UBT: ‘I Had an Affair And Now My Kids Won’t Forgive Me’
Woe the sad sausage whose kids won’t forgive his affair. He demands forgiveness! NOW.
Recently, one such entitled FW wrote to the advice column, Care and Feeding, at Slate magazine.
Dear Care and Feeding,
I had an affair—a choice I recognize was a hurtful one, but was born out of a really difficult time in my soon-to-be-former marriage. My question is how to get back on track with my kids, who are angry and refuse to speak to me, six months into the divorce process. They’re old enough to have input into their own custody decisions, and it seems like I will have to pay while never getting to really see them.
My wife wasn’t careful and had an oops pregnancy. We already have a teenage son and daughter. The pregnancy was complicated and she didn’t do much around the house, leaving a lot of extra work in my hands, and we stopped having sex. I was stressed, underappreciated and exhausted, and caved when a younger coworker approached me. The affair became a lifeline when my wife lost our son at birth and then didn’t recover well, including two weeks in the hospital where I was forced to manage the household and our kids alone, while also grieving my lost son.
I was stressed, grieving and it led to taking bigger risks, until I took a much too-big-risk, and my kids walked in on my girlfriend and me. They panicked and called my wife, and she went straight for a lawyer. The kids are in counseling, and I show up to see them every weekend, but they still won’t talk to me. I suspect my wife is badmouthing me to them, but can’t prove it. How do I get things back to normal? Everyone makes mistakes, and they should be old enough to know that fidelity and marriage are complicated, but they are unwilling to listen.
—“Bad” Guy, Good Father
Your heart is just swelling for this guy, right?
Columnist Allison Price gently called him out for his selfishness, but then sank the ship with:
I can understand how a strained marriage or a big loss can lead to choices like infidelity.
Really Allison? What strange is this guy’s wife fucking? Oh, right she’s not. Because she isn’t human dog shit with all the moral sense God gave ballbearings.
The Universal Bullshit Translator is here to lighten your heavy load, Allison.
But… but…
I had an affair—a choice I recognize was a hurtful one, but
But there’s a but. I must tell you of MY suffering. This half-sentence-with-qualifier is the last you’ll hear about My Singular Choice to hurt my wife.
but was born out of a really difficult time in my soon-to-be-former marriage.
Can you believe this bitch is divorcing me?
#feelthesorry
My question is how to get back on track with my kids, who are angry and refuse to speak to me, six months into the divorce process.
Consequences. What are these?
If my kids won’t forgive my affair, do I still have to pay for them?
They’re old enough to have input into their own custody decisions, and it seems like I will have to pay while never getting to really see them.
I have to pay for children? When they’re not in my care? What madness is this?
My wife wasn’t careful and had an oops pregnancy.
I don’t know how babies are made.
Oops! The UBT wasn’t careful, and performed a vasectomy for you with rusty pliers.
#URwelcome
We already have a teenage son and daughter.
We already HAVE children. No more! I gave at the office!
The pregnancy was complicated and she didn’t do much around the house, leaving a lot of extra work in my hands, and we stopped having sex.
She could stroke out or suffer organ failure from a high-risk pregnancy. I, however, left two able-bodied teenagers to heat up frozen pizza.
The UBT has a suggestion. No sex? Try some extra work with your hands.
Forgive my affair, kids. I was under appreciated.
I was stressed, under appreciated and exhausted, and caved when a younger coworker approached me.
But not too stressed, under appreciated or exhausted for fresh pussy!
Junior coworkers just fling themselves at me. I eventually caved. I’m sure HR sees it that way too.
The affair became a lifeline when my wife lost our son at birth and then didn’t recover well, including two weeks in the hospital where I was forced to manage the household and our kids alone, while also grieving my lost son.
My wife lost our son.
But as she can mysteriously just generate pregnancies, this shouldn’t be a problem. Also, we have a complete set of teenagers!
The epiglottis became a lifeline of angle hair pasta. Cowabunga! said a chorus of clothespins. Must I bear the accordion box alone?
(I’m sorry. The UBT has overheated. Bullshit is pouring out of its transponders.)
THWACK!
Don’t question my wandering dick. I have a dead child.
Forgive me, kids. I was stressed.
I was stressed, grieving and it led to taking bigger risks, until I took a much too-big-risk, and my kids walked in on my girlfriend and me.
I fucked around in the family home. As my wife and children were grieving. I fail to see the utter transgressiveness of this.
They panicked and called my wife, and she went straight for a lawyer.
They panicked. They should’ve kept my secret for eternity and conspired with me against their mother. Thus causing them years of trauma and therapy bills for the benefit of my dick.
The kids are in counseling, and I show up to see them every weekend, but they still won’t talk to me.
Perhaps there is a connection between boundaries and therapy. I fail to see it.
I suspect my wife is badmouthing me to them, but can’t prove it.
They literally walked in on me fucking another woman, but I’m sure their dim opinion of me is their mother’s fault.
How do I get things back to normal?
WHERE ARE MY CHUMPS?!
Who took away my cake?!
Everyone makes mistakes,
Who among us hasn’t fucked a coworker in the marital home? As their wife recovers from a high-risk pregnancy and still-birth child?
and they should be old enough to know that fidelity and marriage are complicated, but they are unwilling to listen.
I’m not a monster! Fidelity is complicated!
Why won’t my children listen to an utterly corrupt man who resents their existence? Did I not stock the fridge with frozen pizza as your mother got herself pregnant? If I’m a prick, do I not bleed?
“Bad” Guy, Good Father
Bad guy, bad father, bad employee, bad lay. Bad, bad, bad.
This comment here tells me all I need to know about this asshole
“ it seems like I will have to pay while never getting to really see them”. Go crawl back in your hole.
Yes, clearly. Speaking from experience, child support and visitation are completely separate things legally and otherwise. Chumps cannot withhold visitation if FWs don’t pay. And FWs cannot withhold child support if they don’t get the visitation. They are independent.
“I take care of my kids.” You want a cookie??
What do you want to bet that for the two weeks he was stuck “babysitting” his own kids, the kids ate crackers and watched TV while he spent most of his time texting his whore and watching porn.
Oops, I was easily triggered. This was like my biological donor. Same thing, I walked in on him boinking my babysitter. I don’t speak/see him because he’s a shitty person with a shitty character. Nothing to do with what my mother or stepfather say. In fact, they’ve encouraged me over the years to reconcile. Nope. I did initially try, but he kept proving himself to be the same old shitty person that is never going to change.
Oh, Wow. No need to apologize for being triggered.That scenario is revolting on so many levels. Sorry that happened to you, and glad you’re NC and free of that sicko.
If I were the UBT I would malfunction at the “oops pregnancy” allready.
Love the “oops vasectomy” with rusty tools. I’m going to bake some lebkuchen now…
And the “I don’t know how babies are made” deserves a double serving of lebkuchen
That walking in on shit? That happened in my extended family. Daddio decided he could use child’s place for a lovenest. Barf. She came home one day and found him in flagrante delicto. Double barf. He yelled at her! all the barfs. It’s been about a dozen years, child is a grownup with a life and stuff. She still barely talks to the dad. Smart girl.
“That walking in on shit?”
Could be a Friday Challenge.
YES!!!! super good idea (;->)
Holy crap, what an asshole.
And this line “… including two weeks in the hospital where I was forced to manage the household and our kids alone…”
He had to take care of his kids and a house ALONE for TWO WHOLE WEEKS while his wife was in the hospital after the loss of their baby. TWO WHOLE WEEKS. Who can possibly manage such a thing?
Guess it’s good his kids won’t talk to him since being a single dad would require him to manage his house and kids ALONE for A WHOLE WEEK AT A TIME, every other week if he got 50 percent custody. He’d need to bang a lot of strange to survive such a crushing burden.
Not only that but he completely glosses over the fact his wife was in the hospital for TWO WEEKS! Not a shred of fear or concern for her health. Nothing about how the kids were handling their mother dealing with a life-threatening health scare, or that they just lost their baby brother.
Everything in this letter revolves around his dick and how he deserves to look like a good guy. This dude is a stone cold sociopath.
