UBT: Why HER?
She wants to know “why her?” The Other Woman is unemployed. She’s a doctor.
***
Dear Chump Lady,
Bullshit translator, please.
My ex and I were together for almost 19 years, married for just 1 week shy of 15 years. High school sweethearts.
We had a surprise third pregnancy that sadly ended in loss at 24 weeks in February 2021.
I wanted to get pregnant again right away, he didn’t. He vacillated on not wanting anymore, but also wanting to give me what I want.
Ultimately, I was pregnant again by June 2021. He was distant during the first part of my pregnancy (deemed high risk due to the last late loss), so I tried to shelter him from it until he was able to “connect” with the pregnancy.
We signed a contract to build our dream home in September 2021 to accommodate our growing family.
End of September and October 2021….
He went on two separate ‘solo’ trips to Canada that I encouraged for his mental health.
Oct 28, 2021 was my D-day and turns out, prior to losing our first pregnancy, he started inappropriately talking to several women online, one of which became his affair partner. She was also married with three kids, and lived (you guessed it) in Canada.
He blamed me, of course. I was emotionally unavailable after losing the late-term pregnancy, so he naturally had to find support elsewhere. He was clearly not in the right headspace to agree to another child, so why did I let him? Etc.
I was hopeful for reconciliation (I was still pregnant), and he came back once in November 2021, but ultimately decided he didn’t want to have to live in a world where he wasn’t trusted. Also, I had already started telling people, and he was upset I told people about the bad thing he did (rather than upset with himself for doing the bad thing).
She came to visit him a month later (Dec 2021) and they were engaged (both still married at this point).
February 2022, I welcome our third living child, whom he refuses to meet at the hospital, and his fiancé moves in, abandoning her family in Canada.
Divorce finalized in June 2022.
I’m a physician. I work hard to provide for my family. She was a part-time dollar store employee who didn’t graduate high school. As she’s in the U.S. illegally (overstaying her visa) she can’t work, so they’re living on his income and my alimony (he destroyed our family and yet I get to pay him 🤦🏻♀️).
I need help deciphering the bullshit. I know he’s narcissistic — has always been a “white liar,” but I was chump enough and naive enough to believe I was exempt. No, I was not. Being married to a doctor brought him prestige without any of the work himself (classic narcissist — wanting recognition without any of the work), and developed a fairly robust spending habit (requested $500 of PLAY MONEY per week while we were married… to spend on himself, his affair partner, his toys/hobbies).
So why her?
Why is someone who is so clearly AWFUL on paper worth destroying your family and leaving behind three children?
And I saw some of the lies he told her when they first started talking (including a suicide attempt, what? And later that we had been separated and living in separate rooms of the home for months, also, what?), so why is she so quick to believe his truth rather than what actually happened… when I have tried to show her proof?
Signed,
I just don’t get it
****
Dear Thank God You Don’t Get It,
Why her?
Why NOT her?
He’s the kind of quality individual that blames his cheating on your pregnancy. And she’s the kind of quality individual who would abandon three children. I think they deserve each other.
I mean, if he’s going to lavish mindfuckery on someone, let it be her. Whatever it cost to be free, be glad you are, in fact, FREE.
I think you’re having a basic Trust That They Suck problem. Very common in the early days. You just can’t believe you invested this deeply in someone so awful, and you keep discovering that he is… that awful.
Let us all chime in:
HE IS HORRIFIC.
I’m sorry you have to pay him alimony. (Please tell me there was a provision in there in case he remarries? They’re engaged? Here’s hoping!) But consider that whatever you’re paying him is cheaper than keeping him. Plus, you get your sanity, which is priceless.
Now let’s throw his blameshifting to that patented, Leibkuchen-snarfing, bullshit machine — The Universal Bullshit Translator.
so I tried to shelter him from it until he was able to “connect” with the pregnancy.
He has to be protected from the mere idea of your pregnancy, while you’ve got sore tits and are barfing up your breakfast.
Hey, he has emotional labor. Your labor? Gestating a human being? Whatevs.
The UBT would like to “shelter him” in the warm armpit of a grizzly bear.
Contracts are for losers.
We signed a contract to build our dream home in September 2021 to accommodate our growing family.
He doesn’t abide by agreements, so what’s the significance of a signed contract? Something new and shiny? Okay. Toss him another toy.
End of September and October 2021 he went on two separate “solo” trips to Canada that I encouraged for his mental health.
Are there no sanatoriums in Canada? Given his fragile mental health couldn’t we try some shock therapy? The UBT suggests ice fishing. He can be the bait. Walleye will eat anything.
Oct 28, 2021 was my D-day and turns out, prior to losing our first pregnancy, he started inappropriately talking to several women online, one of which became his affair partner.
How romantic.
Nothing says “special connection” like trolling online for multiple fuckbuddies.
He blamed me, of course. I was emotionally unavailable after losing the late-term pregnancy, so he naturally had to find support elsewhere.
I hear the walleye are sympathetic listeners. Submerge him awhile longer.
He was clearly not in the right headspace to agree to another child, so why did I let him?
His head was in your space. Does he not understand how babies are made? After two previous children? You’re a doctor. Perhaps you can explain it to him.
ultimately decided he didn’t want to have to live in a world where he wasn’t trusted.
Come here, you poor man. Tell it to the fishies. Glub, glub..
I welcome our third living child, whom he refuses to meet at the hospital, and his fiancé moves in, abandoning her family in Canada.
She’s pick-me dancing with a newborn.
And she WINS! Everybody abandon their families!
She was a part-time dollar store employee who didn’t graduate high school.
She was auxiliary kibbles, but then you discovered the affair. So he’ll have to make do with alimony. Meanwhile, he’s trolling for new suckers. Excuse me, having mental health outings. Right now the optics are bad (you told people!), so he’s gotta dress it up as Twu Wuv. Put a ring on it! Maybe she can get one from the Canadian dollar store.
I saw some of the lies he told her when they first started talking (including a suicide attempt, what?
Hey, those mental health crises don’t invent themselves. Someone needs to save him!
And later that we had been separated and living in separate rooms of the home for months, also, what?)
Schmoopies never believe in cake. Their super special forcefields repel basic common sense. Cheating men NEVER touch their wives. The UBT has no idea how you became pregnant.
so why is she so quick to believe his truth rather than what actually happened… when I have tried to show her proof?
You’re a mean, mean mommy who makes him sleep in another room. You’re not a trusted news source.
Please do not save Schmoopie from the consequences of entangling herself with this fuckwit.
Why her?
She answered his ad. Trust that they suck.
I think “why her” is clear.
He likes feeling superior. With you he always felt like the loser he is. True he likes your money but he was also jealous of you.
I had this mindset with my 19 years older ex. He liked having a much younger wife who was a great shape and successful professionally….great for his image….but he was also jealous of it. It’s one of the reasons he was a nasty passive aggressive piece of shit that had poor boundaries and kept an ex gf around.
My guess is that you spent a lot of this marriage worrying about his pathetic ego. Now he can feel like a big man supporting a loser
With your money of course, because he’s still a loser
Hopefully your alimony is temporary. Watch his life implode when it runs out and enjoy your freedom from a loser.
Kim,
I’m mostly a lurker but I had to leave a comment, same exact experience here (though with a 12 year gap), down to the keeping an ex around… I realized way too long after the fact, the only reason she isn’t still around is not because HE cut her off for the sake of his new relationship, it was as she that wised up and ceased contact forever.
I was the young professional, responsible, keeping us afloat and he had nothing but seething contempt for me. He mostly felt “above” working, yet he was resentful and jealous of me and told me any idiot could graduate college and my degree was a worthless piece of paper.
It’s such a conundrum though, he needs someone he can feel superior to but he also needs a sugar mama to support him… oh well, his problem!
Same thing here. While my FW makes more money than I do, he is a middle manager for an obscure company while my job is highly visible and prestigious. When we went to events, I was the one hearing “ooh wow, here’s my card…let’s connect.” He would act proud but would also make insecure, self-deprecating jokes about the disparity. So of course he cheated with uneducated telemarketers who say “ooh wow” to him.
Same here! He couldn’t get into medical school, so when I got accepted into veterinary school, everything ramped up: the passive-aggressiveness, the criticisms in front of friends, the gaslighting, and oh yeah – the visits with his AP, which is how I eventually found out about the multiple other women.
Same thing happened to me. Loved the idea of a smart successful wife with a PhD. Couldn’t handle to competition. So much so that he tried to get his PhD after I left him. He failed out. Loser.
Dear Don’t Get It,
Except for variables like number of children and occupation, I found myself saying “Are you me?” as I read your letter. So many, many, many familiar beats.
Life is so much better for you now with that albatross around your neck removed. Let his mistress have him; you’ve got better things coming up in your future.
But it sucks and it’s hard. I’m so sorry that the man you invested so much into turned out to be a dud. I get it. It’s taken me years to disattach myself and my feelings from the dud I married too. But once I did (hard work and time), life got 100% better. I was free! And you’re free too!
Yeah, I married slime like that. He’s a vitreoretinal surgeon and abandoned his four kids to be with a literal Russian whore who didn’t speak the same language as he did.
