What the Ashley Madison Netflix Show Gets Wrong About Cheating
The Netflix documentary “Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal” purports to be a look at the complexities of infidelity in the context of the 2015 data hack that exposed millions of cheaters’ double lives.
I was actually approached by the Minnow production company in March 2023 looking for participants. In an exchange with a producer, I made it clear that we were a community of people who did not promote reconciliation and considered cheating abusive.
The producer responded (emphasis mine):
We are interested in the full spectrum – so people who have managed or are in the process of reconciling, but also people who found peace and fulfillment in leaving their partner. We are very interested to hear from people for whom separation was an empowering decision that changed their life for the better, so your audience sounds perfect in this regard. Like yourself, we are also keen to challenge the way our culture prioritises longevity in relationships and “sticking things out” over independence and happiness. Thank you for flagging this though – I will certainly bear this in mind when chatting to any of your members.
So, I posted their call on Chump Nation social media. Two members of our community participated in the Ashley Madison Netflix documentary. Both were filmed. One was told she would be in the third episode. In the end, their left-a-cheater-gained-a-life stories did not make it.
Was the “full spectrum” of the infidelity represented? No. Here’s what it missed.
Reconciliation isn’t the only path forward.
The chumps “Sex, Lies & Scandal” chose to feature, Nia Rader and Christi Gibson, women who discovered their husbands had long histories of serial cheating — were both pro-reconciliation. Both married Jesus cheaters. Both are white, Christian evangelicals.
Nia and her husband Sam Rader, are popular family vloggers. When the data hack hit, Nia had two small children with Sam and newfound prosperity as an influencer. Her only previous job experience was as a sales manager at an outlet mall. She now has four children and deeper sunk costs. At first Sam denied cheating. They made a video after the hack saying God has forgiven Sam, Sam has forgiven Sam. We’re all good. Then in episode 3 he confesses to multiple affairs, massage parlors, and hitting on her best friend who dropped her and she never knew why.
The Raders released a book the same week the Ashley Madison Netflix documentary came out called Sam and Nia Live in Truth: Public Scandal, Secret Vows, Restored Hearts. On how infidelity made their marriage stronger. If you believe that, you’ll also believe you can test positive for pregnancy with toilet water.
Christi Gibson has a sadder story. After the hack, her Baptist minister, seminary professor husband was called into a meeting with supervisors and fired. Later that afternoon, he killed himself. She says in the documentary it was the shame, not the accountability, that killed him. She calls the hack a “witch hunt.” On an Instagram posts, she yearns for the chance at reconciliation.
I longed to sit beside my husband and share how God had fixed what was broken and restored us. Today, I watched Sam and Nia Rader do exactly that in a three part docuseries on Netflix. God, in his mercy, allowed me to put my story alongside theirs—and the contrast is a powerful picture of what God can do when we live in truth.
Christi, maybe God didn’t want you to live with an abusive man.
It’s not the sex, it’s the deception.
There’s a lot of sideways commentary about judging cheaters. The data analyst called into Ashley Madison to investigate the hack says, “I’m Swedish. I don’t judge.” There’s much tut-tutting about the media finding the allegations salacious. Much “eww” at the name Ashley Madison. How provincial.
Missing from the entire narrative is the perspective that these poor sausages caught up in the hack are deceiving their partners. Using them. Extracting value from them. Indulging in an un-level playing field. Monogamy for thee, but not for me.
Jake was one of the participants the filmmakers chose not to include. His wife had multiple affairs on Ashley Madison. (He found out when one of the AM partners contacted him.) In a conversation with me, he said:
Jake
They lie to you about the most important things. It’s always, ALWAYS been about the lies. And yet the narrative is “Don’t judge me! Don’t judge me!” I’m not judging you about your sexuality, but I am fucking judging you about the lies and betrayal. And the fact you hurt your own kids. Yes, I am judging you for that.
What you don’t know CAN hurt you.
No one consents to be cheated on. Those lies have tangible harm. Stolen monies. STDs. The stress illness of psychological abuse. Dr. Omar Minwalla has written extensively about the damage of the “secret, sexual basement” on its unwitting victims.
The Ashley Madison Netflix documentary asks us to have sympathy for the victims of the hack. There’s no acknowledgment that those “victims” were victimizing others. Yes, we see Nia’s pain. And it’s tempered with her undying love and continued devotion to Sam. Yes, we see Christi’s pain. And it’s tempered with the confession that she knew about his other affairs and looked the other way. (A nod to the “surely you must’ve known” chump trope that we’re all complicit in our abuse.)
No one in this documentary says abuse is not acceptable. Period.
Cheaters aren’t sympathetic.
One of the oddest couples featured are Rob and Stephanie, who are in an open marriage. She’s a dominatrix, he’s not into that. That’s not the weird part. This is the weird part: WHY ARE YOU ON A CHEATER SITE? Given that there is an entire buffet of single people and fellow swingers online, why do you feel the need to involve the unknowing partners of others? Come for the deception, stay for the Chlamydia? WTF. Instead the filmmakers allow Rob to natter on about how unsatisfying monogamy is.
Yet, the most unsympathetic of all the cheaters is Noel Biderman. Oh, the irony. You mean someone close to you, an employee you trusted, deceived you and hacked your data? You must feel so betrayed.
I have the same schadenfreude for Ashley Madison’s customers. OMG, you entrusted a cheater website with your credit card and sexual fantasies — and they betrayed you? You believed them when they said the site was secure? And when you paid them $20 extra bucks they didn’t delete your profile? I cannot believe the social contract was broken so callously!
Infidelity isn’t ‘complex.’
There’s not much nuance if you agree that cheating is abusive.
Imagine a Netflix documentary exposing the “complexities” around assault. It wouldn’t be very complex, because we recognize that punching someone in the throat is not an answer to life’s dissatisfactions. However many dark thoughts we have, imagining throat punches, we recognize that assault is wrong. We judge it.
Let’s do the same for cheating.
AM tried to rebrand infidelity as something sophisticated rather than sordid and then to monetise it. To those who got caught out when it all went to sh*t … I have no sympathy whatsoever. And I’m not surprised that, when Netflix then tried to monetise the AM story, they ended up producing an inherently “Cheater-centric” narrative.
I suspect that Netflix won’t be doing anything from a Chump angle any time soon because it will be much harder to monetise our stories.
LFTT
I completely agree. And they’ve industrialized adultery. Turning it into factory work.
Amen, LFTT!
Actually, given record hits on Shakira’s chump ballad and Gallup polls showing the public hates adultery more than human cloning, I think the chump side would probably get huge play if done well. But, as feminist author Susan Faludi documented in Backlash, media honchos (who currently appear to all be pro-adultery) will go so far as to screw themselves out of profits rather than promoting an ethos they don’t personally agree with. Case in point was the sudden cancellation of female-led detective series Cagney and Lacey at the height of its unprecedented popularity. Why? Because the suits at ABC didn’t want “masculine” women influencing the public at the time.
Well…..they’re all loathsome cheaters themselves – cheating is very very prevalent in all of media/entertainment. I think it’s a FORM of entertainment to them and they try to make it like that for us. It’s basically excusing all their own actions by promoting them to the public as essential harmeless or “entertainment”, etc. They’re in a great and unique position to propagandize on their own way of life.
Adultery is also added to make a show “exciting”. I was watching a show called “Evil” and it quickly became apparent an element was the emotional affair between the main characters (a soon to be priest and a psychologist). The director’s comment was “we have two characters who are intellectually and sexually attracted to each other, but if they act on it they could lose their friendship, its going to be an exciting season.” The poor chump husband is just used in the show as an obstacle (he knows nothing and keeps being called away for his job). Oh and they have three young girls too.