That’s the line that sent me flying, too. Especially the “I WAS FORCED to manage the household…” How dare my wife just laze around in her hospital bed and not do her share of chores? Can’t she fold some underwear or something? After all, she’s all alone with nothing to do but grieve our dead son!
The NERVE of this dickhead…wow. He really nailed the trifecta of cheating: pregnant, sick and grieving.
Same ol’ selfish entitlement. How dare you do this (get preggers, get sick, mourn) to ME?! I need my kibbles. I need centrality at all times! Why won’t my kids talk to ME?! Me me me sad sausage channel.
There’s just so much to unpack here, but it’s typical FW bullshit. They all sound the same! Ugh, reading this made me angry at my ex because he could write something like this. He has written something like this. The perpetual victim. Nothing is their fault. They always have a good reason for cheating. “My wife suffered through stillbirth and she couldn’t clean the house or pay attention to me for a whole two weeks! What do you expect me to do?!”
Ugh, then thinking the kids are mad because their mom must be brainwashing them. It has nothing to do with them seeing him fucking his coworker in their house! And how dare they rat him out to their mom! The nerve of them! Who do they think they are?! She was only suffering the loss of a child and recovering in the hospital! He had to take care of two teenagers for two weeks! How unfair! Poor guy.
Exactly. If caring for two teenagers for two whole weeks was a crushing burden that it forced him to screw younger coworkers then he shouldn’t get any custody. He clearly can’t handle it.
He goes out of his way to try to convince everyone that he can’t handle the responsibility. Ok then dude, you can’t have custody or even visitation. You convinced us you can’t handle caring for the teens. Congratulations.
Plus it’s not like this guy was chasing little kids around the house, he was in charge of two TEENAGERS. Teenagers do about 70% of the work of looking after themselves, you basically just have to maybe feed them and make sure they don’t get into fights.
Exactly! Omg I had to do a two week quarantine with a preschooler and young elementary schooler after a covid exposure, pre-vaccines. Stuck in the house 24/7. Ignoring the awfulness of everything else in this letter, that part got a huge eye roll from me.
This guy is such a piece of work. It’s his wife’s fault she lost their son? This guy is a narcissist’s narcissist. His wife and kids need to stay clear of this bag of cow manure.
Bad Guy/Good Father
You have completed the “Fucked Around” phase and, on entering the “Find Out” phase, are finding that it is not entirely to your liking. This is called consequences; the least you can do is own them.
LFTT
PS – Good parents don’t fuck about.
It’s the PS for me, LFTT!
I was extremely invested in seeing my ex-husband as a good father. When our three kids were young, he doted on them, coached their sports teams, went to all their activities, was present and engaged with them on every level. While completely ignoring me. I mean to the point where he would look past me, not at me, when he walked in the house, and not answer me if I asked him a direct question.
So for many years, I claimed he was a “good guy, good dad, bad husband” because he directed his emotional abuse only at me. And I guess I wanted to believe that even though I had picked a crappy spouse, I had picked a good dad for my kids. Thereby alleviating some of the guilt I felt over the shitty marriage example they grew up witnessing.
We separated when they were teens, upon my discovery of his affair with justafriend co-worker. I gave him the marital home, and in so doing, I essentially gave him majority custody of the kids.
In the 12 years since, his life has slowly deteriorated. He’s a “functioning” alcoholic these days and our grown kids have distanced themselves from him in a major way. He almost wasn’t invited to our oldest son’s wedding last year. I’m the one who encouraged our son to consider whether he might regret excluding his father when looking back on his wedding day in years to come.
The way my kids show up in the world, and in their relationships, has been shaped by the way their dad treated their mom. Thus, for all his involvement with them, he was not a good parent in the sense that really mattered.
WAW: I had the same treatment from my ex-FW. Once he got his progeny from me, it was clear that he saw me as the vessel that delivered them & as a handmaiden to them. He never wanted to partner equally. I too sacrificed my entire emotional, mental, & physical health to support his “great dad” image.
Wow, I’m so sorry that you too lived that particular daily heartbreak. I honestly consider it more damaging than the cheating.
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” (Theodore Hesburgh)
Anyone who abuses the other parent is abusing the kids as well. It’s a terrible experience for kids to witness abuse and deal with the agony of the abused parent. Some of them, the weaker ones, cope by turning towards the abuser and shunning the victim. The stronger, smarter ones turn away from the abuser.
No abuser can possibly be a good parent.
OHFFS, for a long time I classified my ex-husband’s treatment of me as “low-grade neglect.” We functioned decently in the co-running of the household, and tag-teamed the parenting of active school-age athlete kids. But the unspoken messages to our kids were more damaging than I was prepared to acknowledge at the time.
My married son often talks about how he never saw us (his parents) show affection toward each other or enjoy each other’s company.
All three of my kids now view their father as weak/damaged, lonely/needy, and his judgment and demeanor as adversely affected by a decade of pretty heavy drinking. Their love for him is tinged with both pity and obligation.
As for me, I’m no longer invested in seeing him as a good parent. The way he treated me means he was not.
I regret not leaving the marriage when my kids were much younger. I left as soon as I was strong enough to, and have worked in the years since to have the healthiest and most honest relationship possible with my kids.
As someone who was on the receiving end of this: please stop butting in to encourage your kids to have a better relationship with their dad. It is a real mindfuck to be negotiating those complicated feelings about loving a parent who is a shithead – especially one who was a shithead to the other parent you love – and then to have the abused parent start in with “oh but you’ll regret it if you don’t invite Dad to your wedding” or whatever. I get that you have complicated feelings about wanting your shithead ex to have been a good dad so your dealing with him wasn’t wasted, but I beg you, stop outsourcing that to your kids.
Apidae, I respect your perspective as based on your personal experience. My son came to me and asked my advice regarding whether or not to invite his father, so I was actually *not* butting in. Afterward, he thanked me for my input and told me he was glad he decided to invite his dad. My kids have their own relationships with their dad, which I have not negotiated, facilitated, hindered, or “outsourced”, regardless of my personal marital baggage.
We’re good over here.
Point taken especially with adult kids. However, I would also like to make you aware that the judges and courts have a very different approach to this problem with minor children. Imagine this from the perspective of the parent.
Across the board, the universal policy in the US is that kids are better off with both parents involved. This is even true, most situations. The custodial parent is legally ordered to facilitate and encourage a relationship with the non-custodial parent ‘to the extent that the child shall have the benefit of having two parents”. That is our charge REGARDLESS of how the exFW behaves!
The courts frown upon attempts to alienate kids and it can affect custody dispute outcomes. Believe me you do NOT want to be seen as the problem—or seen as anything else but the sane parent. FWs will try to mess with custody because you care about it and THEY CAN. For image management. For kibbles from sympathetic flying monkeys. It doesn’t matter how bad the other parent is, the courts still take this stance right up to the line of child endangerment, abuse and neglect. I have personal experience with this.
Let me tell you this sucks majorly. It is a fine line to walk between wanting the exFW out of your life for good and having to tell your minor children they need to go when their dad remembers he has kids and wants a command performance. My ex just resurfaced from a year of absolute radio silence to the kids, for instance. My kids do not want to go with him. *I* don’t want them to go. We have good reasons for this. And yet I have to encourage them to interact, makes plans and take them out to meet their dad. Fortunately that shit sandwich buffet has a time limit to it.
I have to give full credit to CL here because her advice is rock solid on this topic. It sucks. It’s a shit sandwich and you choke it down because you have to. You be the sane parent. You take the kids and drop them off and pick them up. You make boundaries, get parenting software and you grey rock the hell out of it. You cool, bummer wow yourself through these things until one day the kids are old enough to tell exFW no. No, they don’t want to do x, y, x. No they don’t want to go on vacay. Just no. This happens way before 18, in my experience, and at 10-17 they can veto visitation if they want (as long as it is not chumps idea) although at 18 they can go NC and mine did. FWs absolutely do not want a screaming child or a sullen teen on their hands. Their capacity for doing real work, empathy and making anything other than shallow connections is limited. Your mileage may vary.