But, live and learn, and later celebrate.
Report Miss Canadian overstay-her-visa. Today. It will make her getting a green card very difficult and likely he’ll have to go to Canada to live with her. Thus, you won’t have to see him. Ever.
Oh my dear friend, they absotively speak the same language. Their lead-in convo is “Wanna F***?” They just have so very much in common like hot pants (the wearable kind and the “comes naturally” type) and high infidelity. May they flame out concurrently-a spontaneous combustion of two tertiary syphillitic zombies. Idiots come in pairs and I do mean IN.
Or he’ll have to marry her to keep her in the country….buh bye alimony!
I second reporting Canuck schmoopie overstaying. She also needs to be paying child support to the three kids that she abandoned.
Common denominator with schmoops is that they are desperate for something (usually kibbles and finances), convenient - at least for a time - and gullible. Fuckwit's primary schmoops (online hooker habit notwithstanding) was an alcoholic, high school dropout with a history of behavioral issues and who whined about having three children. Sewage seeks its own level.These freaks are never truly going to be there for anyone in their lives, simply because other people are replaceable props, and as such, don't have inherent value for them.
Finding the other partner and letting him know how your cheater is keeping his wife in clover could be very effective. The Canadian authorities could get involved if there is unpaid child support.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing: report the overstay. So many chumps who end up coparenting with FWs and their OWives would have loved to have the option in hindsight. Even if Dumbellina is deported and he jumps at the chance to wriggle out of the interim commitment (highly possible), at least the kids won’t have to deal with the very same psychopath who directly co-wrecked the kids’ home. It saves chumps the trouble of barring Schmoopies from interacting with kids. FWs may go on to meet new partners but there’s a chance the ones FWs meet when single won’t be as negatively invested in demonizing and punishing the chumped family.
Hello,
I would threaten her about her status so he will marry her and thus end the alimony. Then who cares where they live or what they do.
Brilliant.
Chris, you’re scary. This is Machiavellian! I love it!
We are both IT professionals. He left me for and subsequently married a Chinese massage parlor whore who can barely speak English. Bought her a house in the same lower middle class neighborhood where we bought our first starter home. Last I heard he was working on bringing her family here to the US from China. 🤦♀️
I’ve wondered if it would have made me feel any better if he’d left for a more “socially acceptable” person. Or, at least be able wrap my head around it better. It still makes my skin crawl whenever l think about how many times I was intimate with a man with prostitute habit. 🤢
He told everyone, including he pastor at our church, that we were in separate rooms and had been in a sexless marriage for 10 years. Both egregious lies.
In our letter writer’s case, there is literal, tangible evidence that she and the Cheater were still having sex–a baby. But still, APs believe the BS.
Well we obviously separated immediately after that night I got pregnant, right? 🙄 we just went on family vacation in June, then July, and then again in October to “keep things normal for the kids” and we signed a contract to build a house in September for ? I’m not really sure how he explained that one.
What is it with IT guys and Asian women? Is it a fetish they develop from playing video games?
“live and learn, and later celebrate”
I’m putting this on my list of pithy truths.
One of the Universal truths of going through this crap with FWs is that we all want to untangle the skein and understand the “why’s.” But with time and distance you’ll realize that there’s never an answer that can give satisfactory closure — because FWs are disordered. They abandon healthy people and choose fuck ups. They abandon their own children. We can’t understand because it’s fucked up behavior.
Time gives clarity though. And freedom from a FW is the greatest gift of all (apologies to Whitney Houston)
I think time and, more importantly, no contact (or at least greatly reduced) gives you the space to let the questions be and accept that there is no explaining the mind of a fuckwit. They manipulate and control to get what they want and they prioritize betrayal above things normal people would prefer like honest relationships, family, stability, etc. And once they no longer loom so large as you get a life, it’s not that you answer the questions but that you stop asking them because you don’t care.
Why her? Who cares! Lucky OP dumped him like a bag of rocks. Onward and upward, OP!
One man’s opinion:
“Why does a black hole suck?”
Answer: A) Not sure, but they’re great at it, so accelerate in the other direction immediately!
B) Probably because there’s so much nothing there they are desperate to fill it.
C) It’s easier to suck than to try to examine that void.
All A Blur: I copied and pasted your Q & A into an email I’m going to send to a friend soon as I finish reading these wonderful comments. It’s a delightful little read–all the more so if it triggers visuals of spaghettified cheaters in your head. (I reflexively picture spaghettification whenever I see the words “black hole” but until now it never included a face. Quite therapeutic.Thank you!)
Now I find myself wondering if your username was inspired by spaghettification visuals. Probably not. Either way, thanks again.
Happy it helped! I didn’t intentionally choose my username for spaghettification purposes, but I like the idea, and probably I should follow the advice of a great teacher I had, and say, “I’m glad you noticed that!” 🙂
🤣👏🏻🤣👏🏻
I love CL’s explanation of the why for this one:
“So he’ll have to make do with alimony. Meanwhile, he’s trolling for new suckers. Excuse me, having mental health outings. Right now the optics are bad (you told people!), so he’s gotta dress it up as Twu Wuv. Put a ring on it! ” I wish someone had put it so succinctly for me during my own shitshow so many years ago.
It’s not about the doctor-wife or the horrible mother of AP – it is all about the FW. And the FW is strong in this one.
He did it because he is insecure, immature, mean, lonely, blah, blah, blah. Try not to waste one moment with why she….. Or he …… Every time you think you figured it out, it will shift. CL calls it untangle the ball of yarn. It’s very simple.
Trust that he sucks, because he does. OW does, Switzerland friends do. Nothing to work with.
“How romantic. Nothing says “special connection” like trolling online for multiple fuckbuddies.”
That was hilarious. And also quite true.
Fraudster proposed to his “sole mate” about a month after he met her online. I don’t know who he was actually texting and sending money to, but when I searched the photos, they were of a Columbian prostitute. apparently he continued to pursue her, too.
Embarrassed when I finally told friends this was an online hooker, not a “work colleague,” as he claimed, he too was in hot pursuit of someone to justify his actions. Within months, he introduced our religious leaders to his “life partner.” He was also serious about another woman and her 15 year old. Don’t know what happened there, but he then found a new woman and within four days he introduced her to our grandson as his new mother, and she said they’d be a happy family. She dumped him a few days later. So at least three proposals while we were married. The UBT is right. He bragged to the first “sole mate,” (he actually spelled it that way in his emails) that he couldn’t wait to walk around town with a hot babe like her on his arm, and everyone wondering what he had to get her. (Money.) He said he thought she was mentally impaired or deficient but that was good because she wouldn’t question him. Both the first and the last were under 30, and he was over 65.
So sorry for your situation, especially for having to pay alimony to that crap. You don’t “get it” because you are smart and caring. He’s neither. He just faked it.
Perhaps his disordered self came through in the misspelt word? A sort of Freudian spelling mistake? A sole is the bottom part of a shoe, and perhaps he subconsciously conveyed that he was going to walk all over them?
Wow! Truly a huge ass! Glad your free! Hugs!
Goodfriend…every time you share your story it amazes me how disordered FWs can be. I actually laugh every time. Not at you or your situation of course, but at the loser.
Don’t Get It,
Why bother trying to get it? He picked her because she is a bigger loser than he is. He will be superior to her and he can assert that every day and twice on Sunday. Schmooie probably thinks she has a prize for the moment but will one day (maybe if she can figure it out) realize that he only has what he does because of you. So you lost the pick me dance, big deal. What you are winning is the chance for a sane and happy life without a man-baby. Wow, you actually won!
You just need to trust that he sucks and be the sane parent. Focus on your new role as a single parent and be that sane and wonderful mother to your kids. You are honest and you invest in a partner. Those qualities are solid gold. Always remember that these people don’t trade up, they trade to get someone who is worse that they are.
You need to be NC as much as you can with him (only what you need to do by court order) and you don’t need any contact with her (she will believe her prize no matter what).
Sorry that you have to pay him alimony. It sucks but it is definitely worth a lot to have your freedom from a lying, cheating fuckwit. Focus on your new life, it is hard at first but you will get there and realize that you really won in this case.
“twice on Sunday” rings a bell from the RIC I got involved in.
“Sorry that you have to pay him alimony. It sucks but it is definitely worth a lot to have your freedom from a lying, cheating fuckwit.”
The cost of doing business with a fuckwit…
Keeps a chump from getting involved with another one.
“She will believe her “prize” no matter what.” The only thing that is a bigger waste of time than untangling the skein of the FW is trying to untangle the skein of the AP.
I truly have nothing but pity for the future victims of my FWs. I also know how culpable I was in ignoring the red flags that were on full display while I was being love-bombed. That is on ME.
Wish there was some way to warn those future victims…
I just tried to warn the newest one (not the one I was chumped with). She didn’t believe me, and thinks he’s honest with her. “Yeah, sure,” I didn’t say, “You really believe he’s going to be honest with you, a person he hardly knows, while he hid his behavior and lied to his wife for over 30 years?”
The only issue there is if you do warn the latest victim, she already has bought into his nice guy narrative and you will be the bitter bunny ex. Hopefully these victims will be lucky and see his mask drop sooner rather than later.