It really bothered me, I stopped watching but I wasn’t ready for the anger it triggered. Abuse, lies and deceit from a “hero” character are just “exciting”.
Some clinical research of batterers in prison settings found they tend to channel far more psychic energy into image management (i.e.,PR) than average and also have a tendency to avidly collect “supporting data” from any source– articles, quotes, ameliorative comparisons to public figures or fictional characters that justifies their misconduct and casts it in a flattering light. By that token it would follow that abusers who create or control forms of mass communication– own news outlets or produce news, make films or television shows or produce radio content, publish social science, etc.– would be avidly using those pulpits to justify their misconduct and cast it in a flattering light.
HoaC,
I suspect that the issue wasn’t so much that the Cagney/Lacy roles were “masculine,” rather that both characters were played (and rightly so) as being strong and having agency. Sadly, some men, have an issue with female characters (and females) exhibiting these traits and think that they are solely a male preserve.
I’m a father with two daughters (now 27 and 20, but 11 and 18 when Ex-Mrs LFTT left us to be with her AP), and I have made sure that I have bought both of them up to be neither “shy” nor “retiring.”
I couldn’t be prouder of either of them (or my son either for that matter).
LFTT
They don’t have so much of a problem with women being portrayed as tough and having agency if the women are young, have big boobs and dress like hookers. They don’t mind stuff like Wonder Woman, Tomb Raider, or Xena; Warrior Princess. But the actresses in Cagney and Lacey looked like real life women rather than a porn fantasy.
We need more Ripleys and Sarah Conners.
That too, though back when that show aired it seems things were even more restrictive as far as allowable gender roles.
I get the sense these gender expectations shifted radically throughout history, sometimes decade to decade. Like during WWII when women all over the world had to step up and get involved in the war effort so that female courage and capacity for physical labor were idealized, the big stars of the day like Lauren Bacall and Kate Hepburn emitted more strength of character.
But, on the other hand, what I discovered writing a paper regarding history of fashion was that, in the wakes of particularly bloody wars, especially when women were no longer needed for war efforts, suddenly women’s fashions would radically shift to “infantile.” My theory was that it became the job of women to be as hyper-nonthreatening as possible, maybe in order not to jolt traumatized returning soldiers or get raped and murdered by the ones who were violentized by using rape as a weapon of war. I told this to a friend and she burst out in an exaggerated lisp, “Yeah like ‘I’m onwy two yeaws owd, pwease don’t huwt me!!'” I should have used that for the title instead of something clunky like “Infantalized Fashion as Post-war Armor.”
Not kidding. Check out the white empire gowns and “baby curls” that were the rage following the French revolution– basically infant Christening gowns. Same with flapper fashions following WWI– unstructured little girl gowns. Furthermore my grandmother complained/joked that even provincial women in the 1920s started acting like cartoon babies– standing with their toes pointed in, rouging their knees and talking and giggling in obnoxious twee baby voices. Then of course the post-war 50s with pastel poofy little girl dresses and the simpering voices of Marilyn and Jayne. There was the “gamine” look following the Korean war. The Vietnam conflict era was so long the infantile shift happened somewhere in the middle and may have brought the first big-eyed, vapid “waif” look exemplified by Twiggy, waistless go-go dresses and mary jane shoes. Also the Lolita look surfaced in Japan following Vietnam which, though Japan had not been involved militarily, had radically destabilized Southeast Asia at the time. Then the second “waif” wave following Operation Desert Storm, etc.
The Iraq war happened after I wrote the paper but I remember some really stupid clothes.
You’re right. There does seem to be a correlation there, from which causation can be theorized, and your theory fits.
No wonder I watch mostly films from WW2 years.
Now, though, it seems to be less about infantilization than it is about blatant sexual objectification. Pick-me women are going along with this by trying to look like porn stars, and there are a lot of them, most of them probably not even aware that they are doing it, as it has become so normalized. They rationalize it as “empowering female sexuality.” Nope, that’s about appealing to male sexuality. Last summer I started noticing thong bikinis on the beach worn by young teenage girls. 😧
I understand what you mean about actresses’ “making it” clothes. You can probably blame management a lot of the time and blame fashion and media industries for guiding vulnerable teen girls who often naturally crave attention as a normal developmental stage. But I’ll never get the idea of porn stars being appearance influencers. Pathos is a fashion trend? Even when I found FW’s Pornhub cache and did a kind of “Ick scroll,” I didn’t have so much as a tiny pickme pang of “inadequacy” because even the top porn actresses look like melted Barbies. I had the same reaction encountering what was left of “Heidi Fleiss girls” in LA the semester I was there. It’s not even appearance snobbery, just that I can see the misery. I suspect a certain level of abject suffering and resulting personality disorders change people’s faces– causes strange asymmetry (actually clinically relates to psychopathy) or something off that not even 10 lbs of makeup can cover– whether from the misery that drove them to the industry and/or the misery of participating. Mystery that anyone wants to emulate this.
I think it’s absolutely fabulous that you’ve raised independent young women. I know personally how important it is to get the “green light” and encouragement for that from not only female role models but also male role models because, forever after, any men your daughters encounter who disparage strong women will be shrugged off as dismissible weirdos or curious relics because, like, dad has no problem with it.
I totally agree that the Cagney/Lacey characters weren’t “masculine” but independent and strong. But the ABC suits described the characters as “too manish.”
More than just a “patriarchal” attitude, I really see the latter warped perception thing as the mark of serious abusers. Again because both my parents encouraged independence, from the time I was a teen I noticed and was baffled by how very insecure men depend so heavily on the contrast of women’s “weakness” in order to feel masculine themselves. Some are so insecure that it’s like, as a woman, you can’t even stand up to the height of an ant’s belly without making dudes like that feel “emasculated.” The really scary ones will lash out quite viciously at women who don’t provide that hyper-exaggerated contrast and attack the offending females as “dykes,” “manish,” “she-males,” whatever.
In my case, though I was raised by feminists to speak up and take space and admire courageous women, I’m a bit on the wimpy side of the chick spectrum myself- not in terms of general opinionated-ness (obviously, lol) but in other ways. All the same, by my teens, I still started getting subjected to the vicious backlash for asserting opinions, particularly those along the feminist vein. Dyke, lesbo, ball-breaker, etc. You could really feel the violence underlying the attacks to the point that fear would create a spellbinding effect that made my perceptions wobble at first.
That’s the thing about shaming. They say shame– as opposed to guilt– is really a social emotion and it only “penetrates” if the shaming is flung with underlying violence and/or the ultimate social consequences are somehow life-threatening (or were in our caveman days when being pushed out of the tribe meant certain death). Be assured that’s where upbringing and role modeled values really kick in and save the day so, thankfully, I shook it off. For one, I admired a lot of my “butch” lesbian classmates so being called a dyke was about as offensive as being called a “birdwatcher.” Like, er, why the hate? And, if anything, all my life I’d been criticized for the opposite– having in inaudible voice, wimping out in contact sports, shrieking at spiders on camping trips. If anything I needed to toughen up. But even I wasn’t weak or vapid or fwagile or catastrophically wimpy enough for douches with subatomic particle egos (which– along with extremely unstable identities and pathological fear-hyperarousal– is the basic clinical profile of batterers).