Sometimes consequences come immediately in this case or they take 11 years to manifest. My youngest turned 18 about 9 months ago and hasn’t spent one more night in her father and his ho-wife’s house.
Sunrise,
Well done to your daughter for her agency in enforcing boundaries.
That said, I doubt that landed well with your Ex and I’d bet that he has tried to make out that this is your fault. I only say this as all 3 of our children (now 26, 23 and 18) have imposed very firm boundaries with their mother and have as little to do with her AP as possible (zero contact as far as the youngest is concerned) …. and their mother will tell anyone who will listen that it’s my fault.
LFTT
Yep LFTT, it’s my fault that my daughter doesn’t like living with her father. He told everyone it was because I told our daughter that he was cheating-not the cheating itself. He moans to everyone that I ruined the OW’s chances of being step mum. In reality, my daughter figured it out herself about the cheating. Biggest clue? Day one when he moved into his new apartment, there were women’s clothes there and love notes to each other all over the house. But, it was all my fault of course!
(imagine a major eyeroll) (followed by hugely loud snort)
Mine also blames me for the kids attitude towards him to anyone who will listen. But honestly I never had to say a thing because my kids are smart and old enough to understand that his behavior to each of us individually was unforgivable. He has no idea if what he says is true really since the kids rock grey rock, but it’s plausible to the audience. Plus sad sausage kibble for exFW too from said audience and none of the messy work of caring for another human bean if you successfully alienate them! That’s what the chump – ex is FOR, to do all the hard work. I mean really, if the kids won’t give you unadulterated adulation and unlimited kibbles, what good are they?! Discard them like the chump-ex; they are defective. Family 2.0 so much better…
“Discard them like the chump-ex; they are defective. Family 2.0 so much better…’
Within months of D-Day, when x became aware that his kids wanted nothing to do with them, he contemplated adopting the AP’s 18-yo son. Swap one son out for another. What’s the difference? ????????♀️
The kid swap, ouch! My ex was spending weekends at his AP’s nephew’s soccer/baseball games, instead of home with his own children, for graduations and senior year events, first yrs of college. I guess he never thought they’d know? It had nothing to do with me either. No depth to these idiots.
I suspect this is extremely common. My FW was told over and over by his daughter that she can’t stand to be around him because he’s such an asshole, that she doesn’t even consider him her father anymore, yet he still believes she won’t see him just out of loyalty to me.
If they couldn’t self-delude they’d have to kill themselves for the horror and the shame of who they are.
And the ironic thing is my FW’s exOW posted a comment about this letter on her Twitter with a shocked caption “HE JUST WANTS EVERYTHING TO GET BACK TO NORMAL!” when…she for all intents and purposes WAS the younger coworker my husband fucked because I had issues with painful sex after I suffered a bad injury when our child was born. He even told OW all about it as a way to get her sympathy (even though at that point I had told almost no one what had happened to me), and of course in the context of how much HE was suffering because of MY pain.
Like, OW truly can’t see what she is. She sees a story like this and is all “what a horrible guy”, but had no issues when that horrible guy was HER “twu wuv”.
I’m far enough out from D-day, etc. that this sort of thing is just funny to me.
[In case it’s not clear, I am not in any way connected to the letter writer – I just saw a lot of similarities in the situation and was amused at how hypocritical (or maybe just clueless?) my FW’s OW was in posting a comment on this letter.]
” … the younger coworker my husband fucked because I had issues with painful sex … ”
Don’t ever say this aloud, think it or believe it. The FW fucked his coworker because he’s an entitled asshole. Period, dot, end of.
Right. There are ways that loving couples can express sexuality without either “painful sex” or infidelity.
When I first read her Twitter caption, I thought she was supporting the cheating letter writer. Are you sure she meant he was a horrible guy, or did she accept him at face value?
Knowing her, she means it in a negative way (the comment was actually on a retweet that definitely put it in a negative light). But the lack of self-awareness is remarkable (though very on brand for her).
It would be so tempting to out her hypocrisy. You’re a paragon of self control.
It is SO tempting.
Wow this guy is something else. I wish him nothing but really bad things and am proud of his ex and her children for getting away from him so fast!
I know, right? Kudos to those kids for following their gut responses and telling their mother, instead of feeling guilty for seeing something they shouldn’t have seen, or keeping their dad’s cheating a secret out of some misguided loyalty to him or respect for his privacy.
I suspect that his decision to expose the kids to a close-up view of his cheating is what sent her immediately to a lawyer. (Yes, it was an active decision on his part.) If she is a chump, she probably tolerated the b.s. directed at herself, but harming the kids like that was a bridge too far.
Cheaters be like, “I know what I did was wrong, but I was going through a very stressful time!” and then you ask what the stress was caused by and they’re all, “My spouse was taken hostage by a gang of clowns before being thrown in front of a bus and put in a full-body cast only able to drink food from a straw, so I had to cut my own grilled cheese sandwiches into triangle halves ALL BY MYSELF!!!!”
“My family’s mad because I stuck my dick in another woman after my wife almost died and we lost our baby. Why doesn’t anybody care about me and MY needs?”
I vote that “cutting my own sandwich” be added to the list of reasons-to-cheat along with “bagged salad”.
Honestly, I’m torn about this letter. It’s so over-the-top narcissist that my initial reaction was, is this for real? The villain of this story is complaining that while his wife was so badly hurt from a stillbirth that she was hospitalized for two weeks, HE was suffering at having to take care of his own teenage children? But then I remembered that yeah, there are people like this in real life.
I will now refer to this poor-me-I have-to-do-actual-housework whiner subtype of FW as a Grilled Cheese Cheater.
Nice! Really makes you feel sorry for the guy right? I mean grilled cheese sandwiches?
“How was I supposed to know the Laundry Fairy doesn’t actually wave her magic wand and make the laundry disappear? And did you actually realize that after you eat food, and leave all the dishes in the sink, you have to do something to make them disappear or they will just stay there?”
You sure that asshole didn’t leave them in the sink until she came back from the hospital?
For two weeks!
Two weeks!!!!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9v-33jcEDk4
Haha! Good one!
So glad the wife went straight to a lawyer.
She must have been in the depths of hell and half dead from gaslighting if she swung into action that quickly.
what a guy.
let’s focus for a moment on the decision to bring the young co-worker INTO THE FAMILY HOME to have sex ON THE MARITAL BED so he can have ALL THE THRILLS.
the marital bed on which the OOPS pregnancy likely occurred and his GRIEF STRICKEN WIFE recuperated from THE LOSS OF HER CHILD AT BIRTH. this is a shakespearean play.
man, that is tragic.
Happened to me. Ex brought & impregnated OW home on our bed where i had conceived, lost and mourned my 26 week old son, later bled out on that very bed in a subsequent pregnancy at 11 weeks, same bed i conceived our rainbow baby who i was looking after while temporarily living with his doctor relatives after a high risk pregnancy and CS birth. But oh ‘ you never appreciated me enough, she made me feel heard and like a man’ sad sausage!!!! The sheer audacity and entitelment knows no bounds
The fact that the OW would be into encroaching on the marital home and bed is telling. From the statistics associating general high risk life choices and dark triad traits with STDs and the associations between mate poaching, dark triad traits and poor physical health, I would guess she was more likely to be carrying cooties.
????????♀️
OW and FW had sex in our bed (and didn’t clean the sheets afterward, which might seem like a minor detail, but it grosses me out AND is further evidence that FW had NO regard or respect for me). Oh, and they slept in HER marital bed, too.
They must’ve enjoyed the naughtiness of it all.
The OW was in the family home to make him sandwiches and vacuum. Guarantee it.
To this day I have no idea if her campaign to get into my home was successful, but apparently the OW repeatedly offered to come over to my house to (f̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶FW ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶i̶t̶a̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶o̶r̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ a̶m̶p̶l̶i̶f̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶r̶a̶y̶a̶l̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶e̶d̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶o̶r̶c̶e̶ ) clean for FW because FW whined that he was (a̶ ̶h̶e̶l̶p̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶b̶a̶b̶y̶) “living in a mess” when I was traveling with kids to get specialized healthcare for my middle child. During “full disclosure” FW swore that he never let her into the house though he did let her drive by the house after they’d been drinking because the OW wanted to (a̶s̶s̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶u̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶s̶e̶t̶s̶) see it. But then he failed several polygraphs on the question of whether they’d had sex in our family home.