I once made a list of everything FW said he disliked in women (he was a very critical person) and compared it with OW. They could have been the same list.
“Why her?” amounted to four things:
1) She was easy to manipulate and control. He was able to make her change just about everything about herself to suit him. She did everything he wanted her too. She treated him like a king (not kidding – she CURTSIED TO HIM every time he opened a door for her. Gross.).
2) She was naive. She didn’t know what he was, and so she was able to look at him with stars in her eyes. She believed every word he said. AP too believed every lie he told her about me, even though she knew me. I’m sure she believed we weren’t still having sex (we were – often several times a day) and that he was wholly devoted to her and their new life together. Which is truly staggering, since he asked me to move back home and try and make things work at one point. She STILL “waited” for him and stayed loyal and devoted.
3) She was kind of stupid and didn’t have a lot of life experience (born and raised in a backwoods town, married young, etc.), so he could feel superior to her. She was so impressed with him. She thought everything he said and did was amazing and mind blowing. He had the pleasure of introducing things to her and “teaching” her.
4) She was convenient and easy. She was his coworker. He didn’t even have to go looking for her. (I’d been his coworker when we started dating. He clearly doesn’t stray far afield for his conquests.) She was in a bad marriage and was looking for a sympathetic ear. So was he. So they bonded over that, and the fact that they were both writers. Her husband didn’t validate her desire for a writing career, so FW had a really easy in – just flatter her and act supportive of her dreams. Done. Almost no effort required.
I, by contrast, had started calling him out on his BS, I was wise to what he was, and I was far too smart. I was no longer impressed that he wrote articles for a well-known internet news site or that he was an award-winning filmmaker. I held him accountable for the way he treated me. I wanted respect. I wanted him to apologize when he hurt me. Keeping me, regaining my trust, and restoring my good opinion of him would have been way too much work for him. It was so much easier to start fresh with someone else. However, I was also competent at managing our life, so he strung me along to keep things together for him, while also enjoying the cake.
It sucks when you realize you ended up with a pathetic looser. But be grateful he’s gone and has found someone just as pathetic and disgusting as he is. He wasn’t worthy of you, and you’ll be much happier without him. Don’t compare yourself to AP. She’s not important, and is no reflection on you at all. He had to find someone on his own level, that’s all. You were too good for him and made him feel like shit about himself just by existing. That’s why so often (in my case as well), FW’s turn very nasty AFTER the split, and try and smear your reputation, drag you down to their level by goading you, lie, etc. All this while they are supposedly so “happy” with their true love. If you do well after they leave, it destroys their narrative that they had to go because you were horrible.
Yes! My ex even told me at the end that he wanted to be with someone new, who didn’t know his history of prostitutes, hookups, manipulation, lies, and abuse. I eventually figured out the same- he didn’t like being held accountable, having a partner with boundaries, and a smart partner who no longer fell for his bullshit; he wanted someone gullible he could easily hoodwink because he’s lazy.
“I, by contrast, had started calling him out on his BS, I was wise to what he was…I was no longer impressed…I held him accountable for the way he treated me. I wanted respect. I wanted him to apologize when he hurt me.” Same same same. I think my STBX compared me – calling him out on his BS – to my “easygoing” friend who never called him out on anything (bc they weren’t living real life together).
Precisely. FW used to compare me to OW, saying “she wants to DO THINGS with me”, completely ignoring the fact that she had split custody of her kids and he had me to look after our son, so they had childfree time to spend together, whereas he and I had a baby/young child and no money (we could afford either a night out OR a sitter, not both) and therefore our life was more constrained. It’s not a fair comparison at all. Plus she hadn’t had a decade of abuse, which does tend to dim the stars in one’s eyes.
Once FW and schmoopie moved in together, it all fell apart. She expected him to be a dad and watch all three kids while she went out and ran errands. There were dishes and trash, and grass to mow. Bills to pay.
And our divorce was messy and expensive. I assume she also started calling him out, and he got fed up with her and started abusing her the same way he abused me. Real life is much harder than a fantasy.
“You were too good for him and made him feel like shit about himself just by existing.” 🤯
True
I think we were married to essentially the same person. Startling and eerie how similar and basic FWs are.
He didn’t destroy his family for her. He destroyed his family for HIM.
If it wasn’t her it would have been someone else he could feel superior to. That’s as deep as it gets.
One of the deepest insights I’ve gleaned from CN is that “it’s not about you, it’s about them”. They don’t reject and abandon us because of some flaw in us (or in our marriage), but because of a character deficiency in them. That type of person – the type who will betray vows and destroy a family because they believe they’ve found an upgrade – is never going to choose their next partner “for” that next partner. The OP wasn’t rejected “for” herself, and the AP wasn’t chosen “for” herself either: neither one is more than a bit player in OP’s FW’s life.
I doubt this is going to make OP feel a lot better about the raw betrayal she experienced, but big picture: he wasn’t doing AP any favors when he took up with her.
A very interesting thought exercise my therapist had me do when I was lamenting “why her”? Imagine the male equivalent of her…what characteristics would that man have. I listed unsavory ideas. Therapist asked, “would you want that man” and I replied of course not—we wouldn’t share the same values! Therapist replied—“bingo…your ex isn’t choosing partners based on shared values or anything that is important to YOU. He isn’t thinking about connecting to a mind and heart. And may not be able to connect that way to anyone. So let him go. He is not want you want and need.” 🤯 it was a breakthrough day.
He’s proved how much he values commitment, marriage and family. He’s a married man who abandoned his wife and children including a newborn.
This is how serious he takes marriage.
It also shows what a devoted father he is. Devoted parents don’t have time for dating sites and “mental health outings.” Devoted parents research and plan outings for their families.
IJDGI, you and your children deserve much better. Trust that he sucks.
IJDGI,
Why her? Because she she has low standards and bought into his BS. Cheaters inevitably trade down.
As an aside, your Cheater is full of sh*t. If you don’t like living in a world where you aren’t trusted, then don’t be untrustworthy ….. and, if you don’t like people telling the truth about the bad things you’ve done (as is their right), then don’t do bad things. It really is that easy.
LFTT
Ex’s OWhore was the low hanging fruit. A divorced subordinate who didn’t have custody of her 5 kids. From all my years reading CL I know if it wasn’t her, it would have been someone else easily pickable & just as low to the ground.
Why her? I wondered why he bragged about her not making any money. Yet she picked up the tab for pub fries. She assaulted an elderly man and climbed into her boyfriends home throat punched him, threw hot coffee in his face and took off with his prescription drugs. She placed an ad for a dance partner, no marrieds.
He responded and the rest is history. Cheaters throw darts and whomever responds becomes the ONE.
What they settle for reflects their need to be wanted by the neediest of needy. It doesn’t turn out well for them over time.
Look what he got. My attitude is have that! They are equals.
Similar situation here IJDGI, except I’m
a nurse practitioner, for 11 years at D day. High school sweethearts, married while in college, two kids, etc. His Wifetress is a barely graduated high school truck driver, 15 years older than me. I have seen some 63 year old women who look great, but the years have not been kind to her. And I got the glory of doing the majority of the child rearing AND pay him child support!
Basically these narcissistic a$$holes need to find someone on their basement level and stupid enough to believe their 💩. If she wants a man who cheats on his wife and mother of their children and then expects said ex to fund his lifestyle, let her have him. He is not a man. Period.
Yes, I am at Tuesday, but he is her problem now. And BTW, he’s cheating on her and gaslighting her and there is nothing she can do about it, just like your ex’s Schmoopie will be experiencing. Karma eventually catches up to those FW.
A piece of dating advice from a medical professional; stay away from potential patients. It’s a gray area and potentially too messy if the relationship goes downhill. I made that policy for myself because I didn’t want to deal with it and it potentially affecting my livelihood.
The simple truth is that you grew up and he did not. He is a teenager trolling online and finding true love. Gag! These stories are so sad because you think you know them and you don’t. Reverse the sexes and you have my brother’s first wife. Scarily exact story. He used his anger to get him and the children stable married an actual adult, had more children, and hated for what she did to hers
I’m still firmly stuck back at “I was emotionally unavailable after losing the late-term pregnancy.”
I… I… FUCKING WHAT?!?!?
What kind of UNBELIEVABLY IMMATURE, SELFISH, CRUEL MONSTER characterizes a person who loses a pregnancy (at all, most especially one who loses a pregnancy in late term) as worthy of blame for being “emotionally unavailable”?!?!?!?
That’s “deluged in grief” and “intensely brokenhearted” and “deeply worthy of and in need of love, support, empathy, and kindness”, NOT “emotionally unavailable”. Is he four years old? Does he grab your face and pull it around to try to make you look at him when you’re talking with other grownups too?
And where the HELL is HIS concern about that lost pregnancy, hm?
I’m filled with rage at this guy.
There’s always some person who throws themselves around like they don’t matter at the ready for guys like him, so the AP just seems like an object to me in this scenario — he picked the easy path and she’s an easy path — more than likely one of a series. That’s what most of us end up learning over time, in the end.
