Cheating Husband Mad that She Has Cancer
She was diagnosed with cancer, only to find out her husband has been cheating on her. He’s not one bit sorry and mad at HER. Why?
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Dear Chump Lady,
My husband started cheating on me 2 weeks before I was diagnosed with agressive breast cancer.
He was mad at me for getting cancer and kept cheating until I discovered the affair 6 months later.
He has been cruel, never asks me for forgiveness, told me not to expect him to beg me to come back, and to leave him alone and stop contacting him. We have been together 40 years. I just filed for divorce.
Why is HE so narcissistic, angry at me and inhumane to say the least? How is this even possible from someone I trusted with my life? Where did the husband I married and love go?
One Chump w/2 Traumas
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Dear One Chump w/2 Traumas,
I don’t think your FW husband responded to your cancer with cheating. I think he’s always been a selfish, shallow, misogynistic person as evidenced by his behavior. Some people would feel deeply bonded after 40 years together.
Instead, he looks at you like a 40-year-old expired appliance that needs replacing.
Would you apologize to a 1984 Frigidaire for buying a new refrigerator? Look, I can’t explain it, because I don’t have the mind of a sociopath. But there is a gendered element to men bailing on their sick wives.
A study focusing on serious medical illnesses found that when a wife was the one diagnosed with an illness, the couple was more than six times more likely to separate or divorce compared to when the husband was the one diagnosed. Specifically, the study found a 20.8% separation/divorce rate when the wife was ill versus a 2.9% rate when the husband was ill.
For anyone who needs a trigger warning about patriarchy, hold on to your breakfast cereal…
Despite the progress of the women’s movement, entire generations of men were raised to expect that when they married, they got their own personal Jeeves. A trusty wife appliance, who, like the famed P.G. Wodehouse butler, would cater to, and anticipate their every need, brilliantly solve their problems — but most importantly, know their place.
You failed to be Jeeves.
You stopped being of service. Worst of all, you had a crisis and needed to attend to your own health. It might be cancer that provoked your husband’s cheating, or it could be he’s always been a cheater and you just discovered his hollow soul. Whatever the case, it’s a terrible, traumatic shock to find out that the person you invested four decades in is a fraud. You loved him. He was transactional.
The fact that you had to divorce HIM, says nothing about his commitment and everything about his laziness and cruelty. Cheaters usually leave the mess of divorce to the chump. First, it gives them the moral high ground (Jeeves divorced ME!) and second, it takes effort to file for divorce. Work is for the little people.
Why is HE so narcissistic, angry at me and inhumane to say the least?
The best defense is a good offense.
DARVO. The optics of cheating on your wife with breast cancer are bad. (But not insurmountable! John Edwards and Newt Gingrich went on with their political careers, despite expired wife appliances.) If he can make you out to be the bad guy, well, of course he had to cheat on you. You were awful.
If our current political moment teaches us anything it’s that if you Other someone, you can hurt them with impunity.
You’re not his loving partner of 40 years, you’re an appliance. A terrible person. Expendable. A menace.
Tracy, that’s not logically consistent. How can you be both inanimate and also a menace?
What? You’ve never heard of killer robots? Don’t try to make sense of FWs.
Focus on you.
How is this even possible from someone I trusted with my life?
You misplaced your trust. It’s a very big club.
Where did the husband I married and love go?
He never existed, or he exited the building long ago. I’m sorry. It must feel incredibly lonely to face a medical crisis at the same time you’re having a D-Day. I hope you’re surrounded by true friends and family to care for you now. I also hope you’ve got a damn good lawyer. He may be able to bail on the marriage, but he should not be able to bail on the cost of your care.
One Chump w/2 Traumas — you’re MIGHTY. You could’ve stayed married and vulnerable to him, but instead YOU filed for divorce. That took guts. So many might’ve folded to the pressure, financial, emotional and otherwise, to stay. But you didn’t. You met his cruelty with a divorce summons. I hope you kick cancer’s ass as thoroughly as you kicked his.