I still laugh when I think of how he cried in front of the polygraph examiner in anticipation of failing the test. The examiner was a retired cop who wasn’t having it and told me privately to check my belongings for anything missing. I would have imagined that if the examiner was a misogynist, I would have felt that being aimed at me but I didn’t catch a whiff of it. So when the examiner added “These affair participants will take and take until there’s nothing left,” I chalked it up to experience.
I’m missing a pair of diamond earrings my parents gave me after college.
Wow. That’s a hell of a story.
Yep. It was the audition for the role of Wife Appliance: clean my house, make me a sammich and suck my dick.
Oh yeah, he brought her there to clean. That’s why he took the “risk” because he’s much too special of a princess baby man to have to dishes or laundry.
” princess baby man” ????????????
The OW was in the family home to make him sandwiches and vacuum. Guarantee it.
^this^
An “Interim” wife-appliance with benefits!
In addition to all the other misdeeds, this Ashhole saw no need to comfort his wife and teenaged kids regarding their loss and his wife being in the hospital or the kids being worried about their mother’s condition–as we all know noone is in the hospital a couple of weeks who is doing fine physically. Then he could not keep his younger howorker away from the family home.
the ‘opps pregnancy’ got me
the men who ‘don’t want kids’ who don’t use protection or get a vasectomy are the WORST, the men who think pregnancy is all the woman’s ‘fault’ OMG JUST STOP
we all know where babies come from
and the level of delusion in this guy is pathological – true narcissist and i don’t blame his kids because this is just the tip of the narcissistic iceberg with this guy
My FW adamantly refused to get a vasectomy. I had been on birth control for over 15 years and I was concerned about the long term effects of hormonal birth control, especially as I got older. He flatly refused to even consider getting a vasectomy. Said “No way! Will never happen.” So I resigned myself to remaining on birth control pills until menopause. When lo and behold, out of the blue he told me he didn’t want me taking the pills anymore and had decided to get a vasectomy. I was thrilled and thought he was being such a good and caring husband for putting my health above his discomfort. ???? How naive and trusting I was.
I would bet money that the real reason for his sudden change of heart was an “oops” pregnancy.
Klootzak had agreed to get a vasectomy before we were engaged. It was one of those big life questions I wanted addressed. I mean birth control and how we would handle that and so on. He jumped right in and said when we were done having kids, he would get a vasectomy because it’s an easier surgery for men than surgical sterilization for women. I was on hormonal birth control until I was almost 40. I had started telling him I was ready to have kids when I was 33. Once we were married he suddenly changed his mind about having kids. I should have left right then! Instead, he waited until he had been with a much younger AP and then suddenly tells me he is ready to father a child. I swear he did it to keep me stuck with him. And once I had our child and was too old to have another, I asked if he was ready to do the vasectomy because I was 42 and hormonal BC is not such a good idea after 40. But oh no! Changed his mind and didn’t want a vasectomy. Doesn’t remember ever promising to do that. I suffered all manner of procedures to conceive and had a difficult labor. It took me at least 6 months to recover. But he couldn’t be bothered to get a vasectomy because I guess he won’t feel as manly fucking strange that way.
When my x-husband and I were dating, a few months in we had “the talk”. I told him that I was looking for marriage, kids and pets. If he didn’t want any of those things, I was perfectly fine with that, but there would be no need to continue dating. He fell all over himself to assure me that he wanted those things too and couldn’t wait.
Fast forward 20 years and I found out he was telling people that I tricked him and forced him to have kids that he didn’t want.
What an absolute loser.
I got the you tricked me into marriage bullshit too. As I remember correctly, I was chillin in Brooklyn minding my own business. He was the one that flew all the way from Miami to ask me to marry him. Even made a big show of asking my mother for my hand in marriage. My mother still thinks that was the sweetest gesture. How were we so fooled.
When they are into you, they will climb mountains for you. When you are no longer of use to them, they will slit your throat. This is the life of a covert narcissist.
Yup, I had the same covert narcissist. Saw him pulling in the same covert bag of tricks on the OW too. That only lasted so long as well.
And look at how he gets to the “oops”:
“My wife wasn’t careful and had an oops pregnancy.”
“My wife wasn’t careful”–as if he wasn’t present at the conception. It’s all her fault! She “wasn’t careful” with my magic sperm. So she “had” an “oops” pregnancy. Not one “we” or reference to his own relationship to the child.
Exactly. He made it clear the child was unwanted and nothing to do with him… until he could use the child’s death to get pity. Then it’s all “I was grieving the death of my son!” Very typical behavior for these monsters.
I agree 100%
Where do these outrageous people come from? {Got herself pregnant} WTF! I hope this guy enjoys his new world, and it sucks because he made it! He reminds me of one of those clueless humans who see others as objects. Alien pod
I have a feeling Mom and teens are doing so much better, with the human boil removed!
The day women can reproduce by parthenogenesis will be the end of the world as we know it, and I can hardly wait. My life would have been soooo much better if I could have had my children without that moronic sperm donor, I mean, my ex-husband, involved.
PREACH.
Amazing how these creatures always have the spare energy for the affairs but never for anything else. There they are, all tired from extra household tasks while their wives have difficult pregnancies, but they surely get a spring in their step when a young co-worker waggles their tail feathers at them.
I’m confused. He said that his wife didn’t do much around the house. But also that his “wife lost our son at birth and then didn’t recover well, including two weeks in the hospital where I was forced to manage the household and our kids alone, while also grieving my lost son.”
He was doing everything before, right? So how was it hard for him to manage things with her gone?
Ok I’m done being sarcastic. I probably say this on every post but how is it possible that these idiot narcissistic FW’s are so entitled that they can write this shit and not realize how ridiculously fucked up it is?
He gets his wife pregnant — it’s somehow HER fault
She has a high risk pregnancy and loses the baby and ends up in the hospital for TWO WEEKS — but HE’S the one suffering more? Or in his case, he seems to think he’s the only one suffering. Did he think his wife got a 2 week vacation??
He starts fucking a young coworker and his kids walk in on them… and he still believes his wife is the reason the kids are disgusted by him??
The fuck?!
I wish there were real repercussions for disordered assholes
MS Excellent point.
I say he is put on the stand and rigorously cross examined by the posters of CL until he breaks down and admits he is a worthless scumbag. That would be a show worth watching.
But you see, if he admitted that he made bad choices, then maybe he would have to feel bad about himself. Can’t have that! Might put a smudge or two on the ol’ ego!
If the situation was anything like me and my ex, she DID do a lot around the house, but it just wasn’t focused enough on him. He didn’t realize how much she did until she wasn’t there, but instead of saying, “wow even when my wife was unwell she kept the household running as best she could”, he just feels put upon.
My ex called me lazy and a shitty housekeeper (when I had a newborn, and then when I was EXTREMELY ill). But once I moved out, the house fell into utter ruin and seriously looked like squatters had lived there when I went to get it ready to sell (I hadn’t been inside in over a year and took the realtor over to get an estimated sale price and was APPALLED and embarrassed to have brought anyone there). Even with OW staying there a lot of the time, it was so filthy I don’t know how she could bear to be there. Like, the toilet bowl was dark brown and growing things. You couldn’t have paid me to use it. Except my boss, who had seen OW’s apartment when she moved out, told me OW was just as gross. Then when I cleaned out his rental house after he died, it was the same thing. Moldy dishes in the sink. Trash everywhere. Takeout containers piled up on the counters.
It had nothing to do with my housekeeping (my apartment doesn’t look like a magazine spread, but at least it’s clean), it was just another excuse he used to justify his bad treatment of me and eventually his affair.
“But once I moved out, the house fell into utter ruin and seriously looked like squatters had lived there when I went to get it ready to sell”
Ugh. Yeah, I’m pretty sure my FW hasn’t mopped a floor since I moved out. He cleaned a toilet once (he was oh so proud of himself that he just had to announce it), but only because the smell got to be too much even for him. It looked like a hoarder house last time I saw it. I still have to sell it somehow with him in it. Argh!
