Cheater Word Salad
Chump Lady used to be a think tank editor in her younger days. Think tanks are those marble buildings on K St. in Washington, D.C. where “policymakers” work — usually people with impressive credentials and colossal egos.
Think tank publishing is mostly vanity publishing and not every book was stellar. But I learned an important lesson as a young editor. There was a direct correlation between good writing and clear messages — and bad writing and WTF-is-the-point-here?! word salad.
Word salad is when you string a bunch of five-dollar words together that appear to have meaning, but actually signify nothing. Writers who didn’t have anything of substance to say, but still wanted to appear Very Important were the worst word salad offenders. The kind of people who say “paradigm” a lot.
One of my favorite actual word salad sentences during my tenure was: “It aspires to a position of synthesis.”
“This makes no sense whatsoever,” I wrote to the author — so he recast the sentence to read: “It aspires to a position of synthesis with respect to other values.”
Oh gee thanks. Much clearer…
The point of word salad, near as I can tell, is to intimidate. It’s a crazy offensive play to dazzle you with bullshit, and if you resist, they will just jibber jabber at you more insistantly…. with respect to other values, you MORON! If you persist in failing to understand the word salad, they will look at you pityingly. Clearly this discourse is too sophisticated for one such as you.
Cheaters love word salad. It’s condescension, opacity, and aggression all tossed together in a light balsamic vinaigrette.
“I am not defined by my relationships” is cheater word salad. At first it sounds vaguely reasonable. Then you think about it. Huh… then what ARE you defined by? Wife, mother, neighbor — these things play no part in your identity? What is the point of such a statement? “I am not DEFINED…” (condescension) “By my relationships.” (If you have a problem with my cheating, well such fuckbuddy “relationships” do not define me.)
Flutter and vagueness are large ingredients of word salad. The cheater doesn’t want to be pinned down, or directly understood. “I didn’t say that. Did you say that?”
Chumps then apply their own Rorschach test to word salad. They look at it and interpret what they want to read into it. Oh, maybe that means remorse. Or maybe it means I am the person really at fault here. I think they’re saying they didn’t do anything wrong…. or maybe they’re saying they did… shit, I can’t tell.
Exactly.
This column ran previously. I’m recycling occasionally while I’m updating my site. Feel free to comment!
Now I know what it’s called! I got a whole letter full of it from my ex and I’m surprised it didn’t drip real olive oil. I never did figure out what he meant but it seemed sincere! It was so mixed up I couldn’t just pick up the lettuce and discuss it sensibly with him, followed by arugula and then sliced spring onions. There was nothing I could do but stare at it, going WTF? I got to be known as an unforgiving vengeful you know what for not taking it as an obvious sincere admission and apology for whatever it was he couldn’t quite name and wasn’t guilty of anyway because he meant well. Ha ha ha.
I think I have bought into the word salad I was being fed for years because I didn’t want to face the truth. It was much easier to keep my head down and keep trying harder so he would love me. He wrote me a long letter after I tried to leave him in 1999 that asked over and over “why?” Why don’t I talk with him? Why aren’t i more open? I wanted to believe that he really did want to be my friend as he said so I double down and let him back in. Ten years later he had another affair, this after years of heaping abuse upon me and my kids. We had attended marriage seminars, read the books, saw multiple counselers, but still he was justified, because I wasn’t open enough, I was a frigid pole ( but I am sure our sex life was better than most couples), I didn’t fold his clothes right, or he needed to see if he still had feelings for his old gf. It all sounded so silly this time. My head knew his words were bull, but my heart still wanted to be with him, or it was the fear taking over again. This time my head won out. He was spinning words and excuses so quickly even he couldn’t keep up. I think you have to really be in tune with your intuition when they start the blaming and trying to confuse facts, if deep inside you know it isn’t right or feels off, it probably is.
You know, it’s a crime that our culture values the idea of “marriage” more than the people in the marriage. Had you felt–really felt–that “heaping abuse” on you and the kids was a deal breaker, had someone told you in pre-marital counseling that here are the things you must never tolerate, you might have left a lot sooner. Glad, though, that you got yourself out.
Sadly, I know the church knew about the abuse, but they believed the marriage was more important than the health of me and my kids. One if the counselers did tell me to leave. He sent ny STBX out of the room and told me I was married to an abuser and to get my boys and leave. Problem is, I was very depressed at the time and felt like I was heading for a nervous breakdown. The church sent us to another counselor that promised he could help me, but I had to start counseling with mt STBX again. I really had hope again, but the counselor ignored the extant of the abuse. When I told him about my husband balking me out on Easter, threatening to leave if I didn’t change in 60 days, leaving his wedding ring in my Easter basket, screaming at my son and I while driving erratic from a church event, the counselor told me I needed to make sure I didn’t do anything to set him off. I should have thought ahead when I saw the situation beginning, I should have read the signs and stopped it. Then things got better again, but less than a year later my STBX went on a cruise with an old girlfriend telling me it was my fault, I had let him fall. The counselor was still trying to save our marriage, he told me my husband needed a lot of attention. I stopped seeing that guy and went back to the guy that told me to leave my husband. I wasted six years and recieved a lot more pain, but divorce proceedings have begun. I am a bit resentful. I don’t understand why the church would not make sure my family was safe, that they only cared about the marriage. The counselor that blamed the problem on me is an elder in our church. When I told him I wanted to divorce my husband he sternly warned me how hard divorce is. Harder than living with an abusive cheater, I think not!
Writer 65, do you mind telling me if it was the Catholic church that gave you such bad advice?? I hear this often about the ”church”. I ask, because the same thing happened to me.. I dragged the masturbating teen porn addict down to see the priest ( I know, I know, it was during my I CAN FIX THIS crazy phase). The priest told me that” viewing porn was not, strictly speaking, infidelity.” Funny, it sure as shit FELT that way!!!! Then, after finding 16,000, yes 16,000 photos and videos in a dummy account on our home computer, and taking my babies and leaving for a week, the priest chastised me and said I should not have left, but come to him instead, that all men do it and, no it’s not right , but ”strictly speaking”………
So, at 8 1/2 months pregnant with child # 5, I caught him yet again, dragged him to the priest, and yep. Same ol’ same ol’. When I finally kicked this asshole out, only ONE person called me to see what was wrong. I had stopped going to Mass altogether. He took the children and kept up his image as an upstanding, Catholic and very pious man. I withered at home. Sick, scared after giving up my career 14 years before to to stay home, raise and homeschool kids. Wondering what the hell was I gonna do??? So, I was just wondering if all faiths put the marriage before the sanity of the person being asked to eat shit sandwiches and pretend that it is filet mignon or just the Catholic church? Argggggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No, I am not catholic, I think saving marriage even with infidelity is in right now. Our preacher is a child if divorce and preaches often about saving marriages, even after an affair. Yes, I believe in marriage and yes, I want to do what is best for my kids, but the divorce is not what is breaking my son’s heart, finding out his dad cheated on his mom did that. I think people just don’t understand as they do not live in my home. They see this charming guy that is always ready to help those in need at church. They believe his lies, they thought it was my sons fault when my STBX attacked him. And my STBX has set me up as the crazy nagging wife for years. They bought his lies of victim hood while me and my kids really haven’t had a voice.
To be fair, there are people at church that have been kind and supportive, I guess having the elders not support me is what hurt.
I am so sorry that happened to you and your son. It is a travesty that the very people that should help, make things worse. And for me, being shunned by people I had attended church with for 9 years really hurt. You did the right thing. But, divorcing is NOT what I wanted, but after 14 tears of lying, secrets and financial ruin, and realizing change was never gonna happen, I had to pull the trigger.
