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You Might Be a Cheater If…

cheaterqueenTime again for the Friday Challenge based on Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if…”

CN member JenPen suggests replacing this instead with: “You might be a cheater if…”

For fun and a few much needed laughs…we wondered how many cheater lines we could come up with…well, I just knew the chumps would all have a lot of ideas….and thought it might be a fun post sometime.

“If your Match.com profile shows a headless body…you might be a cheater!”

You might be a cheater if:

…You can’t remember how many phone carrier plans you have.

…You do all your texting on the toilet.

…Your Girls Night Outs have no girls.

Your turn to play! TGIF!

Ask Chump Lady

Got a question for the Chump Lady? Or a submission for the Universal Bullshit Translator? Write to me at [email protected]. Read more about submission guidelines.

  • … you suddenly feel the urge to whiten your teeth, get fit, and wear skinny jeans at 50

        • The ex (I refuse to call him ‘my’ anything) was 53 (he’s now nearly 56 and I sometimes wonder how that’s working for him). He started wearing skinny jeans rolled up to show his hairy ankles, plus boxers with inbuilt ‘sculpting’ ????. The chest hair was shaved. And he started walking with a Peaky Blinders swagger, arms held out in a curve from his sides. Cillian Murphy can get away with it; the ex, not so much ????. And sat with his legs spread to show off his sculpted assets (he is not a well-endowed man). That’s how the ex tells the world he’s a cheater. Pathetic excuse for a human!

    • Yup mine got all of his teeth capped and died his graying hair blond.

      • Mr. X dyed his greying hair and beard dark brown. He looked ridiculous. After that, he tried something else, that ended up the dark yellowish color of a large mailing envelope. It was AWFUL.

    • Someone bought me some skinny jeans. I looked like a toffee apple. But I guess I forgot to get fit, and (to be honest) my teeth aren’t great either. Phew, I am not a cheater…

    • Cheaters teeth are almost blinding they’re so white.
      When he smiles he looks like a rabid rat.

      You also might be a cheater if you spend hours in a magnified mirror meticulously trimming your eyebrows, side burns and mustache. Not one hair uneven or out of place.

      He’d normally let his eyebrows grow out of control. I’d have to remind him several times that they needed trimming before he’d trim them back. I thought he was taking more of an interest in his appearance now that he’s older.

      You also might be cheating if you tell your spouse, “you no longer feel butterflies in your stomach when she walks into a room”.
      Never mind that you’d been married 20 years and aren’t teenagers…

      • “When he smiles he looks like a rabid rat”
        ????????

        Funny how so many cheaters and their side whores look like rodents.

        • Ptosis. I worked in this rat-infested industry filled with narcs and climbers and sexual harassment. But for many women, “harassment” read as “career opportunity/free stuff.” I knew several like that and for some reason they all had droopy eyes. So did the AP in my situation. What’s up with that? Early binge drinking? DNA damage?

  • When you suddenly have the urge to manscape at 55 after never doing so before! Your lack of interest in your kids or marriage is your partners fault because of some crazy random reason.

  • In your 40s begin to have “regular medical check-ups” and say that’s just because you are now a mature, responsible adult. Despite having ridiculed standard regular healthcare previously (because special, superior, narc master-race etc)

    • This one! All of sudden it was important to have everything checked. And everything included a urologist. And, darn it if the urologist’s office held a double win – a married schmoopie plus a viagra prescription! I often thought about calling the urologist directly to ask if he knew there might be free test drives happening under his watch. Later I heard they were written up by HR a couple of times for getting caught in the closets with BJs. He’s 60+. Those poor, poor coworkers – hoping not to get their eyes seared every time they needed to open a closet door!

  • You might be a cheater if you called your husband and small sons in the evening to describe in detail all the fun things you did that day in Oregon with your best friend from college . . .

    While you were actually in Las Vegas fucking a married man you met online playing World of Warcraft. ????❤️????

    • Nomar, absolutely horrible. Online games relationships = not a winner.

    • So depressingly tacky– Americana at its worst. Makes me imagine people eating 7/11 microwave nachos on rust-colored shag carpeting under fluorescent tubes while wearing acid-washed cut-offs and mullets. Wail.

  • …you get back home with glitter on your face and “don’t know how it got there”

    …your gym simply doesn’t get cellphone service

    …your wife surprising you at work to have lunch together makes you uncomfortable

    • Wow, I’d forgotten that last one!

      If your wife coming to your office is greeted by open mouth stares….
      because you never told anyone that you were married!!!
      Because you and your fuck buddy got hired as a ‘team’ and you leave your wedding ring in the car every day.

      Oops ???? Minor detail.

    • Ooh, I’d forgotten the long hair that I found attached to his washing. 5 months before DDay and I commented on it, joking ‘are you having an affair?’. Answer ‘no, never”. I am confident that he was also cheating on exgfOW (who has different hair) with someone in the office – exgfOW was on the other side of an ocean. She is very, very stupid.

      • Yes, the HAIR. I actually attributed it to our son’s golden retriever. In hindsight (which is all we have), it was too long to be dog hair!

    • Oh man! His gym didn’t have cell service here either! It’s a new gym trend these days, I hear. ????

    • I forgot that one too. I said there’s my handsome husband & he gave me death stare, I am sure he had told young howorker we had no affection towards each other. I was still in the dark.

  • You return from your morning walk smelling like Candy perfume and cigarettes (casino walking ;). You need an iPhone with two SIM cards and two carriers because “that’s my business, not yours.” Your phone suddenly flashes like a fire alarm every now and then—it’s a text from a hooker! Run into the other room, store, outside to read it and then deny you were looking at your phone.

    And for the win, when saying your working late on a Friday: “Fucking Fridays!” when you pay someone to visit you at work.

    • Oh god. Forgot to add the “I have to work late (again)” to my list below.

      I often wondered when he’d have time to cheat, since he was always home.

      I feel like an idiot now, because all that “working” late. Ow was his coworker. And like a trusting fool, I never thought to compare his “overtime” with his paychecks…

      • ISTL: I wondered the same thing too (when did he cheat??) but then I realized he must of hooked up with her on lunch or those few hours he went into work on Saturday mornings! Unreal. Who would want to be a nooner or a Saturday morning special?!

        • My STBX typically met the AP during lunch. It was one of my first questions when he copped to the affair: when??? He didn’t travel for work and he was always home in the evening. Fucking lunch.

          • Mine would say the alarm company called about the back door of office…I’ll be right back.

      • I got… there’s a bunch of people from work going out for drinks and appetizers after work on Friday. Really boring – just some actuarial and accounting. Would rather come home….. Except it was two people – him actuarial, her accounting. Found the receipt months later after d-day. Never even occurred to me.

      • Same. I later found he was using sick days and vacation days to spend with hookers in hotels.

      • Yeah, you might be a cheater if you have to return to our business after dropping me at home, using the excuse that you need to “catch up” and staying a couple of hours – until I announce as you are leaving that I am too nervous to stay alone and go with you, at which point you are “all caught up” in less than 15 minutes, not to mention acting pissed off because I now refuse to stay at home alone.

  • …you text your wife on New Years Eve that you aren’t coming home tonight because you’ve been really busy and need a break.

  • … you suddenly add a lock code on your phone and never let it out of your sight, even to go to the bathroom or shower. And you receive a million texts a day.

    … you start picking fights about nothing so you have an excuse to leave the house.

    … you inexplicably start listening to bands/artists that you have formerly ridiculed.

    … you go out with friends (plural) from work, but they all incredibly cancel last minute so it turns out to just be one “friend”. Every time.

    … you start keeping a bottle of mouthwash in your car when you have never done that before.

    … you try and force your wife’s leg behind her head during sex when you know she has never been that flexible (but your “friend” is -really- into yoga).

    … there are 35-50 HOURS of phone calls made to one particular number EACH MONTH. Even during the time when you promised to “work on” your marriage.

    … you never invite your wife (mother of your kid) to “playdates” at a particular person’s home, and make all kinds of excuses why (“the apartment is too small”, “we won’t be gone long”, “you’d be bored”, “it’s chaotic”, blah blah blah).

    I could go on, but that’s a start.

    • The band equivalent was Fleabag and Schitt’s Creek. ‘Someone told me they are good’, a man who wouldn’t have touched Fleabag with a barge pole ???? I like Schitt’s Creek and, even though I’m a Brit, I’ve never got Fleabag (overrated). He hated Fleabag but had to pretend to like it. He also suddenly brought a Fantastic Mr Fox dvd home. We were in our 50s, no kids. I found it hidden amongst the dvds and said ‘where did this come from’ in an interested voice because I was interested and puzzled. ‘Oh, someone loaned it to me’. This was the same someone who left his place of work suddenly. She was due to meet up with me to spectate at his majestic marathon running exploit in her home town, but never turned up in spite of my sending her a number of texts on route telling her where I was. Even more weirdly, he disappeared off the marathon tracker for over an hour, quite close to where she lived. Hindsight is a wonderful thing: he’d clearly stopped off for a quickie on the way round. What I love about this is that his long-distance exgfOW thought, perhaps still thinks, that she’s the only one. At least I kicked him into touch as soon I discovered the affair. ExgfOW is both cheater and chump – not a good look.

      • He seriously stopped for sex DURING a marathon!?! ????. Holy Toledo…

        • Yep! Although the act itself wouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds ???? I thought he had died on route! And in a way he had.

  • You go to play “golf” in hurricane winds…..

    You start wearing T shirts in bed when you only used to wear undies( hides the talon scratches on his back)

    I feel such a fool!!!

    • We are all fools to have trusted and loved these pathetic losers. I’ll never make that mistake again.

    • I remember a few times seeing scratches on his back. “That happened at work”…never clued in that he wears heavy duty workwear, so how the fuck would a scratch get through??

      Now I know…fucking pig.

  • You take out a secret credit card with charges for florists, jewellery and hotels, instead of paying the mortgage.

    • And by the time your wife finds out about the OW, you’ve got us $100,000+ in debt with unpaid bills against our business, which you have been looting. Yep, you might be a cheater!

  • When you run a company with hundreds of people and pick one single attractive divorced woman to put in your personal car to drive to the Christmas party in front of the entire rest company. Both ways

    When you’re 55 and take the 19-year-old intern to lunch by yourself – to thank her for working for you for the summer, but ignore your own daughter so as not to show “favoritism“

    When you go to Mexico for the weekend insist that you went everywhere alone but not understand technology enough that you send screenshots of random women “ tour guides” back to your home computer

  • If you shave, wax, trim religiously before every single trip with your “friend” , yet refuse to do so the rest of the year for you husband.

    • Yep. My husband was super hairy, but no, never manscaped for me in spite of a very humble request by me. He started the manscaping in earnest about a year before DDay, but of course he said it was for me.
      I find the whole pubic hair giveaway quite hilarious now ????. It’s probably in the top 3 of “You’re probably a cheater if…” list!

      • Oogh, I wish I had known the manscaping/cheater connection before I encountered Mr. Cheaterpants. I’m old-school, so I was surprised to discover his plucked-chicken look. Later on I was surprised to discover his OTHER girlfriend and his WIFE!

        • He was 63 and suddenly shaved his balls. Must have been difficult, LOL, and began to wear black bikini underwear – the old fool!

        • Plucked chicken ???????? I’m old school too.
          The damned black undies. I should have known. Previously he had worn tightie whities and – literally – hand me down underwear.

      • Yes, mine was very hairy, also…the back hair grossed me out the most…but when he started talking about his female coworker a lot, he started shaving his groin area and asking me if I liked it. Whatever…I had lived with it for 25 years…didn’t know why he was asking me. Then came the chest hair shaving – which I hated! Because it was like needles against me when we snuggled. But, he continued to do it. Did he ever try to lose weight for me? No. But when he left, he lost about 40 lbs in six months. Did he ever do anything about his halitosis for me? Nope. His gummy smile? Nope. But he got botox for his 30 year old girlfriend. Oh, sorry, now wife.

  • You might be a cheater if…
    Your other 4 family members carrier is Verizon and yours is AT and T.

    Ask your wife to shave your back and nether parts ( also in 50’s) when you’ve never done that before in your life.

    Decide you want to try black marble bag undies when you’ve been a tighty whitey guy for 40 years.

    Pick nonsensical fights and have out of control rages on a precious Saturday morning, so you can clear up your day free from that annoying family who love you.

    If your spouse puts a pot of water or skillet on stove, you are obsessively and uncontrollably driven to move it over some exact quantum number to dead center, because she is incapable of even doing that right and it MUST be pointed out to her.

    You criticize your wife’s jewelry, clothes, hair, makeup, weight, laugh, any and all decisions, etc and so on when you seemed pretty happy with all of it last week.

    Text non stop on a rare dinner evening out and when your spouse asked who are texting, you yell out “ none of your business!”

    Tell your spouse you can communicate with every other person on earth except for them.

    Checking account is unexplainably low an unexplainable number of times.

    Look sharp and fresh going to work in morning and if you have a few days off at home will wear the same clothes every single day.

    Have sexy womens boots in your closet (size 7.5), when your wife wears a size 9.

  • Oh and I guess when you are able to lie with a big smile on your face looking your spouse directly in the eye and not care that you’re setting them up for devastation

    • Absolutely this, and this is what is stoping my meh. I’ll never understand the huge lies told over such a long period of time with that sick grin on his face, what is wrong with these freaks??? How can they be so cruel?

      • “Absolutely this, and this is what is stoping my meh. I’ll never understand the huge lies told over such a long period of time…”

        We can’t understand it, because we’re not conscience less shit bags. Be glad of that. I don’t know how far along you are after Dday, it’s been 4 years and a bit for me, mostly I’m ‘meh’, but it still occasionally trips me up with remembering the hurt and rage.

        To be honest, I don’t think it will ever totally go away, like you say, it’s the sickening realisation that not only were they capable of such lies, but they did it with a smile. But I *can* say, I no longer think about it every day, and that will happen for you too. Hugs. ????????

        • Thank you Chumpnomore6, you are much further along in this journey than me, I am only 6 months in but your words give me a lot of hope this pain does get better.Xx

      • This is what still gets me. Also, the insanely huge amount of people who went along with his lies and helped him lie to me. Like, what did I do to make so many people hate me? And people I cared about and have helped… It’s what stops me from being totally ok. Just the enormous betrayal from so many people for two decades.