But for you, and your children, this guy… He absolutely doesn’t deserve the beautiful life you’re going to build without him, and he for SURE will never, in my mind, be eligible for consideration as a whole human being after seeing your devastation at such a loss as a mere annoyance to him, worthy of using it as opportunity for deception, risking your health, and putting you and your children through such pain.
Once seen, can’t unsee.
Filled with rage. Monster. 🤬🤬🤬
1000% yes! I too lost a baby, at 23 weeks, and believe me when I say that is a life changing event. First, I had to spend an entire day laboring and delivering a dead infant, and the postpartum depression afterwards was horrific – I remember standing there, breasts engorged and leaking, understanding why women steal babies, it was just this primal thing. This was almost 20 years ago, and I am a completely changed person because of it. So yeah, the OP’s FW made it about him, and like any of us chumps have done, it doesn’t strike her as outrageous. To the OP, I am so, so sorry for your loss, but relieved you are free of the X-FW. Anyone who could take such a horrible event and make it, even for a second, about him, truly has a black hole where a soul should be.
“he picked the easy path and she’s an easy path” 100%.
When I was in the “pick me” dance, I told him if he picks me, we may or may not work out. But if he continues to NOT pick (because he didn’t want to risk losing us both 🙄) that he was choosing her. He didn’t pick, and thus didn’t pick me, and I asked him to leave.
My aunt and uncle lost a baby at 7 months pregnant. They were both devastated, named the child & had a funeral. Even though they had more children they still mourned the one they lost.
He should have been devastated by the loss as well. The thought that her devastation alone made him cheat is completely off base.
Yes! A thousand times yes!!!
I hit the “thumbs up” button for your comment, but I wish I could upvote it a thousand times!
Yes, my ex also has a minimum wage AP. It all sums up to his ego & shallowness. She’s grateful for him pulling her out of her economic status & he’s grateful for fresh you-know-what. It’s like that hooker story, Pretty Woman (which I freaking hate because I see the controlling patriarchal bullshit of it all, but the ex’s dad loves it so no surprise there). A couple of divorced friends & I agree that the moment our husbands started cheating was when we tired of stroking their egos & expected them to level up. They didn’t like it, being the lazy asses who expect their wives to level up & not themselves. I agree with CL, why try & reason with the OW when she’s not a great person to begin with leaving her family? She’s likely to get karma down the road when her kids want nothing to do with her. As for your ex, I wouldn’t reason with him either to develop a relationship with your last child. As I see it (and lived it myself with my own biological father) there are men who view their children as an extension of their mother; thus they’re only attached to children when they’re attached to the mother, and when they’re not, that’s why they can easily abandon them. You’re a doctor and that’s why I’m sure reasoning & compassion is how you conduct yourself. In this case it won’t work. You will have to firm your resolve that he’s a bug underneath your shoe & treat him accordingly.
So there are fathers who easily abandon kids because they are not with the mother… ohhhh! That would explain how he left 5 kids. Well except the first one. Whom I was forced to live with early in our marriage with the GF (they both treated me like crap). He’s now 40 with no job but gets to live in Dad’s house with his former GF and kids. He doesn’t work. GF supports him. Even though they aren’t really together. Dad probably still gives him cash too when he begs.
P.S. In addition to CL (who’s freaking awesome!) this lady is extremely helpful for advice to chump moms (it can apply to chump dads too) https://www.sophie-sticatedmom.com/2018/04/18/how-do-i-move-on-from-my-babys-father/
“the moment our husbands started cheating was when we tired of stroking their egos & expected them to level up”
YUP.
I sometimes get numb to the CL slogans. In this case, “they deserve each other” explains so much.
It is highly unlikely that your ex would have ever been the honest, reliable partner you and your children expected. I also suspect that these character deficient sorts are never comfortable establishing their own single life so, bingo, they hook up with someone they deserve.
I’m angrier at a legal system which requires you pay him alimony.
I was a pregnant chump too. It’s a nightmare. D-Day was at 3 months postpartum with a newborn and toddler. He was already making plans to marry the mistress before I knew anything was wrong. The adulterers had a joint bank account and moved in together within months and got married right after the divorce was finalized. While gathering evidence, I found another mistress from my first pregnancy.
They cheat for attention. They can’t stand that the focus is on you when you are pregnant. They can’t stand the attention a baby gets. They want to be the star in the room. So they will fall for any piece of trash that treats them as #1. A good mother can not do that once kids are in the picture.
Read every book on narcissism and sociopathy. A man who cheats on a pregnant wife does not have empathy. A man who abandons his baby does not have empathy. You have to get to a point that you fully understand that.
I’m an engineer. An educated career woman expects a man to be their equal and has boundaries and expectations. That’s a nightmare for an entitled narc. Successful women are a threat. They want someone they can control. My ex’s mistress made near minimum wage with $100k in student loans. She stopped working during the divorce and is his stay-at-home housecleaner/ babysitter now (and telling my kids to call her Mom). She shows up to every school activity and is trying to replace me. Evil bitch.
It’s a mindfuck and co-parenting will be hell. (Boundaries and Grey rock!) I’ve healed well, but I’ll never remarry or have more kids. You probably still have horrible cognitive dissonance and C-PTSD. Research that too. Good luck, and you aren’t alone.
I wouldn’t worry too much about them calling her mom. They could say something like I already have a mom or just ignore her say ok and continue to all her by first name. When kids are little they are easy to control. When they get to be 10 and older, she will have major problems. 70% of second marriages end in divorce and the other 30% aren’t necessarily happy.
Right now your ex may be fine with a stay at home housecleaner and babysitter. It suits him. However, once the kids are of age and no longer need a sitter he’ll resent her sitting around on her ass while he pays all the bills. Narcs are never happy…they resent a successful, independent partner and then will resent someone they have to support. Can’t win. The OW showing up at all your kid’s events reeks of insecurity which usually means all is not well at home.
The UBT suggests ice fishing. He can be the bait. Walleye will eat anything. Apparently so does FW and schmoopie!! Thanks for laugh
he has no central and neither does she, so they’re right for one another. and you’re free. in time, you’ll start to feel better about your freedom and notice all the ways he was not a good partner.
i’m almost 2 years out from d-day and, right now, what i think about most of the time, when i do think about it, is how my X was a poor partner. in. so. many. ways. but time and distance give me this perspective.
my house is calm. when things break down, i fix them and there is no drama. the kids talk openly and freely about a variety of things that interest and concern them. i’m getting lots of work done. this life is so much easier without my X. i’m calmer by 1000%.
give yourself time and grace to heal.
“when i do think about it, is how my X was a poor partner. in. so. many. ways. but time and distance give me this perspective.”
Same here. The only word that comes up when intrusive thoughts of him enter my head is “a**hole.” Some people just are. Especially those who are able to lead double lives & content with putting their families at risk.
Asshole.
“when things break down, i fix them and there is no drama.”
So much this. Every little inconvenience was an earth-shattering catastrophe to my ex and the stress and tension and anger were off the charts. Now I just deal with whatever comes up calmly and rationally. There’s no price you can put on peace.
*centre
When you are untrustworthy, there is nowhere in the universe you can live where you should be trusted.
However, there are plenty of lowlife dimwit suckers right here on Earth, and the entire pool of affair accomplices are lowlife dimwit suckers who are skilled at buying and selling (and believing each others’) bullshit. There is a massive supply of people who willingly choose a substandard partner and settle for a substandard relationship.
It took a very long time to internalize that I was being relieved of a lowlife dimwit sucker, not deprived of a quality partner.
Anyone worth being in a relationship with does not lie, cheat, steal, or betray.
You didn’t have the Mona Lisa. You had a forgery. New person gets a forgery. If you have a choice between the real Mona Lisa and a forgery, choose the real Mona Lisa. A cheater calling the forgery the real thing does not make it the real thing.
Agree.
Also: “It took a very long time to internalize that I was being relieved of a lowlife dimwit sucker, not deprived of a quality partner.”
Amen to this!! And, honestly, just when many of us think we’ve climbed out of the hole where the cheater’s rejection determines our lovability, value, and self-worth, a foot slips, and we’re back in it again. Cognitively we know cheaters sucks, but emotions and trauma bonding really fuck with our feelings.
Such is the horrible impact of betrayal.
“Cognitively we know cheaters sucks, but emotions and trauma bonding really fuck with our feelings.”
Spinach, this sentence sums up what I tried and failed to express in an lengthy comment. Well put.
The other mind loop I recall from early days is the comparison trap. IMHO, it comes from looking at cheating from the perspective of someone who is loyal and monogamous.
Cheaters are not single available people deciding between other single available people, wondering which one to be in a relationship with.
The cheater is not choosing. The cheater wants everything they want. The cheater wants fries AND vegetables with their entree, not fries OR vegetables. Cheating is a dysfunctional messy game, deliberately set up as such, which requires individuals willing to dupe someone unwitting and in the dark.
Esther Perel calls cheating “an exuberant quest for aliveness”? That is ridiculous. Lying, cheating, deception, fraud, unkindness, hurting others, is seriously energy sapping behavior and deadening. If you want to feel exuberant and alive, the path is is behaving with integrity, honesty, helping others, being kind. In other words, love.
Also on my mind….
I dropped out of college. I did not get my degree. I started cleaning houses when I was in school, and decided to keep doing that until I figured out what I wanted to do. I have not yet gone back to school.