That’s when I started understanding why some grown women exhibit sort of mutantly infantile behavior– play dumb, talk in twee breathy baby voices, etc. It’s because they grew up with men like the above and the only way to get amnesty from abuse or violence was to make oneself dementedly, self-injuriously nonthreatening. This often ends in martyrdom (Marilyn) but I think some women who internalize this deeply enough like my disordered exMIL will even go the extra step of policing and punishing other woman for errant signs of chutzpah. Or, like my exSIL who– though loudly “pro-LGBT” on the surface– would show weirdly intense flares of hatred or mocking contempt towards kinder, more nurturing heterosexual men.
Anyway, all hail dads and all parents who encourage strength in daughters (and nurturing qualities in boys for that matter).
Oh I loved that show and I rarely like police type shows. I never saw either of them as masculine, just interesting stories. I hated that it was cancelled.
A lot of people loved that show along with Hill Street Blues. Unusually intelligent TV.
Yep. My cheater and I always watched HSB together. I had no idea he was a cheater at the time of course.
Both classics. Also Homicide; Life on the Street had strong female characters, especially the amazing Melissa Leo. I also give props to L&O SVU, which is sadly coming to an end. No more watching rapists and pedophiles getting their just desserts. 😞
Hah, I watched a lot of L&O SVU when I was in toddler prison lol. I do so enjoy a good rapist perp walk.
I started watching this last week and found it nauseating.
The other mentally disordered detail is members’ desire to hide their identities. Like all good con artists and predators. The thrill of deception (and hurting people) is their selling point. Profiting on causing pain.
If only all the lying cheating losers of the world were registered on Ashley Madison with real identities so it could be used as a vetting resource to avoid creeps.
I’m actually glad you didn’t get folded into that documentary, Tracy. I don’t want your message diluted or for you to get grease on you from being in close proximity to grimy lowlifes.
We need a 100% Chump Lady documentary.
On top of my reading pile now is the OnlyFans fraud scandal…..content creators who hire professional chatters and the massive cottage industry that has grown up around that. Exploiting people to defraud subscribers into perpetuating the illusion that they are actually conversing with the content creator they are subscribing to……
So VH – a lot of the TikTok fools actually ARE professional performers! I’ve been telling my husband this in general, that I thought they were all professional chatters of one type or another rather than just random people. I think a lot of the “suicides” or early deaths we hear of with these people are them leaving the gig. God, I’m so cynical, LOL.
Since the OF subscribers are basically an online form of johns, I couldn’t care less if they’re being ripped off. I like it when hookers bleed the punters dry.
I’m not going to watch it, but had ChumpLady been included, they would have just portrayed her as having a following of bitter bunnies. I’m glad that she didn’t get included.
Yes, people participating in these things often get conned about the message and have no idea how they’re being used until the projects are released. It can be quite traumatic. Same with people who are interviewed by nonfiction authors.
I had worked with documentary film makers and even some of the better creators would basically script everything beforehand and then “guide” the interviews to match the secret scripts. Based on that experience when I was later editing for an eco advocacy publication, I got a really bad gut feeling from some prospective author who was interviewing activists and even tried to warn people at a conference. But I couldn’t explain what bugged me about the guy so no one listened and everyone let their hair down. Ugh. His book came out and was a total hatchet job, probably ghost-written for the chemical industry. He tore into disabled agricultural workers, people who’d lost children, whistleblowers who’d sacrificed their careers. It appears his reward for literary human sacrifice was a major university post.
That always made me remember the quote from some journalist about how these types are the “ones who come down from the hill after battle to shoot the wounded.” Be wary.
There is SO MUCH of this smearing of perfectly reasonable people trying to prevent catastrophe.
Makes me puke. I got so angry about the predatory journalist and was so worried about how depressed some of his targets became after publication that I lampooned the fucker and nearly got the publication sued. But he was a really fun target once I started dredging his background and we all thought it was worth the near miss. After that, my editor started calling me “The Gimp”– as in the scary creature they take out of a box when they really want to put the hurt on someone. 😉
I couldn’t even begin to watch. I found it nauseating to consider. I just knew this was going to be a pro-cheater piece.
This:
“The thrill of deception (and hurting people) is their selling point.”
People never quite get that part. My XFW loved the fact that he was pulling one over on me, right on up to the moment when he found out I was on to him.
I never played the pick-me dance, but he sure did.
https://www.wired.com/story/i-went-undercover-secret-onlyfans-chatter-wasnt-pretty/
Thanks – that’s quite a read.
Wow that’s interesting. Only I don’t get why the author would be intimidated by an “extra spicy” influencer. I would just be worried for them.
https://apple.news/AcWS3k3yJTruqJkowQ_9-Ew
Thank you, Tracy, for watching this drivel so the rest of us don’t have to.
And you hit the ball out of the park here:
I was recently reading an “Ethicist” column in the NY Times where the columnist, Appiah, opined that in his estimation a spouse who discovered infidelity by peeking at the fuckwit’s text messages commits a greater sin than the spouse who was cheating.
I’m not interested in anything that glorifies cheating or the abandonment of the social contract. If you want all the benefits of the single life … don’t get married. Stay single. Plenty of people do it.
But don’t defraud someone into marriage and then justify yourself by claiming the marriage must be preserved as some kind of favor to your spouse. Nobody is “entitled” to be trusted after they themselves violate that trust.
Anybody who publicizes him or herself as an “ethicist” probably isn’t. It doesn’t take an elaborate degree of study to figure out that faithful spouses have to protect themselves against cheaters who would destroy their families, their health, their kids, their finances.
I think that’s to be expected from the NY Times these days. I’m not saying that because it’s a “liberal” paper but because it isn’t. It’s just neoliberal faux progressive Pravda by and for the super rich and various sponsoring psychopathic transnational corporations.
It goes back to Plato who recommended hoodwinking the “humanitarian/democratic element” (i.e., ancient Greek lefties) into supporting piecemeal policies that, on their surface, appear progressive but, in fact, are actually Trojan horse laws and policies that will, bit by bit, erode democracy and usher in totalitarianism. In other words, in our current “inverted” corporate totalitarianism, some media entity has to play the part of “pinnacle of lefty journalism” in the whole charade in order to steer shallow progressives in directions those in power prefer.
Anyway, blah blah blah polysci! What I still can’t figure out is the covert angle regarding the current manic promotion of adultery. How does this benefit power or profits? Is it just the personal predilections of the kinds of psychos that grab and maintain media power in such a corrupt, deadly, neoliberal era? (and why does “neoliberal” still get marked by spellcheck in every typing format? Because we dumb ‘Murcans are not supposed to know what it is?)
Maybe it’s a kind of harmonic convergence in that sense. I tend to think of totalitarianism as a “full moon” for every variety of howling perv considering the fact that most totalitarian regimes are a big party for sex offenders and wife beaters. In any event, the weird apologias for adultery are really across the board in media but the faux-progressive badge the Times wears allows far more open promotion and monetization of sex-related stuff while news outlets catering to a more conservative crowd can’t– not openly at least. But, behind the scenes, even Fox News is invested in porn and, as we know from the Aisles scandal, neocon media producers cheat like any other set of power-mad honchos.
In the meantime, there’s nothing progressive or humanist about betrayal, deception and domestic abuse. Precisely because I’m a lifelong lefty and, even if personally pretty tame, a freedom-of-consenting-adult-sexual-expression maven, I’m particularly appalled by fake-liberal media and especially the hijacking of a progressive, groovy banner to promote shit like this.
I hear you so much.
Yay!