(((HUGS)))
There is truly a special place in hell for someone who is angry at their spouse for getting cancer. Girl, thank God you are rid of him and can concentrate on your healing and your peace. Keeping you in my prayers.
This mighty woman has found the best cheering section I Could advise that she align herself with. We here understand what cruel betrayal feels like – I am with CL that this circumstance is profound. I echo CLs hopes that CW2T has a great group of people helping her through in real life too.
When I was betrayed, one of the lessons I didn’t allow myself to learn is that Cheater showed me a great deal about who he really was during the discovery/ reaction / “cruelty as a defense stage”. I bought myself YEARS more misery by not facing the fact that the ass-bastard-mean person was NOT my sweet husband who lost his way, it was a cruel man showing me the depths of his cruelty and no reasonable person would stick around for more.
CW2T…dismiss this fool like the dung-heap he is and focus on you. We care and understand.
Oh yes, this was something I struggled with. What happened to him?! How did he become this?! It took me years to fully accept that he was always like that. Nothing happened to him, it’s just who he was the whole time. That’s a tough pill to swallow.
I’m still struggling with it almost 5 years out from 37 years together. The only comfort I get is that at the beginning of the unpleasantness my adult son said to me “Mom, you were oblivious.” Which is not a good place to be inside of, but at least I can now think that I was not crazy. Stupid maybe, but not crazy.
If I were a dung beetle I would turn up my nose at this dung heap.
40 years married this FW is at least in his 60s and can’t be bothered to simply wait it out (abuse the poster during cancer so she dies from extra stress) which for the Narcissistic cheater has got to be easier to impression manage. 🤔
I hope she lives to be 100 and gives him the middle finger every damn day!
Heck yes! Is everybody here familiar with dumped wifes revenge on Instagram? She was dumped twice by two FW husbands. She gets her revenge by being absolutely fabulous. Her name is Dianne and I love her, her posts make me smile.
Amen!
This resonates deeply with me, even though what I experienced in my 30 year marriage was more along the lines of chronic illness (the kinds of maladies that women with C-PTSD tend to have which got largely ignored by the medical community for too long), with a few acute issues/hospitalizations sprinkled in. During the worst flares or acute illness, he was both cruel and neglectful and obviously really mad that the appliance he married didn’t work perfectly all the time. I can feel in my bones exactly how that study found what it did.
I am so sorry, On Chump w/2 Traumas! I hope you can indeed kick the cancer’s ass and live a good life with empathetic people around you.
You sound a lot like me, the C-PTSD and chronic health problems: several auto immune diseases and metabolic syndrome, etc., and I am quite positive it was from living with the FW NPD abusive spouse for so long. Over the years, I had many near death experiences as well, 4 of them for pregnancies with the FW. He always seemed so sweet and attentive, but
now I know why. It wasn’t really for me, it was performative. It was a show for other people and “look at what an amazing husband I am. I’m so special! No one is as good as me!” It was never really for me. I think back to it and how he would tell everyone at his work or even strangers, what was going on with me and my health, our kids, etc. All for attention. He was an attention whore and after narcissistic supply. Kibbles! But when he was sick or something, man, he wanted to be babied and coddled. I used to joke that he was one of my children. Not so funny now, now that I know what NPD is. He literally was a child! I’m so glad all of that is over! Gone. Done!
But this guy discarded and abandoned this women in two different ways, not just the cheating, but with the cancer too! What a special piece of shit.
Exactly! My ex did the performative stuff when I had acute things going on, too, some of the time. It made me want to puke, when he was showing the whole world what a great husband he was when I was hospitalized, while I honestly felt like he wasn’t there for me. Blech. I’m glad for both of us and today’s poster too that we’re out.
Mine was like this! I actually thought I had a really great husband. He said the right things right up until he didn’t. I had an untreated autoimmune disease that was kill*ng me and I was repeatedly misdiagnosed. He seemed so supportive but he was telling everyone everything and subtly complaining about how difficult his life was. He got so much attention and pity and admiration while also gently smearing me. It was a great setup for him.