Useless as two tits on a boar is what they are. Chronic fuck-ups.
I knew my STBX was messy but it wasn’t until after we separated that I realized just how gross he actually is. His apartment is disgusting! Once I went over there and found jelly on the toilet. Jelly! I am a neat freak (and a professional organizer by trade) so my house is always neat and clean. I never realized how much I did for him until he was gone. He’s revolting.
Umm….are you sure it was jelly? 😉
ISawTheLight,
You said “He didn’t realize how much she did until she wasn’t there” but here’s what I’ve learned about most FWs…. They don’t realize anything. They never saw what we did.
I made meals every night, kept the house clean, took care of all things kid-related (appointments, school, clothes, care), took care of the cars, all repairs and upgrades to the house, kept the fridge full, did all the travel plans, made date plans for us, took care of myself so that I’d be pretty and fit for him….. and FW left me for his coworker. I thought “he’ll miss all that I did.” Nope. They don’t. They are so entitled and delusional that they don’t recognize anything chumps do. We are appliances and easily replaced. There are no memories of the old appliance… they rewrite the script that the old appliance never worked.
It took me a few years to get it… but I see it now.
I thought the same MS, I was so caught up in ‘what I brought to the table’ and it WAS a lot. Not to mention hard-working and loyal. I have since come to understand that I should not be valued for what I do or not do. My worth is not intrinsically tied to my job/roles. Even a cat can open a door (or clean a toilet or fix lunches). I ought to be valued and celebrated for who I am, not what I can do for FWs. Otherwise it’s just a job (one of many I unknowingly held, and got fired from by FW) rather than wife/mother: personal assistant, social coordinator, nanny, accountant, housekeeper, taxi driver, full-time job), in which everyone is replaceable. I came to realize that FW did not value me for me, or value me for what I valued in myself. My standards got chipped away slowly but rose 1000% when I got rid of exFW.
MichelleShocked, except for household repairs (not that there were many), I did all that you did too. Plus I’ll add, took care of everything related to all holidays and birthdays. From the first month we were married, I scheduled all the FW’s dentist, optometrist and yearly physical exam appointments. I even drove him to and back from any blood draws that he needed, because he would get lightheaded from blood draws. Surprised the vampire had any blood in him! lol. And in the end, FW said to me, and this is an exact quote, “You never took good care of me!” At the time I was so traumatized, I didn’t say what I wished I would have said. I should have replied back, “Name one thing I didn’t take care of.”
You are exactly right that to them we are just appliances. No memories. I will never ever again do that much for another person!!! Reciprocal relationships are where it’s at!
I did all those things, too, and FW cheated on me with a coworker too.
My ex missed my cooking, that’s for sure. He manipulated OW into copying my recipes (“I just thought up this idea about a thing you could make” when it was something I invented and had been making for him for years) and even tried to get me to WRITE A COOKBOOK of my recipes! I said I wasn’t revealing my secrets and he got MAD. OW tried to be me, but…
When I was pick me dancing, he had me over cooking for him all the time, even though we were separated (and mowing the grass, cleaning, picking up his drycleaning, whatever, which I did because I thought he’d appreciate me [spoiler: he didn’t]). Nothing is ever good enough.
My ex got me to write a cookbook for his brother whom we raised from age 13. So he and his wife could make the recipes I made. So convenient to get me to do that the Christmas before dumping me.
Now he tells everyone I was a terrible cook. It’s like ok… they talk out of every side of their mouths.
????????♀️ Yup. Had him steal my recipes and go cook them for APs and act like he was a cooking genius. I found out because I read the emails from them begging him to make this thing or that again. Cranberry sausage pork tenderloin? Maple and garlic crusted salmon? Chicken with vermouth cream sauce? Yes, APs, thank his wife for him cooking those for you. He wouldn’t cook a meal in our house but he was using my recipes to get in the pants of APs from California to Maine. And he was asking me to email him some for a coworker friend of his. Nope. Sorry. I forgot it! After D-day, I stopped cooking all his favorites when he is around. If he is such a great cook, he can make himself that dinner. When he was out of town, I would cook them for guests or even just myself but never again for him. Klootzak doesn’t deserve special effort.
Isawthelight,
OMG FW tried to give my recipes to OW too! Lol Except he was too stupid to disguise them as something new. He had asked me to email recipes “for his dad and mom” right before he left me (I didn’t know he was cheating yet). But I later got to see his emails… he forwarded myy recipes to OW. I’m doubting she was cool with that lol
My STBX actually did realize what I did for him after he left. But he’s a different case, as he is desperately trying to win me back. Now, he’ll look around at the disgusting state of his apartment (it’s truly revolting) and say “See! I neeeeeeed you!” Barf. Clean your own place you cheating, lying pig. It’s what grown ups do.
MollyWobbles, FW never looked back or tried to come back to me. But I’m cool with it. He’s a total idiot. Glad he has new supply and he’s out of my life.
In your case, I’d go no contact with that FW. When he finds a way to reach out and say “See! I neeeeeeed you!” My response would be “But I don’t need you.” And that would be that. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.
I have a friend who had to continue dealing with her ex who was a total slob and hoarder —- but their son was staying with his dad 50%. So she had to just choose to be ok with it until son reached 18. It just sucks. She’s free now though — finally.
I think many times there are repercussions , but they are so fucked up mentally they don’t see it as that. They see it as more proof that they are the victims.
My ex fucked up his entire life, he was on top of the world and when it crashed due to his own actions he just got worse. I am betting in his cement filled mind, all his problems were due to someone else.
If klootzak gets a tombstone when he dies, it should be engraved with the words “Why me?” because he said them so often. Finally after D-day I heard him say it once and said, “Why the fuck NOT you? Everyone else has crap to deal with. But you think you are special and G-d takes time from His day to fuck with you personally?”
The wife had a hard pregnancy, he feels put upon. He has to help household function. She also lost a son! Also two weeks in the hospital these days, probably almost her life. Kids lost a sibling, see father having sex, in their home with OW. The lack of compassion for the 3 other people in the family, is astounding. To is “old” family, I say, free at last.
Women who suffer perinatal death normally get discharged quickly… if she was in the hospital 2 weeks, she was very VERY sick
“My wife lost our son.”
I have no words. That’s terrible. Fuck this guy.
And then there’s this other wife-blaming BS:
“My wife wasn’t careful and had an oops pregnancy.”
“I suspect my wife is badmouthing me to them, but can’t prove it.”
He may be on the extreme side of the cheater shit-spectrum, but I certainly see my own cheater in this asshole. He feels unfairly “punished” because his kids won’t talk to him. He’s a true sad sausage.
#marriagesareSOcomplicated #coworkerflirted #POORME #blameanyonebutme
[Recently he emailed me to ask me to wish our daughter a happy birthday for him. What? As if I would relay a message for him. My days of acting like his secretary are over. He can email her himself. I didn’t respond.]
He emailed YOU to ask you to tell his (and your) daughter happy birthday? He can’t buy and mail her a birthday card? Or, as you point out, email her himself? Glad you didn’t fall for obediently complying.
What I read is a demanding, entitled man who was so upset that he had to do housework and his wife was expecting his child. It was her fault, you know, that she got pregnant. He had nothing to do with it. And so a nice, cute, young thing in the office made a play for him and, by George, he fell right into it because he was having to wash dishes at home. Then wife and he lost their baby and instead of comforting her and letting her comfort him he was off screwing a coworker. Boo damn hoo!
The longer I read here, the stronger my opinion becomes that the affair is just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
The author of today’s letter, like all cheaters and their co-homewreckers, has no discernible understanding of cause and effect, and the egregious entitlement is off the charts.
Little Hammer has not spoken to Traitor X since 2019, and wants nothing to do with him. He badgered me for a year and a half to go to co-parenting therapy, thinking it would magically restore their relationship. Yet in that therapy, which I finally agreed to go to, he continued to lie and refused to do anything he was instructed to do. But he bears no responsibility for why things are the way they are.