It’s so wonderfully, schadenfreude-ily funny that Ashley Madison users felt betrayed by the site.
Thank you to CL for taking one for the team and actually watching that claptrap. I would not have been able to view and review it without a jug of Maalox and a team of chump-friendly standup comedians in the room with me razzing every scene as a sort of mental inoculation against the creepy perspectives of AM users and producers but also the twisted perspective of the documentary filmmakers.
What a lost opportunity to make an important film, btw. If I was an enterprising indy filmmaker, I think I would open the story on the question of why there was such coddling, boohoo media treatment of the exposed cheaters instead of their chumped victims, how the victims felt about it and how chumped children felt about it. What were these cheaters really like at home while cheating? Then there are questions about how and why the media are so relentlessly wagging the dog to promote and normalize adultery in general even while the last several Gallup polls show that, quite independently from religious mores, the American public is increasingly down on adultery. In fact– get this– in the last poll, adultery had fallen further to the bottom of the list of controversial issues, tumbling below human cloning and abortion in terms of acceptability while gay marriage keeps rising in acceptability.
How’s that for a fascinating and surprising revelation? It would be a great opportunity to contrast things like the gamut of ethical, consenting adult expressions of sexual freedom– LGBT, ethical nonmonogamy, harmless kink, etc.– against the abusive deception of cheating and hear from chumps who– though groovy and alternative– were still wounded by betrayal. That would bring up the question of why adultery is becoming progressively less acceptable even among not-so-religious folks. Could it be because it’s increasingly associated with domestic discord and abuse in an age of growing awareness of the societal costs of this? And why are media corporations and their sponsors fighting the current? Is it because most media companies are now cross-invested in dating sites and porn (Google invested $3.4 billion) whose market growth arguably depends on an “infidelity mindset”? Or is it something more Orwellian? Does promoting emotional abuse, family dysfunction and general misery fuel spending, consumption and a sort of psychological inertness that enables the corporate oligopoly?
Yeah, follow the money. Who stands to benefit? At what cost?
I’m dying to know.
I think you make some wonderful points. In some ways, the rise of non-traditional relationship structures shines even more light on cheating roaches.
They are not ‘Poly’ or ‘Free-spirited’ or ‘unsatisfied.’ There are ethical ways to have multiple partners, to openly say you only want casual FWB, to explore kink at conventions, and to be who you are. Women’s independence allows men to ethically divorce them and know they can also work and support themselves. If Men are unhappy in the marriage, they are free to leave; it is very common these days.
None of those ways include lying to a partner who thinks you are both equally invested in the shared family vision. It shows that the cheating was just that, poor character, weakness, and lack of integrity. Not a symptom of anything else.
When there are safe and ethical ways to follow your desire, but you still choose to do harm, that is all on you.
That would have been a great, rich point to make in a film about AM. They totally missed out on the better direction as mediocrities are usually wont to do.
I think the harm in cheating is the point a lot of the time, especially after reading research that made a “new” discovery that sadism may be a common component of narcissism. In other words, it’s not just that they “don’t care” about others’ suffering, they get off on it.
My personal theory is that most cheaters engage in coercive control and many are would-be batterers. There are some criminal psychology theories related to batterer mindset that also seem like common factors in cheating such as “masked dependency.” The idea is that,deep down, batterers form pathologically infantile attachments to partners but this dependency feels so “shameful” (do to whatever kill-or-be-killed FOO horror shows they came grew up with) and the vulnerability so precarious that they elaborately hide it from others and themselves. It seems this level of psycho denial and need to hyper-compensate for extreme abandonment fears and emotional instability lead to abusers developing resentment and hatred towards partners to whom the abusers externalize “blame” for fostering this dependency. By that token you can imagine how some would react, such as, say, killing two birds to both “get even” and hedge bets against abandonment by getting involved with people outside the relationships. Outside involvement could also arguably “dilute” the dependency on primary partners (until the abuser forms a new dependency on the affair partner, at which point a third is needed, etc.).
Alas my little speculations on masked dependency haven’t yet been applied to cheaters in social research. In general I’m waiting for social science to catch up and do a study on the prevalence of violence among cheaters and the prevalence of cheating among batterers. From what I saw working in DV advocacy, my guess is the association is really strong. There has been at least one study about how enforcement of one-sided monogamy is a prevalent driver for domestic abusers. Authors focused mostly on how cheating men would use violence against partners to keep the latter from “obstructing” the men’s extramarital pursuits but I think they missed something– that violence was also a way to put a dagger through victims’ shoes to prevent them from leaving or forming other relationships upon discovery of cheating.
urg, “due” not “do”- typo queen needs grammar check.
I weighed watching the Netflix show and decided that getting overly triggered wasn’t worth it. Thanks for laying it all out for us though. I’m doubly determined not to go there now. I knew about the Raders but not Christi Gibson. Part of my recovery has been realizing where I need to say “enough.”
I was the one who cut off the reconciliation talk after he had been living in another state like a single man for a year. That was separation #2. I was committed and determined to hold that line. He continued to blame and game and insisted with me and his religious family that we could become a wonderful redemption story. I knew better. There were too many secrets, and my ex was incapable. I was over-and-done with him.
Then he wanted a divorce. I agreed. We fought about nearly everything, and the attorneys got very frustrated. My ex’s mental health took a major nosedive, and his attorney told mine that his client was a suicide risk. My ex had been there with an unsuccessful attempt during separation #1, so my attorney and I discussed strategy. We got it settled via a bold move, which we felt was the best for everyone.
My ex made closeout a nightmare. My older attorney had retired, and it was so bad that the younger attorney and I had a weakly phone appointment for awhile. In one of those phone calls, I expressed frustration over how long the divorce took and how closeout was just more of the same. My attorney said, “Shame drives so much of this type of behavior.” Yes, that was it. My ex was lashing out at me in the last way he could, the legal arena. His attorney died, and we had some pro se mess to deal with.
Then silence. My ex gave up. Reportedly, he has moved on with a serious girlfriend and has reinvented himself, which was his goal, conscious or unconscious. He is also supposedly very bitter towards me and the attorneys, as if he didn’t bear any responsibility for the mess. I’m so glad I didn’t attempt reconciliation after separation #2.
Once settlements are secure and as long as they’re too toothless and cowardly to engage in violent revenge, the bitterness of busted FWs tends to get funnier from a distance.
I’m not even thinking of FW in this instance since I don’t check but of other cheaters I’ve known along the way (two in particular). My impression is that, even when they appear to rebuild fables of perfect lives following cheating-related divorce or breakups and generally emit smug satisfaction over it, they remain massively triggery about long-past victims who fought back and got away. Like bug-eyed, sweaty psycho triggered.
On the one hand it’s just typical abuser territoriality, sort of like Louis the XV saying “After me, the flood!” But abusers like this can be very bland about exes whom they’re still “friends” with. I think what abusive personalities can’t stand is that there’s someone out there who knows exactly who they are, rejected them for it and, furthermore, doesn’t parse or compromise their own perspective on it.
I kind of think of it like a dictator knowing there’s a revolutionary leader at work undermining them. On the one hand, the dictator will be obsessed with destroying the opponent though, on the other, it’s almost like love or, moreover, all-important existential validation because only those who fight against dictators really recognize who dictators are.
Meanwhile, like all con artists, abusers can never really value the people they fool. That’s kind of the rub of shitty people. For normal people, to know them is to love them. For disordered assholes, to know them is to fight them and leave them. Being known/seen is the closest thing to love any genuine asshole will ever have.