        • It’s like being hit by a train. People I trusted and thought were my friends helped him lie to me.
          Switzerland friends, I finally made the decision to stop all contact with anyone who hinted that “I must have done something.” I thought they knew me better than that.
          They do know better.
          Huge betrayal by the people I’ve cared about and trusted.

        • So sorry, KatiePig. Happened to me too; total devastation of figuring out that ALL my professional colleagues and employees ALL knew and nobody even dropped a hint. I lost my spouse and all my friendship circle. I will never, ever recover from that betrayal.

        • I don’t think people hated you Katiepig, I just think they were indifferent to your suffering, like they were with me. One thing I am taking from this shitstorm of the last six months is that I will call out cheating wherever I see it, be it friends, family or heaven forbid my children go astray. I think this is where we need to get to as a society, cheating is not acceptable and any cheaters I stumble across in my life are treated like they have the plague! Big hugs fellow chump.X

        • I feel you KatiePig. Same here, but only for a half decade (that I know of). Utterly awful… They’re lost, sick, lazy, protecting their family, jealous, shallow…

          • Replying to everyone here. I have realised through a lot of therapy that many of the people in my old life got high on the drama of others. Proper French Revolution stuff – watching, knitting, cheering, smirking, as others are subject to utmost cruelty. These people gossip, often in unpleasant ways. They stoke the fire and step back to a safe distance, to watch the fireworks that they lit while stoking. I have stopped trying to work out why all of my inlaws bar his godparents, plus my sister, my mother, some (not all) mutual friends, either dropped me immediately (and knew what was coming because he had primed them) or told me it was my fault. I was too …, not enough …, you name it, I was it. When meeting people I now assess whether they are drama merchants. As soon as I spot the signs I move them to the bottom of my priority list (and that includes family). Anyone who gets that little gleeful smile on their face at another’s bad fortune, who smirks when telling bad news about others, or who tells me stuff that is not mine to know, or says ‘I shouldn’t say this but’, or ‘I promised not to tell, but I can trust you’, or is racist, or homophobic, or jokes about disability etc. my hand goes up and I say ‘I’m going to stop you there’. It’s working for me, and if I offend along the way it doesn’t matter because I don’t want to know these people.

      • Ugh. I will never forget that sick grin on his face when I hugged his co-worker who I thought was our good friend.
        ????

        • Same.

          Smug smirk as he watched me hug the rat faced whore whom I had invited into our home for Christmas. ????????

    • Yes, Meanwell. Like the others said, the pain from this cruelty lingers. The ex used to whistle a lot. I used to think, wow, he is just such a cheerful guy. After d-day, I realized that it was a tell–he whistled when he got away with something. Whether it was getting nudes from nurses or transferring money to his gf/s while he was literally just beside me. Whistling was like a nervous tic that revealed his anxiety about taking a risk and then his exhilaration about not getting caught. Deception makes these subhumans truly, deeply happy. It is what they wake up for in the morning and what keeps them warm at night. So when I hear whistling now, it is a huge trigger.

      • This is so true, deception was my husbands fuel, my ignorance was his bliss! He also had a funny thing going on with his tongue as when he lied the tip would appear out the corner of his mouth, slightly snake like really. Now everything is out in the open and there is no more blatant deception he honestly looks like he has shrunk in every way, physically, emotionally, financially, clearly running on empty now as his only friend is that disgusting slapper from work. #TheKibbleFamine

      • I get that. I have learned to understand this. there was a thrill for him. But it took me a very very long time to really understand that he didn’t care, if he hurt me and he may have actually even been aiming to hurt me. I was very naïve

        You had a Whistle, I had a smile and a special word he used only when he lied
        Towards the end when the lies were becoming absolutely outrageous and I knew most of what he was doing, through marriage police work, but he didn’t know I knew, he would use the word “nope” instead of no

        Did you take an Uber home last night? nope

        Did you take someone to dinner while you were on that trip out of the country? Nope

        Was ho worker at that meeting? Nope
        Were you alone with her? Nope

        Over and over and over again. I ended up finding a mug in a novelty store with the word “nope” and it sits on my window sill

        He saw it before we divorced and it actually upset him

        It really is a criminal mindset, they think that they are smarter that they are just master manipulators, such fools

        • Omg, your ex’s use of “nope” is making my brain go into high gear…my ex was the same! I am just realizing it now though. During our separation, he would say Nope when I asked him questions I already knew the answer to. Funny thing is the questions you listed are so similar to what I asked. It is probably their way of keeping it short and not saying too much that might give him away.

          One thing I noticed too is that he puts his NOT in all caps when denying something that he actually did. “I did NOT go to her house. I did NOT go on vacation with her and her kids. I do NOT have herpes.” I can put NOT in my email search bar and get a nice timeline of all his lying ways.

          Augh I hate that we got good at this. Marriage detective work is not something we should’ve had to do.

  • You might be a cheater if…

    Your wife finds some lube in the car and you tell her you bought it for her.

    You have two phones and you insist one is for business calls and you say your boss is reimbursing you for one of them.

    You steal cash from your joint bank accounts and buy pre-paid credit cards with the money.

    You have a secret PO Box.

    You are in the bathroom for long periods of time and you don’t have diarrhea.

    You have to rush out of the house in the evening and buy emergency groceries. It takes you over an hour and the supermarket is 500 meters down the road.

    You don’t like having sex with your wife anymore because she’s too vanilla all of a sudden.

    You have a sudden penchant for dressing like you did in the 90s by wearing combat boots and a beanie.

    • Lol.
      How about wearing a bracelet after constantly ridiculing any man who wore jewelry

      • My ex wore a bracelet as well! It looked like a cheap friendship bracelet and that made me feel like shit for some reason.

        • Another ‘unexplained bracelet in the bagging area’ spouse here ???? I know it’s sad but it’s also hilariously funny. I love this challenge.

        • Red String bracelet
          I think some sort of spiritual signaling or or “special moment reminder” bracelet to a woman.
          A few years before and on another man he would’ve used it is a punchline for weeks

          • Had forgotten all about the sudden copper bracelet “bought” for all it’s magic health benefits.

        • I don’t know if she gave it to him I think they were together in Mexico and he told me it was a tradition down there but I don’t know so I think it was a reminder of an experience they had together and it was a signal to her

          It was just a red string people wear them here sometimes for Kaballah
          To ward off the evil eye supposedly
          I guess I was the 5 foot five evil eye

          It Was definitely tied, no pun intended, to an experience he had with her and he wanted to keep it on. It was in my face and he knew that I would never be able to source it

          • I’m sure my ex wore the bracelet bought by his OW. It was creepy somehow, along with all of his other transformations. He doesn’t look the same or even talk the same.

      • Same here, cheap silver bracelets. She wanted me to wear one too but I tried and tired of it in a day.
        So weird. It’s like they’re all reading from the same playbook.

    • Ugh. ManChild also used a version of the vanilla sex excuse. So predictable! And the getting mad if I wasn’t in the mood, after he ignored me all day as if I didn’t exist.

    • Oh, do I know about long periods in the bathroom. Snakeface used to head to the bathroom with his laptop after work and soak in the tub for 90 minutes to two hours. He was into porn, and he resented my resentment of his passionate interest, so I assume he was… ahem… enjoying himself while looking at porn sites, safely behind a locked door. Or he was texting or having naked FaceTime with Spiritual Slut. Maybe both. I’ve wondered if Snakeface’s porn addiction was cured by their great, spiritual love, or if Spiritual Slut puts up with it, but with more tolerance and understanding than I had.

      The other bathroom story I have makes me cringe. After Snakeface asked me for a divorce (never, never admitting the real reason why), but before we could tell our sons and, after that, the rest of the family, we had to spend a weekend out of town with his parents. The four of us went out for dinner one evening, and before leaving the restaurant, Snakeface had to use the men’s room. He was gone quite a while, leaving the rest of us waiting for him in the corridor of the mall where the restaurant was located. Mother-in-law wandered to the other side of the corridor to window shop, leaving me alone with father-in-law. After way too many minutes went by, father-in-law turned to me and expressed concern that Snakeface might have some issues with constipation, which were a problem in mother-in-law’s side of the family. FIL had a habit of raising things with me that he should have brought to directly to the attention of Snakeface, his own son. MIL and FIL were good parents and grandparents, they were good to me, and I would never have hurt them for the world, but FIL and I also rubbed each other the wrong way. Standing with him in the mall, embarrassed on more than one level, it took all my self-control to keep from telling him “Your son is probably taking forever because he’s texting his girlfriend.”

      • Sunrise, that would have been a good one! My ex was always so long in the bathroom that my mum took me aside and asked if he had stomach issues. I said no. My mum kept pushing it and asking what the hell he was doing then. I was defensive at the time, and like the grand chump that I am, I had it in my mine that he was just needing a little bit of time alone. He had this narrative that he was introverted and needed a lot of brain processing time. So I believed him and defended him against my mum. I even talked myself out of being pissed and annoyed about it when I had to sit and wait for him. It was all just fucking rude. I was always waiting for him in one way or another. Being in the bathroom and winding me up, being late, in the computer too long-it was also a control mechanism. But defending him to my mum that was just one of the many many ways I spackled.

        • … your spouse and your parents take turns apologizing to each other for your inexplicable asshole behavior

          Yup, right here. Smdh.

        • Saaaame, making me wait always, so damn rude. Great we’re now divorced from them.

    • This…..You are in the bathroom for long periods of time and you don’t have diarrhea.
      YES!!! And does so with his phone or iPad…

  • …….phone records show you calling local randos for fuckfests late at night after wishing your son happy birthday and getting lots of cash on a work trip
    ……you are very proud of your Hilton rewards earned from business trips (forgetting to mention your hooker points also earned on these trips)
    ……you miss a call from spouse when house is being broken into and cops are there because you hid your phone from an unsavory hookup
    …….money is tight and you blame your spouse when you’re the one spending thousands on dick tamers and damn her for not using all the leftovers in the fridge
    ……..you suddenly start taking expensive supplements and working out yet sex with spouse doesn’t improve or increase.

    • … the expensive supplements, oh my this reminds me. After Dday, combing the joint bank statements, I was able to track his (new) orders for “Horny Goat Weed”… I laughed out loud at that one!

  • You might be a cheater when your wife…interrupts a conversation between you (as a volunteer coach) & a soccer mom…and wifey realizes this wasn’t a conversation about improving any kid’s soccer skills.

  • You might be a cheater if…
    You start bringing around a girl and saying you guys are close like brother and sister.

  • As seen on the FB group page yesterday: you might be a cheater if “Pizza Hut” texts you to wish you a good night with heart emojis

  • …your wife calls you and you say “who is this?”

    (That happened…I thought it was funny…I was so delusional )

  • You might be a cheater if —
    –You begrudge your wife every piece of jewelry she’s ever wanted and disparaged it as vanity and foolish, but you are happy to buy it for a friend you met online
    –You flop into bed after long hours at your computer and tell your wife she should thank you for how hard you’re working to fill out job applications when actually you’ve been emailing a “woman” you met online
    –You don’t tell your therapist about finding your online “Solemate” because “who would believe a true luv story like ours?”
    –You believe the online AP when “she” tells you that the fastest way from Arizona to NY is by going to Oregon. By bus.
    –You’re so desperate to brag about the bodacious babe who “wuvs” you that you leave “her” pornographic pictures and emails in your adolescent grandson’s bathroom where he can see them

  • ……for your 20th wedding anniversary, you tell your wife that, for the past few months, you have been thinking about living by yourself for a while. But you don’t want a divorce.

    ….you go to the car wash but the truck is dirty.

    …..you disappear from the house on the weekends without telling anyone else in the family, and when you just as
    mysteriously reappear, you have no items from the hardware store you say you went to.

    ….you leave super early every morning to ride miles and miles to work on your bike, but your weight does not go down.

    …..you have no interest in going to Yosemite, a favorite place, for your birthday, with that same bike, to stay in one of the cabins at the Ahwahnee in October, which usually have to be reserved years in advance, but your wife called on a whim and by some miracle one had become available. (and after DDay he growled, “You NEVER do anything special for my birthday.” Like going to see Elton John in Las Vegas. Which was also the selfish, thoughtless, criminal handiwork of a mean ugly horrible evil wife.

    ……it becomes so difficult to reach you by phone, the phone which is surgically attached, that it becomes an issues your wife brings up in couples counseling.

    ….you go to couples counseling and lie
    lie lie lie lie. For years.

    • Car wash was broken again or the line was too long & then a patient had to be seen for emergency back issue ….

    • You say you have to attend a work event AFTER YOU’VE RETIRED. And you complain when your spouse points out that minor detail.

  • You might be a cheater if….

    – Your workout buddy is the next door neighbor….she is such an “amazing woman”
    – You leave work in the middle of day to go “running” when it’s 100 degrees outside with said “amazing woman” only to come home a little bit sweaty.
    – Criticizing your thin wife saying it looks like her legs have been beaten by a bag of nickels
    – demanding your wife get a 4th job away from home….while you only have 1, of which you do half ass and leave every day to “run” with the neighbor.
    – You expect your overworked wife to work at 3 jobs every day (even weekends) and only get 2-3hrs of sleep a night, PROMPTLY waking her up at 6am.
    – You yell and scream at your overworked wife if she sleeps after 6am, wanting to spend time with young children, or needing to go to the doctor
    – arguing with your wife that she can’t boil water right

    • – only have pictures of you and your kids in your dating profile
      – in your dating bio claim you are “GOD FEARING” and looking for your soulmate

  • When you tell your boss that you have to go home during work because your wife is struggling with the loss of our 16 year old son, but really you are going to screw her best friend

  • You insist on riding each and every motorbike (7 of them) each and every day for hours at a time during a lockdown ????????‍♀️????‍♀️

    • Mine broke mandatory quarantine because he was “going stir crazy and wanted to go for a drive”. I know now that he went to go fuck his crack whore or some randos. How he didn’t bring home Covid is unreal. Fucker.

    • Or, if your bank statement shows a hefty, mysterious expense right when your wife was sick at home that day

    • This! I’ll never know how much he spent on his side pieces and my lawyer says we can’t bring it up without proof so…. I’m pretty sure he’s hiding cash in a safe deposit box but again, we need proof. He’s arguing in his defence that he is entitled to 76% (not a typo – don’t ask me why 76%) though he’s delusional as the law is clear. I will be so, so glad when this is over.

  • …if every time you begin to speak your pants mysteriously catch on fire…

  • Got another round in me!

