He Claims He Just Sexts and Never Meets

He’s a liar.

Any time one of these people says it was “only” X, Y, or Z, you can pretty much guarantee it wasn’t.

My ex swore it was an “emotional affair” (actually, he denied even that at first, but then admitted to it, complete with tears). He was having sex with his coworker almost from the beginning of their 4-year affair.

You caught him sexting, so he will admit to sexting. But won’t let you see the messages. Because they are probably things like “I can’t wait to see you again”, “thanks for last night”, “I loved ****ing your *****”, etc.

Regardless of the technicalities of what he’s doing – clearly this is NOT okay with you. And that’s what is important.

He will NOT change. He will only learn to hide it better. Ask yourself very honestly if you are okay staying married to this guy AS HE IS RIGHT NOW. Not some magically reformed version of him, because you won’t get that. If the answer is no, then start planning your exit. Don’t be like me and waste your time on someone who clearly has no respect or love for you.

Thing is, it doesn’t matter whether he consummated the affair(s). I went through this – my ex-FW demonstrated for me the invisible barrier around her that no one was allowed to violate. She swore that she’d never rounded “third base” (her words) with the guy. She swore she wasn’t in touch with him. Meanwhile, I had court-worthy proof she was lying. But it didn’t matter for me, and doesn’t for anyone, IMO. Because the willingness and readiness to have affairs is there. You can never, ever trust that it won’t happen or didn’t happen. The details are just details.

And another massive danger sign: blaming you. No, no, and no. You didn’t text somebody and decide to meet up with them – he did.

It’s okay to believe that you are right and he is wrong, and not give him the gift of your time and effort. Just like you didn’t cause his bad behavior, you can’t cause his reformation.

“A show of hands, CN, if your cheater swore on their children’s lives”: ????????????, all three of them.
Nichole, cheaters are cheaters at everything, especially about things they think they can get away with. And chumps are the easiest targets of all to cheat on, because of all the reasons CL raises so many times here.

Get rid of this creature who is not worth an ounce of your good faith and efforts. Instead of letting your children be an instrument for fuckwittery, give a good example to them

“swearing on your kid’s lives” means exactly what? That they will die if he is physically cheating? It doesn’t work like that and you know it.

He will only admit to what he thinks you know.

That he was preparing to meet up to have sex tells you enough. And he won’t let you see the messages? How many red flags do you need? Do you want to play marriage police for the rest of your life?

You weren’t a “perfect” wife when you were grieving? How DARE you? Did he support you? Or did he sext women and blame you?

It’s easy for me to say these things because I’m on the other side – I left the cheater. It’s hard to leave. It’s hard to have your whole life changed. But you are married to an imposter. It benefits him for you to stay, and he will say anything to get you to stay.

Nichole,

You said: “He says I alienated him, pushed him away – it’s possible, I did have a bad spell after my mother passed away last year.”

I’m sorry — what?? Are you apologizing for grieving after your mother passed away?

That’s straight out of the Cheater handbook. FW told me that he started to feel unhappy in our marriage when my father passed away.

Talk about zero empathy! Grieving is inconvenient to these narcissistic cheaters. Can you imagine telling a friend “your grieving is not good for me. Get back to being happy and doing shit for me”?

Seriously, you can see how selfish and childlike FWs are by how they handle someone dying that YOU care about.

Nichole,

Out of everybody’s comments I’ve read so far, ISawTheLight and Poet expressed the closest to what I’ve been thinking. It’s what I’m used to seeing from CL, but I’m guessing she didn’t want to keep writing the same thing every time someone writes in w/a similar problem.

What I was waiting to read was “Is this relationship acceptable to you? Are your so-called husband’s actions acceptable to you?”

I don’t think the answer to either question should be yes, but I’m not you. Only you can decide.

Looking back, like many others here, if I could have viewed my FW XW’s actions towards me objectively in real time, things might have been more in my favor come D-day (but that’s hard to do when you’re blindly in love w/the person you thought you had, not this strange facsimile you have trouble understanding).

Especially if I could have had clear sight about how I was being discarded in the last few years of our mirage (a usage we must give thanks to VH for ????), and w/the knowledge I have now.

I would have been able to see that the FW XW’s actions (and not a few of her words, or even the glaring lack of some of them, like, “I love you, too.”) made it clear that our relationship was not acceptable to me. That she was not behaving acceptably towards me. That if there had ever been any true love on her part towards me (questionable), it was disappearing down the drain of her envy, greed, selfishness and general lack of good character.

In addition to being blindly in love, I was also mired down by a serious depression those last few years. It doesn’t seem like you are (I certainly hope you aren’t, for your sake). It sounds like you’re just hoping that your husband will mend his ways and come back to you as the man you’ve always imagined him to be. Because he might not have physically fucked around on you yet.