Perhaps the self-centered, entitled, blame-shifting, Artful Accountability-Dodger is related to the dimwit nincompoop in the story below:
https://apple.news/AR7VGASWhRRKO9sAexOdGlw
I love what Dr. Frank Pittman used to tell cheaters, “YOU are what is wrong with your marriage.”
The affair was the frypan-upside-the-head that was necessary to shatter the mirage I was living in, exposing the reality of who he really is.
“Wonderful people don’t screw around with married [or otherwise committed] people, and wonderful married [or otherwise committed] people don’t screw around” , which is another of my favorite Dr. Frank Pittman quotes.
Yes, yes, yes… the Hammer nailed it once again. The affairs? Disgusting. But what made me start my exit plan was the realization that even without the cheating, klootzak is an asshole – controlling, financially and emotionally abusive, narcissist. And even if he ever managed to sort out fidelity, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells, not being myself, and bending over backward daily to deal with him. He’s a horrible human being.
I held on through the RIC. I thought oh maybe he really is a sex addict and he will get better control of it with age. But then I sorted out that the millions of lies he has told me and degrading way he talks to me and treats me is intolerable. The entire relationship is beyond repair because HE is what is wrong with my marriage.
It took me a while to accept that I had made a poor choice for a husband. I’m not a person who makes mistakes very often. Given the information I had at the time, I see why I made the choice. I do believe I was bamboozled. And I see that my being a trusting, compassionate person was a weakness in dealing with a monster like this. So I forgive myself for not picking well but the real issue is that klootzak is a monster and will never change.
So yeah, you are absolutely right! An affair is a sign the participants are messed up people and a symptom of a sane person trying to have a normal marriage with someone who is incapable of that.
Me too MWX…fuckface is an evil sociopath…I just didn’t see it. He conned me out of 15 fucking years I’ll never get back. I’m working in therapy to forgive myself for allowing him into my life and not seeing it clearly. There were some signs I can see now…but holy fuck is he a disordered POS evil monster.
VH spot on
I often think how utterly pissed the ex must have been when I started stockpiling feminist literature early in our marriage ~ starting with The Female Eunuch when I first realised something was awry (which was around the time we replaced the kitchen and his mother got me measured up against the sink to make sure it was the right height for me to give her son’s dishes a jolly good scrub). I mean we’d both been to law school together, my marks were higher than his, and here I was being measured against a sink. Why didnt I run! If someone believes they are superior and entitled (by virtue of gender, a PD or whatever) they wont give a shit about anyone’s feelings.
“The longer I read here, the stronger my opinion becomes that the affair is just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.”
Wholly agree and why I think chumps need to be cautioned against making “no longer screwing other people” the benchmark for reconciliation and marital repair or assume that if ex-spouse doesn’t cheat on new partner then they’re reformed. The depth of selfishness that goes into making the decision to cheat takes way more work to overcome, if at all, than just keeping it in their pants.
My case involved abandonment, and both my therapist and divorce attorney noted many times that wonderful people don’t take off. Because I asked for a separation, which my ex took as an excuse to take off, it wasn’t legally abandonment but emotionally it was. As messed up as that made me, it did help me get my head together and finally outright refused reconciliation. The divorce followed.
I was recently out of state getting an elderly relative into a nursing home. A long-term (30+ years) family friend was very involved, and I actually enjoyed watching how she and her husband would disagree and struggle during all the stress and yet keep upright and loving. I was careful to take off after dinner so they had time together, and she thanked me for that. They are truly wonderful people.
I have two adult children in their 20’s. One absolutely refuses to speak to his FW cheating mother after she revealed her affair and walked straight out of my life without warning to live with PSOM. The other has had one awkward meeting with her and doesn’t see much of a relationship going forward. They know who OM is and emphatically state they will never be in his presence, no matter what their relationship eventaully evolves with her. FW wife whines and cries to her brother that my oldest won’t speak to her. Poor her!! She’s all broken up.
Even her parents are not speaking to her at all and have been very supportive of me throughout this. Her mother was happy to see I filed for divorce.
It’s amazing how the selfish entitlement just keeps on coming with these people.
Yes, these guys. They blow up a family and then think that the kids should be a-ok, and the ex-wife somehow positive.
I asked for a separation (#2 actually), and he took off for the beach. Then he wondered why our college kids wrote him off. They actually refused to talk about him and would even walk out of the room if I brought him up. They had their own phones/emails and were actually away for most of the day because they were commuting to college and working. At times they barely talked to me other than rooting around in the refrigerator and asking when I planned another grocery run. Not a good time for me, either. And yet, somehow and some way, I alienated them from him. I turned their little (not) pliable hearts, you know.
There were a lot of questions about why he ran there and an old girlfriend that lived in that region and the waitresses that he was doting on, but whatever. My divorce attorney said he “smelled” other women all over what happened, but I chose to push to settle it out of court without getting a P.I. My ex fought it to the bitter end, just convincing me all the more that he was seriously character-disordered. After all the show about “quick and fair,” I ended up with a settlement after way more time and expense than I had hoped, but not enough for me to retire like he was. It was slightly more than what a judge would award. I took out having him help with college because his approach was a mess legally and required ongoing contact. I provided him with the information to pay the college directly whatever he felt like, but he never did. The kids scrambled and got second jobs and scholarships.
Our kids are grown and haven’t had anything to do with him for several years, their choice. We made our peace and hang out when schedules coincide, talking much more about the present than anything else. Both have said that I was the parent who always showed up and owned up to my flaws. Of course, I realize now how very off my picker was. It had been a whirlwind romance and had its positives, but good men don’t blow up their families, period.
“Dear potential kibble-supplier,
I have a black hole where my conscience is meant to be. This causes me to greatly downplay anything “bad” I do but explode into epic proportions anything that resembles consequence or even just inconvenience. It’s given me a pretty privileged life.. until now.
I live in a world where women are 100% responsible for their pregnancies, where fathers should be able to punish kids by withdrawing resources if they don’t agree to see them and where adverse opinions on me are formed not on accurate observations but on the say so of the bitch who manifests her own pregnancies out of thin air.
I guess I’m sort of like Joseph from the Bible. Why didn’t they pay more attention to him, anyhow?
I digress, back to me. You see my dilemma here; I’m trying REALLY hard here to skew the severity of what happened but it isn’t working anymore. How do you go toe-to-toe with a woman who might be the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary? WOE!
Oh and the baby died but like I said, back to me. I have no interest in self-reflection or the welfare of my children or any of that, that stuff is for idiots. I just need you to tell me that I’m right. Also, I.. I dunno, I feel like I can talk to you and you just.. SEE me, y’know? I know this is a bit crazy and we’ve only been talking for a few minutes but… I think I could fall in love with you.
Think about it.
– Sad Sausage”
You can’t get through to narcissism but you can punch the living shit out of it.
“ ….including two weeks in the hospital where I was forced to manage the household and our kids alone, while also grieving my lost son.” Forced? You mean taking responsibility for Your Own Kids while adulting?
Geezuz is this guy really that helpless or entitled to have never run his own household?
This one left me stunned. This guy actually makes my FW look like a good guy (and I’m not being sarcastic.)
“ My wife wasn’t careful and had an oops pregnancy.”—-with what, a turkey baster? The mailman?
So glad the wife immediately went to a divorce lawyer and got the kids into counseling.
Hard to believe this is a real letter. It checks every red flag box twice. Or have I just become savvy at recognizing such bullshit after 10 years of being exposed regularly to CL & CN?
Oh my days!!
I sure hope his ‘free to live her best life along with the teenage kids who know rotten when they see it’, has found this site.
I also hope she is able to function and finds the joy in her life again after the death of her sweet baby ❤️
Love the response! “If I’m a prick, do I not bleed?” Priceless. Don’t know why he’s asking an advice column. What answer does he expect?
He can’t get over: her getting herself pregnant, having a hard pregnancy, not cleaning, being in pain while recovering, losing a child, and making the immediate decision to leave him. How can he expect them to just get over what he did? Wtf!