In my experience, doctors can be lying cheating jerks and dollar store clerks can have hearts of gold.
Personally, I confer prestige for character, not accomplishments.
I agree with you, VH. I’m a college dropout. I never feel dumb or undereducated when I come in contact with people who hold advanced degrees. I’ve always claimed a college degree doesn’t mean you’re smarter than the average bear.
Like you, I confer prestige for character.
I will say, though, that a college degree in the US in many cases is your “ticket to ride” that can put you on the path of a more stable life.
My post-FW life included a couple years of attempting to date, using various dating apps. I was in my early 50s, and one of my requirements was that any potential date have their life together. That they have a job, a home, a vehicle. The bare-minimum markers of stability.
I didn’t go on many dates. And a second date, only once. Then I quit.
I refuse to be anyone’s chaos janitor ever again.
FWs, educated or not, seem to wind up leading chaotic, unstable lives.
I want to reinforce this, there is an element of elitism and classism here. My husband was CEO of a company he built from scratch over 899 employees in 10 years, and he is one of the most awful human beings, no character, no integrity no kindness
Ivy League degrees straight through
please let’s remove the element of education or money from quality of human being
When he cheated he did not want to cheat down he wanted up, not down, nobody was good enough for him, He wanted someone equal to all his magnificent glory in his mind he would’ve happily dated a doctor. But brain surgeons only please a regular dr doctor wouldn’t do
But he still would’ve been a horrific person
You’re not wrong. It’s the time investment we made together for me to pursue my formal education and make it a priority.
Again, I really only pointed it out for the juxtaposition.
IJDGI, my takeaway isn’t that you’re saying this woman is worthless because of her job; it is just one of many comparisons you can concretely point out. Objectively, the pay grade and status of a doctor is way above that of a dollar store cashier. You’re right, it’s quite a juxtaposition and at the very least proves he didn’t pick her because she’s better than you on that front. I say this as a person who has worked many low paying and/or inglorious jobs and who sees the value in all kinds of work/workers.
I felt worthless when I learned about my ex’s infidelity and assumed that he went for the OW because she was superior and possessed whatever I was lacking. Then I began to question FW’s narrative and his devaluation of me, which initially involved comparing myself to OW in every way possible. This exercise was kind of an epiphany, even if it gave FW continued centrality — as if his poor judgement, values and choices determined my worth. (Plus I hated giving a stranger who was no one to me any kind of credence.) Many of my comparisons were based on superficial crap I didn’t actually care about. I fought to reject my own assumptions about my inferiority by thinking, “I’m prettier; I am kinder and wiser; I’m smarter; I would never be an OW; I chose a different career/lifestyle for a reason; I’m better at x/y/z than she is; I am the one who genuinely knows and loves FW and his family” and so on. It’s embarrassing now, but I think the comparisons are natural, and I see it here on CL from chumps all the time. And let’s face it, we all want to trash everything about the AP at first. Looks, age, clothing, voice, career, social media, you name it. I said and thought petty, ridiculous, uncharacteristic things about the OW when I still cared about FW and my relationship with him.
Zero disrespect to those who chose not to follow formal education for any reason. It’s more about the juxtaposition. We had been together since high school so well before I had any formal training.
I didn’t see any disrespect directed at the OW because she was a part-time dollar store worker who didn’t graduate from high school. IJDGI said, “Being married to a doctor brought him prestige without any of the work himself (classic narcissist — wanting recognition without any of the work), and developed a fairly robust spending habit (requested $500 of PLAY MONEY per week while we were married… to spend on himself, his affair partner, his toys/hobbies).” So my take is that in trying to figure out why her narc ex chose this woman over her, she was essentially expressing bafflement that it is clear that he would not be getting prestige-by-association or $500 play money (entitlement much?) from his new partner.
But as many others pointed out, what he’s getting out of the new relationship is ego strokes, someone who thinks he’s “all that.”
Galling that IJDGI is having to pay alimony, but probably not surprising, given that her ex might have help support her as she went through med school and residency and at the time of the divorce, out-earned him substantially. I do hope there’s a time limit (or that he loses it by marrying).
$500 WEEKLY play money
20th Century Chump, I wish ‘I’ had $500 a week of ‘play’ money! Even $500 a month would be great!
Single, no kids, but mortgage!
Of course there are doctors with hearts of gold and dollar store clerks who are lying cheating jerks.
But the juxtaposition sounded
to me like “better than”, and I felt compelled to comment on that piece of what was shared because you did ask “why her?”
Very simply, he wanted to cheat on you because of his character issues, and she accepted the invitation because of her character issues.
The comparison tar pits feel awful. In order to get out of them, I found it very helpful to focus on the character of the individuals involved, which is all it is about. The outsides (looks, money, social position, achievements, etc.) have nothing to do with it.
As for my attitude and outlook upon life, as a college dropout who founded a business with Traitor Ex and chose to be a full-time parent (a VERY culturally unpopular choice in recent decades, certainly not regarded as prestigious) I found it helpful to remember that the pieces on the chessboard all have different abilities, but they are all equally important because you need all the pieces to play the game.
❤️
I’ll take somebody who graduated from the School of Hard Knocks, an autodidact with a PhD in character any day.
I’m dealing with an aging family member who is a malevolent dark triad. She holds two doctorates and is very accomplished in her field. But she thinks this gives her carte blanche to lie and mistreat people.
As Dr. George Simon says “character matters”.
….and to be fair…
It’s been five years on the Infidelity Road of Recovery as of last month. Getting out and staying out of the Tar Pits of Comparison is an ongoing practice. I am too familiar with the Less Than area. I have recently landed in another area, the Why NOT Me? region.
“Hey, Velvet, what made you think you were so great that he would never cheat on you? Maybe YOU’RE the one who’s full of themselves. Maybe you were blindsided because you were so convinced you were All That, So Amazing, so conceited that you couldn’t imagine he would cheat on you!” Was that it?
Yep. That’s what showed up in my head a couple of weeks ago.
No. I just trusted him. That feeling of being OK, good enough, is the Holy Grail I have sought in my years in therapy, and it still eludes me all too often for all my time on the couch.
Actually, I think my very damaged self-esteem was a factor in choosing him……
I have to go back to what I said above. Cheating is about the character issues of the cheaters. I have never had a secret sexual double life or been a side piece. My side of the street needs maintenance, but that kind of grime isn’t on it.
COMPARE AND DESPAIR.
Yeah! V.H. genuine people have your back ( regardless of employment status) The people who don’t always put themselves first. The rich wo/man is not the better wo/man she/he just has more money to play with. If you are no longer of use them it doesn’t matter if you are top Model ,a Snake milker, or a full time Netflix viewer or Proff with gynae skills. It’s down to character and where you sit on the psychopath spectrum.
I know how devastating it is to love someone that you discover is not a decent human being.
We have convinced ourselves for years that they are, but if you sit down and allow yourself to write a list of the ways he has hurt you over the years, you will be blown away by the depth of it. His cheating is not the only thing on that list.
Chumps have two traits that have not been beneficial to us being involved with narcissists. One is an optimistic world view and seeing the good in people over less admirable traits. And the second is an extreme case of” put-up-with-it-ness” that allows us to tolerate things to a level of doing us great harm.
“Trust that he sucks” and go no contact as fast as you can. He’ll say all the robotic words to convince you he really does care and is a good person, but go to your list of “ Ways he has hurt me” and you will be reminded in black and white how much he actually really doesn’t care about anything but himself.
Your kids will be so much better off without seeing their mother getting abused through their childhood, as you waste a good deal of your own life, trying to spackle it all up and keep the family you love so much, solid and whole. He will destroy that. Infidelity is abuse.
You and your three children are a complete family, lose the termite who is chewing down that foundation.
Love your babies and leave that cheater for good. What you are seeing now is who he is, not the imaginary vision you believed he was. This dollar store diva is probably not his first dalliance and she will not be his last.
Chump Lady’s blog and nation has been THE most beneficial source to my own healing. Read her book if you haven’t already and hang with us, we get it and we greatly care.
You will never have the answers to why he chose to implode his family, there isn’t any logic in what he does or will continue to do for his entire life.
The quote below has become more and more true to me every year moving forward, you can’t see it now in your grief and torturous pain, but you will see it one day too and be glad you chose the only right decision to make, to leave him.
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand this, too, was a gift.”
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand this, too, was a gift.”
I love this poem. I read it years ago and this line has stuck with me ever since.
It is so true.
“Put a ring on it! Maybe she can get one from the Canadian dollar store.”
Dying 🤣
bwahahahahhah
What a disgusting excuse for a husband or a man for that matter.
I am so sorry you’re here. My first instinct is that he did you a favor❤️ outside of having to pay that is just repulsive and again I am sorry. He should feel like scum taking your hard earned money but these people do not have that component.
The other “lady” she’s a poor excuse for a mother as well as “fiancé”. The dollar store job and not graduating could mean she’s never cared about herself enough to do anything about it and still doesn’t. She provides him validation he had to go there to get it. Unbelievable
I can’t say this enough I am so sorry.