It was 22 years for me, this is not what I wanted either, but at some time we have love and respect ourselves and the only way to do that is to set ourselves free from the lies and abuse. I think I may be changing churches soon just to start new where people don’t know the old me, because I am not that quiet, scared person anymore. I am happy and outgoing now that I don’t have someone telling me everyday what a loser I am.
Oh and here’s a great word salad gem. ” Teen porn??? Oh I know it SAYS ”hot sexy teen nymphos”, but all of those sites have a disclaimer the ALL of the girls photographed are over 18”.
Another one, when I told him that all those women are made up and airbrushed to look so perfect he exclaimed ”oh no! You don’t understand! I was on a site where men photograph their wives, and this was RAW footage! And these women were absolutely FUCKING BEAUTIFUL!!!! ” . OK I FEEL BETTER NOW ASSHOLE. I had to walk away from him when he told me that shit, saying he was being ”transparent” with me, because I wanted to slap his stupid ass into next week.
I think “the church,” as in institutionalized religion, is part of the problem. What your story really illustrates is how little some “counselors” know about marriage, abuse, therapy, and disorders of the mind and character. It also illustrates how hard people will fight to maintain the status quo in their lives, out of fear or duty or honor (as in “I made a vow”). I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: people should be told by parents, aunts and uncles and other healthy adults that marriage is not a life sentence of abuse. They should be told that horrific outbursts, verbal attacks, threats, intimidation and manipulation are forms of abuse. And that psychological and emotional abuse are deal breakers. They should be told that cheating is dangerous to the chump’s health, that it threatens the economic foundation of the family, and that cheating is therefore a deal breaker. AS CL says over and over, if the cheater is sorry, let the cheater show that by moving out, paying support, being kind and thoughtful and faithful over a period of time (not 2 weeks or 30 days. Let the cheater court the chump again (regardless of gender). And for anyone to make staying in an abusive relationship a condition of someone getting help for depression, and in particular in a case where the spouse is abusive and unfaithful, well–how stupid and incompetent.
Divorce is hard, but done well and for the right reasons (not for the skank of the week), divorce can help people get out of relationships that will destroy them. And again, how stupid is a counselor that “counsels” someone to do the easy thing that is self-destructive rather than the “hard” thing that can lead to healing? My therapist always wants me to do the think that’s “hard,” because that usually is moving me away from fear, or reactivity or inertia. Sorry you ran into a total idiot masqueraiding as a “counselor.”
And I meant to say that young people should hear these things before marriage. No way I would shell out thousands for weddings and not tell my kids that if their partner turns out to not be abusive, they need to get out and not wait.
I came from an abusive family, I really didn’t know how a normal marriage was supposed to work, my marriage pretty much mirrored my parents except I don’t think my dad cheated on my mom, physical, verbal abuse is normal with my parents. I wish I had known that abuse was enough to leave, but the one counselor that told me I should leave also explained that by being abusive my husband had already broken our vows. Right before I found out about his last affair, I had been speaking with my STBX on the phone, and he was being mean like he hated me. When I hung up I realized that once my youngest moved out, no one in my home would love me except my dog. At that moment I thought “if he ever cheats again, I am leaving” I think God heard me, not long after I found out about his affair, but he said it was only a EA, that he hadn’t slept with her, I still didn’t think that was enough to divorce, months later I found out about the cruise. I was praying that God would show me what to do and then I got up and immediately found his secret face book page with a picture of him smiling on a beach with her. What a big chump I am, but I think god was sending up flares by that time trying to help me see the light. I thank God every day that he has set me free, I am free from my own fear and blindness, but this is incredibly hard. I have to remind myself often that the nice charming guy with tears in his eyes while he says he is so sorry is the same guy that ripped my heart out and fed it back to me.
“Maybe we need to burn this thing to the ground to see if there’s anything we could rebuild on.”
“We need to go our separate ways to see if one day we could find our way back to each other.”
“This thing” was our 19-year marriage and intact family, and what I didn’t know at the time was that he was embroiled in an affair when he said tossed out these leafy greens.
Turned out there was a sinkhole. And I finally threw the map into the recycling bin.
Rally,
Did you tell him that you had no intention of walking that damn crooked road he had chosen so the chances of you finding your “way back to each other,” were pretty non-existent? Sweet Jayzus in a Jumpsuit! I’m surprised you didn’t throw up on his shoe when he said that.
Your X certainly etched the “ASS” in Jackass.
No, unfortunately, back then I fell for the romanticized turn of phrase because it made what was happening seem more noble or even hopeful, or some crap like that. You notice how his word salad always ended with the possibility that we might one day get back together? Yeah. By that time, I was so starved for anything hopeful coming from him that I would gratefully pounce on words like that.
Now I know that he was trying to pretty up the large shit sandwich he was about to feed me by wrapping it in paisley butcher paper. Whereas I was desperately trying anything not to have to destroy our daughter’s intact family.
The “find our way back to each other” line immediately preceded our removing our weddings bands from each others’ fingers. I was sobbing at the time — he wasn’t. That should have told me something. I didn’t yet know that he was heavy into his affair with the Whore of Babyl…er, Tampa.
Burn this thing down to the ground? What an ass.
Someone should stick an M-80
up that guy’s butt.
Oh, Dear God.
“I need to leave you to see if I miss you”
“My dating others benefits US”
“she’s country like me” (wtf? he doesnt even like to camp nor has he ever lived outside of city limits, ever)
“My dating others benefits US”
How generous and selfless of him to have an orgasm with other women behind your back. He manipulated you because he CARES. LOL! The stories cheaters tell themselves are truly baffling.
You sure you are spelling “country” right? Sorry. CL. Patriarchy, ya know,
Bahahahha! Couple extra letters in the word salad.
Oh boy, that’s a reminder I could have lived without 🙂 Not the whole “language that is misused to mislead rather than clearly communicate” part of the message, but that within the context of cheating.
For a split second there a memory flashed by of me being so frustrated I felt like I was about to blow a gasket 😉 Back Demon Memory #14! OK, all better now 🙂
I always though Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language” should be required reading for everybody, and it scales up and into other areas aside from politics quite easily, and it’s even more apt now than it was in 1946, IMO.
Here’s one link to it:
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
i just love that “Back Demon Memory #14!” i have a lot of those that my silly little heart keeps trying to bring up. now i will be chanting that saying!!! lol
Back when I was in the secondary classroom, we would have to attend professional development days and then divide into small groups and come up with something to turn in, to show we “learned” something and were participants. Often, because of my and others specialty areas, we would find ourselves in the same small group.
Time to get online and tap into the bullshit generator site! It was awesome in all of its specific and global paradigm shifts as we synthesized multi-level accessibility levels for the variants of intelligences across multidimensional and cross-cultural influences.
‘Nuff said.
WOW. You win. Where can we find that bullshit generator? I could use that at work.
Go to Google and type in jargon generator.
Here’s the site we used most often:
http://www.sciencegeek.net/lingo.html
“There’s a part of me that will always love you.”
Which part?
Down here, near my left ankle.
haaaaaa
the little toenail clippings
I just lost my coffee….thanks, Trusting!
Like that, left ankle comment.
me too, but possibly under the foot
or better yet the tip of his dick when he sees how good i look now. hahaha
OMG you guys are cracking me UP tonight!