Yes, the dictator was obsessed with destroying me because I knew what he was. He seems to have finally rebuilt his empire to the point that he’s leaving me alone, but I don’t take that for granted.
I went no contact during the divorce process, and it was just so very clear to me during closeout what a mess my ex was when I chose to do some things with him via email. My ex actually thought post-divorce that I’d allow his blame-and-game to stick to me? Nope. He actually thought that I’d agree to a side deal that benefited my ex and removed me from the advice of my attorney. Nope. I got so good at it that I actually handled some of the pro se mess myself.
Part of it involved my former employment with an out-of-state university, so my closout attorney actually recommended trying to handle it myself for a time before hiring another attorney. As it turned out, their attorney got involved and resolved it cleanly with my attorney advising me informally. And my ex had said that I was too simple to make it without him?
But this is one reason among many why I have nothing to do with his family. To them, he is still the wonderful sibling and uncle. No, thank you.
I’ve heard it said that one of the few hard, cold, tactical advantages that victims of narcissists have over narcissists (being that narcs tend to excel in anything hard, cold and tactical) is that narcissists frequently grossly underestimate their victims due to lack of self-reference and lack of reflection. It’s sort of like partial “delusionality” in an otherwise functional criminal. Glad it worked in your favor!!
He definitely underestimated me. I don’t know why. My attorney was so selective that he generally required a reference from another attorney, and I had one from an attorney that I had worked with on a long-term case involving a relative with repeated litigation. I had managed our finances and taxes and knew what we had. I also had been a mid-level manager with employees and contracts that I managed.
He reportedly tells everyone that I gave him the shaft in the divorce and that both attorneys were crooked, but the terms are pretty much standard. He signed it. We did not go to trial. I guess it makes for a good story, though.
There was just another discussion thread about FWs’ staggering capacity for delusion. So chumps are as “dumb” as APs are “hot” I guess. Maybe the same beer goggles produce both illusions?
After my older attorney retired and closed the firm, his younger associate took my case to a larger firm that has an in-house therapist. She advises the attorneys, participates in collaborative settlements, coaches/counsels clients, and runs a divorce support group part-time in addition to her own therapy practice.
So, one time, I asked her to summarize divorce recovery in a few sentences. She said, “Accepting and living in reality.”
Not delusion. Not at all.
So Tracy takes another bullet for us, I stand and give my ovation. My question for today is, How do you find a diamond that falls into a septic tank? How do you find that pearl that fell into a pig stye 20 years ago? This is what would have happened if Tracy had been included in that Ashley Madison “ME fest” and the gathering of people who are shocked at a betrayal?? Really, really? Marriages are stronger really? There is a saying that evil triumphs if the good do nothing. My study of history shows that the good get carted off to Siberia, prisons, concentration camps, lose jobs, lose families, lose children, lose church families, lose retirements and their lives… the list is endless of what happens to trusting people who want to believe the best of other humans when that trust could be very unfounded. Still there are lighthouses like Tracy and like all of us who left cheaters. We still shine in the night, even though we get battered by storms, lose our husbands/ wife’s to the cheater life, see our children split in two, still we shine. Some ships will still sink and be battered by the seas, but we still shine, because Good people have to . No matter what. Thank you Tracy, I get tears thinking about you and all of us and how we stand tall and keep telling our story. Whether we get battered by the society or not. We stand strong.But you cannot stand strong tied to a liar, cheater, deceiver, abuser of others. You just cannot.
But you cannot stand strong tied to a liar, cheater, deceiver, abuser of others. You just cannot.
Nope, never, and no way. My attorney was nearly seventy, the son of an appeals judge, and a man of faith. And he was the first to say to me, “Your husband is an evil man.” I asked how that was going to affect my divorce, and he said, “Your husband is a man of lies and manipulation, and we can’t expect otherwise.”
It was also his thesis that people of faith tend to underestimate evil.
I often would spend time in the parking lot after appointments with my attorney, writing down all the nuggets of wisdom. But yes, “don’t underestimate evil” remained with me.
Thank you for sharing this about your attorney, Elsie, it is really meaningful to me and helpful.
My attorney was an elder at my church. He was very good at his job and was a partner in a bulldog family law practice. He frequently referenced to John 1:5
“And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”
His strategy was to expose all the lies, misdeeds and financial shenanigans and force them to be accountable for them. Hence when she committed DV in our house in front of son he got a restraining order, temporary child support by garnishing her wages and a psych report. She was living in darkness, but the light won out.
Wonderfully chilling bible quote.
Exactly. The light does win in the end.
I picked my attorney because he was one of the top ones in my metropolitan area and had such a winsome way of talking. My goals and priorities matched his exactly. An acquaintance called him, “Grandpa with an iron rod.” I was sold and never regretted that choice.
My ex picked a significantly more expensive one, a pit bull known for skirting ethics and making people cry in court. Mind you, this was for what could have been a very simple, quick divorce. Of course, it wasn’t.
My attorney completely outclassed and out-maneuvered my ex’s attorney. At the signing, he said, “Legal justice is done, and we can trust God for the rest.”
I have not had legal justice — three years of litigation abuse, lawyerless, my ex’s lawyer lies and bullies, broke, and my emergency order attempt thrown out by the judge in March. I hope you’re right, that the light wins out.
It’s a long haul for sure. I attended a divorce support group through my attorney’s firm for awhile, and there were so many stories like that. Even with no custody issues, mine was three years before my ex finally let go. Don’t give up.
Going into my fourth year, Elsie! Thank so much, I really appreciate your saying that . Haven’t slept through the night once since he left, it’s all so unbelievable I am numb and shocked.
…. like, thank you thank you thank you for these words of encouragement, they help a lot!
Elsie, before I left my house to my XHCheater, I went to my marital bedroom and knelt down beside the bed that would soon be of use to my then husband and all the OW he desired. I asked that my XHC would not have one moment of true satisfaction in using woman in that bed, until he gave up evil and changed his life course. I asked for sand between the sheets until that day of change. Then I prayed in every room for a miserable life for him and anyone with him until God changes his life in a miraculous way. This is not revenge, this is Spiritual warfare. People who stay with evil are too close to it and are infected by it. This is my opinion because I was affected and infected by his using me and others at the same time. The only way was to get out and no contact. It takes a safety plan but it is very possible..but you have to be prepared to lose everything in the fight for freedom. I did, but I am no longer in bondage to an evil man.
People who do evil things should be punished. That desire for justice is at the heart of every human society. No society can function without justice. If the society itself is so corrupt – as is ours – that it no longer gives justices, people will seek it privately, and they should.
I agree with this. The correct choice is to get away, not “pray it away” and hope they change somehow while you stay with them.
I pray for my ex and whoever he is with daily. They are not in a good place, and that prayer gives me peace.
I started watching this guff but I couldn’t hack it for long, because the people on it annoyed me! That fat bloke who thinks he’s funny and the other fella who set it up were so pleased with themselves, making a fortune from enabling people to deceive, betray and abuse those who love them!
As for the cheats who got hacked- serves ’em right and I’d shake the hackers’ hands because liars, betrayers and abusers need secrecy in order to get away with their crimes!
Yuck!
What we need is an alternative UBT sound track to play along side the original. Something like Mystery Science Theater did for crappy movies that made them hilarious. Invite some fellow chumps, pop some popcorn with lots of butter, add wine and let the ridicule begin! Maybe we could do it in a massive Zoom meeting?
I’m in.
snark-watching!
Oh God I’m there. Please make it happen.