You’re in good hands here. There needs to be a way to stop having to pay for others crimes
Shann, I’m also hoping this is temporary alimony only. I did some casual research, and apparently with alimony, much depends on state law. Some states take fault into account, and some don’t. I hope the letter writer lives in a state that does!
When my aunt and uncle were divorced in Virginia, my uncle was dumb enough to lie to the court about his assets. Apparently this angered the judge, who awarded my aunt $1,000 a month in alimony for life. I think they’d been married about 20 years, and had 2 minor children, and neither had any assets prior to marriage. They were divorced because of his cheating.
$1,000 isn’t much, but I hope it serves as a reminder to him for the rest of his life.
Hopefully this is in a state or area where alimony is limited.
In my state of D, there was no alimony but, there was temp maintenance based on years of marriage. I could have gotten three years of temp maintenance.
I chose not to, I just asked for 6 months to save some money. He delayed it to a year. Still don’t know why, but whatever. We were legally separated, and he had to keep paying.
In posters case I hope the alimony is limited in time. Long term alimony should only be in play in very rare circumstances. In a fair world anyway. And one of those cases should be to pay off the fraudulent use of marital funds for adultery.
Wow! I’m sorry! So glad you found CL and are free! Hugs!
Why HER?
We Chumps like to unravel the complexities of Cheater who, what, when, where and why. We overestimated them the whole time thinking they had moving cerebral parts that work. They’re just not that complex and never were. Cheaters are superficial people who float along the surface of life looking for instant gratification, mood soothers, others to do the heavy lifting, and constant ego stroking along with kid gloves to keep them calibrated.
The OW are cut from a similar cloth. Skimming along in life like stones across a pond, they are often free-spirits, easily influenced, crave action and attention, like shiny appearances and bank accounts, and don’t have moving cerebral parts that work either. The complexities of life to include raising children, attending to priorities, building quality relationships or knowing themselves are absent or dysfunctionally weak.
Cheaters don’t leave for someone better than you; they leave for someone worse than themselves.
“Cheaters don’t leave for someone better than you; they leave for someone worse than themselves.” 💜
Dear Don’t Get It,
First, I want to say I feel infuriated at that terrible man you have to call the father of your children. There’s a special place in hell for men that cheat on their pregnant wives, and an even more special one for those that are already cheating when they impregnate. My cheater started cheating when my younger one was a newborn. The impetus he gave? He felt “disconnected” when our 2 week old had a bad infection and needed to be hospitalized because I “wasn’t listening” when he pointed out early symptoms. It’s all BS. They find a reason based on the timeline of their cheating so they can pin it on you. The pregnancy loss is a time when he should have been there for you, not pushing you away. That alone makes him a lousy partner.
Believe it or not, it’s a gift that this AP is welcoming him with open arms. It shows you his true colors and it keeps him busy with her. If she rejected him he’d be back home doing marriage counseling letting you believe that if you can just put in the work and own your side, you too can finally have the beautiful deeply connected relationship he yearns for. I know this because I lived it. Which leads me to why I love Chump Nation. We made the mistakes that we want to help you not make.
I have a PhD, a great career, a warm family, like to have fun. It simply doesn’t matter who the AP is. The cheater builds up whatever mystique they want around the AP in their heads and you’ll stay all the reasons they’re unhappy. One of the best lines in Chump Lady’s brilliant book is something like “there’s nothing special about the AP, they’re just dim and available”. Sounds spot on in your case.
She has the morals of a slug, loose elastic in her knickers and was available and he seemed to have enough money to make her life easier, there probably were more he was interested in but they had at least one shred of decency, so he kept mining the muck heap until he found someone with no shred.
In my case I learned that he had tried many times before, hadn’t cast the net wide just always thrown it over women with some morals. The one he actually went off with was someone who was looking for.a.man as she was in hard financial Straits, and no one else would have her, I knew her. Loose knickers, 0 morals, a man fishing widely, a match made in hell
Total downgrade, and one of her offspring publicly shared on social media that he is a class A cunt so he is not beloved of her family
I can’t even finish reading this without commenting. Oh I feel for you! Apparently my FW, who started cheating after our first two were born, but maybe ramped it up after we had a late fetal loss (similar gestation) because poor him. And no I couldn’t mention it either nor even know where the fetal ashes are because he hid them somewhere and didn’t bother to tell me etc… etc… it was ridiculous. I was always ‘sheltering’ him from hardship and any emotional/physical etc… needs of my own. Alas several affairs spurned by XYZ excuse, online dating etc… culminated in an inappropriate relationship turned affair with a friend of mine. Our financial situation is reversed but I’m actually a pretty okay person who was well respected in the community for my (lower paid) work, adequately all the things, but it was never about me. Who am I anyway but a part of him. And that is the narcissistic world view. Hug your babies. Remember you are valuable and f**k him.
Also so many mental health breaks. Poor poor him. Never mind I was carrying everything I could to lighten his tortured load.
Wow he is truly awful.
Dear Don’t Get It – it’s hard to stop thinking “but why but why”…. but there is no why. There is only that they suck. Trust that they suck, as CL says. And ((HUGS)) to you.
Also: ‘His head was in your space. Does he not understand how babies are made? ‘ made me spit my coffee!
honestly, people need to stop getting married (and keep your finances separate)
i know, i know, but when you are legally bound to someone it makes everything more difficult
so easy to get married, so expensive and difficult and soul sucking to get divorced
anyone who would do something like this is a horrible human and likely a sociopath and most people don’t find out until years later
sam, that’s what one of my aunts did…she lived with a man for many years, and they weren’t married. Unfortunately they bought a house together, so when they split, she had to buy him out. No kids though.
I don’t know if he cheated, but I can say that when I first met him when I was 8 years old, I knew he was a jerk.
He was in a PhD program and didn’t finish his dissertation in time. And of course he blamed my aunt for that. I don’t know, but I suspect, that she supported him for many years while he supposedly worked part time. At least she finally got him out of her life.
I trust that divorce sucks and am thankful I dodged that particular bullet, but I can also assure you that FW’s find ways to future fake and con, and they manage to drag things out and screw chumps over, regardless of marital status. I say this as a never-married “longterm partner” of an FW I invested everything in — and lost everything to.
I remain skeptical of marriage and the norms and institutions that surround it. I also think maybe marriage itself — as a legally binding, or even ceremonial, commitment agreement between two people — isn’t inherently flawed; rather, the problem is fuckwits and the patriarchy.
I’m never getting married again. Nor will I ever entwine my finances with another person.
I learned that lesson the hard way. My divorce cost 5X what my wedding did. Not to mention all the wasted years and stress. My bank account started growing them moment I split my finances from FW. I hadn’t realized what a drain he had been, in every respect.
I also spent a lot of time obsessively wondering “why her?” I think it’s normal—I was blindsided by Dday and trying to figure out what happened to radically change my entire life in what seemed like an instant. Thanks to CL, I started with asking the better question: is this ok with me? “NO!” Then stopped untanglinging the skein of fuckedupedness and simply trusted they suck, by definition. I learned here that they almost always affair down, sometimes WAY down. The only thing special about an AP is that they were willing. If they hadn’t been, another would. Also, over the past 8 years since Dday I’ve heard just enough from friends and family members to know that he’s cheating on AP and it’s a 24/7 brawl at his house. She’s no longer the cute young thrilling side piece willing to do anything for much older richer married man…. She’s the relationship police, screaming at him 24/7, openly threatening to murder him in his sleep or destroy his reputation and business — he’s threatening to get a protection order against her…. Multiple hospitalizations for drug and alcohol related falls and seizures….
Not my monkey not my circus! Thank you CL!
“Why her? because she answered his ad” Simple truth of it all. The ex’s fuckwits went fishing and the silly schmoopies got caught in their nets. Serve them right! ALL of them!
I hope they get married and I hope the alimony comes to a full stop. However, my gut tells me reality will set in, he’ll give her the heave ho, crawl back to you spewing garbage about his mental health and somehow manage to make this all your fault. “I just don’t get it” please do not give this creepy loser the time of day, he’s shown you who and what he is, you and the kids deserve so much better.
I Just Don’t Get It, I spent too much time trying to figure out the “why HER?” conundrum. For awhile, I wracked my brain trying to understand what she had that I didn’t – which was: a criminal record, no education (practically illiterate), minimum wage jobs – none which she could hold for longer than a couple months, mental illness with a stalking problem, a flat troll face, an adult child who has no contact with her, and my FW. And they both deserve each other and it’s a match made in dysfunctional heaven.
I think in many cases if not most the appeal of the low hanging fruit is that they were willing to sneak around. Maybe not forever, but long enough to not be easily gotten rid of.
Doesn’t matter what they look like, most of them are not highly desirable or they would be dating single men.
Yes there are some who are simply not looking for long term commitment but they are few and far between, most are mate poaching or using for cash and gifts, and in some cases just sex.
In this case I am speaking ow single women dating married men, but I am sure it applies pretty much across the board. If they are a highly valued package they wouldn’t be willing to be hidden.
In fact that was one of the few ways I slammed whore. FW called me before the D was final and wanted to meet at an obscure restaurant. I said nope if you want to talk to me it will be in front of God and everyone, I don’t hide from anyone.