    …you keep your germy cell phone in your pajama pocket when you’re home (should have left him for this one alone!)

    …you sleep with your cell phone next to your face on the nightstand and claim it’s for the alarm – when you have a perfectly functioning alarm clock sitting next to it, that your wife gave you when you were dating

    …you close browser tabs quickly on the shared computer when your wife walks into a room and insist she’s imagining it (and now she can recognize Facebook’s shade of blue from 100 miles)

    • Quetzal – yess on the race to close the computer faster than a speeding bullet and yesss on the Facebook blue color 100% !!! I’ll add these –
      – You might be a cheater if the facebook new message tone makes you leap out of bed in the middle of the night like the bed is on fire and sprint to the guest bathroom down the hall with your phone. Bonus points if you need to race past the bathroom to the garage. Suuurre your wife will believe you thought you heard something alright…. Only not the something you say it was (hmmm was it really a badger out there orrr… was it side bitch saying she’s in her jammies again?
      – You might be a cheater if you start to hold your phone at really odd angles to make it harder to view the screen while sitting on the couch and think it looks close to normal – Rest assured – – it doesnt…
      -You might be a dumber than average cheater if you never take the time to figure out how to turn off the notification lines (your wife can read the first few lines of everything side bitch says)
      -You might be married to a cheater if that aforementioned facebook notification tone makes you twitch like a lab animal in an unethical experiment getting shocked or stabbed many times every.single.day…….

      • You might be married to a cheater if that aforementioned facebook notification tone makes you twitch like a lab animal in an unethical experiment getting shocked or stabbed many times every.single.day…….

        This! But in my case it’s the sound of the click made my slamming his iPad keyboard shut. That sound makes me cringe and is now a lingering part of my PTSD

  • AND HOW CAN I FORGET THE TOP PIECE!

    …every night you’re “SO TIRED” and you make sure you deliver such a compelling line in your whiniest voice possible

    (…every night you then proceed to fall asleep without saying goodnight to your wife, having had sex or even a conversation, after making her watch tv shows about disgusting illnesses or crime)

    • Ohh…the so tired! After he had gone to bed at 8pm sharp for a good 8 hrs.
      Seems he was ‘watching’ markets all night.
      So – slept a lot when it was our time.

  • …so enmeshed in yourself that you don’t see how devastated your family is as your partner becomes a top notch marriage detective
    You begin manscaping to find if something so small actually exists and your partner never complained about either.
    Your partner leaves in he middle of the night with the kids because you are an abusive asshole

  • You make your wife feel guilty for asking you to (at least) come home in time to put the kids to bed, claiming she’s ungrateful because “I am working my ass off so you and the kids can have nice things.” And that you are difficult to reach during some of these late hours because “I am in a conference room deep in a deal and my phone is on silent.”

  • …if he’s so dumb that he thinks that charging a hotel room on my credit card and later reversing the charge to pay cash will make it disappear completely from the credit card statement… ????

    …if, despite the fact that there was proof, he says “I can’t lie about something that didn’t happen!”????

    …if he suddenly manscapes, and shows off the results, and asks me to pick out some cologne for his birthday that is ultimately only worn at work for the howorker to enjoy….????

    • Omg! I am so stupid. STBX charged a hotel on my card then reversed it. I thought he just decided not to stay there. I already knew about OW and was obtaining evidence. I cannot believe I missed that!

    • Omg the hotel credit card thing happened to me too!!!! What a giveaway. The ex claimed it was for a work function.

  • If you send your wife on a girls’ trip for her birthday so that the next month you can justify going on vacation “alone.” #notalone

  • …gets on dating websites to “vet” men for her sister to date.
    …has her SUV used by her friend’s 13yo daughter to have sex with a rando (kid she pointed to) from the neighborhood that left behind a magnum condom under passenger seat, but wont tell friend, and cannot reconcile that it was rape.
    …SAHM unreachable all day due to “just got out of shower”, or “was cleaning” while glued to phone the moment I get home.
    …habitually hides phone screen, or closes out web browser EVERYTIME I enter room. Sometimes just sits and stares at the wallpaper.
    …starts fight then disappears for hours – unreachable due to “no service” or “left phone in car”, or starts meaningless fights after being gone for hours.
    …dresses well to shop, or go to work (when she did), but changes upon coming home in to old t-shirts and sweats.
    …turns cheek when kissing, placing pillows between you in bed while sleeping ALL THE WAY to very edge of a kingsize bed, but denies that any of that happens, we are good, and she is the happiest she has ever been.
    …roleplays as a sex slave online while I work, sleep, sick, go to store… (wasnt aware I knew, or more likely didnt care).
    …disappears for 2.5 hours on a friday night for “emergency groceries” at the corner store, but phone said she was at a house 20 minutes away from the store. Wildly inaccurate phone location I guess. Comes back with a small back of nonessentials and says it took a while because clerk was slow.
    …so much more to add but ran out of room.

    • Item #2 — A 13-year-old drove her car? To meet a random kid for sex? And she won’t report it? Do I have this right?

      • I found the condom. She asked it if was mine. I laughed. She gets hysterical – oh my god! where did this come from! Heads inside to talk to daughter. Cased closed. Daughter friend stayed the night weeks ago. Sleep with kid who walks around our neighborhood in the SUV. Recently confirmed how old she was. I was in denial and didn’t want to know more… just said OK!

  • … You start wearing neon green contact lenses that make you look like a fucking alien. But really, do prostitutes even give a shit what color your eyes are?

  • You might be a cheater if you claim you have to work late every night Monday through Friday and then get home on Friday evening and announce (Wow, I managed to just barely hit 40 hours this week!) And then get angry and yell at your wife when she asks how you worked five 12 to 13 hours shifts and “just barely” hit 40 hours. She’s just a bitch! She’s just trying to start shit out of nowhere! LOL

  • If you tell your size four wife she needs to “tone up” and shouldn’t embarrass herself by wearing thong underwear while you tell 400 pounders on the internets how beautiful they are… well, you might be a cheater.

  • You are a cheater if :

    – you suddenly buy privacy screen protectors for your cellphone and laptop (“everyone on the plane was looking at what I was doing!”)

    – you stop sharing your location

    – you come down with IBS (self-diagnosed) and spend hours in a locked bathroom

    – the one city you always traveled to for work (10+ years) suddenly has no more work and now has to go to another city (home of ho-worker)

    – you answer a call from your wife while on a work trip and claim you can’t talk as you are out with the guys at a bar (in a major city), but there is dead silence.

    – you change your lock screen passcode from your wedding anniversary date to your ho-workers birthdate

    Can’t believe I put up with this shit!

    • I forgot one more

      – moved the credit card statements to paperless billing

    • Yes. My exFW said he couldn’t always share his location because it would turn itself off. Hahaha

      • His needed to be repaired on a Thursday night at 10:30pm. They stayed late for him ????

    • I had exact same. We were married to the same fuckwit! Ewww. So denigrating. I’ll never get those years back. I’m 64. God help him if I ever get a cancer diagnosis.

  • …if your coffee date with an ex-student is so important it can’t be canceled and you leave your wife and son at the T-Mobile store to finish getting new phones set up.

    • …if your fanciest trip to Hawaii involved primo chairs on top of the resort with full service, and..he says, I can’t take the sun (umbrellas avail) and had to sprint back to the room after 15 minutes.

  • Starts a gym membership
    Whitens his teeth
    Gets braces on his teeth at the tender age of 51????
    Removing body hair

    And every answer to a question is either “don’t remember” or “don’t know”. Which I might expect from a teenage boy but not from a middle aged man. But then again if heavy porn use stunts their emotional and relational development he is only 11 years????????

    That explains a lot of things he cleverly had hidden until D-Day

    • FW had sudden amnesia, too. This from a man (child) who claimed to have razor-sharp memory, and always accused me of remembering wrongly.
      And the heavy porn use, which led to Delayed Ejaculation issues. He admitted that hookers would “work” on him for nearly an hour, then have to say they were finished. Oh, and I just needed more stamina. My fault.
      The man-scaping – which, IMO, looked ridiculous.
      And don’t forget “the FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT(!) to privacy!” Don’t come near anything in his realm that could possibly be incriminating. His desk, his phone, his computer, his work-shop, his car, his closet. Meanwhile, it’s OK for him to dig through your stuff. Actually, since I had nothing to hide, I didn’t care.

  • . . . You start taking a shower BEFORE going to the gym to “workout.”

  • – if you ignore your wife when she talks, but expect her to listen endlessly while you discuss your “students”
    – if you complain because the laundry wasn’t done “fast enough”
    – if you are 48, but suddenly decide to spend every Friday happy hour with your 20-something family members & can’t drive home cause you are “too wasted”
    – if you uninvite your wife to events that were planned & tickets bought months in advance
    – if you suddenly decide hockey is not “your thing” after attending & watching games for 10+ years, so you refuse to go to the game 1 hour before the puck drops
    – if you clean out your 401k a week before walking out on your wife, citing the need to “find yourself”

    I also got the “vanilla sex” issue that a previous chump mentioned. After DDay, one of the excuses he tried was that she gave him porn star sex and I didn’t. Um, yeah, cause I am your wife not your whore.

    Oh well, life is so much better on the other side. Glorious, glorious meh.

  • Just added to my reading pile:

    Lying https://a.co/d/4Qgm5bg

    Some very old, very simple, very true life advice I got from AA, decades ago, is STICK WITH THE WINNERS.

    All cheaters are liars, and as such are not winners. Lying is self-defeating and destructive, the antithesis of success or healthy behavior.

    Trust that they not only suck, but are ripping themselves off as well, voluntarily joining the losers circle, partnering with like-minded (or lack-minded?)

    There was no “mistake made”. I do not
    want anyone in my life who is capable of lying to me, betraying me, hurting me, abusing me, and for whatever reason I just did not see him that way. The big obvious DDay was the 2 x 4 of Truth unfortunately necessary to break the spell.

    If any “mistakes were made”, they were mine for trusting him. The STOP signs were there and I just wasn’t able to give them the respect they deserved until I could.

    • The mistakes were not yours..get off your own back! The most important part of loving and caring for someone is also trusting and believing. It’s on that person if they abuse that trust. Hindsight is 20/20. I see the signs now too; doesn’t make him less at fault for his intentional deception. Hugs!

      • I truly appreciate what you are saying here. I don’t believe I caused him to cheat, but looking back, there are definitely times during the relationship that I should have “gotten out of the car” and didn’t, which is important for me to acknowledge for future relationships….if I ever recover from the blow this one dealt me…..

        ❤️

  • … when you enroll in college (on the GI Bill) after your lazy ass got fired, and you choose the formerly all-female (and still predominantly female) Woman’s University over the state university that has the better program for your chosen major.

  • If you never take any responsibility.
    If you have a black belt in deflection
    If your excuse starts with”but you”
    If you create a bizarre narrative

  • You might be a cheater if:

    You have been meeting up for months with an “Ex-Boyfriend” (who happens to be someone that you had an affair with years ago when he was married and you weren’t, and yet you never once mentioned this man to your husband who you’ve been married to for 24 years) under cover of “I’m going to my twice-weekly choir practice” (sidenote: you can’t sing for sh*t) and when busted you deny everything and refuse to discuss it on the grounds of “it’s personal and none of your business.”

    You go “FaceBook Official” with your relationship on your public FaceBook profile before you get around to actually leaving the house that you live in with your husband and children.

    Just saying.

    LFTT

    • That’s fucked up dude…I’m sorry she put you all through that

      • NYN,

        Thanks …. but believe me, it’s only just scraping the surface of the sh*t she pulled.

        To carry on with CL’s theme, I’d add that you might be a cheater if:

        You deny to the children ever having met up with your AP until after you left them and their father …….. and then 3 months later tell them that you are now in a relationship with the AP, but that it is all their father’s fault because he pushed the two of them together.

        You draw a false equivalence to your children between your relationship with your AP and any relationship that their father might have with someone in the future, even though he is still, 7+ years after D Day, not dating. AKA …… “it’s not fair that you won’t accept AP now, when I know that when your father starts dating you’ll accept his girlfriend.”

        You tell your children that their refusal to have anything to do with the AP is putting her relationship with him under pressure and that it will be their fault if they break up.

        You’ll get the drift by now.

        LFTT

        • Gawd…she sounds like an evil narcissist. I’m so sorry for you and your kids.

          • R,

            Believe me, she’s all that and more.

            Since I’m on a roll, you might be a cheater if:

            10 years before you left your husband and kids, you switched all of the savings plans funded out of the joint account (which only your husband contributes to) to plans in your name only. That this only comes out during the divorce process 2 years after D-Day and after you have dissipated the money – making it impossible for your husband to recover any of it – is just the sh*t sprinkles on top of s sh*t sundae.

            When you leave your husband and kids, you empty the joint account, leaving him on the hook for the mortgage, supporting your eldest daughter at university and your youngest two children at private school, and for paying off the secret loans that you took out without your husband knowing. That you then double down to try to convince friends and family that this provides ample evidence of your husband’s inability to manage money is the sh*t flavoured sauce on top of a sh*t sprinkle covered sh*t sundae.

            A month after you leave your husband and kids, you empty your youngest two children’s savings accounts and your son’s current account ….. and then deny everything. If a sh*t scented sparkler to go on top of the elaborately and lovingly crafted sh*t sundae mentioned above were a thing, this would be it.

            LFTT

            PS – at least I was able to make sure that the kids got their money back.

  • …you refuse to tell your (now ex-)wife how many vacation days you have left when she wants to plan a family vacation.
    …you buy tins of Altoids in noticable quantities and tell your (now ex-)wife that work is so stressful and these help.
    …you show your (now ex-)wife your work calendar to prove how busy you are with meetings every day and your (now ex-)wife realizes that you are the organizer of all of these “meetings” and there are no other participants in these “meetings”. It’s just time blocked off on the calendar under the pretense of “meetings”.

    The fuckwit was doing Craigslist hookups on his lunch hour, during these “meetings”, and taking vacation time to enjoy hookups.

    • So fucking disgusting. FUCKFACE did random hookups while he was away for work…oh and escorts too. Fucking pig.

  • ……if you’re 50 and you buy so many new bras that your husband starts to think you have many sets of secret titties you have never shown him…….but stupid him…..you were just showing the ones you had to coworkers in hotel rooms…..