Oh please, YES!!! I would sooooo love to do commentary on the AM scandal like they did on MST3000! In a heartbeat! We should put this together.
Maybe we can make the Rifftrax!
Can somebody write them and ask if they’ll do it please?
If we are not represented, then that will be another docuseries I will be skipping. (I repeat: Quiet on the Set is very worth your time instead!)
I remember sitting on a Tokyo hotel room watching the Ashley Madison hack unfold(in fairness, Ultraman was over for the day and it was the only thing running). I found it deeply ironic that a website about paying to hide secrets wasn’t willing to pay the blackmail. Fuckwits can’t event protect themselves, let alone each other.
Or comprehend Tracy’s point above-this is what betrayal feels like when you trust somebody implicitly and they take your money and make everything about themselves.
I have zero sympathy for the “victims” of that hack. “What happens in the dark will come out in the light”-sometimes that light is OLED.
The real victims were the people that suddenly found out on TV that their happiness was predicated on a lie.
I remember sharing that perspective with my FW(we were together at the time) and starting to hear about the divorces, the firings, the suicides and going “I’m glad that’s not us.”
Little did I know..
They really should be coming here for the truth rather than “Are you still watching?”
.
So ironic they wouldn’t pay their blackmailers! NOW you decide to be principled?! LOL they should have paid and at least been consistent.
I think society as a whole needs to stop turning a blind eye to cheating and the narrative that it ISN”T abuse, because IT IS, as we all know here on Chump Nation. It it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…you know the trope. So if being betrayed FEELS like abuse, it is! But I think one of the larger problems is therapists need to see it as abuse and start calling out the cheaters on it!
They do the “I need you to see your part” to the betrayed, the person that was cheated on, instead of simply calling it like it is – the cheater is 100% responsible and cheating is abuse. But no, the cheaters get the help of a therapist to victim blame and pass the buck.
Drives me NUTS! This Ashely Madison crap is doing the same thing and excusing this abusive behavior! Shame on the people that made this insidious program. SHAME! They are directly contributing to the problem of “They deserved it and/or what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
“Fuck yes” is all I can muster for this. Seriously. I laughed through the whole shameful thing at the sad-sausage “o I was BETRAYED! I was DECEIVED! Woe is me!” affair (pun intended).
Yeah, sucks, doesn’t it? I’d love to think that this taught you something about not doing it to other people, but you’d need some base level of empathy to learn that lesson, so I won’t hold my breath.
Thank you, Chump Lady.
I won’t watch the show, I won’t give it a bump up the list or a hint of approval. What strikes me from what you’ve said is the Christian minister who killed himself because “it wasn’t about the accountability, it was about the shame.”
But he wasn’t shamed, he was being held accountable. Because you did ABC, you will have to pay XYZ. Accountability was the inevitable cost. He was going to lose his job, his reputation, his standing in the community, and probably his family. The price was too high — hey, that’s accountability for you! — and wasn’t willing to face it. His shame was about being caught, being exposed. He felt no internal shame at all or he never would have signed up and cheated.
What is it we learn about FWs here? Cheaters don’t feel shame, they only feel consequences.
I am truly shaking my head at the idea that ANY of the people involved with AM feel victimized in any way. I’m disgusted that anyone would feel sympathy for them. Some part of me wants to ask every sympathizer out there if they feel equal sympathy for the spouses and families of the cheaters who went through every conceivable form of victimization including their situation being publicly outed.
When I lived in Florida, every single year the county to the north of us would publish what was known as “The October Surprise”… which was no surprise to anyone but the people they caught. They published the pictures and names of people who were caught trying to get a little too friendly with children, (you know what I mean). The county nailed them legally then exposed them.
No one ever said, “Ah poor dude, he will never get to work at Disney again!” No one considered them victims of being shamed.
People detested them.
Why do we give sympathy or courtesy to cheaters? For the love of all that’s Holy, no one on AM can even fall back on the drunk hookup, or the never-planned-office-affair. Those people went out of their way to manage their cheating. They paid for the privilege and convenience.
Nope, no sympathy here. None whatsoever.
I agree. John Gibson was finally held accountable.
An article from The Washington Post (“Why the wife of a pastor exposed in Ashley Medison hack spoke out after his suicide” by Abby Phillip, now with CNN) mentioned that he had struggled with sexual addiction and depression for most of their marriage, and then the shame of being exposed pushed him over the edge. Well, the world finally knew the truth.
The article cited the hackers who said, “Learn your lesson and make amends.”
When his wife was asked if she could have forgiven him, she said, “I hope and pray that I would have been able to forgive because in the past, God’s given me the grace to be able to do that.”
That poor woman.
Added thought: Joshua Duggar.
He was exposed when the hack went down, and had THREE accounts on AM. His sweet wife stuck with him, but now he’s in jail for kiddie p o r n.
I almost wonder if people who used AM weren’t also hiding a multitude of other terrible secrets. It wouldn’t surprise me.
It’s the “tip of the iceberg” argument. What Josh Duggar’s wife (and the others) found out was only a fraction of what there was.
Thanks, Ashley Madison for all your care & concern for your now-defunct cash cow customers! I sure appreciated getting an STD from my then-husband…but hey, you don’t give a crap about us who suffered, were betrayed or lost family funds to cheating, amirite?! All those Ashley Madison executives & staff can go fuck themselves! Bunch of loser creeps!!!
Fucking themselves is the only punishment you’re imagining? Daw, you’re such a sweet person. My imagination runs a bit south of that. Fiery single car freeway wrecks. Things like that.
Well, I don’t care how they fuck themselves, just that they have it happen to them. Fiery crashes works too lol
No animals were harmed in this daydream…
😡Another reason to be glad I don’t have Netflix.
Of course, the evil Netflix – and all these production companies are evil propaganda outlets – is going to push the Come Let Us Be Victims Together narrative. Let’s all have “Christian” suicide pacts because Christians are all dummies who just line up and volunteer to be abused. Unfortunately this is what we’ve come to. And yet….there have been centuries of various types of Christianity in which behavior like adultery might be punished with at minimum, social ostracism and shunning (which I advocate) or jail terms. Now we all try to be “kind” at the expense of our dignity and self respect. NO THANK YOU.
These women (and it’s usually women because women tend to want consensus and can’t we all get along anyway instead of being up for the fight) are going to end up with two choices generally – either they’re going to keep their fake marriages going until they find out AGAIN and maybe AGAIN….and maybe AGAIN….that their husbands have not stopped cheating because….why should they, there are no consequences except “hurt feelings” and they don’t give a shit about that….OR they’re going to finally wake up and get the dreaded divorce. I’ve seen these recon people end up this way repeatedly. No one, especially someone with kids wants a divorce. But it’s better to get it done earlier than later. So many of us have had EARLY D DAYS in our marriages/relationships and in looking back we wish we’d got out then. I certainly should have. But for one reason or other, we waited, hoped, worked at it, tried harder, smiled more…..and got the NEXT D DAY and the NEXT because…..the overwhelming majority of them do not stop cheating. They only stop cheating when they PERSONALLY HAVE CHANGED INSIDE. When there is no longer a need or desire to cheat. Or when they get too old to get it up. Well….they could still do it online I guess.
The tragedy of this Netflix shit is that it introduces MORE PEOPLE TO THE CONCEPT OF CHEATING ESPECIALLY VIA ASHLEY MADISON, which is the PURPOSE of the “documentary”. It is pro-cheating, pro Ashley Madison propaganda. Our overlords DO NOT WANT happy successful marriages with children because that takes away from the need for Daddy Government and also makes Corporate Slavery secondary to the needs of a family and community. They want to own us body and soul and destroying marriage and family is the way to that. IMO, this is not just a moral issue, it’s a political issue as well – all of this promotion of infidelity is deliberate with goals, especially financial goals, in mind.