If I were in your shoes Nichole, the very least I’d be doing is getting my ducks all in a row. Preparing for the very real possibility of divorce. Because you need to start thinking of your welfare. Your husband doesn’t seem to be thinking much of yours.

I hope CL’s and CN’s thoughts on your situation help you decide how to act. But, of course, it’s all up to you. You have to decide. And that’s a hard thing to do when you’re the loving, chumpy partner. I wish you clarity of mind, and the ability to remove any rose-colored glasses about your husband and your relationship. And the determination to do what’s right for you.

When it’s all over Nichole, I wish you peace and happiness. I’d wish it for you now, but you’re in the thick of it, and it’s not as likely (take them where you can find them, though). But if you do what’s best for you, not as an awful, selfish person, but as a person who realizes they have their own worth and respects that, peace and happiness will come to you. And we’re all here for you if you need us.

I think the answer to the question of whether someone has offended before and will offend again lies in whether they have polished justifications, particularly justifications at their victim’s expense. The fact the OP’s partner managed to turn her understandable period of grief over the loss of a parent into an excuse to abuse and betray her is a perfect example of this. What could be more dehumanizing than robbing the victim of the consolation of their actual innocence in the crime committed against them, moreover using the victim’s grief as a means to do this? That mental trick could only be committed by someone very practiced in rationalizing harm. They’ve shown they have the excuse machine well-oiled and functioning. And all they need is the machine to be capable of doing anything imaginable. The accusation itself– that the OP was a bad or quasi-abusive spouse during grief– is so vile, extreme and absurd that it suggests the FW must have already done something as vile and extreme as the accusation.

I would suggest digging around to get evidence of physical cheating and do some forensic accounting because this can help the settlement process in the case (highly likely) this cheater spent marital assets on affairs. Like everyone else, I would also suggest a full STD panel.

Regular readers know my pet theory– that cheaters like this are sort of “batterer lite.” The scary thing is that covert abuse and punishment like maintaining a secret double life and endangering victims while playing the “good egg” on the surface can eventually progress to even more extreme and endangering forms of abuse and punishment. For instance, serial cheater Chris Watts was reportedly never violent until he killed his family. When caught, Watts was like a bag filled with rationalizations that exploded on police when they pricked it.

At first Watts claimed no knowledge of Shanann’s whereabouts and no responsibility in her disappearance. Then he falsely claimed he killed her because she’d killed their children. Then he claimed he killed his family out of love/loyalty to his affair partner and seems to have stuck with that alibi even in prison. Implied by the latter excuse is that his wife “failed” in some way as a partner. And all through the process, even in police interviews, Watts was able to maintain an almost bovine appearance of calm. Maybe because when women disappear the first suspect is usually the partner, one neighbor who stood by while Watts was being interviewed by police on video seems to have picked up on some expressions and gestures by Watts that conveyed guilt. But if you watch the video, these “shifty” expressions and gestures are really micro. If anything, Watts appears far too calm. You can easily see how Watts managed to fool his wife, her family and everyone else for so long. What enabled that appearance of calm?

So here’s my usual spiel (with a few updates): I think what makes a cheater– or batterer or serial killer/rapist– is a well-greased excuse machine, the core of which is altering the identity of the victim so that the victim deserves whatever the offender dishes out. As the abuse and betrayal become progressively more extreme and harmful, the offender’s need to vilify their victims progresses as well and paves the way for progressively more extreme abuse. This is part of what criminal psychologists call “neutralization,” a kind of guilt reduction strategy. It’s an ornate process of rationalizations by which serial offenders justify committing various offenses. It works retroactively to reduce guilt over past offenses and proactively to enable the offender to commit future offenses because the past offenses don’t cause the discomfort that normal people would experience in the wake of an offense and because the offender appears innocent to others and gives away none of the furtiveness or shiftiness people associate with criminality. The latter would arguably enable the offender to lure in future victims and continue to evade detection by others.

In other words, serial offense depends on appearing innocent. Appearing innocent depends on *feeling* innocent. But feeling innocent when one is not requires elaborate mental gymnastics. Neutralization/guilt reduction theoretically involves 1) denial of responsibility; 2) denial of injury; 3) denial of the victim; 4) appeal to higher loyalties; 5) condemnation of condemners.

Denial of responsibility: the offender either denies the offense or describes themselves reacting to forces beyond their control.

Denial of injury: the offenders actions did not cause real harm. The harm was imagined by victims or victims harmed themselves.

Denial of the victim: there was no victim because true victims are innocent but the offender frames the victim as either lying or bad and deserving the offense.