  • If you tell everyone that will listen your always working; yet their is never any money from all the time working.

    • Bingo. My ex fw worked OT or part time jobs all the time, but never any money. He always said the rental properties took up all the excess. (we had two rental properties). I figured out later that the reason he wanted those properties was to hide money that he was spending on whore. His own little money laundering set up.

      I have no doubt he was working some part time jobs (as a police officer, they are plentiful) but he was using that money for his whoring around. While I scrimped and did without to make sure our son had some things he needed, and some thing he wanted.

  • When you find a knit cap in his car that definitely isn’t his style, besides being way too small, and when asked about it he says it belongs to his male friend (who is over 6′ tall with a skull like a melon).

  • You might be a cheater if you suddenly buy contact lenses, a staggeringly expensive pair of sunglasses, and tell your chump you need them for ‘fishing’. ????????

    • Holy cow. I’d forgot about the sunglasses! Yeah, he bought those and used the fishing excuse. I swear, there must be a cheater’s guide to wardrobe and accessories for sale on amazon!

      • Same – sunglasses & interest in Tumi backpacks. Howorker magically had a $300 one

        • Oh the Tumi! Funny I forgot about that since I use it whenever I go into the office. A few years ago, Fuckwit handed down the expensive backpack he just had to buy before Dday to our teen daughter. She never liked it so after it sat in her closet for over a year I casually asked if I could use it. She said not only could I use it but I could keep it. Fuckwit winces whenever he sees it over my shoulder. It really is a nice bag…

    • Oh yeah, the sunglasses seem to be a common theme. FW purchased a $400 pair of Oakley’s to impress his ho, and then had a screaming meltdown when our daughter was swinging a stick within ten feet of him because she might scratch his precious eyewear.

  • You might be a cheater- When that friend you invited to church is late and refuses to acknowledge your wife when he arrives taking a seat between you and her. And when you arrive home with him after church for lunch that your wife knew nothing about and he acts like a sulking brat and you start massaging his shoulders in front of your wife and children to make him feel better because he is now refusing to stay for the lunch you claim he was there for.
    You might be a cheater when that same friend keeps calling you all hours of the day and night demanding that you put them forward for a role they are not qualified for because you work in recruitment and they feel you owe them and you keep leaving the house to have your conversation with them.

    Yep no might about it, I was blind.

    • Sammie D, you and I are like Melanie Wilkes in Gone with the Wind: we are so innately honest and good that we cannot even host a suspicion that those we love are not also honest and good. We are literally blinded with love. It took a diagnosis with an STD to finally peal the blinders off my marital bridle.

  • Chump speaking on bf/gf relationships

    You might be a cheater if you never use the gifts I buy you. For example, you say you like art and need more things to decorate the walls in your house, yet when I visit you never have the artwork I bought you displayed. Afraid your other gf may ask where it came from? Smh.

    And you are definitely a cheater if you have your Facebook profile set so that no one can comment.

  • You start wearing your sons (15) body spray (axe) to work but never wore the cologne your wife bought for you for 25 years.

    You search for grape tomotoes for over 3 hours hours in the city and there’s a supposed tomato shortage. All while your wife is making dinner and waiting for the tomatoes.

    • I do need to add this is amazing all the stories are the same, I felt so foolish for so long and not even knowing, trust that they suck is an understatement to the abuse they put us through. And it’s hard to believe at times I still struggle with such deception. The coming home home and I love yours. So utterly mind blowing

      • Yup…the lying is absolutely pathological…disgusting. Someone said earlier about how they lie while looking into your eyes and with a smile on their face.

        There must be a special place reserved in hell for these evil motherfuckers.

      • It was pretty bizarre. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it, so I just let it go after a few WTFs. My head was deep into “don’t piss him off” mode back then, so I spackled: it’s his body, we have kids already, now we don’t need to bother with birth control, etc.

        But he definitely didn’t do it for my benefit – otherwise he would have tried to cash in: “I have sacrificed my balls for the greater good, CC. What have you done for me lately?”

    • If you have secret bottles of viagra hidden in your tool box in the garage so you can take a few while on your way to “shop” and you always have a bottle of water in the car.

      • You start leaving the random little blue pill around the house – in the kitchen, bathroom, family room so when they show up in your car, boat and office your wife and kids think it’s just another case of dad being the befuddled professor.

  • Was going to riff on one of Chump Lady’s:
    You may be a cheater if your Boys Night Out doesn’t include boys,
    but unfortunately I saw photos on his phone that show that sometimes they did…
    He was just curious.

  • -You suddenly decide to password-protect your phone.
    -Your Relationship Status on your Facebook page used to say “Married” but not anymore.
    -You get new colored underwear when you only used to wear navy/black/grey before and you wear those on days when you get home late.
    -Home mortgage paperwork comes in the mail addressed to you when your spouse handles your current home mortgage.
    -You have a sudden interest in cooking vegetarian when your spouse tried to get you to eat that for years and you turned up your nose at it.
    -You order gift-like items for the opposite gender from Amazon.com but don’t give them to your spouse.
    -You decline to accompany your spouse on trips to visit an ailing parent so you can stay home and hang out at strip clubs.

  • You might be a cheater if you have ever said:
    But we’re just frrrrriiieeeendddds!
    It’s not what you think it is. How could you even think that.
    She neeeeeedssss my help, I’m her ffffrrriiieeend.
    Nothing ever happened.
    I never had sex with her. (Like Bill C., Cheater needs a birds and bees talk to define what sex is and isn’t.)
    I didn’t do anything wrong because I didn’t have sex with her. (Nothing like a good, old fashioned double down on a lie)

    Also:
    If you use WhatsApp or Words with Friends chat or some other app besides your default phone messaging app to hide your texts.

      • Me too, all except the last one, and I’m not sure about that!

        He refused to sign the Admission of Adultery form, “because I’m not going to say I did something when I didn’t!”

        When my solicitor pointed out the rat faced whore was living with him in his flat, he insisted to her and the judge that”she’s just my lodger! “.

        Fucking gobshite bellend. ????

    • OMG what’sApp. he could not figure out how I was able to read his texts. I couldn’t get in his phone but whats App kept popping up on the iPad he left on the bed every morning that’s how I could read his texts.
      Thought he was so smart using an encrypted text and then synched it to an open device

    • “But we’re just frrrrriiieeeendddds!
      It’s not what you think it is”

      Check.

  • All of sudden every work event “doesnt allow partners to attend’ yet every other husband/wife/partner are miraculously present….

    The deception is deep. They are rotten to the core.

  • If you come home from work one day not wearing your wedding band, and when your wife questions it, you say you take it off during your shift so it doesn’t get damaged …

    • …when you lose 3 wedding rings in 15 years
      …when you text a message to the OW to your wife
      …when you have to have your own bank account and credit cards

  • You might be a cheater if…..
    you claim to hate hiking and refuse to hike with your wife, yet have a pair of new hiking boots hidden in a Nike sneaker box in the back of your closet.

    • Just remembered another silly tell-tale cheater sign. Schmoopie in my sitch is a card carrying hippie chick (granny).

      You might be a cheater if…..
      you develop a sudden interest in avoiding “chemicals” in cosmetics like shampoo and deodorant, stop using traditional products you’ve used for years and switch to “natural” stinky patchouli based cosmetics even though you hate the scent of patchouli.

  • Your husband says he’s in the mood for a milk shake at 8pm on Christmas night

  • Cheaters are definitely classic. Here are a few you might be a cheater if:
    you believe that friends gift each other underwear
    you refer to certain people as “special friends”
    you don’t go anywhere without your cell phone(s)
    you need a P.O.Box
    you have various aliases for email accounts
    you have to hide your dating app accounts
    you are frantic because you think your dick pics just got uploaded to the family photo account
    you panic if your wife comes within five feet of your laptop
    you have to clean out your car for ten minutes before your wife can go in it

    There are so many more but I think most will be covered by the end of the day. Cheaters are just not that original.

    • My FW was sporting a new pair of pajamas (I believe they were superhero print of some kind, like Spider-man?) and he told me they were “a Christmas gift from someone at work”.

      Because THAT’S totally normal, right?

      (I happened to know that “she’s just a friend” is one of those people who gets new pjs for herself and her kids every Christmas. Hell, she gave MY kid pjs for Christmas.) “Someone from work”. Jesus. He must have thought I was dumber than a box of rocks.

      He also his email exchanges between himself and OW in a hidden folder in his email called “work”. I guess he didn’t know about the GMAIL search function…

      • Exactly. I also worked and we have had gift exchanges and I can honestly say I have never gotten PJs or underwear from any of my co-workers! I also never gift my friends (male or female) with underwear. This just isn’t right in my chumpy universe.

        • Ugh. Reading this now makes me question whether all of those gifts x received from patients were actually from patients. Some were expensive gifts, like a new fishing rod. I thought it was weird that a patient would give such a thing.

          I’m such a chump.

          • You trusted appropriately.

            I always thought that the ‘where chefs go to eat’ book that he got in the £10 limit secret santa, which had been meticulously marked up with post it notes on several hundred pages, was odd ????‍♀️. She (he knew who the ‘secret’ santa was and I queried how) had also written in tiny, very neat writing on each post it note, with her views on the restaurants and the food eaten. Most of us run around buying secret santa gifts at the last minute when we’ve received several email reminders from HR. Most of us do not spend hours annotating a very big book unless, perhaps, we are trying to impress the target. Only reading here do I think ‘ah, yes, this was another of his office wives (he called them that) doing the pick me dance. Or that exgfOW had sent the book from Canada to the office, and the secret santa story was a lie. It might have been her handwriting. Either is possible.

            So no Spinach, you are only the average chump, nothing special ❤️

  • You might be a cheater if you introduced him to your boys a month after initial separation.

  • You might be a cheater if… your dating profile has a woman blacked out next to you.

    You might be a cheater if… your dating profile has a fake name. Aka. Sweetincali, lookinforlove.

    You might be a cheater if… on your Match.com picture, you’re wearing a wedding ring. Yes, I’ve seen it.

    You might be a cheater if… you ‘travel a lot’ and are only available on Tuesdays.

    You might be a cheater if …. All your ex’s are crazy.

    You might be a cheater if… you bring your phone everywhere with you, including the bathroom to poo

    You might be a cheater if… you suddenly buy Viagra but not for your poor wife who’s had to deal with your limp noodle for years.

    You might be a cheater if…. You go to hotels for ‘business’ meetings. You know, it has a nice restaurant.

    • Chumpchumper: Oh, it was business all right. Monkey business.

  • …you read The Four Agreements, won’t shut up about it and how your partner needs to follow these rules they learned in kindergarten but you, meanwhile, are lying, taking things personally, assuming your partner is an idiot and well…absolutely NOT doing your best.

  • You might be a cheater if:
    you have to work Easter morning
    You go shopping all day on Black Friday but purchased NO gifts.

  • You might be a cheater if you keep having sudden “emergency” errands to run just as your partner is stepping into or out of the shower and cannot immediately jump up to accompany you. You might be a cheater if you are always playing “words with friends” when your partner comes into the room, but you abruptly shut it down and retreat to the bathroom with your phone for 30 minutes EVERY SINGLE TIME WWF is interrupted. (I had no clue that game could be used as a messaging app – did any of you?) You might be a cheater with a married OW if your cell phone is always turned facedown during the week, but never on weekends when her husband is home and you can’t talk with her.

    • I didn’t know. My ex used to play words with friends all the time–with, he claimed, his sister. He also used to spend inordinate amounts of time in the bathroom each morning. And as we only had one, I’d hold it until I couldn’t before I’d ask him to vacate, and he’d exit in a huff.

    • Oh yeah, Karmaistooslow, amazing how many of those apps have messaging as part of the deal. Cheater #2’s OW’s ex-husband filed after their tech-y son showed husband how to download and save the chats. Not only was their divorce a quicky, uncontested divorce, but OW’s three sons are low/no contact with her for what she did to their dad while he was fighting stage four cancer. At least he got rid of the biggest cancer of all: OW.

  • You might be a cheater if:
    Your impulse control is so weak you leave the out-of-town hospital ICU where your minor child is critically ill during an extended stay. Instead, you claim your boss has requested your emergency assistance. You leave for a 24 hr luv-fest with your Schmoopie, returning only after your selfish desires have been met – with no one the wiser.

      • Not quite as low, Adelante and Latitude69, but Cheater #1 left the hospital not even an hour after I gave birth to our son and didn’t come back until the next day – reeking of alcohol. At 10:00 in the morning.

        Did I mention that the hospital in which I gave birth had family suites set up for dads and other siblings to spend the night with mom and the new baby? I was so sad, on what should have been one of my happiest days, to see the other families bonding and I was all alone in a suite for four.

        • I remember that ache. There is nothing more lonely that being married to a cheater.

        • HB, I was in the family suite in the maternity ward with Traitor X. He only left once a day to go home to feed the animals. But now that I know he was most likely cheating during that time, I wonder now what else he was doing. DDay turned those sweet happy memories, and every other sweet happy memory, into a pile of dog poop.

          I lost 40 pounds when I was pregnant. I could barely eat because I was suffering from nuclear heartburn and was on prescription antacids. I remember my dramatically improved ability to eat just after giving birth. He had gone down to the cafeteria and retirned with food for himself. When he got back, he started eating and I had to ask him if he could get me something too. Some women get flowers or a gift from their husbands after they have a baby and I didn’t even get a breakfast burrito.

          One of our visitors were some friends, our boat partner and his wife (#3, who was half his age.) I now know this “friend” encouraged Traitor X to leave me and that wife #3 was the friend’s affair partner. He told Traitor X our daughter “would be fine.” I see the hospital photos of this AH holding my newborn baby and my blood boils. I wish I could go back In time and tell both of them to get the F out of my hospital room and get away from me and my baby.

          One of my favorite pictures of Traitor X used to be the one of him asleep in the dad bed of the family maternity room, cradling our newborn daughter. It was the ultimate Protective Dad moment. Now it makes me really sad, wondering what grimy grifting co-homewrecker was in hiding, lurking around our life when that photo was taken.

          It’s been helpful for me to remember that I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes whenever I am comparing appearances of Happy Family to my own situation.

          Big hug to you.

  • … you lock the bathroom for ages while you get dressed (massive manscaping, hickey hiding, toilet texting), have a very different (Mediteranean) diet, start wearing very bright work suits (think Miami Vice) and start listening to Shakira (he was a hard rock guy) at 50. His hoochie ho (sorry his ‘soul mate’) is 40 and Portuguese.