I remember someone saying something along the lines of “Don’t you realize how hard it was for him having to do everything because you were sick?” And it was just like… I worked nights in a warehouse until I couldn’t anymore. I still made dinner every night before work and I meal prepped him breakfast and lunch. When I wasn’t working, I got up every morning and cooked him breakfast and packed his lunch. I did all the laundry and all the cleaning and all the shopping, even at my sickest. What was he doing that he considered “everything”? I would even bring him his dinner and drinks while he played video games in the evenings. I would even take his car to get smogged and renew his registration and stuff like that. Literally all he had to do was work his 40 hours a week.
Part of why I had to quit my job was because I couldn’t handle working and doing literally everything else for our family too. I told him I needed help, something had to give. I was working 50 to 60 hours a week compared to his 40 and he b*tched at me that he didn’t want to have to do anything around the house and he shouldn’t have to because he made more than me. It blows my mind now. So then I was lazy according to his fan club for quitting my job because he refused to even do a load of his own laundry. Ugh, they’re monsters.
That’s so sick! Glad you no longer live with a monster like that.
Long before I discovered the cheating, I had a breast cancer scare. I asked fuckwit to come with me to the hospital, because I was so frightened. He had a screaming tantrum, throwing his dinner plate on the floor, because he’d have to take time off work to do so. I wish to God I’d divorced the piece of shit then. Instead I went on with the mirage for years. You *are* mighty, One chump!
It’s so hard to believe someone would act like that even when it’s right before your eyes. Glad your health was ok though!!!
An adult acting like a toddler is a giant flapping flaming red flag. Most of us know that now. “When you know better, you do better.”
Oh yeah, Mine was always bitching about that…”I have to work. Someone needs to provide for this family…”
So many times these FW show us who they are! Mine did something similar too.
I suspect that CW2T’s FW was angry – at least in part – because she had the temerity to survive her cancer for long enough to divorce him. I am sure that, at least in his mind, the “Grieving Widower” act would have better suited his narrative than being found out for exactly who he is.
He deserves his own very special circle in Hell.
LFTT
My FW was scheming to arrange a fatal accident for me and very likely for this exact reason. Rid of the Chump collect life insurance and the KIBBLES of sympathy and validation he was going to receive!
Yeah, FW#1 (the abusive lawyer) just loved to “tinker” with my car. As far as I knew, it just took the form of detaching one or the other wires so that the car wouldn’t start and I’d be late for work. But at one point, I took the car in for routine maintenance and the mechanic told me that there were several gashes/scrapes in the brake line – not enough to cut it entirely but enough to weaken it. I didn’t realize the import of what he was telling me until much later; FW told me that it must have been due to careless driving on my part. Yeah, I can be dense.
Wow! That’s terrible!
My most recent FW was also scheming to arrange a fatal accident for me — widowers are shinier than divorced men, and he’d get to keep all of the money and stuff. It took me surviving two of his arranged accidents to figure out that he was behind everything.
We’re divorced now — not because he was planning to kill me, but because I found out about his girlfriend. (His sister told me.). But I remember the moment I realized it wasn’t just the one girlfriend; he’d been cheating on me all along. That’s why I had so many UTIs and vaginal infections. 20 years together, and I was oblivious.
I’m so glad your FW and Archer’s fuckwit did not succeed in killing you. Scum of the earth!
In the minutes before he left and during the time he came back per court orders to take inventory, my ex also sabotaged the house in several ways–exposing live wires between tween’s and my computer, redirecting the plumbing to send gas into the house, tampering with the gas water heater, and smashing the smoke detectors on the ceilings in the hallway and office. I didn’t put it together until after the divorce, but a caseworker figured out he was trying o trigger a housefire or electrocution. Fortunately, we knew about enough other things that the court ordered no contact and gave me sole custody.