Well, just said this on another thread but:
“I’ve told you I can love many people in many different ways”
“You never should have married me. I have so many issues I could commit suicide”
“You look old” – not much dressing on that one.
and, the last…
“I feel like a little wild animal trapped, trapped I tell you, in a cage!” boohoo
Time to throw that cage in the nearest river and drown his sniveling, cheating ass.
I think he meant ” many different positions”. That is my take, anyway. Probably a pretty acrobatic person.
“I feel like a little wild animal trapped, trapped I tell you, in a cage!”
Have you been hunting Timid Forest Creatures out of season again LOL
Both the word salad and the response are really funny.
From an email a few months ago. I’m giving you the abbreviated version:
“Poor me, poor me, poor me, very dramatic statements you usually only hear in soap operas, poor me.” Followed by salad.
“I know this all sounds pretty pitiful, but I don’t really feel sorry for myself. I just wish my life had taken a different course. This is not where I was meant to be.”
It makes my head hurt to try to understand those three sentences. They’re not complicated, but they make no sense! I think he does feel pretty sorry for himself, especially given that he can’t even take responsibility for where he is in his life. Where was he “meant to be,” I wonder? Off the word-salad topic, this email didn’t once acknowledge the pain he inflicted on our children.
Some of these are just about using passive voice to avoid responsibility.
I wish my life had taken a different course vs. I wish I had taken a different course.
This is not where I was meant to be vs. This is not where I meant to end up or even this is not where God meant me to be.
Yeah, I wish your life took a different course too, like the umbilical cord wrapped around your neck 3 times at birth! If only we weren’t so hurt and dumbfounded when they said this kind of CRAP!!
whoa – those 3 sentences make no sense. At.all. Is he happy…now? Is he remorseful that he lost you…now? Or did he mean…he never should have taken his path with you to begin with?
I see what a mindfuck that is. Not even worth trying to figure it out.
HE doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
well he knows he doesnt feel sorry for himself. and yet the next sentence expresses sorrow for the way his life turned out? i agree HE doesnt even know what he is talking about. more then likely trying to be the victim so she will feel sorry for him and fix it for him. fucktard. cant even get that right. haha
“I just want to be happy.”
“You weren’t happy when I met you. You appear not to be a happy person, unless everything goes your way and you have unlimited money. What I am doing that has caused you to be unhappy? You told me years ago that you were not responsible for my happiness – that each person is responsible for their own happiness.”
“The relationship isn’t making me unhappy.”
“What about the relationship isn’t making you unhappy?”
“[Marriage counselor] told you what I needed. I just don’t think we’re compatible and this is going to work.”
“We’ve been married over 25 years. When did you decide we weren’t compatible?”
“We’ve never been compatible. We don’t like the same things. You like the windows open when you sleep and I don’t. You get up really early.”
“I get up really early to go to work.”
“Right. And you don’t like to have sex in the morning.”
“I never said that. You don’t want to get up early enough to have sex without me being late for work.”
“We’re just not compatible, okay? [Marriage Counselor] told you I was different!”
This is representative and/or a variation of most of our arguments during the marriage. Remembering it makes my head want to explode.
The more trite the reasons, the deeper the involvement with the AP.
I got criticized going all the way back to the beginning of the marriage, too.
Thank you for this Chumpalicious. I believe you are right and I certainly never thought of that correlation.
i got the “i just want to be happy” thing too. ugh
I got “I just wanted to feel like a man again”…
“I deSERVE to be happy.”
Well, this, this is just iceberg with bottled thousand island, but he said, “You can leave your wife without leaving your kids. I didn’t leave the kids, I left you.” And then he left and only saw them a few hours a month from then on….
“The relationship is making me unhappy.”
Yep. I got ” I know you are hurt and all, but I did not get married to be celibate and you need to get over your issues so we can resume a sex life.” And ”It feels like my head is going to explode over this….I am going crazy! (In sotto voce) ”I feel like killing myself. I wouldn’t do it, I just feel like it.” (Yelling) ” I NEED HELP. HELP HELP HELP!!!!”
He only acted this way when I caught him, Dick in hand and lesbians on the screen. Yuck.
Irish, I’m Catholic and the first priest I spoke to basically told me to try to be a better wife and have a better sex life with the idiot. I finally ended up speaking with a really conservative older priest (he’s 80 and is more of a “fire and brimstone priest”, guess what he told me… Leave, don’t talk to him until he “fixes” himself. To say the least I was completely floored. After I told him how D-Day went he just kept on saying “what is he thinking”. I had been crying the whole weekend before cause I thought that this particular priest would tell me that I had to go back and give him another chance. This was D-Day 2, more like 22 but I was a chump to the core back then.
DeeL. All 3 priests I spoke to are ”traditional” priests. I expected them to really come down on him. Especially since it was the 3rd time I had dragged Stbx to talk to them. What a disappointment. I was basically told the same thing. Be a better wife. I think those words are so damaging. It is hard enough go through Dday after Dday, deception upon deception, gaslighting, lying and all the rest. Then to be told WE needed to try harder. Hell to the no! I had tried. Everything I know how to do and nothing, absolutely nothing stopped him.
“What about the relationship is making you unhappy?”
Love it. I got a similar version of the incompatible argument. AFTER 23 YEARS and 2 KIDS. Did you just decide this??? Later he tried to say I was the only woman who could make him happy. I just said, “It appears you’ve not been very happy with me the past, you are seeing someone else, so I don’t think you’re happy with me now. I predict that you won’t be very happy with me in the future, so no thanks.” He didn’t have an answer that time.
Late to the thread but that’s a good answer!
I also got the “we’ve been incompatible since the day we married” speech after 20 years of a marriage where he not only told me all the time that I was his best friend, he even had a little sign on his bathroom wall: “Happiness is Being Married to Your Best Friend.”
I am so sorry that happened to you and your son. It is a travesty that the very people that should help, make things worse. And for me, being shunned by people I had attended church with for 9 years really hurt. You did the right thing. But, divorcing is NOT what I wanted, but after 14 tears of lying, secrets and financial ruin, and realizing change was never gonna happen, I had to pull the trigger.
We can’t forget the classic – ‘I just want to be FREE’.
At almost 60?
Never knew you not to be free – you always did everything you wanted and got everything you wanted.
Go be free..old man.
yeah, it goes along with the ‘I never got to (or get to) do anything I want’
As this is said I flash on him fucking other women, right, never get to or got to do anything your poor little boy mind the little aged man who found himself destroying his family never got to do anything you never wanted?
So the affair, you didn’t want that, you were forced you were blackmailed into it.
If they could just go and not explain the stupidness.
I got that too beachi. Never mind the fact that I NEVER went anywhere or did anything without the kids in tow, and he hung out with “friends” at least twice a week without me or the kids for most of the marriage. Oh, even better, he “never got to make his own decisions.” Somehow the affair was MY decision? Must have been the OW’s decision.
His cheater word salad that messed with me the most was that I was “controlling and deserved to be cheated on.” It took a lot of therapy for me to realize who was the controlling one in the relationship, and spoiler alert, it wasn’t me.
🙂 oh come on, the music born free needs to be playing as he says that
Watch it. Just hit the big six-o. Bring on the Viagra.
Arnold, you are in fine form today. Don’t forget the condoms!! 🙂
My ex, in one of his more pronounced sad sack moments declared “I was punished for telling the truth”.
Yep, how dare I divorce him because he admitted not only to a 5+ yr affair with a co-worker but that he was in love with her?
And that he was never willing to give up this married girlfriend… “I am complex and capable of loving more than one person. I don’t operate in absolutes”.
Well, I do, you fucker. You’re absolutely an asshole.