  • …your 57 yo ass is now covered with 25yo rhinestone jeans, you use whitener on your yellow teeth, and your slumpy-shuffle is now a chest-out stick-up your butt strut.

  • You just might be a cheater if you keep all the pharmacy receipts for your monthly Viagra refills in the armrest storage box in your car, but you don’t keep any Viagra in the bathroom medicine cabinet or bedside table.

    • I used to put drops of water in his sample bottles of Viagra. Who knew the bathroom could get so humid?

  • …you keep a grocery bag tucked just inside the garage door filled with a corkscrew, plastic wine glasses, small cutting board and cheese knife and a picnic blanket…and condoms. Asshat was pure class ????

  • You might be a cheater if . . .

    – you suddenly DO like women to wear the catch-me-fuck-me heels that you and your wife used to laugh at

    – you come back early from a baseball spring training trip to catch your wife having an affair, with no understanding of the concept of projection (and no understanding of the fact that your wife would never do such a thing)

    – you go into a business meeting with your mistress (your business associate) with your wedding ring off, not realizing that you’re being videotaped by a private investigator

    – you buy Christmas gifts for your mistress’s three young sons, nothing too expensive because you don’t want her husband to find out, but enough to be a charming and endearing gesture

    – you tell your wife that you’d like to upgrade her diamond ring because impression management will be important when you leave her (curses! you were foiled on that plan, due to the many clues that chumps have referred to today – working out, teeth whitening, manscaping, protective of the cell phone – unfortunately, your wife figured you out)

    – you tell everyone that the affair has ended, but it hadn’t . . . and your new girlfriend (now wife) is dumb enough to think that she’s your one true love

    – you are grateful that your HPV positive oral cancer was ‘CANCER’ and you can avoid any reference to a STD or the fact that multiple partners are a risk factor for developing said ‘cancer’

    – you’re back to laughing at catch-me-fuck-me heels because your new wife doesn’t seem to be the kind of person to wear them (would ‘the real you’ please stand up . . . oh that’s right, you don’t know who you are . . . you morph into the person who can best relate to the shiniest person in the room)

  • Instead of making me smile, these “you might be a cheater…” are making me sad today. I’m back there experiencing those painful memories all-over again. Being discarded after 30 yrs of marriage and a life of raising our sons, friend, vacations. Wow! Unbelievable that he could do what he did. Hugs to newbies and oldies! Cheaters suck so bad!

    • It is rough going for a long while.

      I doubt few ever get rid of that deep pain of betrayal. Doesn’t mean you can’t live a great life, but it scars for sure.

    • Yes ????
      The sunk costs are great, and the losses devastating. Hugs to you today.

    • Thrive, depending on where you are in the process and if you’ve had therapy to help overcome the horrible trauma from FWs and DDays, I can see how these posts can be triggering. Please put this down and take some time for yourself. And just remember, we all get it here. FWs are shitty humans. This post just let some of us sling some mud at those idiots and mock their ridiculousness. But if it is too triggering, please close this down for today and do something for yourself. ❤️

      • Thank you! I’m pretty far along but yeah..that ole grief raises its ugly head sometimes

        • Yeah, you’re not alone, Thrive. So many of us feel the same way (to one degree or another).

          Laughter mixes with some really bad memories, and suddenly I’m tossed back on my heels.

  • …your Facebook page only has one friend (married person who just got in contact with you) and no actual posts. But you are on Messenger all the time with your one friend.

  • …if your wife gets stalked at work by some random woman who tells your wife to tell you they miss you on an app. And you deny all knowledge of this person and site, putting your wife’s livelihood in jeopardy.

    …if you suddenly decide to buy a brand new iPhone after claiming to
    hate iPhones for years (because apparently the “good” dating apps are not available on the weird phone you owned)

    …if your kid figures out you’re talking to other women online because you are so blatantly obvious in front of them

    • Oh my gosh. I’d forgotten kids hearing about the love quips. Son was asked to withdraw $250 from atm. Then he meets howorker with $$. Hands it to her. Tells son he’d forgotten her Christmas bonus. Throws in I wuv you. Son tells his sister, daughter asks Dad, he says it was a mea culpa for forgetting about her bonus. After all she’s 33 years younger….

      • Dear God. When they include the kids, they enter a special circle of hell. That’s just awful.

    • Oh wow, some creepy woman stalked you at work? That’s terrible. That hasn’t happened to me, but what I found suspicious was all these women who acted very unpleasant when they saw me with him.
      They were nice to him, but would roll their eyes at me, frown, look me up and down, make bitchy comments, refuse to acknowledge me if I said hello.

      Sometimes it makes you wonder until you start putting the pieces together. I’m sorry you experienced that.

  • You might be a cheater if…you get tested for STD’s 13 days after your wife gives birth to your 4th child!!!!

  • You all of the sudden start exercising until you throw up.

    You take 2 hrs to go get the paper from the corner shop.

  • You might be a cheater if….
    You stop at the local international market to pick up souvenirs for your wife and small children from your “international business trip”. While really you were on vacation with your girlfriend a few states away.

    • What an idiot. Don’t you love it when the lie is more complex than needed? Necessitating all kinds of scrambling to cover up.

  • You insist that the Verizon accounts (mobile phone and internet) be in your name when your spouse pays literally EVERY other bill. And “forget” the passwords to the accounts when she asks so she can check the kid’s data usage.

  • …you have the urge to hike the Appalachian Trail. (Not my cheater but an absolute classic fuckwit statement.)

    Mine was extremely covert and I trusted the fool. So nothing was extraordinary or weird, until I learned about most of it.

  • You might be a cheater if….

    Your underwear is crustier than three day old French bread.

    You start referring to your spouse as “that other one.”

    You’ve had so many yeast infections that you have hot dog buns growing out of your vagina.

    You don’t dare strike a match in your house lest you explode the gas you’ve been lighting.

    You tell your husband the baby’s green eyes and red hair must have “skipped a few generations” from your Irish great great grandparents.

    You went out to get your pregnant wife ice cream and came back with chlamydia.

    You prefer shifting blame to shifting your lazy ass.

    You consider “grab ’em by the pussy” good advice for flirting.

    You re-gift schmoopie your wife’s engagement ring, berate your wife for losing it, then use her “carelessness” as an excuse for leaving her.

    You attempt to order whores on Amazon.

    Your favorite instrument is the triangle.

    You wish your spouse and your schmoopie would go on So You Think You Can Dance to demonstrate the Pick Me style.

    You firmly believe in minimizing your behavior and maximizing your breast size.

    Your wife is starting to wonder why you often stop for sushi on your way home.

    Your husband is starting to wonder why you often have rug burns on your knees.

    • OHFFS cripes good points ~my wedding and engagements rings went missing sometime prior to or at separation. I assumed ex was looking at them forlornly whilst crying onto his divorce papers. Or that he had pawned them.

      • “my wedding and engagements rings went missing sometime prior to or at separation”

        I had something similar. He came over when I was in the shower. When I came out, a silver Celtic Love Knot ring (which he’d bought me) was missing from my dresser.

        He denied taking it. It was found by me in a box of my documents he’d been ordered to return to me. He said I must have put it in there by accident. ????????

        I thought then, and still think, he’d taken it to give to the rat faced whore.

        I don’t know why he bottled it – maybe rat faced whore didn’t want it, or ge got cold feet for some reason.

        Who knows what goes on in their fucked up heads.

      • He stole your rings? Good grief!

        A necklace FW bought me on our silver anniversary trip got mysteriously lost. He told me the baggage handlers must have stolen it, but the since it was well hidden and was costume jewelry not worth more than a couple of bucks in a pawn shop, I doubt it. Since D-day I have always suspected he put it in his bag to give to the whore. He was watching me while I packed it. He had probably promised his ho a souvenir and had forgotten, so he panicked and took that.

        • OHFFS I think stealing jewelry is the pathological envy/gaslighting issue rearing it’s head again ~ like when they damage or lose your sentimental items but claim it was an accident. An overt abuser would just punch a hole in the wall or set fire to something but not these silly old duffers.
          Maybe ex used it for a cock ring who knows. That might explain the strained look on his face.

    • LOL!!! Oh these are all so great! “your favorite instrument is the triangle” YES THIS

  • Since cheating is often complemented by financial infidelity, I’d love to see a thread about signs you were being financially chumped. I assume there are some manscaping and tight ripped jeans equivalents since these jokers ain’t too creative. I missed so many obvious signs and even now 18 months later still keep having aha moments ~ but only because I work with DV victims who’ve been financially abused so have something to awaken me from my slumber. It’s something that may be relevant to your financial future if still going through a property settlement.

    • It didn’t hit me until years later when I was talking to my son how much I was ripped off. I knew he had been spending money on whore for three years because I had the cc company send me a three year history before I closed the account.

      But, I am sure he was spending money on whores for many years before. No matter how many raises he got, or how many part time jobs he worked, there was still no extra money except for his boat needs.

      When I say whores I mean lay whores not professionals; but they all have to get paid to keep the honey flowing and keep their mouth shut.

      What pisses me off the most was my son didn’t get some of the things he needed or even just wanted because “no money”.

      I got a part time job in the school system to have money to spend on my son. I stated quite emphatically to fw that the money I made would be solely for extras for our son, and also that he (fw) would have to continue giving me grocery money. FW gladly agreed, and why not, it meant I never looked at the money flow and he could use any extra on his dick needs. I also used it to buy gifts for fw, which I regret how much I spent on him now, when he couldn’t even be bothered to remember my birthday.

      But at least I could do some good things for our son. Had I put it in the main account he would have usurped that for his dick needs too.

  • You might be a cheater if you start showering BEFORE you go to the “gym” and you buy a penis enhancing pump (after 13 years of marriage) just to “help your self esteem.” lol!!!

  • He might be a cheater if

    – His personality changes from cheerful and easygoing to angry, impatient, and sarcastic
    – He online-orders a device that is supposed to lengthen and straighten his ????. Your formerly pleasant and companionable after-dinner time becomes weird and uncomfortable as he insists upon sitting pants-less on the leather sofa with an Ilizerov apparatus strapped to his schlong
    – Whenever you get into his vehicle the passenger seat isn’t how you left it
    – His car’s Bluetooth settings are programmed to a female coworker’s phone
    – He is obsessed with his coworker & unable to converse on any other topic
    – When you go on family vacations he’s buying souvenirs for his coworker because “that’s just our work culture”
    – He leaves you a 13-minute voicemail that turns out to be a butt dial of him and his coworker giggling
    – It has been a fun tradition that you come along on his business trips, but you’re suddenly no longer welcome and he becomes bitter and wrathful when you can’t understand why
    – He’s on a business trip when his aged parent is on their deathbed and he refuses to come home because his business trips are “literally life and death”

    Reading all of these comments at first triggered tremendous sadness in me. I had been married 30 years to someone I thought was my best friend. I trusted his fidelity was as inviolable as gravity, and while I never presumed that my life would be free from tragedy, I could not have imagined this particular catastrophe.

    Oh, yes; the signs. I loved and trusted him, so as the new behaviors started to appear, I did my best to be supportive of the sudden dedication to weight loss and fitness. I reworked my entire way of meal prep and shopping to suit his new diets, and would be shocked and hurt when he’d lash out in rage if I ever incorporated a formerly-enjoyed, but now forbidden food. He had never been much interested in clothes, but all at once he started shopping alone for new underwear, clothes, and shoes. Like a tantruming toddler, he didn’t want me to shop with him, but if he needed to know if a garment fit properly, he’d irritably request my instant assistance. The guy who had been hirsute since puberty abruptly HAD to manscape, and flew into a rage when I balked at the demand to shave his back.

    I think it is really important for us chumps to share these stories, because if there is anyone reading this blog whose partner is currently displaying any of these behaviors, it is so important to recognize what is really going on. My sadness has given way to anger when I think about how I chose, against all the evidence, to trust the lies of cheater who abused my misplaced faith in him.

    • I used to be worried that the FW would stalk me here, but, after reading all of these “testimonials”, I realized he would never be able to tell which one of the chumps was actually me, since our stories are so similar.

    • “My sadness has given way to anger when I think about how I chose, against all the evidence, to trust the lies of cheater who abused my misplaced faith in him.”

      Yes!!! Same. And I agree that sharing our experiences might help others recognize “the signs.”

      p.s. The image of him with that device for his ???? is priceless!

    • “I had been married to someone I thought was my best friend. I trusted his fidelity was as inviolable as gravity, and while I never presumed that my life would be free from tragedy, I could not have imagined this particular catastrophe.” This. Same.

      • Me too. I knew he had issues, but I never EVER thought this would be one of them.

        • He might be a cheater if you find out one year into your marriage that he cheated on his first wife and thats how the marriage ended……guess what,, no surprise, he was!

  • Ooh I’ve thought of another one:
    casually enquires as to why you dont walk around the house naked and insist on covering up as you walk from the shower to the bedroom through the family area. I’m sure my kids would have loved to see mum displaying her wares as dad sat in the corner on his phone perving and concealing a stiffy.

  • If the business credit card has an electric bill charged to it. The office electric is debited.

    If the business CC has howorker’s rent on it, her annual bonus, smh

    If the business checking has check to howorker under category of leasehold improvements, we owned, not leased the building….

    If new office credit card has charge for living room furniture and mattress, a loan ????

    • No longer welcome to come to the health care convention.

      Phone calls from family ignored

      Manscaping for benefit of skin cancer screening that hasn’t been done in years

      Closed iPad when you walk in room

      Changes passcode

  • If you can’t look me in the eye and explain how you met your current partner, you might be a cheater.

    If your joint checking account is speckled with cashapp payments to Ben Dover, you might be a cheater.

    If your new fiance won’t sign a pre-nup based on your past behavior, you might be a cheater.

    If you panic when your spouse’s business trip is cancelled, you might be a cheater.

    If you eat dissociation for breakfast, but experience the heartburn of “I feel like I’m living two lives” by dinner, you might be a cheater.

  • If you say to your wife during a disagreement” all you bitches are the same”.

    You make so many extended trips to Home Depot, your spouse assumes they hired you.

    You have only one FB friend and it’s a woman and you are not allowed to make comments on the site.

    You haven’t worn your wedding band in 30 years and you can no longer use the excuse of it being a job hazard since you work in an office for years now.