Mm, Netflix also produced El Conde (but probably only because they didn’t understand it). Kind of a mixed bag but you’re not wrong that these companies tend to lean in a certain direction.
The United States already had a go at examining and monetizing cheating with a two-decade TV show “Cheaters”.
Cheaters (American TV series) – Wikipedia
It actually seems to have had enormous success in recruiting chumps and confronting cheaters (with a smattering of paid actors). And since didn’t go beyond the “ah ha – caught you” moment, the viewer wasn’t preoccupied with reconciliation. The cheaters all demonstrated the charm, rage and pity responses.
I can’t even watch fictional cheating stories. Actually, happy marriage and family holiday shows are still triggering.
Regarding reconciliation: for those of you who know some of my story, you know that I reconciled with FW (at her request) after she confessed to affairs halfway through our marriage. Spoiler alert – she cheated again, and even worse. I actually didn’t need LACGAL to decide that reconciliation was pointless – I was already divorced when someone gave me the book to read. I needed the book to feel better about my decisions, because God knows most other people won’t. Come at me with whatever you like: Did you try reconciliation? What about your role in the dynamic? Is this best for the kids? I tried everything to place scaffolding around the marriage, and FW did everything she could to knock the legs out from under it … but she never actually asked to end the marriage, of course.
Here’s what Tracy gets right on the damn nose in the book: if you are being asked/pressured/shamed into reconciliation, maybe it will work! But, realize that you are being asked to rebuild and reinvest in a relationship with a person with a demonstrated track record of willful deceit and lack of empathy. WHY would anyone want to do that?
There are honest and ethical ways to address problems in a relationship. There are honest and ethical ways to have sex with other people while in a relationship (if that’s your thing). There are honest and ethical ways to end a relationship.
Cheating is NONE of these things. For all the post hoc rationalizing, whining, and complaining by FWs about how their chump wasn’t fulfilling their needs, they never once made the decision to END the relationship that was apparently so unfulfilling.
The cultural narratives that mollycoddle cheaters are insulting for one main reason: they assume that there’s something about cheaters or human nature that chumps just don’t understand. I’m sorry, but no, we know exactly what type of people FWs are.
“they assume that there’s something about cheaters or human nature that chumps just don’t understand. I’m sorry, but no, we know exactly what type of people FWs are.”
Indeed. Which is why FWs get so angry when we call them out and remain angry at us long after divorce. We know who they really are. They can’t snow us anymore. That represents a loss of control, which infuriates them. Even if they don’t want to be with us, they still want to control us and get us to buy into their image management. I know my FW still worries about who I might tell. His new GF, for example. He hasn’t accepted that I don’t care enough to bother. He will never believe that, because he has to feel central. In his mind I am still in agony over his betrayal and jealous of the poor woman he is currently preying on. I suspect he can’t even get it up anymore without some kind of triangulation. I think that’s part of why they prefer cheating to honest polyamory; their abuse-o-sexuality requires triangulation.
My husband had his lawyer send an NDA!
Good grief! Their gall is never-ending.
What? Great way to divulge that his greatest fear is being exposed.
Oh, yes!
😆🤣😂🤪
Did you sign it?
ha! No! I told him and his lawyer, “my story is mine to tell”.
OT; so I’m experiencing another consequence of being chumped; as one of the few single women in the neighborhood, I seem to have a stalker neighbor. This asshole has been harassing me in the street occasionally for about a month, but yesterday he escalated into swerving his rusty old pedophile wagon (white van, typical creeper vehicle) as if he was going to run us over and then stopping right next to my daughter and I to insult us. I’ve been cool, calm and collected until now. He was openly nasty to my daughter, so I lost it. I told him to go fuck himself and that if he didn’t stop bothering us I would take legal action. Next time I will whip out my phone and film him so I have proof. My daughter is terrified that he will come and hurt us.
I can’t help but think this is partly FW’s fault. This guy is the type of cowardly bully who wouldn’t be doing this if we had a man around. He doesn’t bother my married neighbors.
I’m 61 years old FFS. When are these evil men going to leave me alone? I’m told I look late forties, about the same age as this dick, so maybe that’s part of it. Or, more likely (and this part really worries me) he is a sick fuck who is after my daughter. Apparently, he believes her to be a teenager, but she is actually in her 30s. He has not said anything sexual as of yet, but he has that vibe to him. A few weeks ago he stopped the pedo wagon in the middle of the street I was walking on and sat there staring malevolently at me for several minutes. I am worried because he seems to be escalating. I may have to get a lawyer to send him a cease and desist. But ultimately, with these people, I have found the only thing that gets rid of the ever-present fear of violence is moving. We have been so happy here until this started. I would hate to leave. ☹️
Oh God. The gauntlet of uninvited dicks. I’ve been stalked four times and I think it’s already passed the point of legal action. If you can hire a PI briefly to get a name, you might find a criminal record with which to go to police but you can also go to police with just a license plate and a description of this psycho’s behavior to start a paper trail. Don’t walk out the door again without your phone in your hand to film anything that happens. There may be a way to contain him so it’s not you who has to move. So sorry this is happening.
Yeah, I was thinking of hiring a PI. I want to know what I’m up against. I know where he lives (within sight of my house, unfortunately) so I got his name with that. No social media or any other references to him found as of yet.
Thanks for your advice and support, HOAC. It helps.
I’ve been there and know how, when dealing with things like this, it’s so deeply unsettling on a primal level that it that makes it all too easy to sink into a minimizing trance where you’re like, “Uh, the hamster’s not dead, no, it’s just sleeping…” In those moments we all need objective third parties to look at the facts and tell us the hamster is, in fact, dead as a door nail. This guy is giving every classic indication of being dangerous and likely has a rap sheet if not a history of being held in psych wards. I wouldn’t want to take the gamble that he’s merely a harmless nut. On top of gathering evidence and reporting, see if you can upgrade home security and warn neighbors.
You can always simply go directly to police since your daughter is also a witness to this intimidating and continuing behavior. But if you don’t trust local cops to get off their duffs and go the extra mile to dredge up this individual’s identity and address and any criminal track record, it could help to go armed with information and video evidence. Going in with evidence and simply being polite and earnest-but-worried kind of twists their arms to do something because they start imagining that video surfacing on the 6 o’clock news.
Sometimes they’ll stonewall you just to test if you’ll lose your shit which would enable them to write you off as a crank or a nut. It’s really just a golden opportunity to demonstrate how appealing and sympathetic you’ll seem to news viewers when you explain how police did nothing. I had this whole “genteel damsel knit-brow-pursuit-of-truth” routine I’d do when being stonewalled, like “Oh! I see, so sorry. We were told by our local representative to come here and speak to you (it helps if you actually make that “concerned citizen” inquiry to reps first, maybe along the way compliment them on recent policy, chat a bit, etc.). Should we instead go to state police?” Cops usually rethink, regroup and relent after that.
Update; I found out that he owns an unsuccessful contracting business without even any references from customers, reviews, or membership in any business organizations. I thought I detected stereotypical blue collar machismo, so that explains it. But at least it means he probably doesn’t have the money to go through a lawsuit. It also means he’s vulnerable to having his reputation trashed and losing his business altogether. An opponent with something to lose is much better than one with nothing to lose.