Another one! Holy moly there’s a lot of deeply evil fuckwits out there.
Pure evil
Wanna hear something creepy? My ex talked about wanting to kill me but he’d decided just to divorce me instead. My family is notoriously hard to kill. Grandma had four different cancers she beat over her lifetime, Dad got a six inch diameter fence post punched through the middle of him in a car accident and survived and recovered. He chatted with the first responders that he terrified because they thought he was dead upon arrival. Other grandma had cancer that just vanished halfway through treatment. So many crazy accidents that we just walk away from, etc. Mom used to tell me very seriously that on her side we were related to Rasputin. But it’s both sides of my family. We survive crazy stuff. I used to get called a witch over it in my small hometown growing up.
Anyways, one day I was doing laundry and a bolt of blue lightning arced up out of the dryer and slammed into the side of the washing machine. Both machines died instantly. Nobody believed me except my (now ex) husband who was also there when it happened. I ordered a new set and the guys came out to install them and when they pulled out the old ones, they saw a literal hole in the washing machine and the side was all blackened. They were shocked. Never heard of that happening before. I was telling this “funny” story years after my divorce and said “my ex was even an electrician and he couldn’t figure out how it could have happened.” and then I went “Oh… Oh my God…”
He was doing a lot of electrical experiments at that time and I remember him talking about arc flashes and how dangerous and terrifying they were. This was also around the same time he made a “death ray” out of an old TV in our backyard and started a fire which he then blamed on me because I was doing a project with mirrored tiles. I only know this because my son who was in elementary school at the time had felt guilty about keeping that secret and told me after the divorce. He didn’t know his father had blamed me for the fire.
I look back and I wonder how many times did he try and get frustrated and angry because this idiot just bumbles through life unscathed no matter what he sets up. LMAO. Boy, he must have really hated me by the end. He was so bitter about it. Kinda pathetic. LOL
OMG sounds like he rigged the machines to create an arc flash so you’d die in a “freak accident “? Yes our FW chased us married us then hated us for being in their way by merely existing (exhausting ourselves working and parenting). I had a somewhat similar AHA moment after waking up from RIC false reconciliation. Jennifer Doulos, anyone?
Yes, exactly! I was the only one who did laundry at that time and it also happened while he was home which could have been to make sure it didn’t get one of the boys instead of me. It’s scary because there are so many women who didn’t get lucky like we did and I never even slightly suspected anything until the divorce. I watched the doc about that monster Chris Watts and just cried through it, he reminded me of my FW so much, even looked a bit like him. Could have just as easily been me and maybe even our son too just like Shannan and her girls. I’m sure she had no idea he could do something like that either. It’s terrifying how they can hide.
That is so awful. I’m blown away by how many people here had murderous fuckwits.
You found proof that he was trying to have you killed by faking an accident? That would be terrifying…Im so sorry you went through that.
Strong circumstantial evidence
Both my Xs showed me guns after they had D days and were moving stuff out. Said I should keep one handy now that they were out of the house! Protection order x2.
My hugs to the letter writer.
This is definitely not POS first go around with cheating mark my words!
FWIW it’s a common story that chumps of serial cheaters develop odd health issues,autoimmune flare ups and sometimes cancer. The body registers the stress.
Do not let him or others spin the narrative that your illness “drove him to cheat” because he’s likely been an abusive toxic spouse for ages living a secret double life.
You are mighty for leaving this disgusting excuse for a man!