    You store gift wrapping material in the back of your truck.( random gf gifts I surmised)

    You keep all your tools in your truck. ( made it a whole lot easier when he picked the Saturday fights, so he could drive over to his mistress’ house to build her shelves!)

    You keep your bottle of cialis in the center box of your truck, but you’ve already told your wife you don’t need cialis with her.

    You keep multiple framed photos of your wife, family and gf and change them out depending on who is visiting you at your distant state work apartment.

    You have a business outing to the Greek isles in the summer when your wife could def attend and you tell her it’s not for spouses and every other spouse attended but you.

    You’re on a Thanksgiving beach vacation with all your extended family. Your spouse buys you the cutest nautilus shell purse, but stays in the shop after you leave and buys another one.

    Your husband tells you he just likes to talk with women because they are way more fascinating and interesting than men are.

    You always have a tube of breath mints with a few missing, but you’ve never used them before so regularly.

    You have to have a ridiculous amount of vacation days, but you may use 3 of them at Christmas is all we got out of it.

    If your explanation for any questionable behaviors are so lengthy that your spouse loses interest in the answer.

    When a medical questionnaire found in your closet to a urologists office says you are not married and you have sex 3 times a day when you are actually married 30 plus years and have sex maybe once a week.

    You refuse to admit you have a mistress( he does) and says he wants a divorce to “live an honest life alone”. Lol!!

    If you send your wife on a spa w/e so you can get quality time with the mistress of the month.

    If your deepest conversations become what’s the weather looking like tomorrow.

    If you panic when your wife is 3 steps closer to your phone than you are.

    You start using an an ab roller device religiously at age 55.

    When you try and recontact an old mistress from 20 years ago and her current husband calls you back to tell you to never attempt to call her again, she does not want to hear from you.

  • You start dyeing your graying chest hair.

    You insist on getting a box at the local post office, for your expensive hobby. ‘Cause surely people in the leafy suburb might come on the acre of property and steal our mail.

    You rage at your growing teenage son for eating so much even though he’s height/weight proportionate. A tall young man. He’s diverting funds for your expensive hobby (and whores), don’t ya know.

    • Along these lines, you tell your wife that she has enough sports bras while she’s looking at new ones at REI while you’re buying yet another pair of expensive hiking boots (to go on a secret hiking trip with the AP). Your wife looks up from the rack of sale bras and is speechless because she has no idea how he knows how many sports bras she has and the condition they are in and she can’t fathom the inequity of it all. But, at this point in the mirage (thanks, VH), she just shrugs and walks away from the rack. She’s just a shell and doesn’t know it.

      • “She’s just a shell and doesn’t know it” is a perfect description of me at the end of my marriage.

        When he dumped me (because he “needed to be alone”, though that was a flaming lie and OW was in my bed the next day) I didn’t know who I was. My whole life centered on him. He’d made sure I had nothing of myself left. The first day I was without my son I sat on the bed in my mom’s guest room (where I ended up staying for 4 years) I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know what I liked to do. I didn’t know where I liked to go. I didn’t know what I liked to read, or eat, or wear. EVERYTHING I did was in the context of “what will FW think of this?”. My spare time was spent cleaning the house so he wouldn’t be angry, buying little things for him to stave off his bad moods, cooking meals he particularly liked to try and keep him happy, etc. We went where he wanted to go, watched the movies he liked, listened to the music he liked, ate and drank what he liked, I wore what he liked, did my hair the way he liked. All of it was him, not me. I had to completely rebuild myself. I remember a few weeks after that day thinking about some books I had really liked as a teenager (one called “The Paris Apartment”, Terrance Conran’s “Easy Living”, and a book on English cottage gardens, all long out of print). I thought to myself “I remember liking THOSE” and went on Amazon and ordered some used copies. I had to reach back almost 20 years to find something that was “ME”. And from there I slowly and painfully found myself again. It is wonderful to be me again (a little scarred, a little older, but far wiser and far more confident in myself). Not a single choice in my life is because of him anymore. He died almost a year ago so I am truly free of him. I don’t even have to share my kid with him anymore (and he was definitely trying to mold my kid the way he molded me, imposing his own interests and tastes on him; it was great when my kid finally told me that he doesn’t really like Star Wars and the Marvel movies, he only watched them because daddy liked them – my kid prefers Disney shows like Bunk’d and The Owl House. I saw it happening and I didn’t want my kid to feel the way I did, like he wasn’t his own person). I watched the same thing happen to OW, as he slowly stripped her of everything that was HER and made her into what he wanted (unfortunately, she was a coworker and also always around so I got a lovely front row seat). Seeing it happen to someone else in real time made it so much clearer what had happened to me. It’s hard to see when you’re in the middle of it, and you think all the changes you make in your life are your own ideas. When it’s subtle (or not so subtle – like him insulting my hobbies and tastes) manipulation.

  • You might be a FW if…
    – You wear a cheap $10 necklace with your initial and the phrase “one in a million” that your husband never gave you and when questioned you say you’ll show the receipt but never do.
    – You have air freshener and stain remover in your car and stash stained shirts in the garage.
    – You have purchase records for expensive designer men’s accessories that were not gifts for your husband.
    – You get angry when someone takes your car out for a fill up and wash to be nice.
    – You have phone sex with a loser on Christmas eve whilst unknowingly being recorded.
    – You equate your grief over losing the AP to the grief of blowing up an 8 year marriage

    • You have my sympathy wisedupchump. The grief over losing the AP was awesome to me. It’s like being stabbed and having them upset the police took their most favorite special knife.

    • The whole “grief over losing the AP” thing…UGH. I heard it from friends and therapists alike. Such bullshit.

  • ……if you break strict Covid lock fown at 10pm because you ‘have’ to see your work buddies.

  • Hit the “like” button if they all of a sudden start wearing black mid-thigh underwear, when they’ve only worn white briefs, ever. Bonus points if they previously criticized you for wanting to throw away said white briefs if they had holes, dying elastic, or were not so white anymore….

  • You might be a cheater if you go from needing help with basic phone functions to a master of Skype, WhatsApp, facebook messenger, and a couple of other messaging apps seemingly overnight.

  • Pardon if I’m repeating items from anyone else’s list.

    You might be a cheater if you…

    1) Never call your partner by their actual name and opt for nicknames instead (prevents name confusion when you cheat).

    2) Accidentally lose/destroy things of emotional value to your partner.

    3) Future-fake home projects and never complete them/let the home go to shit/be a slob. “Home” is not real, just a place to bunk and eat and pick up fresh laundry and the mail between adventures. No point wasting energy on things that aren’t real.

    4) Don’t adjust driving to partner’s risk tolerance/get angry if your partner is afraid of your driving.

    5) Become “trance-y” during sex. Act like you’ve been shaken out of a stupor and aren’t happy about it if anything interrupts sex.

    6) Consistently spoil special occasions and meaningful moments. You will always stub your toe, get a splinter, realize your account is overdrawn, etc. (any cause to go into a fit of cursing or exude a bad mood) right before leaving the house for a romantic dinner or holiday event. In fact, “outside the house” is your exclusive hunting grounds and the presence of partners and children are unwelcome. Make them feel this so they stay in their box and out of your way.

    7) Pretend to detest work-related parties, saying you’re only “ducking in and out to show your face” so that your partner doesn’t protest when you leave them at home so you can unreservedly flirt and act “virtually single.”

    8) Don’t keep pictures of your family on your work desk or social media– or maybe only a picture of you with kids if you’re a guy because “chicks are drawn to men who are good with kids for evolutionary reasons.” But privately, children annoy you and make you feel trapped.

    9) Don’t defend your partner against anyone ever– your snarky relatives, rando negging, etc. Then pretend to have psychically teleported out of the room at the exact moments the nasty remarks were made. If confronted over your passivity, say the person probably didn’t mean anything by it. Once anyone shitty sees that you won’t defend your partner, they’ll become emboldened and will double down, allowing you to contract out the job of quashing your partner’s self-esteem.

    10) Have pathologically lax boundaries when it comes to sexual vibes and gestures. Become eerily transfixed if anyone– as long as they’re of your target gender– gives off hyper-focused, laser-eye-contact-y vibes as if you were sequestered in a private bubble together to the exclusion of all else in conversation regardless of the context or who might be witnessing it. You are Captain Dick/Twat reporting for duty! If someone wants to exchange crotch kibbles, you must oblige. First this adds to the list of possibilities in the case the boundary-breacher is even halfway fuckable. Secondly, if they’re not fuckable, this sends signals to potentially fuckable bystanders that your crotch is open for business. Thirdly, as you learned from Uncle Pete/Mom/Dad/Aunt Clementina, when someone wants to violate sexual boundaries in ickily inappropriate ways, they may become menacingly resentful when thwarted. If asked about the exchange, betray no perception that it was inappropriate no matter how outrageous it became and defend the boundary-breacher no matter how awful they are.

    11) Once anyone halfway fuckable signals openness, you descend into dark, borderline psychotic ruminations on your partner’s perceived flaws, no matter how petty or absurd, which you’ve been storing up in your blame bag for just such an occasion. Create an effigy of your partner and get ready to set it on fire as needed. Begin to target your partner’s sexual self-esteem with callous jokes, cracks, etc. Criticize their parenting, character, likeability, appearance, accomplishments. Find offense in everything they do, dredge up perceived offenses from before dinosaurs roamed and reject their attempts to be kind or giving. Throw epic rages and tantrums out of the blue accusing your partner of whatever to solidly establish your exclusive claim on victim status. Cultivate flying monkeys to complain about your partner behind your partner’s back to a) rehearse the complaints until you yourself believe them; b) to signal that all might not be well in the relationship so acquaintances aren’t surprised when/if it ends; and c) to get the word out that you’re open for business. But continue to deny even to yourself that you’re setting the stage to cheat so that if you misread the target’s intent, you can– after taking your crushing sense of dejection and wounded ego out on your partner– return to relationship baseline without traces of guilt that might give you a sleazy vibe or betray your character to either your partner or future potential marks.

    12) Over the years as your partner attempts to talk about these seemingly unrelated behaviors and establish healthy boundaries, pretend to listen, make sad-sausage excuses and promise to change but secretly store up a general sense of “S/he doesn’t accept me for who I am/is always critical!” in the handy blame bag. Then, upon launching into affairs/hooker sprees/trysts with circus animals/misc., spew this very generalized, pent up resentment in blazing fits of wounded pique that go on for several days until your blindsided partner looks as if they’ve witnessed a massacre, has no color in their face, can’t eat or sleep and can barely stammer out a cohesive sentence. Then while your partner is reeling, reestablish new rules for the relationship that involve you doing/spending whatever you want, answering for nothing, getting no lip and still enjoying relationship amenities on command. In this case, no response from your partner or just a trembling blank stare shall be taken as full agreement to the new terms.

    13) Become generally callous, smug, disdainful and la-dee-dah while actively cheating. Mock your partner’s pain. Tell yourself that you’ll be happier when your partner is gone while being conversely vigilant for any sign of rebellion. Go into briefer and flimsier attempts to love-bomb your partner back under control in the case they pull away, then periodically repeat some of the things you’ve been saying behind their back to their face in a high-handed, cavalier tone in order to make yourself feel like less of a hypocrite and so that, if you decide to run off with the AP or circus animal for a time, you can tell flying monkeys and future marks that you were always honest with your partner. Keep this up until your partner makes a concrete move to separate.

    14) Upon being kicked out of the house/being served separation papers/getting the sober separation talk, turn pale and give the surprised Pikachu face. Plunge into panic. Put more effort into love bombing. Stand up and push your affair partner/circus animal away emotionally until they get pissed and punish you. Regret pushing away the affair partner/circus animal, love bomb there as well until the double bombing wears you out and makes you cranky. Then return to being callous, smug and disdainful towards your partner, shaking your partner out of shock enough that they become leery and start sleuthing which won’t be particularly challenging since, by now, you’re leaving a trail of cues as wide as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

    15) Upon being confronted with the evidence of your cheating, go silent and numb and slightly shake your head. Then get flamingly angry and dip into your blame bag for random examples of your partner’s heinousness. Run away to call your affair partner/circus animal to get sympathy over your ogre of a partner. Run back to keep your partner from throwing your stuff out on the street. Collapse like a Victorian damsel or have a sudden medical crisis. Demand to see a couple’s counselor. Make promises to change. Cry, but slightly angrily and for yourself. Talk about what separation will do to the kids. Randomly switch back into shrugging disdain and compare your partner negatively to your affair partner. Call your affair partner/circus animal to arrange a secret meeting “to talk about things.” Meet the affair partner to bonk like coked-up Jack Russells, weep together in a soggy pile, make maudlin oaths to the greatness of your WUV, paint primary partner as snarling, vengeful ogre.

    16) a) If you’ve done all this before, you know how it might turn out, you simply move in with your AP/CA, break up with your primary partner by text, post happy togetherness pix on social media.
    b) If you haven’t gone through the rigamarole before and aren’t aware of the risks that your partner will follow through by dumping you, kinda-sorta break up with your AP/CA but leave things slightly open ended and see if the specter of being dumped for real can get the affair partner/circus animal to accept going underground with even more demeaning terms.

    17) If you opted for b, get caught sneaking off to fuck the AP/CA again. Attempt to make your partner feel bad for the AP/CA’s sobbing lament over the kinda-sorta breakup. Get pissed when your partner doesn’t weep for the AP/CA’s plight. Storm out. Storm back. Make promises. Write a viciously cold email to the AP/CA and send it front of your partner. Break down again. Dutifully read the articles on infidelity and sex addiction your partner sends you. Wax philosophical about how your trauma-filled childhood primed you for attachment disorder and sex addiction. Keep checking your email and messages to see if the AP/CA is ready for the ultimate death match pick-me dance even after you called them an alcoholic, said you only loved your partner and claimed you were ashamed of every unhealthy minute you spent with them. Get angrier and angrier the more time goes by without messages or emails from AP/CA and mount the case that your partner “made” you write that nasty message that made you lose the wuv of your life. Charm the shit out of couple’s counselors and RIC therapists to contrast your partner’s nippy, shattered, cynical state to show who’s the real dysfunctional destructo menace (them!) and who’s the real victim (you!).

    18) If married, dejectedly miss and reminisce about the AP/CA until the second you’re served divorce papers, then suddenly realize the AP/CA’s flaws in technicolor and wonder what you ever saw in them. Ew. Bad breath. Snores. Tacky shoes. Congratulate yourself for ignoring the AP/CA’s final attempt at contact, then expect immediate reward and get angry when your partner doesn’t show gratitude.

