ChumpLady.com

Leave a cheater, gain a life

If You Think I’m THAT Sort of Person…

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Did anyone see the interesting story in the New York Times the other day about the fake Buddhist monks in Times Square? Apparently, there are a bunch of charlatans dressing up as Buddhist monks and nuns and aggressively pan-handling on the street. Pressing bracelets on tourists and then demanding $20. Badgering people to donate to […]

Surely You Must’ve Known

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Are your powers of premonition pretty lousy? Me too. I have no idea who is going to win the election or what the stock market is going to do next quarter. But when it comes to infidelity, you would’ve thought that everyone is clairvoyant and that particular super power skipped you. Because after you discover your […]

Dear Chump Lady, How do I fix my picker?

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Dear Chump Lady, I have a question for the New Year — as we’re all thinking about new beginnings. It’s a simple question but I’m sure the answer is not so simple: Do you have any advice on how to fix a broken picker? I’m nowhere near ready to date yet. Not even close. But […]

The Cheater Work Ethic

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“Gotta work late” is the oldest cheater excuse in the book. The lamest. The most worn. And a line nearly every chump falls for. Because, God, it sounds so virtuous. Who are you to call them on their shit when they are busting their ass for their family working over time? Aside from the fact […]

UBT: “Sometimes You Need to Betray the Social Order”

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God, I love me some Orwellian doublespeak. I like to end the week on a participatory note. So your homework today until Monday is to write Chump Nation some doublespeak in the vein of this Esther Perel gem I found on her Facebook page: Betrayal is awful but sometimes you need to betray the social order to create […]

UBT: “I Wasn’t Trying to Manipulate You”

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Today’s Universal Bullshit Translator tidbit comes from Arlo, who sent it in after reading an article I shared on Facebook about gaslighting. (Which is a great article, btw, you can read it here.) Having more than a few A-HA moments, Arlo shared the article too. No sooner had she shared it, then her soon-to-be-ex-husband texts her. Arlo writes: […]

UBT: “You Were So Perfect, I Had to Cheat.”

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Usually cheaters run chumps down and blameshift their affairs. You Weren’t Meeting Their Needs. You suck. They love you, but just not in that clandestine-hooker-profile-rent-a-room kind of way. Yet every now and then chumps get this particular bit of mindfuckery from the self-pity channel: “I cheated because I was insecure and needed a distraction. I suffer from low self-esteem […]

The Dead-Eyed Stare

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So what about those dead-eyed stares, huh? The other day a thread broke out on the blank look cheaters give you when you confront them with their lies. What is that look? Condescension? Vacancy? Amusement? Are the manipulation wheels spinning so fast, the facial expressions are set in neutral? What’s going on in there? I remember […]

The Trickle Truth Is Neither Trickle Nor Truth

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Add to the list of Reconciliation Industrial Complex euphemisms I despise — “trickle truth.” I’ve ranted about “wayward” before and the “fog,” but it only recently occurred to me that “trickle truth” is equally moronic… or Orwellian. (Moronically Orwellian? Deviously Orwellian? Anyway…) “Trickle truth” is like “truthiness,” the term comedian Stephen Colbert coined for the rebranding of […]