Imagine if the unfortunate wife didn’t lawyer up after what they walked in on? The Wife would never be able to look those children in the eyes had she stayed. My adult children were so relieved when I filed. They never walked in on anything but one did see an “I love you” when FW gave 33 years younger howorker $200. Former spouse claimed it was her Christmas bonus ???? and he says that to everyone (adult daughter asked him about it after adult son told her) They speckled- I get it. I learned after filing.
Spackled
I was reading the letter where he blames his wife for getting pregnant, silently pleading “oh please call him out for this!” CL, you never disappoint.
I’m so proud of his stbx wife for seeing through the bullshit and divorcing him during this difficult time in her life. Best wishes to her and her kids in their new FW-free life.
Also, is it typical for teenage kids to straight disown their father for “one mistake,” even a really disgusting hurtful and intentional one? Something tells me this guy wasn’t father of the year to start with.
I feel like there’s a good chance it’s his behavior since the incident that may be keeping them away. Did he actually apologize to them or was it more like, “Your mother was vacationing in the hospital after she just had to have your dead brother I didn’t want because she was irresponsible with her birth control and I was expected to do laundry and dishes?! How was I not supposed to screw a subordinate from work nearly the same age as you kids?! Do you realize how much of a burden you are?! Taking care of you forces me to screw young women in your sick mother’s bed!”
Probably not word for word but the horrifying shit that came out of my ex husband’s mouth to justify himself was along those lines. Shocking but typical for them.
Both. It was both. He wasn’t father of the year before, AND horrifying shit came out of his mouth after discovery.
LW: “I suspect my wife is badmouthing me to them, but can’t prove it.”
UBT: “They literally walked in on me fucking another woman, but I’m sure their dim opinion of me is their mother’s fault.”
This is why we call them “fuckwits.”
I wanted to leap through the computer screen with the rusty pair of pliers after reading this. Whining about having to shoulder the burden of maintaining a household for 2 weeks while his wife was recovering after the death of her baby. Her baby because apparently he had nothing to do with conception. He’s such a selfish jerk I’m really glad his wife filed right away and that the kids are in counseling and avoiding his bullshit.
I’ve been raising my two kids solo since before I was ever divorced because FW ex didn’t participate in parenting unless it suited him and he was around. But he always thought he was a good dad. After DDay neither of them really wanted much to do with him. Consequences.
Same. My ex painted himself as father of the year. But I did all the heavy lifting of parenting, even when we were married.
He died a year ago and … nothing really changed as far as what I do for my son. I always took care of all the practical/mundane (“boring/not in the spotlight”) parts, like doctor/dentist appointments, shopping for clothes or school supplies, getting haircuts, cutting fingernails, school registration, etc. etc. etc. FW would take our kid to the skate park or the arcade or what have you. Other than having my son with me every day instead of 50% of the time, my work load has not increased. (If anything it’s easier because I don’t have to fight about everything or ask his permission, or deal with his attempts to control every aspect of my life.)
Fortunately my son is young (10) so he didn’t have too much time to be disappointed by his father. He has fond memories of his dad and I don’t try and change that for him. When he is older, I will answer whatever questions he has. For now I let it be.
I’m fascinated by the language of this: “The affair became a lifeline when my wife lost our son at birth and then didn’t recover well, including two weeks in the hospital where I was forced to manage the household and our kids alone, while also grieving my lost son.”
“The affair became,” not “my having an affair.” His wife went through childbirth, and the poor infant died, but no — she “lost” a child, and she “didn’t recover well.” So she’s clearly really messed things up for him. You also have to go pretty far to avoid saying she was in the hospital, everybody’s favorite vacay, but he found a way — her ineptness at recovering “included” two weeks in the hospital. And her not snapping-to “forced” him into managing the household all “alone.”
Any way you look at it, the only reasonable response is clearly to have your sidepiece over for a quickie while the kids are home.
Don’t forget that he “caved” to this co-worker’s advances. Poor man, it’s not like he had a choice to turn her down, he just collapsed under the relentless pressure of this Jezebel’s wiles.
Holy fuck. I literally have no words. I have lost all my words.
This guy.
He feels so justified that he wrote this shit down and sent it into a magazine.
He let them publish it!
Here’s a news flash – Good fathers don’t let their children walk in on them having sex with another woman in the family home while their mother is recovering from a traumatic pregnancy and the death of their sibling.
This is the opposite of being a good father.
Of course, the kids aren’t talking to him.
But responding here isn’t going to help. I’m a chump, writing to chumps.
I’m heading to Slate.
It’s about time that my wrath had a good venting.
Just let me grab my lovely wine ….
The good news is that the Slate commentariat unanimously shat on this guy. Not a single defender. They are sensible over there.
Well. Sums up the mind of a fuckwit.
x, who I divorced after 39.999 years could very well have this same narrative.
So glad glad glad to be free from it. Sorry adult children are in the throes of figuring out what went wrong with the image I spackled and the fuckwit who is their father. My bad there. Working on it.
Man, was that a lot to digest!
Going back to Hell of a Chump’s very incite full post yesterday:
“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.”( “ rationalizing harm” 100%)
These deranged beings become blinding neon beacons of dysfunction waving inescapably in your face.
Completely impossible to unsee once you’ve seen.
Where is the empathy for his wife? The compassion? The care and concern for his family’s suffering and very tragic loss?
The gratitude that his wife survived and the ‘step up to the plate’ courage amidst his own grief that his wife and children are going to need him to be a tower of love and strength? He has ZERO of that ability.
No, this asshole’s attitude is what can I do to improve my OWN life around all this flying shit before me?!
Me, me and me, the only thing that really matters to him is ME!!!
“ it seems I will have to pay while never really getting to see them”( tune up the strings please, this guy is truly suffering, forced to give a shit about his kids, how fucking tragic!)
“ my wife wasn’t careful” ( and knocked herself up!)
“She didn’t do much around the house”( with her crappy excuse of a high risk pregnancy, where was my damn lemon pie?!)
I, I,I and I was under appreciated ( wife’s fault, and I caved to young pussy placed on the tip of my penis)
I was FORCED to be a man and help my family thru crisis by taking out the trash every damn night and ordering pizza.
I was grieving!! What about MY journey people?!?
My wife is badmouthing me to my kids because they happened to see me fucking someone other than their mom in their home while mom was critically ill in the hospital after losing our baby. ( the bitch!)
“ Everyone makes mistakes”( my bad, you all forgive me? let’s go get some ice cream!)
It’s really tough being faithful kids, I have needs that just can’t wait! I’m that special. Why can’t anyone see that?!
The good news to all of this tragedy is that this family is going to be light years better off getting rid of this entitled prick of a man-boy.
Good riddance to him! I could barely stand to read the post, let alone live with him.
Great job once more UBT! ( I’m hoping there was some tetanus on those rusty pliers.)
“Where is the empathy for his wife? The compassion? The care and concern for his family’s suffering and very tragic loss?”
There isn’t one speck…cheater asswipe is clearly annoyed that his wife got pregnant, apparently on her own, then she was hospitalized for two weeks (she’s got some nerve) and one of the damn brats walked in on him screwing his mistress. Oh and now the kids have attitude! Losing the baby doesn’t even come into play and besides his wife lost the baby so no skin off his nose, less child support. There was absolutely no grief on his part he’s just talking out his ass for sympathy.
Bringing the whore into your family home to fuck is a giant, aggressive “fuck you” to the wife and kids individually. It’s deeply personal, and he meant it.
It’s also a symptom of OW’s mental instability, that she would willingly enter another woman’s (and her children’s) personal space, which he exploited. I hope she doesn’t get herself pregnant, which he apparently believes is a thing.
Good fucking riddance to this navel-gazing piece of shit.
Had the same thoughts about schmoopie – it takes a special kind of self-hate to fuck a grieving mom’s husband.
I headed to Slate to comment. I was disappointed that there doesn’t seem to be an option for commenting. The columnist’s response was not as good or as funny as Chump Lady, but she did call out the letter writer for the same faults Tracy and Chump Nation addressed.
The sheer entitlement they have that allows them to make themselves the victim of absolutely every single thing that ever happens is just mind blowing. I used to see little glimpses of that during my marriage and it always left me so confused. They are always, always, always the victim.