Your last line is priceless.
That’s right, stay in that corner and keep repeating I was punished for telling the truth. And then remember, you weren’t telling the truth when your wife didn’t know.
Such a wrapped up in himself asshole
Paula, that’s awesome!
LIKE! Paula, rock on with your absolute self. 🙂
Oh and Tracy, you are so influential in my life that I’ve not allowed myself to use the word “paradigm” since I read this blog first go-round!!!!
hear hear Paula – Coming back from a nice resort vacation I asked him out of the blue (yeah, a little late from me) if he ‘made the phone call’ to his ex g/f. He said, ‘yeah, I’ve talked to her a few times’. My blood boiled and asked him what the 2nd call was about if the 1st ended it. His I can’t remember answer was enough for me. I was heartbroken because I thought he made a terrible mistake and would immediately cut it off with her now that I found out. Nope – turns out he had her fully engaged the whole time I thought he was trying to save our marriage. Can we be made bigger fools of?
paula – LOL! Me neither. Besides, it was so 90’s…
I noticed that Fiona Price person who critiqued your book on Amazon tossed a mean word salad. Or, should I say her paradigm resonated with the illusion of sophistry brought about, primarily, by pedantry and ascending condescension, blah, blah fucking blah.
Beautiful! Reminds me of Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes, Minister. (Brit reference)
You may say so, I cannot possibly comment…..
LOL, Arnold 🙂
One of my XW’s best, when denying a physical element to her myriad dalliances; ” Yes there were inappropriate relationships where the chemistry became sexualized”.
What a fucktard (apologies , Fiona).
I’d just pointed out that I had read her journal entries where she expressed her desire to ” stop having sex with strangers”.
These folks will look you right in the eye and deny, even when they are busted dead to rights.
So having sex with strangers=inappropriate relationships where the chemistry became sexualized.
Two great speech tricks there – 1) the passive voice. The chemistry mysteriously became sexualized.
2. Calling something by another, longer name that makes it sound vaguely neutral, but is really trying to hide something wrong.
These things, apparently happen. One day I was walking down the street and some chemistry sprang up and a bunch of raccoons attacked me and began humping my legs.
LOL.
bless you arnold, you can dish it out and make me laugh outloud, my children are looking at me like i am crazy.
Arnold…I caught my ex in the bed with the skank, and he denied to the day I went NC that anything happened. They were merely in the bed naked together, and I had a dirty, untrusting mind to assume there was sex involved.
The denial part still floors me….I mean, really????
You cannot make this stuff up. Unbelievable.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
“They were merely in the bed naked together, and I had a dirty, untrusting mind.”
THEY were naked, yet YOU’RE untrusting?
Like getting naked and in bed with other people is innocent… Sheesh!
Their clothes had somehow become infested with lice or ticks and they had to shed them and flee to the bed.
Holy crap! You’re on a roll! Ha ha Fi.
My ex said, “I need a woman who wants to ride the roller coaster of my life with me, and is willing to crash and burn.” He also said he wanted a woman who is an extension of him.
Of course, this is the same guy who when I asked him if he loved me, replied, “I need a lot of zest and excitement in my life, and if only you could give me that, I could give you your heart’s desire.” I guess that was a “no.”
Well, Glad, if your heart’s desire is a guy in a pink leotard then maybe….
Sounds like he needs a woman who doesn’t have needs of her own but is of service to him.
I hope you told him you had your own ride to ride and his extensions weren’t very appealing, particularly the crashy burny parts. I could offer a few suggestions as to what he could do with a zester as well. He doesn’t have a clue about any “heart’s desire” but his own.
Were they this idiotic to begin with? I kept thinking “he must think I’m stupid” until I realized he couldn’t detect his own bullshit. Maybe he’d just been swimming in it too long. His integrity got all pruney.
I think he mean that he needed a penis extension for the woman to ride, or she would fall off and crash and burn. That is my take, anyway.
Arnold, you’re killin’ it tonight! You are hilarious!
Usually he’d talk shit and then follow it up with “my therapist says so.” As if I wouldn’t notice the shit part.
These fuckers gain a whole new vocabulary from their “therapists”. I would love to hear all the fucking lies they tell their “therapists” and ” spiritual counselors”.
Agreed. Asshat doesn’t like the way I describe my feelings. It makes him feel bad about himself. He says it’s “unproductive”. I said UNPRODUCTIVE for whom?
Crickets.
Anyhow, he likes to dissect my statements and then tell me HOW I should be stating them to the fucking MC. Nope.
During our bogus reconciliation, one of my conditions was my ex had to go to therapy. He went for two appointments, although he canceled several times in between, then when the therapist said he seemed to have some issues and was very manic, ex refused to ever go back, saying the therapist, “wasn’t on his spiritual wavelength.”
These days I just shake my head in wonder that I ever put up with so much craziness for so long. Sheesh.
Maybe he should line his walls with tinfoil so aliens won’t compromise his “spiritual wavelength”.
Did your husband have a graying ponytail, wear a beret, use petoulie oil and carry a man purse, by any chance?
man-purse = murse 🙂
“I don’t do jealousy” – his standard brick walling when the topic of inappropriate contact with female colleagues came up. He was just mentoring them, you see.
“People change” when asked to explain why he just went off and started fucking someone else.
“We just arent suited” — I never forget this one because he wrote it without the apostrophe and that in a nutshell reminded me of his carelessness in everything he did. We were married 29 years.
Sometimes word salad doesn’t have to be complicated. Just meaningless will do.
“I don’t do jealousy” – oh yeah…..I heard that one too.
A statement that made the problem my jealousy, not his inappropriate behavior with other women, to include screwing them.
Yeah, the careless bit is a BIG red flag. Carelessness is part of the “I don’t have to follow the rules” package, along with laziness and arrogance. My ex had this lazy walk that I used to think was so sexy. He sauntered through life not giving a shit and his attitude was evident in his body language. It was right there from the beginning. If only I had known then how to ‘read’ it!
Holy crap, Marci and NeverAgain — that kind of carelessness is TOTALLY about “I don’t have to follow the rulz!” It’s pure arrogance. Didn’t think of it that way before now. Ex couldn’t be bothered to learn the difference between to/too and then/than, either. Or what “literally” means.
Soon after I met him in college, and he found out I was a journalism major, he showed me an article he had written, a write-up on John McEnroe, one of his idols, that he said he was going to send to Sports Illustrated. The piece was laughably awful, from A to Zinc. Not just the sentence structure, the flow, the grammar and the spelling, but the point of view and the quality of ideas. It was a bunch of cliches strung together by a rank amateur.
How many red flags do you think were flying in that one exchange with me? Gawd, when I think about it now, it literally makes my head explode.
McEnroe one of his idols ? ‘Nuf said.
DING!DING!DING!
A light bulb moment for me, too. Laziness, cutting corners, contempt for how things are done (sometimes he was right, I’ll admit…). There was the bit about not carrying adequate insurance. He had the attitude of, “Who cares?” and, “It’s FINE!” Then, “Nothing I do is good enough!”
He wanted fruit trees, but knew better than to prune them, because, obviously, the branches are reaching toward the sun! (So that meant that I had to prune the trees.) When we house-sat for friends as a young, unmarried couple, and he did not lift a finger, in spite of receiving careful instructions about watering the garden, “It’s FINE,” that left me with an uneasy feeling. I should have known….