Appeal to higher loyalties: the offender claims they acted for the greater good or were driven by “love” or were only doing what everyone secretly does or that harming the victim was warranted to protect others or society or to serve God.

Condemning the condemners: accusers are all hypocrites or deranged or serving a twisted agenda or on a witch hunt.

Researchers argue that some offenders become so skilled at this that the thinking eventually doesn’t require any effort and is automatic. The mental process is reportedly observed in a range of serial offender from college exam cheaters to serial killers. I think the operative term there is “serial.” One-time offenders would lack the well-oiled rationalization machine. Researchers also argue that this puts into question whether sociopathy necessarily exists in the way we typically think of it– that some people simply lack empathy. Instead they argue that neutralization itself explains how offenders manage to snuff empathy and shame through a learned system of rationalizations in order to dehumanize their victims and/or deny the harm they do to the point that they’re functionally sociopathic and guilt-free.

For another clue about how some people manage to appear to even the people closest to them to be “good eggs” and solid citizens for years at a time while harboring a secret, heinous self and double life, I recently read some articles debating the existence of multiple identities in psychopaths. Some of the theories were similar to what I read about batterers as a former advocate for victims of domestic violence– that batterers tend to have multiple “partitioned” or “compartmentalized” personae. It’s how they lure victims in by presenting themselves as safe and nurturing and then, as they begin to abuse their victims, fool bystanders into thinking the abusers are incapable of hurting a fly– or to convince victims that the offender can change for the better. As the thinking goes, this compartmentalized personality effect isn’t to the same degree as someone with dissociative personality disorder where each separate personality is unaware the others exist, as if the “partitions” are floor-to-ceiling walls. It’s more as if the different personae are separated by short office cubicle partitions. It’s similar to what serial killer Dennis Rader dubbed “cubing.”

Imagine a doll with a cube-shaped head and four separate faces on each. If you’re looking directly at one face, the others are invisible to the eye. Rader indicated that when he entered one persona– say, family man, church or boy scout leader– it wasn’t simply that onlookers only saw the face being presented but that Rader himself could lose– apparently to a significant degree– his awareness of the others. He could almost fully invest and almost nearly believe that he was the face he showed and forget the other faces.

In prison interviews with a psychologist, Rader admitted his violent fantasies began in childhood. To keep his inner life secret and undetectable to others, he also developed the ability to present different faces to others. Some psychopaths are only abusive to those closest to them while others direct their aggression only to people outside their communities and families and apparently Rader fell into the second category. He was reportedly very successful at this and neighbors, friends and even his own children swore they never saw any hints of what Rader was capable of. As an adult Rader described developing fluidity in shifting from one role to the next. Only his eventual victims would see the sadistic killer face. He also described secretly enjoying the memories of his crimes while in the middle of playing the role of solid citizen so it’s clear he had awareness that he was presenting different faces and personae to others.

But what I found interesting is the depth to which Rader could invest– almost on a cellular or metabolic level– in the various personalities that he presented to others while simultaneously being aware he was doing it. It sounds like he could alter his own metabolic functions by investing so deeply in a role so that the “solid citizen” cube face would give away none of the furtiveness or shiftiness or say discordant things that might tip off onlookers that Rader wasn’t such a great guy. The psychologist who interviewed Rader in prison compared it to method acting except that individuals like this could keep up the “solid citizen” role for years. The same seamless, extended performances were seen in Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy.

The quasi-split personality abuser can be spellbinding to victims because of the degree to which the abuser quasi-believes in their own rationalizations. While a cheater is in the midst of cheating, they almost believe in their own “cube face” presentation. When the cheater is between cheating sprees or extramarital “crushes,” they may fully believe that they’re loyal and devoted partners… until some trigger shifts them to the other face. The betrayer cube-face may then believe the marriage was always bad and the victim was always dysfunctional and deserving of retaliation. Each “cube” seems to have different memories, ideas, perceptions, beliefs. But unlike someone who’s genuinely mentally ill and has no awareness of these facets or shifts and may be generally paranoid and delusional about the intentions or actions of others, what marks criminal mentality is sufficient awareness to conceal and cover up offenses and to reserve their vilification only to victims or those who might obstruct the offender’s offenses.

Another bit of research I read is an argument that psychopaths don’t so much lack empathy as derive such extreme, overpowering hits of dopamine when achieving “rewards” (whatever those might be) that this drowns out all other internal cues, including sympathy, humanity, remorse. But that’s a discussion for another day. Basically the takeaway is that it doesn’t matter whether the individual is capable of empathy or not if they have a means or polished mental trick of drowning it selectively. Like the common conception of a man-eating bear, once someone develops that rationalization system, stick a fork in them. No normal or safe person has that excuse machine.