I remember at one point before I finally got him to get the hell out of our apartment (it took two months total but it felt like eternity) I was avoiding him since he had talked of murdering me and trying not to respond to his insults. But he went too far with something one day and I snapped at him, “What do you want me to do? High five you and say “cool prank bro!” because you faked a 20 year marriage?”
And he hung his head and made his mask look all sad and he said, “Isn’t it really a prank I played on myself?” Then he moped around the living room and kitchen making sad faces and I thought holy shit, it doesn’t matter what he does, he will always spin it around in his mind so that he’s a victim.
Some time later when I was not speaking to him and still trying to avoid him and his anger, he screamed at me, “Poor Katie! Always the victim!” Just out of nowhere. Like he saw me doing laundry and yelled at me. All I could think was well, that is a textbook definition of projection if I ever saw one.
KP it strikes me that your ex, along with many of the former partners of posters on here, likely seethed with jealousy for 20 years at your quick wit (whilst superficially pretending to admire it, at least for the first five minutes). He is probably still lying awake at night trying to think of a comeback.
You’re probably right. And thank you. He always claimed I wasn’t funny and didn’t have a sense of humor. But other people seem to find me funny.
The amount of rage and hatred that just poured out of him when the mask came off made it clear they were not new feelings. He obviously silently hated me and stewed about it for a long time and while I hate to fall back on saying someone is jealous when they don’t like me, I don’t know what else it could be. It was so weird.
In my youth I dated a man who broke up with me and then snarled in my face, “You are the smartest woman I have ever dated!” and I stared at him confused for a moment and then said “thank you?” and he scoffed and gaped at me like he couldn’t believe I thought being smart was a compliment. But… what?
My ex husband reminded me of that moment many times when he was stalking around the house trying to find something to insult me about. He couldn’t come up with much. It was kind of sad watching him try, honestly. All he had was projection. He called me incestuous at one point and when I responded by screaming WHAT THE F***?! WHO IN MY FAMILY ARE YOU CLAIMING I’M F***ING?!” he literally cowered. Then stammered out some unintelligible gibberish and left the room. But that was just projection too, since he dates an adult baby who pretends to be his molested daughter. barf barf barf. All the barfs.
KP – I thought this was interesting:
“In the eyes of many zoologists, humor is a human replacement for the violence which animals use on each other to establish an order of dominance (the pecking order).” https://www.autism-help.org/aspergers-guide-humor.htm
Oh, that’s very interesting. I was constantly the butt of his “jokes” and when I would ask him to stop or flat out tell him he was hurting me, I’d get accused of not having a sense of humor. He would go until I was crying and then get all “All you have to do is tell me to stop and I’ll stop.” And I would point out I asked him to stop a dozen times before it got to that point.
I used to wonder if something was really wrong with him and he didn’t have the ability to stop but it never sat right. Thinking of it as a form of dominance makes a whole lot of sense though. I mean, it worked. More effectively than hitting me would have because then I would have left. That’s so interesting, thank you for sharing.
My heart is so broken for this chump. I hope that she finds CN. We are here for her
A high risk pregnancy and the newborn died ? A cheating father ? Gee I wonder if cheater infected his wife and unborn child with something and caused the baby’s death.
What a p.o.s.
I frigging LOVE Chump Lady and the UBT! The sarcasm, the truthfulness….I too was left by FW when 38 weeks pregnant and handling a 2 year old. He said it was a “work trip”. Turns out he’d booked a 4 day weekday staycation for him and the AP. I was literally begging him not to go on the “work trip/ conference” because i was having unrelenting pelvic pain that caused me to limp on one leg.. but he still went, caught covid from the AP and passed it on to our 2 year old when he came back. These folks only think about themselves…I have no sympathy.
“I can understand how a strained marriage or a big loss can lead to choices like infidelity.”
Cheater apologist = cheater or cheater opportunist
These sad sausage narcissists and the pain they endure when they aren’t the center of attention and being catered to. The pain! The injustice!
This was a little triggering for me since I had a similar situation with a difficult pregnancy and it took me a long time to put together that he blamed me for it and the “burden” of having to parent our older child while I was in the hospital.
He made bad choices while I had bad things happen to me, but his narcissistic brain didn’t see the difference.
The most dangerous words “I can understand how a strained marriage or a big loss can lead to choices like infidelity”.
These FWs are self-absorbed and entitled, but generally are able to resist other “choices” which have less societal acceptance. That’s why they don’t steal cars or punch their boss.
Hope the column gets the push back it deserves.
I so needed this one today! My 17 year old son is refusing to talk to FW and FW is not taking it well. FW said our son is “holding an unreasonable grudge” and then compared to him to my father, the ultimate horrible narcissist! I countered with “Or perhaps he’s setting boundaries to keep a toxic person out of his life while he tries to heal from the damage you’ve done”. Learning that your father has been lying to you your entire life is devastating and my son needs time to heal from that pain. No one, especially the family abuser, should make him feel guilty for doing what he needs to do to try to heal and be whole.
Seriously?
This guy thinks his children’s mother caused the bad opinion of him here?
How fucking lost can you be?
I wish this guy would do an AITA thread. He’d walk away with 3rd-degree burns.
I’m sure someone else must have voiced this but this guy may have contributed to or caused the stillbirth.
1) Adulterers have higher rates of STDs than even those in open marriages (https://www.livescience.com/36242-cheating-unsafe-sex-open-relationship-std-risk.html). On top of this, sildenafil use by men is associated with doubled and tripled rates of STDs (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-erectile-diseases/men-taking-drugs-for-sex-function-risk-sex-diseases-idUSTRE6643ZN20100705).
2) Many older men who have sex with younger partners take ED drugs to “keep up” and appear more youthful. As with other medications, Sildenafil use by men exposes partners to traces of the drug during unprotected sex. If you dig beyond defensive drug industry-sponsored research claiming no association (but not admitting insufficient studies) between birth defects and sildenafil exposure in pregnancy, research on sildenafil is inconclusive about whether the drug can cause sperm abnormalities (https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(07)04196-9/fulltext) that could impact fetal health and fetal death (https://www.dw.com/en/viagra-in-pregnancy-study-stopped-after-11-babies-die/a-44813572)
3) The speed with which this guy’s ex divorced him suggests that she’d been suffering from his gaslighting during the pregnancy. Anyone who’s been through it knows what this does to physical health and can imagine what it might do to a pregnancy. (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/stressful-life-events-may-increase-stillbirth-risk-nih-network-study-finds)
4) All the above.
Sorry, Sad Sausage, no understanding coming from this poster.
You ask how you can get thing back to normal. You can’t. You blew up normal and there is no MORE. It’s called the consequences of your selfish, impulsive, immature choices. You aren’t looking to restore love, trust or fidelity to your marriage and family . You’re merely looking to restore a semblance of normality by “seeing your kids”, which you hope might translate into positive impression management to those around you. Do us all a favor and GROW UP!
You really want another chance with your children? One that, if you work nose- to-the grindstone for a long time, MIGHT work? Then humble yourself, engage with a therapist to learn something about yourself that makes you act the way you do. Next, fall on your knees in humility in front of those kids, telling them that YOU chose to risk your relationship with them by being a selfish, inconsiderate, immature excuse for a father. Further, tell them YOU want to earn back their trust by showing them through both words and actions how much you do love them. Understand that your weak character cost you your family and has to be earned back over consistent choices forward. Explain to them why you were such a poor example of manhood and how you intend to recover their interest, trust and love. Take their emotional distress into account by helping them face their fears with a counselor while you attend right by their side. The onus is on YOU to become the better man, not them. Expect no instant gratification; they deserve as long as it takes to reconsider you as a viable parent. Plan on years of genuine authentic committment to unravel the damage you did in one impulsive prior moment. Consequences are Teachers if you want to learn.
Not sincere enough, Sad Sausage? Don’t want to go the distance? Impression management looking like the better option still? Then walk – no, run to the nearest exit because until you reconcile with tender hearts that you spawned, you don’t deserve these good folks in your life.
This guy needs to be a top contender for “Most Selfish Asshole” awards 2022.