Ah, well. He’s her problem now. What a disaster.
i forgot the “Nothing i do is ever good enough for you”
i was so sick of hearing that. i never put him down. i would always go over and beyond, just short of getting on my knee and worshiping his godliness. and that was just for putting the dishes in the dishwasher!! (even thou half the dishes and silverware was still in the sink, that man HATED to touch the silverware)
seriously, i made it a point to THANK him repeatedly for every single little thing he did. and yet he always said that. i am thinking now, it was for MORE kibbles, my signal to tell him, oh no you are so great, i am so stupid, your right.
Miss Sunshine,
I love you, I love your spirit and I love your clarity. The way you articulated this . . . OMG! I lived this as well. I remember being the STBX wanting to do certain things and me arguing against it, not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I knew I would be the one doing any REAL work that was involved. There were so many opportunities that may have been missed simply because I did not have the time or the energy to invest in anything else and still be able to maintain my family. So many times I felt as if he was setting me up in a no-win situation because I KNEW his contribution to whatever he was suggesting would be limited or non-existent.
It is so good to know that I am not the only one who endured this.
Mine was extra good at delegating…so I would end up doing everything…even after Dday, I was the one who got him the apartment, who wrote the divorce, who found a place he could buy (with my money), etc..what a chump I am!
Yeah, my ex didn’t use obscure words, complicated language, and page-long sentences.
She just invoked ridiculous mysticism to explain her worst behavior as if it were something noble. Meaningless pretty much sums that stuff up.
Your wife should move to Santa Cruz, CA., Nomar.
My ex emailed to me, the day after I found out about his affair, “I don’t think you have any idea about how hard it will be for me to see you with another man one day” (after I told him our marriage was over.)
About as hard as it was for me to know he’d been cheating, having unprotected sex with some slag and then with me at home whilst I was still breastfeeding our baby?
And although it isn’t word salad technically, this is the kind of stupid shit he’d say (this one was during counselling to try to work out relationship property division) – “Yes I know I’ve done a lot of things I shouldn’t have, BUT SHE TOLD PEOPLE ABOUT IT!”. Yep, that was the major crime, not that he’d done all this stuff, but that I hadn’t hidden it for him.
Justine, I got this too – how DARE I tell others about their affair! It could ruin OW’s career!
To which I replied, “I hope it does. Then maybe she’ll think twice about screwing some other woman’s husband to get ahead.”
I must admit, I still fantasise about contacting his AP’s boyfriend and letting him know what his beloved girlfriend was up to wih my XH whilst she worked out which man she wanted (she ended up dumping my XH who did know about the other man, but this innocent guy didn’t ever know he was being two timed with my Ex). Instead of ruining her career, I’d probably ruin her rleationship. Tempting…..
I don’t think it’s good to do it for revenge, but ChumpLady advocates telling someone for their own sake. Her boyfriend may be okay with her having had another guy and then choose him, depending on what their commitment was at that time. On the other hand, if he doesn’t know about this and he’s moving forward to marry her, he is being put in the position of making a life-changing decision without really knowing where he stands.
Because ruining someone’s marriage doesn’t matter?
Wouldn’t it be nice if he had told OW not to cheat with him because it might ruin her career?
Personally, I quite enjoy the prospect of ruining an OW’s career. After all, she ruined mine.
Now yau’ll don’t forget about our anger issues. You know, our anger is just TOTALLY out of line with offense!
This reminded me of when I discovered the cheating. X left his computer unlocked, and when I went by it to get to the laundry room, a message from his bimbo “dinged.” I read it and then read all the other declarations of love and forever. When I confronted him of cheating, he accused me of being a “computer hack.”
I guess to him, my reading his emails was far more egregious thank fucking another woman.
This screwed up thinking just exhausts me.
My STBX has conditioned my children to think that it is never about his behavior but about the response to his behavior. He had me conditioned, too, until he didn’t. When there are consequences, he is usually the victim being set upon or put upon by some nefarious outside force who doesn’t understand him and/or is out to get him. No one should respond to him negatively no matter what he says or does. If he says he’s sorry, or even if he doesn’t (and even if he really isn’t, because you know, he isn’t), you should recognize he’s a good guy and keep treating him well.
The problem is not his cheating, it is my response. The problem is not all the money he spent (because it was my spending that caused our debt – NOT) but my frustration with having to find a way to fill in the financial holes caused by his spending. The problem is not that he betrayed me but that I was totally devastated by his betrayal. If I loved him, I would want him to be happy even if it wasn’t with me (he actually said that).
Writing this is making my ass hurt, so even though there is soooo much more, I will stop now. What a donkey’s asswipe.
Yes! whiney serial narcissistic cheaters are all alike. I got the “I didn’t tell you about contacting escort x, slut y and activity z because I know how you would over-react, nothing happened… I was just bored, killing time…” “You’re over-sensitive… nothing “really” happened” “You always make me wrong.” ” I won’t be spied on!” “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
If I loved him, I would want him to be happy even if it wasn’t with me (he actually said that).
And then you realized that this sort of verbal vomit caused the first part of the sentence to be null, which voided the second part of the sentence.
Love is about valuing someone. I do not value a cowardly prick who does the shittiest thing to his family. I do not value a spineless loser who “loves” the sort of woman who smiles smugly as my children are doubled over in pain, crying, as their hearts and trust are irreparably wounded (SHE WINS!!) I do not love my ex, and I never will, and I’m not sure I ever did. I didn’t even know the scumbag, it turns out. So how could I love HIM?
I do not want anything for my ex, much less for him to be happy. I don’t have that power. I don’t think he, nor any of these jack-offs we all write about here, are “happy” people. I think they are vacuums. Best to steer clear.
We know better now.
And what about flipping that statement around, “If you loved me, you narcissistic asshole, you would have wanted me to be happy.” And since he didn’t “want” you to be happy, demonstrated by the affair(s), therefore, the first clause of the sentence can’t be true.
Yes, we do know better now, Miss Sunshine. Yes we do.
Chump Princess, This is exactly what my X thinks. It’s not what he did that HE finds truly horrendous, it’s my reaction to it, that must be scrutinized. Sadly, I’ve realized that this was always his pattern, even with small stuff, I just didn’t realize it.
Why do they always start the story from when someone ELSE does them wrong?
When I read stuff like this it reminds me of one of my biggest sources of shame: I married a fucking idiot. How could I have done that?
Arnold, as a person who has never suffered depression until I got mixed up with this fuckwad I get what you are saying. This is my shame. How in the hell could I have married this guy?? I have suffered depression since he left and that has been several years now. Even taking medicine doesn’t help that much. I beat myself up every day for getting involved with him. My self talk goes ‘ LEAVE it to you to find someone like HIM…blah blah blah.” Ugh it must go away some day. Gawd the damage these fucks do.
That is so interesting, Arnold, because in reality, that is probably my biggest source of shame.
I know that I am not responsible for xH’s behavior. I did not cause him to cheat, lie, abuse, abandon. That’s on him. I am not ashamed of what he did.
Still, I feel shame. I am single and alone in a sea of happily married couples (I actually am comforted and reassured by happy marriages, and adore my super-supportive marrieds). But I wear these ugly shoes because I chose wrong. I picked a loser to marry and make children with. I had a lot of warnings, including from friends, but I chose to override my discomfort with his social awkwardness, and this is where I stand now. I made a mistake that is public. And, worse, my children are suffering the consequences of my mistake. Their family, though not destroyed, is obviously broken, and isn’t that a shame? Yes, it’s true, many look at us and wonder what sort of idiot would leave this, but the fact remains, that our husband/father did leave. And I feel ashamed of it. I work around it, I make up for it to the best of my ability, and I realize nobody has a perfect family–they all have their issues. But I still feel shame for marrying a jerk. I could have and should have done better.