I do have good reason not to trust the local cops and to think they won’t believe me, but if he escalates I will have to go that route. There isn’t enough for charges as it stands, as he’s made no threats and this was the first time I warned him off. If he ignores the warning and bothers us again, that could be enough to at least get them to warn him to stop.
I used to work in the security industry and I can tell you that home security isn’t worth a whole hell of a lot. In the words of one expert whose name I can’t recall; “If they want in badly enough, they’re getting in.” If you have a motivated psycho on your hands, they will find ways around it. The systems can be helpful if the threat is from amateurish B&E artists. Ring and perimeter cameras are a joke. All you have to do is wear a hoodie to foil them. Anything which detects motion would be going off constantly because I have wildlife living on the property and visiting frequently. I’m out in the boonies. For armed response alarm systems, response would be coming from too far away to get here in time. I may get a door and window alarm without motion detectors. That could give me more time to grab the axe, hunting knives and bludgeoning tools I keep handy at all times.
I did tell my next door neighbor about the creep, plus a sizeable male friend came over last night and made a big show of working in the yard, then we strolled slowly past the asshole’s house. My friend will come back and do it again for awhile. It can’t hurt.
Thanks again, HOAC. ♥️
So glad you’re on top of this and know who the creep is. I’m big on paper trails so I might still recommend going to the police and saying that’s what you’re trying to establish. All hail strapping male friends willing to play beard and body guard.
Yes, there have been a lot of unwanted male bids since I was left on my own three years ago. It’s like I’m a discounted item they can get for cheap so they shrug and have a half-hearted go at it. Not just discounted in the eyes of society, but also I’m just small and poor and there’s no male around to defend me and challenge them. It feels disrespectful and insulting and sexist and predatory. It emphasizes my vulnerability (as if my ex didn’t expose that already). I’m so sorry, OFFS, that you are experiencing that situation, that’s awful.
Thanks Chumpty Dumpty.
It feels insulting, sexist and predatory because that’s exactly what it is. They may think women alone are desperate for a man, or more likely, they don’t even consider that and are doing it just because they can. Creepers gotta creep.
My friend is a widow. Her friends ex husband started stalking her. He is mentally ill was driving around looked suspicious so police pulled him over and he said he was trying to find her house but forgot where she lived. Luckily we are in a small town the police officer knows her and that she contacted the police regarding showing up there and calling her alot. Found out weeks later he was in jail for stalking another woman, then was released and homeless. Definitely think he saw her as a (mark) woman with a job, a house and that she would be interested in him because hey hes a man and women need men. His ex wife worked and he wasnt able to hold a job. All women are of use.
Yes, when I’ve had single, male visitors on rare occasions at my house, their ears perk up as they look around, and I can see the gears turning in their minds,picturing themselves living here, with a free appliance thrown in! Nice house, domesticity, an attractive woman, some nice kids.. and all at a major discount because they “found” me in the “75% off — final sale” displays! My husband’s discards! (That’s how I think they see it, at least…)
Once you realize many men see woman as property, as useful objects, there’s no going back. For better or for worse, you can’t unsee it
Yikes! I’m happy his memory is so poor!
I have a Swedish friend and from how they describe it. They have children first, then if they feel its working out, they marry. They also said that if they get a divorce their life doesnt change. The person moves out, helps raise the kid, their job stays the same, they get free childcare, healthcare, they get paid to reproduce, free nursing home. Thats why so many people are migrating there after 6 months they get all the benefits and then cause violence with their gang activity. Their standard of living remains the same. The men Ive met are very domestic. So its a completely different culture. They pay higher taxes but I have a small business and I can tell you I pay ALOT of taxes and get nothing in return.
I think that the numbskull quoted here about being Swedish actually meant to say, “I’m Switzerland,” i.e., neutral. He’s just too uneducated to understand history and geography.
Brilliant summation–albeit sad. I’ve posted that the direction they took didn’t trigger me (and it didn’t), but I did find it atrocious that they missed the opportunity to highlight the full spectrum and went for the typical trope instead. This post of yours alters that. I didn’t know the full story of how two were chosen from CN, and now that I do–fucking shame on them lying and for biting into the ‘religion sells’ ratings grab apple.
I watched the documentary.
All of it – and the moment at the end of the Rader’s story when the interviewer asks how they feel about the fact that the Ashley Madison website was still around told you everything you needed to know about how “awesome” an RIC marriage is.
Nia visibly went into shock and mumbled “I didn’t know that was still around” and went silent with a 1000 yard gaze.
Her entitled as fuck husband literally did a choking spit take – and it wasn’t because he was surprised. Once he stopped coughing – and figured out his reply he mumbled “That’s an website of pure evil”.
Yup. He’s still on AM – and I’m sure he’s not – in his words – “stupid enough” to use his real info this time.
Sounds like hell.
I’m not going to watch it, but just EEEWWW!
Thank you Chumplady for reviewing the Ashley Madison documentary. I saw it on the Netflix menu, “thought” briefly about watching it and then skipped it to binge watch Jewish matchmaking and Indian matchmaking- which proved to be far more interesting. So, you saved me valuable time that I didn’t have to waste.
I discovered about 3 years post divorce filing that my fuckwit husband had been on Ashley Madison when the scandal broke. Was not too shocked. I absolutely LOVED the fact that he and many others were exposed. It was a great, satisfying LOL for me.
I am glad that you Chumplady didn’t waste time participating. The Netflix producers made the plastic continuation of infidelity as the big, sexy, naughty adventure. They don’t want to go down the reality path of betrayal to a spouse, devastated kids, teenagers who start cutting themselves, STD’s, children who get abandoned both emotionally and financially etc. THAT is not the ‘Big Sexy” to entertained the public with. If there was any truth to such a documentary? Well, it would have to be classified under the Horror or True Crime category.
Exhausting, exhausting, exhausting. Doesn’t surprise me, though.
Also, unrelated, but I’m in the middle of watching a video on Jennifer Lopez. Apparently, she’s notorious for treating other people like garbage. A particularly wild story is some woman talking on a podcast about how Jennifer Lopez asked a bunch of backup dancers if any of them were virgos, and fired the ones that were. But more interestingly, her big push into the limelight was supposedly because Mariah’s ex wanted to get back at Mariah and try to ruin her career. I’m not much of a celebrity drama person, but popped up in my feed, and I decided to take a look after reading the article earlier. Thought I’d share!
Whenever a woman is strong, especially when she’s a female boss, people criticize her when they don’t do the same to a male boss displaying the same behaviours. J-Lo may or may not be a nice person, but I’m going to be dubious of this claim because of the often sexism involved into tearing strong women down. I see people are saying Ben Affleck is “happier, smiling” and people are saying it’s because he left J-Lo. I think Ben is doing impression management to cast her in a bad light. He is after all, a cheater & an alcoholic who cheated on his former wife with the nanny. He left his sweet family & blamed former wife for his drinking…but I see people are quick to blame J-Lo for their marriage troubles and not Ben!
Oh, no, I’m not calling Ben Affleck a victim! But other powerful, strong celebrity women – Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, Mariah Carey, etc. – don’t have a reputation and history of mistreating the “little people” around them. (I have strong thoughts on how all billionaires, including minority billionaires, aren’t to be trusted, but that’s a discussion for another time.) I was just surprised, because I haven’t paid much attention to celebrities in that way.
Although, I always got vibes from Ben Affleck. He always felt off to me.
So everything then, as expected. I’m trying so hard to give you my surprised faced but it just flipped me off and went back to bed 🤷