To clarify, I am speaking from the many, many, women I know whose fws went with single whores. Very few of the women I know had husbands who went for married women. But then again I think when both are married they don’t get caught as often since both have a lot to lose.
Susie Lee I would bet its in the ‘Cheaters Manual’ that marrieds are better bets for APs as less likely to be clingy, needy, wanting more of the cheaters time and as you say more to lose. The ex wasn’t fussed with his trysts as he advertised online for singles, couples (male female or lesbians) – then once discovered settled for an online woman half his age single mother who answered his advert! She really was desperate to win him! They had been having an affair for a year. I doubt she knows his full history. He was still cheating will others when she took him on! He would be careful to conceal his porn habit and hookups. At DD He said he could never be part of my mine , family and friends lives again as everyone knew what he had done! ( not that he was welcome of course – this is the entitlement of fuckwits they expect you would want them back at some point) AP She knew he was married and didn’t care. Maybe she will read this blog and recognize herself one day?
Been there with the long distance schmoopie who believed his ridiculous lies about living apart and “orders from the (nonexistent) judge”. I too was the better educated, breadwinner wife, and my theory is that over time narcissists get tired of being outshone and out-earned, so they purposely pick a schmoopie who won’t outdo them (i.e., a dumb one). The fact that they can finance this new life with your money (my lawyer was concerned about the possibility of my having to pay alimony too, but luckily for me he was able to get me out of that) is pure gravy.
They suck. Both of them. You, on the other hand, are now free to do better and live a chumpless life. Congratulations, and continue to be mighty.
A topic that has been playing on my mind with this post today is the need to compare ourselves to others to gauge our own worthiness.
A lawyer or doctor being left for a waitress or a dollar store worker.
A minimum wage employee getting replaced by the CEO of a company, etc and so on.
Are we more worthy of love if we own our own business or do heart surgery every day vs a stay at home mom or a career volunteer?
The caliber of an individual is not defined by the career that they chose to pursue or their credentials, as impressive as that might be. There are as many shitty doctors, lawyers and politicians as there are minimum wage employees or undereducated folk.
Our worth goes a lot deeper than what our name tag reads.
I lived in Florida in the 80’s, worked in an ICU and also at a cardiac rehab facility a couple of days of week for fun. When I drove to the rehab gig, there was a manned toll both on a new road that collected 25 cents from the cars. ( I’m showing my age, lol!) Even seemed ridiculous then to man a booth for 25 cents, but whatever. There was this heavy set late 50’ish black woman frequently in that booth collecting coins.
I can still smile remembering her, she just lit up the world with her cheeriness, warm genuine hellos, it immediately put me in the best mood possible, even if I was in a good mood! I don’t even know her name, but I know her ‘simple’ minimum wage job could not have had greater value. I remember her fondly 40 years later and would scoot over two lanes to make sure I gave my quarter to her. That woman added great value to the world, but on paper would not impress others.
My FW screwed around with a lawyer, an executive, a successful business owner, an engineer and I’m sure countless others over 40 some years that I don’t know all their job titles. I do know it made me feel inadequate. I compared myself to these ppl thinking what they did for a living trumped my nurse status and began seeing myself as “ less than”. ( which I had not ever felt before or done such comparisons)
But, no matter what level I got to in college credentials, I never betrayed anyone. I was who I claimed to be. I treated everyone with kindness. I put good out into the world, I loved the hell out of my kids, family and friends and was faithful as the day is long. I volunteered in my kids’ schools so much the new teachers coming in assumed I was a full time employee. I didn’t spend every waking minute devaluing anyone, or lying, cheating or thinking I was more entitled than the next person. I’m not trying to say I’m any saint, we all make mistakes and no one is all that. We are all a bunch of ‘works in progress’.
But I didn’t go around purposely hurting ppl for my own gain.
I saw all these mistresses as more successful than me and maybe more worthy of the love I lost? If I had my PhD, maybe I would have earned the right to be loved back by someone I deeply loved?
It means little to me this Schmoopie is a dollar store worker. She deserted her children and spouse and broke up another young family to do that. She’s trash. That’s the part that crashed her value.
And the high degreed or societally successful other cheaters, felt equally entitled to destroy lives for their own selfish greatness. None of these ppl are worthy of being considered of greater value than us chumps.
I’ve learned to stop comparing myself to these cheaters. I stay in my own space and I know my own worth and I’m happy he is not around anymore to make me believe that I’m ‘less than’ anyone.
How much goodness you project out into the world is what counts. These abusive cheaters and their cohorts emit continuous toxicity. We are all so much better off without them.
Not Untangling the Skein is so difficult for a new chump. I was just amazed FW could do what he did, I still am. Abandoned 3 successful adult children & 4 grands, 33 years younger gf 🤮, late life drug addiction(he used to brag about not drinking-but human growth hormone and stimulants in OXY OK) It does me no good to dwell on it. Being 64 (4 years since Dday) now I realize I may never be coupled again, I have a good life for the most part.
FW’s last AP was married with a new baby.
Yep, she broke up a married couple going through pregnancy. I read some of her emails. She was 48 and he was ten years younger than her. It didn’t last. The thing is that my XW had miscarried 18 months before, a baby I am not too sure was mine. Connection? I don’t know, but throw in some diagnosed mental illness it becomes quite the tangled skein. Our therapist told me she had problems I couldn’t fix. After all I had been through I believed her.
Wow.. what a brave, courageous, loving, smart, woman you are! The response and the comments below are deeply validating. Thank you for sharing your horrific experience. Cheering on your brave self!!!! Grandma who’s been there.
“She was auxiliary kibbles, but then you discovered the affair.”
To me, this is the keystone of the OP’s entire situation.
Her ex didn’t hatch a grand plan to leave his family, his cushy life, his $500 weekly allowance. To the extent he had a plan at all, the plan was cake. And, as CL says, the preferred flavor of cake is when the chump is still oblivious.
He wanted to stay married, his lifestyle subsidized by hardworking, high-earning OP, while still doing his dirt.
They never seem to expect to get busted. And they never seem to think ahead. So when D-Day hits, they scramble. They come up with some farfetched, blameshifting excuses for their behavior, and we chumps are left scratching our heads, wondering wth.
My ex-FW, the Lying Cheating Loser, had myriad side pieces, both local and scattered all over the country. I began referring to them as a collective: the Broken Bitch Brigade (I’m a sucker for alliteration).
When I finally had enough and dumped him, he said, “I never wanted to be without you. Whatever that looked like.”
He wasn’t willing to give up his Broken Bitch Brigade. He was always going to be lying, cheating, sexting, mooching, and slacking. He was just hoping I’d be willing to agree to those conditions and stick around, busting my ass to support the household, in return for a random kibble here and there.
I chose to walk away. My only regret is not doing it sooner.
My theory is men who married well when they were thinking with the brain in their head, somehow want someone who is nothing like their first choice. Women who have an education and a good job, and who have grown to know them well over the years are not easy to fool. New Schmoopie is excited to believe all his lies. They both want to escape to fantasy land, where reality never happens, and they can be “free” from the SADZ.
You have to work on loving yourself and fixing your picker. Stop worrying about what he or she believes, or what will happen to them. Not your problem. You have to take care of yourself and be the sane parent to your children. That is enough to worry about!!!!!
It is hard to get over the dream. It is possible to do, however. One day you will realize a burden has been lifted from your shoulders. Get a good lawyer. Post divorce, some issues can be reassessed. Like Alimony. Good luck with your journey to MEH!
He’s a fuckwit.
You and I were stupidly married to fuckwits.
Our bad.
Cut your loses.
Move on.
Stay away from fuckwits.
Life is so much better without fuckwits.
Listen to RAFF No More and Kim. They speak the truth: if you earn more than your FW he will absolutely cheat on you with the worst scumbag he can find.
So you’re paying alimony, but not child support. That means he hasn’t gotten custody. Keep it that way. Lull him into a false sense of security with the alimony. Tell him that since he has a whole new life, you don’t want to hold him back and you release him from responsibility for the kids. He doesn’t have to pay support, but he can’t see them either. Tell him it’s better for all of you to forget that old life, because it actually is. Tell him the kids will always think of him as daddy (yeah right) but that they would agree that he needs his freedom and be happy for him. He’ll probably jump at the chance because you’ve just fed him the same rationalizations he’s been feeding himself. Then bide your time, continuing to pay alimony, until you can have his parental rights legally terminated without his agreement. Check first if abandonment automatically terminates his rights in your jurisdiction, and how long he has to go without seeing them for it to be considered abandonment.
Needless to say, make sure the conversation you have with him cannot be proven to have happened. Nobody is to witness it and there is to be no record. As odious as it is, do in person rather than by text, email or phone, and don’t alert him to the contents of the conversation beforehand or he might record it. Just say you want to discuss something about the kids. Be vague.
I say all this because this man and his AP are complete degenerates. Your children should not be around them. It is good for you if their marriage happens, so do not alert him to the alimony ending when it does. In the aforementioned private conversation, tell him you’ll always take care of him, but it hurts too much to be reminded of the old days, so you and the kids need to make a clean break. Make it believable. Then be ready to enforce a no contact policy. Make it crystal clear to him that there is to be none, but say so in a way that emphasize it’s about his freedom. Give no hint of what you are planning.