In the game of musical chairs, I am left standing alone.
Oh, well.
I found Brene Brown’s book about vulnerability helpful; she talks a lot about how to get past shame. You went into your marriage with an open heart, and clearly you lived up to your end of the bargain. And when you picked that man to marry, you did the best you could at the time. And from that decision, you have kids that you love. No shame in any of that.
So sweet, Arnold and LaJ! You’re so right!
LovedaJackass: thank you for this…I am also in awe about how I disregarded the red flags even though I am considered to be emotionally intelligent and have a PhD. Most everyone who writes here seems to have above average intellect and nonetheless we were chumped by people who can´t speak or write in coherent sentences or don´t have the basic common sense to see to see the consequences of their actions. It is embarrassing to say the least, but also true that we got into this with open hearts..
Cut yourself some slack, MS. They mask themselves well during courtship, as someone points out above.
🙁 We all married idiots. All completely moronic. Their ability to dazzle us and groom us into tools is/was nauseating.
Arnold, YES! I feel the same shame.
My thought precisely. Why I even got involved in the first place, who knows. It was a good trigger for some serious introspection starting three years ago. I think it’s helped me choose more carefully, and also to accept that it might actually be best to not try to recreate the “happily married” fantasy. Next time, if there is a next time, I will be looking for a very different relationship.
With my first wife, I really cut myself some slack on having become involved. No obvious signs, but , in retrospect and having researched PD , I can see it.
I was young and inexperienced .
Don’t feel bad Arnold, everyone here made the same mistake. I’m sure your ex’s were good at pretending to be decent, loyal, loving women in the beginning. A lot of the disordered types are Academy-award-level-actors when it comes to pretending in the beginning of the relationship. By the time it all goes to hell and we find out what we’re really dealing with, we’re in deep. I know what you mean though — sometimes I’m embarrassed I stayed married to such a freak for 20 years. What the hell was I thinking?
Yep same here. I definitely feel at like I wear the cone of shame. I was young, naive, and thought he was maturing with me. Not lying and skeezing around behind my back. I am using it as a huge lesson and def fixing my picker.
I bet he honed a lot of cones.
” i just want to be happy” i never knew he was unhappy
“i am tired of all the fighting” WHAT fighting!?!?! i quit trying to explain shit to him 8 months prior and was pretty much silent on all the out all nights, drinking and no answering calls and texts.
after i found out about MOW: “i do still love you, but i love you enough to leave you so i can stop hurting you.” WTF does that mean. like leaving me is not hurting me? like not fighting for our marriage, our family, and our kids is not hurting me?
after the divorce was final: “i left you, i did not leave the children.” i STILL have no clue wtf that means. is there another way to leave the house where your children live and not see them every day, AND NOT leave the children? is there another way to hook up with a hood rat and listen to everything she tells regarding your own flesh and blood and follow her demands on how, when and where he gets to see his children, and still say you didnt leave the children. what does no calling the children, not seeing the children and not paying child support mean to him then?
opps sorry for the double post. my computer was having fits.
My favorite was when my ex sent me a love-bomb text meant for his schmoopie. When I replied with a “?”, he responded, “I just hate that we ended this way”. Another classic line regarding his ability to remain faithful: “I’m not Nostradamus, nobody is”. I am so much happier without the cheater diet of bitter and wilted greens.
You really don’t need to have the second sight to predict that cheating will end your relationship in a bad way.
If you want a really confusing word salad…try receiving a hate-bomb text from your current BF that was really meant for his cheater-ex….now THAT’S almost a red flag. When queried, the response was, oh sorry, hit the wrong button. No, buddy, you need to get to meh before you date anyone else.
I’ll bet you know that decision was coming.
Sometimes , it may take some dating to achieve meh. Meh takes a good long time.
There can be only one response to listening to any of this: an immediate banana cream pie to the face .
Oh, and one must chant “Namaste, fuck you” when smashing the pie into the cheater’s face. Forgot that part.
Or “His will be done”, while cramming the pie into the mush.
Arnold, you are truly on fire today.
Arnold thanks for lightening up my day. But what a waste of a good pie.
” i just want to be happy” i never knew he was unhappy
“i am tired of all the fighting” WHAT fighting!?!?! i quit trying to explain shit to him 8 months prior and was pretty much silent on all the out all nights, drinking and no answering calls and texts.
after i found out about MOW: “i do still love you, but i love you enough to leave you so i can stop hurting you.” WTF does that mean. like leaving me is not hurting me? like not fighting for our marriage, our family, and our kids is not hurting me?
after the divorce was final: “i left you, i did not leave the children.” i STILL have no clue wtf that means. is there another way to leave the house where your children live and not see them every day, AND NOT leave the children? is there another way to hook up with a hood rat and listen to everything she tells regarding your own flesh and blood and follow her demands on how, when and where he gets to see his children, and still say you didnt leave the children. what does no calling the children, not seeing the children and not paying child support mean to him then?
Oh my goodness MsVain, I got exactly the same: ultimately our marriage ended because I finally understood that talking truth to stupid really WAS banging my head against a brick wall. He took the new silence as me not loving him any more and went to find OW to fill up the hole.
I was married to someone that shallow. That is my ultimate grief.
I also got: ‘I am leaving you, not the children’. Yes, explain that to the new eating disorder, and to the failed exams.
Infidelity is SO DAMAGING. In any other context it would be criminalised.
apparently i was also married to someone that shallow, never thought of it like that before so thank you for pointing that out.
my silence also had a lot to do with my dealing with the death of my 25 year old daughter (natural causes) and therefore i was emotionally unavailable to him.
fucking asshole is right arnold. you have no idea. and i appreciate that.
funny how these people never see other peoples pain, not their wives, nor their children. all they can focus on is how THEY feel.
i am finally realizing just how lucky i am that he left.
I got: “fucking other people made me a better father”. Well how the hell does that happen when you were never even home. He didn’t say fucking, ok. He said having affairs, hooking up with randoms, fucking coworkers . A better dad who brings diseases home to his wife before, during and after she nursed her children as infants.
OR
“I would never leave my kids.” No, shithead. You would just model the crappiest behavior to your kids on how to treat your spouse. And then see above. How is never being home NOT leaving your kids? Huge huge disapponting waste of flesh.
I got exactly this. I’m leaving you ,not the children. They’re so fucked up. They have no idea of their selfishness
In almost a year the boys have stayed less than 60 nights. There’s 365 nights in a year!!!
What sort of mother does that to her sons. I don’t get it.
How can they sleep at night. The boys just get on with it and achieve. Their mother is just a spectator
Surely she will wake up one day
My stepson had a mother like this. He’s grown with kids of his own now and wants nothing to do with her.
I cannot wait to see what your kids think of her when they are grown, Baci.
God, what an asshole. Please, this shit is killing me.
I remember learning about word salad as part of the mental health unit in nursing school. It’s defined in my text as a group of words that are put together randomly without any logical connection. The example in the book goes like this, “Most forward action grows life double plays circle uniform”. Sounds about right that cheating folk would speak in the same way that they act, without logic…
“I find myself in a new life.”
“Our relationship has been upside down.”
“You accused me of stepping out on you. I won’t tolerate that.” (Note the ambiguity–he won’t tolerate me saying he “stepped out” on me, although he refused to discuss his relationship with his MOW and although I had made it clear that it didn’t matter if the affair was emotional or physical.