Archer, I didn’t read your note here until AFTER I wrote mine. We spoke the same words…truth
Thank you for sharing these statistics, Tracy. They do not surprise me. I know a few women whose husbands left when they got sick, or one woman who after tending to he dying sister who then died, was depressed. Time to get rid of her! She was in her deep sixties and remarried a nice man from her church. I on the other hand, after my father’s suicide and my mother’s horrific early onset dementia, also got left, but only after 5 years of escalating abuse and my only proud moment- I kicked him out saying “you can’t talk to me that way”. But then we sadly went into RIC, which furthered the abuse and bought him time to set up his new life, including hide money. It was DARVO the whole way. it took me a while, but I was always an appliance. He also used to whore me out to his unkind family to do house chores… he spent a lot my family’s money- we supported him in his career!- before he became successful, and while cheating on me, he eventually found someone with more money! She even was the one who divorced me for him! HAHA!. I struggle with the shame of having known him. And having let him in my life, and the endless victim blaming makes it mark too. Being here helps A LOT, but his emotional control and endless belittlement has left me changed. Most importantly, I am now free, I find if very hard to meet nice men my age but the freedom gets sweeter and sweeter as years go by. If some sadness and self blame comes over me, the truth- he was terrible, he was terrible from the beginning, the whole “teaching him how to love” and “love is action” shit I did was hopeless but I felt sorry for him. BEWARE OF PITY. No one had ever loved him, poor psychopath! Learning here about about the 3 channels has been a life changer. 1chmp2traumas, it’s hard to know this is a gift, but it is. You will be free, and you will find out who your real friends are, your real allies. My oldest son who is 29 was visiting me and he said, look at this life you have built . You did this. And I have. I have no tolerance for “the disordered” as Tracy calls them, and I can spot them quickly. My life is smaller is some ways, but it is good. I hope you had an early diagnosis and can beat that cancer. Your soon to be ex was a cancer, too. So that one you can cut out! Congratulations on that, and I wish you the best.
The “We teach people how to treat us” philosophy only works if the person you are trying to teach is marginally normal and cares in the first place. To me this is a victim-blaming idea. Some people just learn better how to manipulate you.
It is. And I tried to do it all by myself out of love for him and mostly
“”pity” as his family was atrocious. Victim blaming was HUGE and he will die lying that it was all my fault. Pure psychopath.
Yes, exactly. I was so honest and open and tried so hard to communicate and all it did was give him more weapons to harm me with.
same
Great analogy. I’d even go so far as say her cheater (all FW here truly) is like HIV back in the 80s when we knew less. Weird recurring infections and illness and cancers that were like whack a mole to treat.
The real culprit was the HIV virus destroying the immune (defense) system! The enemy from within the body (marriage). 🦠🦠🦠🦠🦠
So sorry you are dealing with two crises. I hope you will find a way to focus only on your own treatment and self-care, and that you have friends and family around you to care for you and love you.
As to the questions you ask about how he could be the way he is? Well, I’d say look to the way he’s treated you and extrapolate. He’s being “narcissistic, angry, and inhumane” because he not only has it in him to be those things, he’s decided that he’s somehow entitled to feel that way, and I’d bet he also decided at some point that you “deserve” it. But it isn’t about you at all–it’s nothing you did or didn’t do, or were or weren’t–it’s solely about him and his low character. He’s revealed something of himself to you (maybe “finally revealed”), and what you see is shocking to you.
It hurts to understand that they could see us the way they clearly do (and did) if they are able to act in the despicable ways they do. Here’s the thing: now that you’ve seen what you have, now that he’s shown you who he is and what he’s capable of, you can from here on out “trust that he sucks,” as CL says. Once you start expecting “narcissistic, angry, and inhumane” behavior, you can short-circuit the mind loop of “How could he do this? How could he act this way to me?” How? Why? Because he sucks.
Wow this dear chump is so mighty.
The data from this study is fascinating, shocking and gut wrenching. And triggering, as I am reminded how I lovingly cared for my young husband when he underwent treatment for the same illness (meaning cancer in general), and then after he recovered I stayed with him for another 30 years, during which he checked out and secretly betrayed me. He was very angry (suppressed) after his cancer experience and ironically, he decided to take it out on me, rather than be grateful he survived. Let’s do a study on husbands who had cancer and then punished their longsuffering, hardworking, loyal, faithful, compassionate, empathetic and servant-hearted, home-nurse, wife appliances.