She who laughs last, laughs longest. One day you will not grieve anymore, and you will laugh and be beyond happy that he and his dollar store bitch (who I believe is priced at $1.99 in the condiments section) are out of your children’s lives.
She abandoned her kids for him because she thinks he has money. She likely doesn’t know it’s your money. Don’t warn her. Let her marry him, pay him alimony long enough to establish child abandonment on his part, then once it’s all nice and legal, stop paying and let them go broke.
Be as ruthless in getting what you and your kids deserve as he was in putting one over on you. If you don’t, this shit show will be in your life for 18 years. You don’t want that. He’s a sperm donor. He is not a father.
The OP asked “why her?” Like attracts like? I feel the need to qualify this by saying that I’ve noticed abusers tend to switch back and forth between pursuing partners who either model whatever dysfunctional FOO issues the abuser grew up with and then, conversely, will pursue partners who represent a departure from this (chumps). When an abuser gets sick of the chaos of being with a like minded FW, they may seek “asylum” in a relationship with someone with integrity. But when the goody-two-shoes partner only amplifies the abuser’s guilt and shittiness by contrast, the abuser will ultimately find another familiar Mr. or Ms. Goodbar.
They always go back to what they know. This morning I woke up with one of those revelations that seem really brilliant until the sleep cobwebs clear and you realize the thought was really the equivalent of “Ice is cold!” or “Pie is good!” But I guess what was new to me was the clarity of it even if the idea wasn’t terribly profound. What I realized is that cheaters and co-cheaters are guaranteed to have personality disorders because the “splitting” behavior that’s peculiar to certain Cluster B disorders like narcissism and borderline– the ability to “split” other people into exaggerated camps with no middle ground (to cast some people as “all evil” and others as “all good”)– is required to get over all the social, emotional and pragmatic obstacles to and prohibitions against doing what they do. Splitting is necessary in order to rationalize destroying partners and families, to do something that’s generally socially condemned, that leaves a trail of financial and social disasters and even to ignore the red flag warnings against getting involved with a fellow liar. Relationships formed by cheating rarely work out so even if participants are clinically empathy impaired, it’s boggling why any self interested person would take the risk for such a faint possibility of gain.
So the big light bulb idea (duh) was that the disordered mistake the demented idealization involved in splitting for love, attraction or whatever. The answer to “why her?” might be that the AP has the same disorder. People tend to try to absolve themselves and normalize their shitty behavior by finding “consensus” with others who are shitty in the same way.
Like I said, not a brilliant or original concept but I think it’s really difficult– as the OP put it– to wrap our heads around the behavior of disordered people if we don’t happen to share the disorder. You can understand something intellectually but never get close to a gut understanding of it. Skein untangling was part of my job description when working as an advocate for DV survivors. In order to hammer some understanding of abuse into my thick skull, I visualized a third sex: the “abusosexuals” or people whose libidos are wired more strongly for betrayal and the need to victimize than gender preference or anything else.
If you think about it, affairs are the perfect outlets for all witting participants to covertly express anger and the need to punish a designated victim so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that virtually all batterers cheat as part of a spectrum of subjugating behaviors. Though DV survivors are discouraged from discussing infidelity within battering because it could play into negative bystanders’ and legal authorities’ tendency to hunt for reasons to discredit victims (“S/he fabricated the story of abuse due to jealousy’), people who work directly with survivors usually come to realize that cheating is typical and almost expected in DV and absolutely all abusers gather accomplices and triangulate with “flying monkeys” in order to gang up against their victims. These other participants– whether family members or friends of the batterer (or former friends of the victim who decamp), biased legal officials or Schmoopies– play such key roles in entrapping victims within abuse dynamics and deepening trauma that the enablers have to be categorized and understood in their own rights.
It seems one existing category for understanding accomplices is “hybristophilia” or the “prison groupie” phenomenon of those pathologically attracted to known liars, cheats, thieves and murderers. If the crime in question involved victimization, you could say some of these groupies are also “abusosexuals.” Because battering– like murder– is a certified crime, it’s easier to view enablers as criminal accessories and easier to find scientific explanations for same (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202206/rethinking-the-murderers-accomplice). When something isn’t widely recognized as criminal behavior, it’s not as simple to understand or categorize accomplices. But I think the current movement to criminalize “coercive control” (https://www.theacecc.com/post/not-all-bills-are-created-equal-a-review-of-coercive-control-legislation) will eventually put a clearer lens on “flying monkeys” and accomplices to sub-violent emotional and psychological abuse and that their involvement isn’t accidental. It’s also hopeful that there’s been increased recognition that cheating is rarely “just cheating” but typically involves the kinds of emotional and psychological abuses categorized as unlawful coercive control (https://www.joplinlawyers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/FINAL-COPY-Infidelity-as-a-Consideration-in-Domestic-Abuse-and-Coercive-Control.pdf).
So, why her? Probably because she’s a fellow abusosexual. If it’s too difficult to trust they suck, then consider that they have an ugly affinity. Like CL said, the typical lies that cheaters tell affair partners are idiotic and hardly believable. Bear in mind that even prison groupies argue the innocence of their criminal paramours. But they’re just combating stigma and public perceptions, not actual culpability because the culpability is the attracting force. If the groupies were genuinely looking for innocence in a love object, why do they always choose the ones caught on video with smoking guns and covered in blood?
I’m really sorry you are in this situation, it’s awful.
One of the “why” he did what he did, left you and now blame you for everything is because he’s a narcissist. It makes no sense to you because you have empathy, you care and you love, and you want the best for people. You don’t hurt people for your own selfish needs or wants.
You losing your baby (😢) and later having a high risk pregnancy put all the attention on you (as it should), and he saw you as being “the center of the attention”, while he just had a supporting role. This came at no benefit to him, apart from playing the doting husband and get kudos for that. But it was nothing (in his eyes) compared to being married to a physician and getting $500 a week to buy toys to play with. That was a great benefit to him.
And so, Mr Narcissist, feeling like he was only in the supporting role and resenting you for it, looked for somebody who would put him on a pedestal and be No. 1 again. And he found somebody just like him. She dumps her own kids and own husband to move with a guy she met 2x. These 2 are on a ego trip central right now. Your husband thinks he’s “better” than her own husband and she chose him! She got a guy who was married to a physician, so she’s “better” than you! And they get alimony!
Meanwhile your kids and a newborn takes a lot of time, and effort to be looked after (I had 5) . You are still recuperating from the birth. Your ex husband doesn’t see any benefit in helping you. He would get “nothing” out of it, just work. The kids will not praise him for being a good dad and playing with them, they will just play. Or demand things, like snacks and diaper change.
It’s much more rewarding for him to play house with an adult who’s like him. Who’s enabling awful behavior and get rewarded for that. Who will praise him to the hilt, who has no kids to look after, to just have “fun” and congratulate each other for having “escaped”. She got to play the hero (in her eyes), rescuing the poor guy who, against his own wishes, got his wife pregnant again. He’s playing the hero who saved his other woman from her awful husband and now will give her all the happiness she deserves. Narcissist like to play the drama triangle to the max.
I went through the same stuff, unfortunately. (((big hugs)))
Dear I Just Don’t Get It,
Why Her?
BECAUSE SHE IS LOW HANGING FRUIT.
XHole was looking to jump off Mother Ship, (steadfast, sturdy and strong,) during a SHIT STORM of TIDAL WAVES that HE created.
The first safety craft floating by was a cheap, unstable, fragile and pitiful craft with many leaky holes around its perimeter. Xhole jumped with all his feeble mighty to land himself on that pitiful craft, that is sure to sink. It is only a matter of time.
COWARDS run from their problems. Xhole is a Coward.
Get a good lawyer and best settlement you can per the Law. Focus solely on your children and career and raising them a safe environment.
Go NO CONTACT from this shit show of blatant abandoners. They are both pathetic.
More like fallen fruit. Even when they’re making shows of “honesty” after getting caught, FWs rarely discuss their batting averages or the vast number of times they strike out for every paltry “win” (i.e., bonk). The don’t discuss how their standards plummet pathetically over years and years of cruising and batting out, how they never get top shelf options. I used to work in media and not even cheating rock legends get their first picks.
It really isn’t worth your while trying to figure out the workings of a FW mind. Be content with being wonderful, high achieving, amazing you. FWs are best left wallowing in their own poo. They understand that best. And you really don’t benefit from trying to understand them.
Ok….good one on saying “he did not want to live in a world where he wasn’t trusted”. Those are called “consequences” that come along with choices! Trust is trust until it’s not …. Love yourself and those babies…his “consequences” will bite both of them in the ass one day!
Yeah, my ex said when I was hand-wringing over having separated from him and he already had started dating again that he wasn’t sure that he could be what I wanted him to me, or words to that effect. UBT translation: I wouldn’t want to stop seeing other women. He also said something at one point, without irony or a scintilla of self-awareness, about wanting a relationship with someone without baggage… but I wouldn’t have had the “baggage” (not trusting him, being wary that he would hurt me again) if he hadn’t cheated. Ugh.