“I don’t put any restrictions on you, and I won’t tolerate restrictions on me.” (Then I’m confused, because when you commit to a monogamous relationship, you are agreeing to restrictions on your behavior.)
After he logged 8 full hours at his high school friend’s memorial and wake, regarding his friend’s sister, the MOW: “I wondered where her husband was. He didn’t seem to be around.” (Duh. The two of them had been corresponding and she was in hot pursuit of Jackass.)
On the day I had my 4-year old cat euthanized for lymphoma: “Sorry to hear about the cat. She was special in her own way.”
“You can text me but don’t be upset if I don’t text you back.”
When I read this thread, I thought I wouldn’t have much to contribute, but the more I think about things he said, the more I see word salad.
oh my giddy aunt!! just reminded me of when he told my 20 year old son, (when the boy was asking him what he thought i was going to do if he kept staying out all night)
“well if she is going to accuse me of it, i might as well do it”
i cant even remember what month that was, sometime in the end of 2013, maybe december but could have been november. i didnt even catch on to it when the son told me. ugh!!!
???
It’s just not worth wasting breath on these idiots. This is why NC is the only way to go. Just take all your “restrictions” with you (as if being married to someone you love is “restrictive,” jerk!) and leave him standing there, free to do as he pleases for the rest of his miserable life.
Just, EW!! What a complete scumbag!! Let the stupid women who throw themselves at him have him. He’s disgusting.
Thank you, Miss Sunshine. You made my day.
And I thought of another one. In describing his new life, he said: “I am working on being nice to the kids in the drive-through at Wendy’s.” This while he was making up excuses for why he couldn’t drive 8 miles to see me or meet me for dinner, all the while spending the money I put in the business account. I guess if a man’s over 50 and has to change his whole life to muster up courtesy at the drive-through, that is one hellacious red flag
Bitch cookie for drive-through courtesy!
Oh I have enough word salad to fill a book. I was cheated both by my ex husband and my friend of thirty years whom my child was named after. Here are a few pearls from her from the only time I ever spoke to her.
When asked whether she loved him or was it a fling in fact what the hell was it : the language of my heart does not speak like that. We (her and my ex) have been connected since the beginning of time. I have no script and no plan and I mean no harm. You should look upon this as a gift to get to a better place.
She was right on the last one.
And later when I emailed her to talk in a moment of weakness: (we never actually talked)
Closure comes from a place of deep surrender in the heart. You don’t seem to be in that place and perhaps when you are in that space we can talk or it may not even be necessary
And finally a pearl from him
You kept chipping away at my heart. I left it unguarded and it just happened.
Oh one last one
You even said there was always a spark between us. Aren’t you glad it’s not a 25 year old ?
“We have been connected since the beginning of time”????
That is the exact kind of drivel I used to write. When I was 12.
When, exactly, is the beginning of time, anyway? So, does she mean that she and your ex have been connected since before the Big Bang, or right at the Big Bang, or what? I tell ya, though, that’s some serious primordial ooze the dense bitch is lodged in.
OK–I would like to slap this bitch upside the head as a gift to get her to a better place.
I must admit, that is one mean word salad. I love the super evolved stuff.
Arnold I am liking you more and more. keep posting. yip they are SUPER evolved.
Yeah a better place without the most disgusting crap thinking ass that had the nerve to even say that to you
And your friend, OMG
Can’t go there
OMG what horrible, arrogant condescending nit wits. “You should look upon this as a gift to get to a better place.” VOMIT. Apparently, she’s more spiritually evolved than you. (God word salad).
How could your life not be better without these two? Ugh.
My Ex actually said that a couple of times on one occasion: “I am more spiritual than you are”.
Of course, in that same conversation she claimed to be an empath, rambled on and on about “synchronicities” as if it somehow explained her erratic behavior, and then talked about ghosts and other stuff, and I thought–at the time–that she must be having some sort of breakdown. I didn’t know she was chatting somebody up on Facebook and making plans at the time, so I was really feeling kind of sorry for her.
I’ll give you an example of how weird it was: “I’ve been seeing cherries everywhere. At first I was thinking about how much I liked Cherry Coke, and then there was this bus with an ad for cherry confections, and then [woman at work] started talking about cherries, and …”.
Similar thing with dragon flies, butterflies (along with claiming to be “like a butterfly”), and so on.
Anyway, the gist of it was magical thinking: “I think something, and then it starts to manifest itself” and “I am evolving spiritually”. Now an outsider would–and many did when she started up with this stuff–point out somethings called “confirmation bias and selection bias” in terms of the purported “signs” and “synchronicities”.
The empath thing got out of hand often too (and more than once) She got downright paranoid of people at work (and at least in one case it didn’t seem justified) and quit her jobs because “she couldn’t be around people like that”.
Later it became more evident that she dreamed up an affair partner, then started trolling facebook, then grooming somebody, and so that was the root of the ‘by thinking it, I can make it real” and searching for “signs” and “synchronicities” stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised, for example, if the guy she was grooming hadn’t posted a picture of cherries or cherry trees or something.
So in sum, she was an “empath” requiring special treatment as she was hyper-sensitive. Her empath abilities extended to ruminating over the meaning of dreams and seeing synchronicities everywhere confirming her specialness and believing that she was more evolved than others and like a pre-butterfly chrysalis about to emerge as something totally new (about to have an affair in reality ).
What her empath abilities were not terribly helpful with was empathy.
Empath my arse. Shes a fucking nutjob, plain and simple.
Wasn’t that Buffalo Bill character in “Silence of the Lambs” into the chrysalis deal ?
Hmmm, TH.
I think your X and my STBX may have been twins, separated at birth. From the beginning, he kept telling me that he operated on a higher spiritual plain than others. He was not religious, but he was in touch with the spiritual powers inherent in the universe and that is what guided him through his use of meditation. He always told me that if he meditated on something, he always did the right thing and always made the correct decision. He was in this world but he was not of this world.
So, if how he treated me during our time together is indicative of that, then I don’t know what “not of this world” group of which he was a part, but apparently the group with which he aligned himself is a bunch of assholes.
Anyone who’s really on a higher spiritual plain than the rest of us doesn’t talk about it. They’re humble and compassionate.
Anyone who is absolutely sure they always make the right decision is too arrogant to be in touch with God or the spiritual powers of the universe.
Yes, but they are highly evolved assholes, not to be mistaken for peasant assholes.
Holy shit, TH.
Maybe she was having some kind of a mental breakdown. It really sounds weird.
LBS
Those are two sick puppies who deserve each other. You are blessed to be rid of them and be free to live an authentic life. Hope you don’t engage them any more.
“I am not going to make any excuses – I made a lot of bad choices that hurt other people regardless of whatever motivated those decisions or what I was going through.”
Um…isn’t that an excuse?
Apparently if I only knew the noble intentions behind his relentless pursuit of hot fresh pussy, I would no doubt be far less crushed and heartbroken than I am.
Somehow, I doubt it was all that fresh.
I think I made a lot of bad choices has become a new way for people to avoid taking responsibilities. First, you don’t say what you did, it was just some mysterious bad choice.
Then you sidestep what hurt people – it was the bad choices, not you that hurt people.
And you don’t quite admit who you hurt- it’s just a mysterious group of other people. That isn’t necessary here – you’re standing in front of them.
Then the whole bit about I’m not making excuses and whatever the reasons were – well, if you really weren’t making excuses, you wouldn’t have to say it. There must be some name for the kind of speech were you say you aren’t claiming this just as a way to suggest that it might be so. I mean, apparently there was some reason motivating the mysterious choices and maybe it wasn’t just I felt like it or I wanted to.