    19) Pretend to accept the divorce at first but refuse to sign the papers. Keep pointlessly offering help to your partner with feigned casualness, find excuses to text and call, show up at the family home on any rationale. Stop watching porn. Almost wear your partner down into giving you a second chance, then skip therapy and start watching porn again. Fly into rages about all the wrongs your partner has done you and/or how they’re turning the kids against you until even your flying monkeys stop listening. Cry in front of your kids and try to play the victim. Get clinically depressed. Hint at suicide or that you’ll be too disabled by depression to keep your job, thereby threatening your children with starvation and ruin. Get even angrier when these threats only get a note from your partner’s attorney. Then get more depressed. Then use more porn. Then get angry again.

    20) Get the talk from your attorney that your position is pretty bad and evidence of the affair will affect settlement, as will your continued recalcitrance and reluctance to meet terms. Start raging over every detail of the settlement and telling anyone who will listen what a bitter beast your STBX is. Flirt with the office doorknobs but unenthusiastically. Without your partner to play ogre, you no longer feel so sparkly and the the new hires at the office seem pretty dumpy and dull. Besides, your vibe has changed and the doorknobs are getting the ick.

    21) Plummet deeper into self pity, feel yourself getting older by the minute. Stalk. Drunk-dial. Drive drunk. Get a DUI conviction and lose your license. Or not and keep driving drunk. Demand to get your college paperclip collection back until your partner threatens to serve you with an order of protection. Imagine murdering your partner, then imagine yourself all over the six o’clock news. Regroup. Wearily sign the divorce papers but secretly half-expect your partner not to file them. Go on a bender when your partner goes ahead and files. Bang some barflies. Get chlamydia and the clap. Play best parent in the world, then start missing visitation. Accept drinks with that bloaty client you never thought about in that way before. Then realize this client, while older and rather boring, is a good listener and doesn’t question your narrative about how cruel your ex is. Move in with them. Get fussed over, then caught on Tinder. Get kicked out. Rinse/repeat. Try to be friends with your ex to broadcast that “nothing really bad happened,” then rage to your remaining friends that your ex is bitter and won’t be civil for the sake of the children.

    22) If solidly wealthy, buy your kids’ unenthusiastic loyalty and buy yourself a bimbo/himbo who rapes your bank account and can’t wait for you to buy the farm. If somewhat solvent, marry someone who listens to your bullshit, eats their feelings and dies before you. End your days in an old age home where your kids visit every other month but only if you’re going to leave them anything. If middle management, get passed over for promotion as you age and get forced into early retirement, then die alone in a small condo.

    • Eloquent description of the cheater’s demise. Makes me sad, for us.

      • HOAC, the framework for an epic novel is right here. I envision a Tristram Shandy stream of consciousness type tale. FW, the unreliable narrator, attempts to impress the reader with titillating schmoopie adventures, and vainly tries to garner sympathy for his resulting tales of woe as his life goes down the toilet. The voice of HOAC, the author, is unmistakably at work behind the scenes painting FW with a satirical, jaundiced brush. Urging the reader to consider FW’s false narrative with a critical eye. The novel culminates in a “cock and bull” denouement where FW can’t “perform”. I’d love to read this novel! C’mon HOAC. Bet there’s a novelist deep inside you waiting to be born.

        • Hah, I’d love to read this book as well. If no one else writes it, I promise to think about it and get a good copy editor.Maybe two volumes, one of a he-cheater and the other of a she-cheater: Tristram Shandy mixed with Humbert Humbert or Mildred from Of Human Bondage mingled with Odette de Crecy, Madame Bovary and Debbie Jellinsky from Addams Family Values? 😀

        • Thanks BB! Maybe when the kids come of age and move out! I tried responding to your comment earlier but I think the reply was marked as spam. It was something about blending Tristram with Humbert Humbert or, for she-cheaters, a FW melange of Madame Bovary, Mildred from Of Human Bondage and Debbie Jellinsky from Addams Family Values. 😉

          • Yesssss! You can do it. Multiple volumes Tristram Shandy style – I love it. Come to think of it, there’s new ground to be broken with a novel featuring the female cheater self-aggrandizing unreliable narrator perspective. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any fictional characters in this mold. I bet there are some examples out there…..but who? Mildred, Bovary, Odette etc. aren’t the tellers of their tales. Debbie is so singularly self-absorbed she couldn’t be bothered to tell her story – the opinions of others don’t mean squat. I love that character. Joan Cusack nails that performance! Seriously, there’s fertile material here just waiting for you to shape it.

            • I agree it’s not been done and would be hilarious. Debbie does do a kind of biographical power point presentation. Ballerina Barbie, yuk.

    • Wow! The last paragraph is especially poignant. Well written!

      p.s. I’m sorry you went through all that. He sucks.

      • Lol, thanks. There are bits from my own experience that came up as under-recognized common cheater traits in chump polls (the nickname thing, spoilerism and future-faking home repairs– who knew?). But it’s actually a compilation of Fuckwitticisms reported by chumps. I wanted to include she-cheaters, cheaters from a range of socioeconomic strata and those who either stalk and refuse to sign or who run off with Schmoopies and ghost.

    • 2, 4, 16, 19, 20, 21 – man, you nailed a lot of things that happened in my situation.

      2) My ex would destroy MY things in his “uncontrollable” rages, yet somehow always seemed to avoid breaking or damaging anything of his.

      4) My ex used vehicle abuse all the time. He would deliberately drive in a way that scared me, but if I had any reaction at all (even closing my eyes, or putting a hand on the door handle to steady myself) he would scream at me, insisting that I was disrespecting him, being a backseat driver, being a drama queen, whatever (never mind that he was constantly getting speeding tickets or getting in accidents). Not only that, but he took advantage of the fact that I was a “captive audience” in the car, particularly on long trips, and would use those opportunities to verbally abuse me, sometimes for over an hour, calling me every name in the book, screaming so loud my ears rang, and all the while rage-driving and terrifying me. I opened the door of a moving car once to try and shock him into stopping his verbal barrage, because he wouldn’t pull over when I asked to get out and I couldn’t get away from him. He then, for the next four years, constantly used my “suicide attempt in front of our child” (yes, my 4-year-old kid was in the back seat while my FW yelled at me because…I wouldn’t have sex with him the night before) to try and paint me as mentally unstable and later in the custody battle as an unfit parent.

      16) FW told me he needed a few days “to think” and asked if I’d stay at my mom’s for a week, and I was trying desperately to make things work so I agreed. He sent me a text the next day and told me not to come home. He then, 3 months later, asked me to move home again (wined and dined me, made all kinds of promises, blah blah blah, but insisted that he keep OW’s friendship; I should never have agreed, but I was so deep in the pick me dance at that point). He never stopped his affair, but I think he wasn’t prepared for divorce and maybe hadn’t totally decided if OW was worth it (he’d only known her about 6 or 7 months). It was a test for us both, I later realized. For me, it was to see if I’d put up with him continuing to have the affair, as well as to him to be able to say he’d “tried” and maybe I’d go quietly in the divorce. For her, it was to see how loyal she was. I failed my test. She passed with flying colors. He dumped me again (told me to leave and threatened all kinds of horrible things if I stayed, so I left because I wasn’t safe there). He later moved in with her and her two kids. By that point I’d stopped paying for things and since he was terrible with money and a spender, he needed someone to financially support him. He literally told me that he was only moving in with her because he couldn’t afford to live on his own (he’d let our marital home deteriorate to the point where it was almost uninhabitable, and I opted to sell it when he offered it to me), but I’m sure he told her it was because he loved her and was ready for the next step in their relationship. I got some satisfaction in the fact that their “happy family” routine lasted less than a month. I guess he thought he had her hooked and let the mask slip. She left him because he was abusive and scared her. And he was left with a huge rental house he couldn’t afford.

      19) FW was the one who said he wanted a divorce. I didn’t at first. But then he dragged his feet, didn’t file, and only filed when he found out I was about to. Then he refused to submit the required paperwork, didn’t reply to emails, etc. When he did submit his documents, it was only about 10 percent of the things we asked for.

      20) FW’s attorney started realizing that his position was looking worse and worse (I had a lot of evidence of abuse, FW admitted his adultery, and admitted he tried to get me to destroy evidence of his abuse of me), FW wouldn’t listen to his attorney, and then the attorney dropped him due to non-payment (and the attorney was apparently pretty unhappy at being left with a huge unpaid bill when my ex killed himself). FW definitely tried to be Dad of The Year, but only when other people were watching (total Disney dad).

      21) He constantly painted me as bitter and vindictive when all I wanted was to get the divorce over with and be left alone. He stalked me and had other people stalk me until I shut down all my social media for a long time. After OW left, he tried to elicit my pity, and tried (for some reason) to invite me to have dinner with him and our son or to do activities with them (turned all of those invitations down – I wasn’t about to be in the same room with him for long). I had no pity for him, and was certainly no longer interested in a relationship with him. He created every problem he had. When he killed himself, he left a 24-page suicide letter that blamed everyone else for his problems, and was full of self pity. But he was never the sort to die of old age in a home. He said for years he’d be dead at 45, and he made sure he was. Drama, til the very end.

  • … if you have enough technical know-how to set up multiple email accounts, hook-up apps, and dating profiles, but you are completely befuddled by the accountability app you promised your wife to install on your phone after you were caught. It is just so complicated! Who can understand it? It’s so difficult! *sob*

  • I came home after a four week trip and when we were going to have reunion sex, I find out he had shaved his balls. I asked him what is this, and he said he did it for me…….turd!

  • You might be a cheater if you tell your wife you’re going fishing in one state but instead fly to another to be with schmoopie. You send your wife a picture of a fish you caught, except you lie about where you caught it. Wife expresses excitement for your big catch and concern that your being alone. She hopes all is well (and is effing sincere) but you don’t give a shit.

    You might be a cheater if you tell your wife that you’re working late when you’re actually screwing the AP in a hotel.

    You might be a cheater if you get a massive fish tattoo with your AP and elicit sympathy from your clueless wife because it hurts a bit.

    You might be a cheater if you neglect your spouse.

    You might be a cheater if you’re a complete piece of shit but think you’re AWESOME.

    You might be a cheater if you have NO boundaries with co-workers and think that knowing how you like your coffee means they’re into you.

    You might be a cheater if you need PORN and Viagra to perform but tell your spouse that your inability to orgasm is her fault.

    You might be a cheater if you have shitty character.

    You might be a cheater if you enjoy keeping secrets from your spouse.

    You might be a cheater if you get off on triangulation.

    You might be a cheater if you suck.

      • OMG Spinach, I too got a version of the Fake Fish Foto! In the midst of post D-day shit show, he inexplicably took a four day fishing trip (cough cough) to “clear his head.” Which wasn’t fooling anyone. What was I going to do? Forbid him going? I could barely make it out of bed! After the expedition he proudly scrolled through a handful of pix (staged proof the trip was legit), including a photo of some puny fish he’d caught. Supplemented with tall tales about sleeping in his truck each night. During this performance I’m thinking to myself that Schmoopie was either standing beside him while each photo was snapped, or he parked her somewhere during the day and hooked up with her in the evening. Turns out he did go fishing alone because she couldn’t get time off from work, but he did shack up with her all four days in her HOME.

        Newbies, yeah this shit hurts and destroys while you’re in the thick of it. Once you’re through it and on the other side please give yourself grace and have hope. Time will heal the wounds. During the dark days this crap would torment me at night and cause anguish during the day. Now I can shake my head and laugh at the tomfoolery. Give it time newbies – there is light at the end of the infidelity tunnel.

  • You might be a cheater if on your way to work at 10:30 at night you accidentally text your wife of 32 years “hi Dot” and your wife (who is not named Dot) calls back and say’s “who’s Dot?” and you answer after a long pause in an accusatory tone, “I just can’t talk to you.”

    • Ahh, classic cheater behavior–make a mistake (the errant phone call) then immediately blame the person (chump!) who questions the mistake. Now he’s the victim of her reaction!

      I lived this life, too, Loch.

  • When you have a 3some with your wife’s ex best friend and her gross husband…because the marriage was going in the wrong direction..guess that fixed it

  • If your wife logs on to the family insurance plan website and finds another woman’s name on your family policy!

    • Or another kid who doesn’t belong to the wife.

      Seriously how do they get away with this, don’t the insurance companies notice two grown women on one policy. I have heard of it happening before.

    • Yikes! He must have paid full price premiums for the OW. I don’t see how he could have pulled this off otherwise.

  • You might be a cheater if you stop having sex with your wife because the side effects from the little blue pill are too much, but still have the pills and a book marked copy of “She Comes First” in your nightstand.

    And your wife finds a bottle of cheap sparkly purple nail polish behind the bed that you claim was there before you moved in with him. Dude, it hasn’t been 10 years since the last vacuuming!

    • Oh FFS. I questioned why x got another order of Viagra after he told me he used the pill only once or twice with me (practicing?). If that were true, the bottle would have been nearly full. He said he was running out because he often took a pill in anticipation of sex but then we ended up not doing it. #myfault #suchalie

      After D-Day, he got another shipment. At this time, he was openly living with the AP, so I’m not sure why he bothered lying. Frankly, I think lying had become a habit at that point. So from his lying mouth (or texting fingers) came this nugget: “It’s not what you think.” ????

      It was exactly what I was thinking.

      • You might be a cheater if you’re suddenly buying “herbal aids for erectile dysfunction” off the Internet because you’re too cheap/embarrassed to buy it from the chemist. ????????

  • You use a spreadsheet to track which emails are used for which websites and what the passwords are for all those accounts

  • When you wear high heels and sexy outfits on your way to work as a theater nurse, after years of wearing yoga pants and runners.
    When you get new lingerie to fly to an interstate conference.
    When you go out on ‘girls-nights’ every Friday and are too hung-over or tired to take part in family activities on Saturdays.
    When you have a male friend who is “just a friend”
    When you have secret bank accounts and credit cards
    When you delete selfies with random guys in bars who were just “company”
    When you lie, every time you open your mouth

  • …you suddenly become vegetarian after declaring that you love your steak and can never give up meat ????????????