Love, care, healing, wellness, power and strength to this dear mighty chump.
My FW had cancer 10 years before D-Day. At that time he went through a whole “I’m going to be a better husband and father” kick. That lasted as long as his recovery (which was very quick as the cancer had been caught early) and as soon as he wasn’t under the threat of illness/death anymore he went back to his old self. I’m no heroine for caring for him during that time, my point here is that he didn’t “punish” me for his cancer, but to the contrary he actually became a fairly good partner for a short while. During Covid he started his affair (the one I know about anyway) with the reasoning that he was going to die so he was getting what he wanted, wife and kids be damned. A total 180 from the first time he faced mortality.
This is my FW during his cancer diagnosis and treatment (up until 3:20 in the vid):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlsRRL4pU3M
I’m so sorry he did this to you in your time of need. Unfortunately, it tells you everything you need to know about his true character. Narcissists are so good at masking, that is why they can “hide” in plain sight, just like my cheater FW NPD husband of 30 years did before he cheated on me and imploded our life. But it is very disturbing and just crushes you when you find out who they really are and especially when you’ve been with them so long. It’s like the whole world has turned upside down.
Wishing you the best with your FW free treatment and new life! It will be better with him OUT of the picture for sure! Lean on friends and family and you always have support here.
First of all ,2 Trauma, my heart absolutely bleeds for you and will keep you in my heart with prayers and across the miles hugs. ❤️. You DO NOT NEED a loser jerk in the house, no you do not!!! I’ve heard cheaters BRAG how they were having sex in the house with the CAREGIVER while their life long mates recovered in the other room. That could be any of us. I’m sorry, you never ever had a prize. I found out my X had so many emotional affairs at every job, plus phone sex and then on line. He was always a cheater and liar but he was a good actor too. There are so many secrets I know nothing about but your creep DID NOT LOVE YOU for a long time..well they can’t love so he did not care for you or bond with you and he has a despicable character. Listen, you will heal better and do better WITHOUT HIM! Your body has kept score for years and it KNOWS what your husband was doing and it was hurting so badly. Please get a kind and good lawyer, please take therapy seriously, please get rid of this creep as quickly as is legally possible but get coverage for your medical care if you can. Hopefully you are nearing Medicare coverage and then you can take more cash. TAKE CARE OF YOU do not look to him for ANYTHING. He is an alien. Listen to Tracy, read all her writings, she has the blueprint!!!! My X said he wanted another child and then BLAMED ME for getting pregnant. 9 months of hate.and then he left at delivery.
My next cheater waited for my retirement to tell me he didn’t need me. They are demons and carry diseases and mental instability. You DO NOT NEED THAT. . Don’t waste energy on him, spend all you can on your recovery. I am so so sorry but give yourself true love without him. Focus on healing and YOU!!
First off, I am very, very sorry to hear about your diagnosis. That’s already bad enough news. The one-two punch of “by the way, your greatest supporter is now your greatest enemy?” It’s terrible. Not with cancer, but I’ve certainly been to THAT rodeo. And it fucking sucks. You have enough to worry about and that idiot has done you no favors. I hope you have a good care team while you go through all of this. So much of what you are going through right now is about circling wagons and getting the help you need. Again-I am so sorry.
You will likely find out what I and everybody else here found out-that if that person was ever really there…they quietly left long ago. Cheating does not occur in a vacuum-that moral impairment was always there. It was not a matter of “if”, it was a matter of “when.” It has nothing to do with you, your illness, how much or how far ahead in the ledger you were. With fuckwits, it’s always “it’s not what you have done for me-it’s what you’ve done for me lately” along with their own sense of entitlement.
As you over-reflect on all of this you will start to identify times where you gave him the benefit of the doubt or he otherwise presaged all of this. Do not beat yourself up overmuch-you had no idea. None of us did. You loved him and gave him grace. You’re supposed to do that. He was NOT supposed to cheat and had no right to do so. Nothing you said or did or are gave him that right.