It’s funny how much shorter the sentence is if someone says, I cheated and I hurt you and I’m sorry.
My ex at first used the “I made some bad choices” line, but later switched to telling people that he “went through a sordid phase.” I guess he thinks that sounds better than admitting he is gay. Of course, his “phase” has lasted his entire life, but craziness doesn’t bother with logic.
Me no understand the dribble that you got served to you on a platter, I hope the pig had an apple in it’s mouth
Excellent!
That’s what Rielle Hunter said about herself and John Edwards…that it was LOVE that caused them to make some ‘bad choices’.
Reille Hunter. How’d you like to be her kid?
And have that narcissist pretty boy for a father. Poor kid.
He definitely needs his ass kicked.
I’m really getting into the passive voice thing today.
But look, saying love made you do something is ultimately using the passive voice to pass blame. Love does not walk around with a gun or even a check for a million dollars. Love is a feeling inside you; it does not make anyone do anything ever.
(Not to mention all the philosophical mumbo jumbo about whether real love makes people do bad things or encourages empathy to everyone.)
P.S. So I guess it wasn’t their fault–it was LOVE’s fault!
Recently, when my STBXH and I were discussing the division of marital assets for the divorce over the phone, he got all huffy and said “this is not fair!” To that, I replied, “no, what’s not fair is you going around fucking other women!” And then he was silent, and quietly mumbled, “I didn’t fuck other women.” Perplexed I asked, “what do you mean?” Then it hit me…and I replied again, “oh, excuse me, you went around ‘making love’ to other women.” Because in his word salad dictionary, “fucking around” is bad…but “making love” is supposed to somehow be better????
OMG that is word salad, all right Mschump.
I was told that when he said ‘there is nobody else’, that was true. Because, whenever I came home he broke up with her. Therefore, there was nobody else.
Character disordered people… and I fell for him. For years. When (towards the end, when I was starting to understand that my chumpery meant I was actively participating in my own abuse) I said to him ‘Your ability to lie is terrifying’ he answered, ‘I know’.
“towards the end, when I was starting to understand that my chumpery meant I was actively participating in my own abuse”
Well said, and marks the point in time when we start getting unstuck.
I understand. My ex was horribly offended when I called what he did “fucking around”. He, like your honorable fellow, was making love to the skanks he hooked up with on the internet.
Mine too. He also didn’t like it when I called his other women whores. He said ” why do you think they are whores?” I said ” what do you think a woman is called , who sleeps with a married man !?”
Apparently instead of whores I should have gone with ” mystical and enchanting creatures that have descended upon us from the heavens” , perhaps then he would have understood me.
I got that too! He would become incensed when I referred to either of the last 2 OW as “whores,” particularly REVEREND Imaho. I once said to him, “What do YOU call a woman who thinks it is all okie dokie to fuck another woman’s husband? Where I’m from, that’s called a Ho or a Whore or a Skank. What would you call me if I was sleeping with another woman’s husband, besides your ex-wife?” This is the same man who had referred to his own daughter as a “tramp” or a “slut” when he didn’t like an outfit she was wearing (and she was a virgin!).
I’m still waiting for an answer.
My ex described his OW as “a saint, she is so giving, she is so much better than you or I will ever be” srsly, my response was pretty standard, I really don’t think anyone who fucks a married person can be described as saintly and better than me.
Yeah, she’s giving it up all over the place. Very giving.
They hate it when you point shit like that out, dat.
Typically they either completely ignore the point or they attempt to make it look like you are petty for focusing on such a minor/ trivial thing. BTDT.
My ex referred to it as “shagging” (sorry) her.
Sort of gave me an idea of the depth of their ‘love’ 🙂
My ex did not have words… ever.
So when he started spouting “You can have me as a friend but not in your bed” while still denying the affair.
I knew those weren’t his words…
i agree. alot of what i have heard him say were not his words. or his thoughts.
it is interesting how involved they get with that OW.
My ex wife’s word salad changed through out our marriage. It was always word salad, but came with different ingredients. She served up liberal tree hugging salad, the finding herself salad. Truth was, she was screwing around with a new age environmentalist who installed solar panels on his roof. He actually hugged trees, and screwed married women.
Every word salad she came up with was tossed with her “ME…ME TONGS”
When tree hugging and solar panel dude was replaced with with yoga dude, she became a spiritual cheater, namaste and breast implanted neon colored yoga pant wearing vegan enthusiast.
She’s now married to a Texan, meat and potato, gun slinging republican. This is latest her word salad, bullets and olive oil tossed with her ME TONGS.
The salad ingredients may change over time, it’s the salad tongs that never change.
P.F., despite the unchanging “ME TONGS,” it sounds like your ex is a complete non-entity. Who she is is simply a function of whoever she happens to be fucking at the moment. Talk about identity theft! Glad you don’t have to deal with that anymore.
FMT
Thank you, and I’m alimony and word salad free now.
That’s the thing with cheater word salad. Cheaters eat their own word salad. It makes perfect sense to them. If they eat it they expect you to eat it too.
Word salad is how they operate. it’s like impressionist paintings done by a chimpanzee and being sold as art.
My XW is a chameleon as well. She is a complete bigot, shockingly racist. But , she just married a black guy who was married when they began seeing each other.
Arnold, that was a thing that freaked me the fuck out, my ex was so good at his facade I lived with him for 15 years before suddenly discovering he was a horrible racist. He pretended to be a feminist and to hate racists and homophobic shit for YEARS! Then suddenly he is spewing the most vile shit and justifying it too. How does someone hide their true selves for so many years?
Arnold,
You have been making me laugh and snort! I would be surprised by this, but I’ve seen this quite a bit.
My STBX criticized and mocked overweight people, women particularly, practically all the time I knew him (almost 30 years) and probably before. At one time he actually threatened to divorce me if I gained too much weight, which I did after giving birth to three children in 4 years. His final 2 APs? Both overweight women who were both “so special,” the last one being someone who could finally really make him happy. He thought religion was all bunk and hokum designed to control the masses. He ridiculed me because I wanted the family to go to church, until I finally stopped doing it. Last AP? A minister. (Let us not get into how she justifies herself to herself.)
He has no values, no principles, no beliefs which are not situational or alterable depending on his perceived wants or needs. In short, he’s an unperson, a shape-shifter.
The thing these folks seem to hate most is to be mocked. I love to mock them , although most are too dense to even get it.
My dad , before he died, told me ” Arnold, your wife is the most insincere person I have ever met”.
Your dad ought to be doing marriage counseling. He’s be better than most of the nitwits we read about here.
It would be interesting to see a study comparing the emotional IQ’s of chumps vs. cheaters.
I think many of these cheaters confuse being intelligent with being cunning. They think being cunning and duplicitous and being in the one up position makes them”smarter” than other people. They don’t have the discernment to understand that having the instinctual ability to be a consummate asshole is not the same thing as being intelligent – emotionally or otherwise.
My EX always prided himself on having such high IQ, and I believed him, too, as he thought I was too naive and trusting of people (just book-smart). He had a knack for quickly reading people–what their cultural and economic and social background was, what made them tick, what their motivations and desires were. He said it was a skill he learned from his mom. He was good at navigating the “politics” of his work environment. Looking back, I think he was really focused on how to read people so he could maximize his manipulation of them.
I used to think he doesn’t come off as sleazy, but now I think he does. He’s a good and fast talker and can automatically draw people in to his way of thinking. I think people generally think he is a “good” guy, willing to go out of his way to help people.