    • GC oh yes the diet change ~ mine
      become paleo after years of eating rubbish. I was stupid enough to go the health food shop to buy paleo substitutes. And all the bloody bacon he ate to get a six pack sheesh. The last thing I said to ex on D Day was “well at least I wont have to put up with gallons of bacon fat splattered everywhere”

      • And I was stupid enough to get excited about his new “healthy diet” that I cooked him gourmet vegetarian meals, made elaborate lunches for him to take to work and even documented my cooking adventures on Facebook and Instagram ????????????????????????
        I laugh about it now but I was devastated at the time of D-Day.

  • You might be a cheater if you –

    Suddenly get a Brazilian to make your appendage appear bigger!!!

    Get your teeth whitened.

    Take up exercise.

    Become interested in designer fashion (after 30 years of having no style, nor caring about fashion).

    Start going to Friday drinks (after 30 years of being a homebody).

    Stop having dinner every night with your family (because you are too full after going out for lunch and afternoon tea every day with Schmoops)

    Start a collection of business cards.. of women you f@rked at work conferences or business functions.

    Start meeting women for sex in churchyards…

    Put a password on your phone.
    Checking your phone incessantly.
    Texting incessantly (after never really using it at all)
    Furtively hiding your phone screen when texting.

    Going out to your car to make “private business calls”.

    Suddenly start having MORE sex with your wife (twice a day – both before and after you meet schmoopie)

    Suddenly become interested and obsessed with perfecting sex acts you were never interested in before..

    Suddenly become interested in music and get your kids to make music play lists for your “boys trips”
    So many signs….

  • You might be a cheater if…

    You need a shower immediately before you go out and immediately AFTER you come home. #ISeeYou

    You think your dick is gods gift (this is a massive red flag for me now)

    You don’t get cashies from work anymore and haven’t for years (I was also a shareholder of said business) (the cashies never stopped fyi)

  • You might be a cheater if when your wife is in ICU getting blood transfusions after an unexpected tubal pregnancy, and you don’t leave your job, from out of town, to come to her bedside.
    (Granted I did leave a phone message at his office saying I had to be admitted to the hospital that evening and would possibly be going to the OR., as the doctor was concerned about some symptoms I had).
    It was a couple of years after that that I learned he was cheating, as he left many condoms in the bottom of his travel bag for me to see, and I was in first trimester pregnancy at that time.( and we had a beautiful 3 year old).

    Another thing thrown in there at some time or other, was that he bought all new underwear, which I lovingly laundered and folded so nicely for him. Yes, you might well be a cheater when shopping at Sear’s in the men’s undies department, because you just gotta look your best before you take them off.

    Years later a chump feels so ????‍♀️
    ????‍♀️Because chumps aren’t supposed to call ourselves “stupid”

    ????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️????‍♀️

    • I feel for you Peacemaker. Having read your list below, and this one, we were married to the same person. Mine went to work when I was having a miscarriage. Only time I’ve ever been pregnant and I was 42. He said that his boss found him crying at his desk. So that’s ok then. I should have left him then rather than letting him dump me 16 years later for his exgf.

      • (((Mighty Warrior)))I am so very sorry that you went through a miscarriage with no partner support. There just aren’t proper words to express this.????
        My cheater always said that he was “ busy making a living” on the many many many times I could have used his support.

        I am thankful that CL allows Chumps to reach out to each other.
        I wish the horrible things a Chump goes through, those terrible terrible lonely moments of disbelief, I wish that no one else had to feel the same way.
        It is bittersweet to share pain with others, who totally get it, who understand.

        Sending love, and true understanding, Mighty Warrior & all Chumps

  • You’ve abandoned your family and won’t help pay any bills because you’re too busy partying with your cheat partner. You don’t call it cheating because you walked out but your divorce is not even finalized yet to this day ????

    • What is it with cheaters thinking that walking out the door = single? My FW insisted that he hadn’t committed adultery because “we were separated”, except that in my state that doesn’t matter. And he didn’t inform me. And kept having sex with me and telling me he loved me he just “needed some time” to sort himself out. He told me a year or two into our separation that he “wanted to see other people” and I did not agree.

      And the fact that he was cheating the whole time, and the fact that he equated telling me he wanted a divorce (but not actually filing) was the same as being single, did not stop HIM from accusing ME of cheating any time I didn’t immediately respond to his text messages or answer his calls .

      • Also 99% sure he was already having sex with “she’s just a friend” BEFORE we separated.

        • yep, it’s never “just a friend” like they want us to believe!

  • If you become instantly a better and more creative lover with your spouse.

    • You suddenly initiate new moves and desires. I thought he was reading sleezy men’s magazines; turns out he had a lover with an anal preference! (I refused to participate. I’m not touching his and he’s not touching mine – just ick!)

    • Agree with this, too. He told me to say “cum inside me” which should have also been a hint that something wasn’t right.
      He doesn’t want children, so the fact that he would even tell me to say this was…weird.

      Now I think that the coworker or somebody else was saying this to him, and then he wanted me to say it. Ugh.

  • …you buy your spouse an expensive gift while on a business trip. This type of purchase was unusual and not in keeping with our efforts to save money.

    Even today, about twenty years later, I remember having such confused emotions when he handed it to me: gratitude that he got me something on his trip, anger that he spend WAY too much on what was an ugly sweater that I couldn’t return because it was purchased at a boutique store on the other side of country, and confusion because he didn’t hand it to me in a loving way. Instead, he kind of threw it at me.

    I think he bought this gift out of guilt because he had sex with someone on that trip.

    Newbies, watch out for the guilt gifts.

    • Yep after years of “forgetting” my birthday, and in fact seemingly taking pride in forgetting I got some flowers at work Sep 6th, my birthday is Oct 6th. I called to thank him for the flowers and he said “well I always forget your birthday so I sent them a month early”. I still don’t know what that was about.

      I have two theories: first he and whore decided he would start the last three month of the discard in full force, or he decided he want to throw a surprise birthday party for his best friend and decided that he better get me a gift so he wouldn’t look like a total ass when he asked me to do most of the planning and work for it. Which of course he did, and I did the work. It was my friend too, so in my ignorance I didn’t mind.

      Either way you are right, an out of character gift is a big red flag.

    • Yeah, the guilt gifts! Plenty of those. I actually got a piano that I nicknamed the ‘guilt trip piano’, and I flat out told him that too. ( I still stayed for another 30 years!!)

  • You go out to lunch and notice red lipstick on his shirt collar. Then jokingly ask your husband (at the time married 13 years) if he’s having an affair. He of course replies “no” and makes up some excuse about hugging a friend at his office meeting. I believed his story because I mean really lipstick on a shirt collar only happens in movies. A few years later I find out he’s a serial cheater.

  • …take your wife to Macy’s with you to shop for all new underwear… (…and, not for MY benefit…)

    • And, shave his head bald so 30 year old affair partner won’t see his receding hairline and gray hair.

  • Your new hobbies are spending hours in the bathroom and slamming the laptop shut when your spouse walks by.

  • If you possess so many narc characteristics you stand out like a police car at night with lights flashing and sirens roaring!
    Some such characteristics are:
    You are always right
    You are self centered
    You are mean
    You prefer your own company, but you like to ruin good times for others
    You always have the radio and TV tuned in to what only you enjoy ( & others dislike strongly)
    You always criticize
    Nothing anyone else does is ever right, but hey you only criticize and correct them for their own good. How would they know if YOU didn’t correct them
    You put people down, yet you often tell them that they lack self confidence
    You don’t care if others hear you talk mean to family members
    ( did I say? yes,I did say, that, YOU, ARE ALWAYS RIGHT)
    You hate tears, “ Grow up, crying never helped anyone”
    You march to your own drummer, time schedules mean nothing to you
    You are capable of breathing in with charm and out with rage, you can turn on a dime
    Blame shifting comes so naturally to you.

    Sadly, there are so many other characteristics, but for now this is quite enough. I think more will make me want to puke.
    Yes, you have the power to make a Chump feel sick!

    Big hugs to all Chumps.
    Remember you did nothing to deserve this.
    It is not your character flaw!

    To those who walked away, or somehow got rid of the cheater, even those who were left by the cheater,
    YOU ARE MIGHTY, GO IN PEACE❤️

    • I know I said enough of harping on a narc’s character flaws, but I missed a biggie, a huge flaw!
      LIE, a Cheater lies, pretty well about everything & anything, they just mold events to suit their own desire, mostly by denial, especially about the affair(s). “ I don’t know what you are talking about. You are crazy. I never did that. There was never another woman.”
      ( step around my crumpled body when I found the evidence and fell apart)
      Yep, can’t miss listing the LIE LIE LIE, even worse than the blameshifting)!

    • Time schedules mean nothing!
      Initially we had an active social life. They were all in my friend circle since he didn’t really have any but I digress. Then he fucked one and hated the rest. So making plans became impossible. A dinner in two weeks? Nope because I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I would say, “ if we commit to that it what we will be doing.” Honestly, from that point he lived a separate life. He would travel separately to all functions and activities so he could leave when he wanted. It all so obvious and embarrassing now that I accepted that treatment.
      He was also self employed and trying to schedule jobs for him was equivalent to catching water with a sieve. I practically begged him to set aside two days that I could schedule customers for estimates. He would always refuse because…. He didn’t know what may come up for him to do. I’d speak to a customer. Speak to the ex when he came around because he wouldn’t pick up my calls. He didn’t have a physical schedule so I guess he had a personal file calendar in his brain. He’d give me dates. I’d reach out to the customer to try to coordinate a time. Rinse, repeat. Eventually the calls stopped. The last entry I had was a few years prior to leaving. We filed jointly and his mom did his books. This almost became an issue to the point I had the paperwork for innocent spouse relief ready to file. * don’t file jointly with a cheater because it means they lie too.
      He yelled
      that I never helped him with his business.
      Wouldn’t go estimate jobs with him while there were two young kids at home.
      He never trusted me
      If he goes to jail, I go with him
      Yet, the world had to revolve around his time.
      Selfish bastard

  • You might be a cheater if you suddenly start taking lots of solo motorcycle rides. At night.
    You might be a cheater if you get rid of the frumpy dad jeans and Costco white tennis shoes for skinny jeans and Sketchers.
    You might be a cheater if you actually start buying some better underwear than just tighty whities.

  • You might be a cheater if your wife initiates sex one day, and again a week later, and for the first time ever in your 20-year marriage, your 40-something penis lies there all floppy. Your naive, trusting wife will plead with you to visit the urologist bc she thinks you might have early onset ED, and she would really like to have sex with you again. She doesn’t initiate sex with you anymore bc she doesn’t want you – YOU – to feel humiliated by your flaccidity. All the while you are secretly fucking her friend on your lunch breaks.

  • You might be a cheater if you tell your wife you’re spending the weekend out of town taking care of your dying father. But you were really in a different city hooking up with AP. Umm, yeah, and there’s a special place in hell for people who use a dying parent as a cover story. ????

  • …You spend over $20,000 for hair transplants and it looks like you glued your shaved pubic hair onto your head.

    That’s why I call him, “Pube Head.”

    • And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I fantasized about pouring Nair into his shampoo bottle….

  • You might be a cheater if you inspire decades of country songs “You Can Have Him Jolene” by Chapel Hart

  • It does help me to realize there are lots of other people dramatically duped and going through the seriously effed up. This news story involves a DDay wherein a wife finds out her mild-mannered church-going husband of almost sixty years, with whom she had two sons, is a serial killer, arrested for the rape and murder of a teenage girl in 1974. And there were lots of other victims.

    https://apple.news/AS9ALb-aKSZOnv_O2rdjUnA

    I’m not the only person who has ever been deceived for a long period of time.

    It’s good to think of my situation as having been woken up and shown the escape route from a hell which I was unaware I was living in.

    If someone reveals themselves as a liar, the best move is to leave. IMHO.

  • You know you’re a cheater when:

    – You left your spouse an article about, “how they didn’t appreciate you” on a counter for them to find. After leaving the restaurant bills with the cocktails for your spouse to find (make sure the bill contains drinks and food that you don’t drink) you weren’t getting the message across to your spouse, so you left the invoice for the expensive engagement ring. Since that didn’t get the message across, you printed out love-letter emails from the several teenager’s you were f&#king replete with detail of the manicures and pedicures you were paying for. Make sure to tell your spouse that other people appreciate you more. Since that wasn’t enough you left your spouse poetry about how they were the reason for all of your trauma. You also sent a laundry list of your faults to all the neighbours and your spouse’s parents. Just to keep it clear, you left the trail in increasingly difficult places to find (like several pages down in a stack of printing paper). The longer it takes for them to find the letters and poetry the better.

    – You religiously phoned your spouse at lunch and home-time and was there at the gate to let them in; but the motivation was more about knowing their whereabouts so that you could be home on time.

    – You are away 6 months of the year on some rescue mission; but be sure to leave frozen dinners so your spouse doesn’t have to cook.

    – You threw your spouse’s favorite things out when you were angry at them and then spent months helping them to look for them (extra points if you can subtly point out how absent-minded they are). Extra-extra points for finding the “lost” car keys every day. Even more points if the thrown out items were special to your spouse (degree or dimploma, favourite books…)

    – You left with the essential oil burners, cologne, your spouse’s intimate sex things, cufflinks, and NOTHING else.

    – You point out that your spouse has a nose hair out of place (or needs to scrub an elbow). Size 10, but that gets assisted with (help spouse diet in a caring manner) and then openly critisise them at appropriate times.

    – The death threat was subtle enough and linked with your career, and so it wasn’t recognised as a death threat until it was (pretend first for extra effect).

    – You have an apartment less than two minutes from home, complete with widescreen TV, double bed, and candles and you make sure your spouse gets to know about it.

    – “I care about you deeply; but, I don’t love you anymore”

    – The reason you left your wardrobe behind was that you dress based on the person you are attempting to charm, so a new wardrobe is in order (black solid-colour suits for decades versus tweed and bright patterns).

    – You tell your wife you identify with Dexter.

    – You can save someone in a hospital at the risk of other patients; but, you intentionally don’t tell your spouse that your marriage has issues, and apparently; that is OK, but be sure to do as much harm on the way out.

    – Marry the wife of a couple friend or a family member ASAP after divorce. The engagement ring was bought before the decision about which of the people/teenagers you were courting.

    – You’ve done this before.

    – You are charming, and everyone thinks you are a saint.

    Sadly I could go on… and on…

    #noContact #reallyNoContact #reallyReallyNoContact