You are making the right move in divorcing that idiot. You will question that. That is natural. You are still making the right move. Read the studies (top of the morning to you, Hell of a Chump!)-your outcomes would be far worse than if you didn’t. “You can’t get healthy in the place that made you sick.”
What am I excited about on this fine summer Monday morning? Hearing back from you in a year when you beat both the cancer AND this idiot in court!
You got this! Give them BOTH Hell!
And a Mighty Monday to the rest of you!
Top of the morning to you too. 🙂
Did someone say studies?! Starting with the view that cheating is a form of domestic abuse (most cases involve coercive control at the very least), there’s definitely mounting evidence that chumps who escape cheaters might be dodging the statistical bullet of more overt types of domestic abuse or even violence in the future.
For instance, reports about abusers escalating abuse while victims are pregnant are so blood-curdling that I’ve wondered if this was specifically related to pregnancy itself or could be generalized to victims being in particularly vulnerable and compromised positions for any reason such as illness, family loss and other catastrophes. What I found is kind of a mixed bag of results which probably just means we’re in early days in regards to very detailed studies of coercive control and domestic abuse. But what’s in the bag is pretty telling.
On the one hand, there seems to be something particular about pregnancy that drives domestic abusers to escalate. In response to statistics reporting that pregnancy is the time when women are at highest risk for domestic assault and murder, feminist author and Andrea Dworkin’s widower Prof. John Stoltenberg argues that abusive men may see fetuses and infants as rivals for victims’ attention. Stoltenberg also puts a Freudian twist on it saying abusers see fetuses as proverbial “rival penises.” But, on the other hand, it does seem that abuse escalates whenever abusers perceive they have victims over a barrel in general– somehow rendered less able to fight back or escape.
On that score, cancer rates are higher among abuse victims, though the issue of cancer or other life threatening illness in victims has a few chicken/egg issues such as reports that abuse itself can increase the risk of cancer and chronic disease. Some argue that this happens because the severe stress caused by domestic abuse and coercive control compromises immune response and puts individuals at higher risk for autoimmune conditions and cancer.
Still, it’s not always clear if abuse also escalates as victims’ succumb to abuse-induced disease. But I would bet it would. In any case, 76% of women diagnosed with breast or gynecological cancers are abuse survivors compared to 26% of women without cancer diagnoses: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jan.15285#:~:text=The%20combination%20of%20cancer%20and%20harassment%20can,or%20continuation%20of%20cancer%20treatment%20in%20women.
Furthermore, new research on the association between cancer and intimate partner abuse may finally be closing in on the cheater/batterer overlap because it turns out that domestic abuse victims are a whopping ten times more likely to develop ovarian cancer. https://www.ons.org/system/files/journal-article-pdfs/R780V335L26G0652.pdf
Because roughly 30% of ovarian cancer correlates to HPV infection, because STDs like chlamydia can double the risk of especially epithelial ovarian cancer and because there’s a correlation between DV and HIV infection in women, there’s evidence that abusers are more likely to be cheaters than average.
Even more telling are reports that cervical cancer rates are nearly triple in domestic abuse victims because it’s well known that over 99% of cervical cancer is caused by HPV.
So this seems to argue that domestic abusers are more likely to cheat though the research hasn’t yet been performed arguing that cheaters are more likely to abuse in other ways. Again, if those studies are ever done, I’ll bet there’s a very strong correlation. For starters, there’s a statistical correlation that individuals who subscribe to things like “infidelity tolerance” and “rape myth acceptance” are more likely to display “hostile sexism” and engage in sexual coercion. Interestingly, this was found to be true not only in heterosexual men who hold these attitudes and beliefs but also heterosexual women so research might also be circling closer to overlapping motives in both male and female FWs.
So there’s my current armchair science dredge. In any event, it seems likely that leaving a cheater might not only get victims a life but may literally save it in many cases.
Afterr having cancer and finally getting the all clear from the specialist, I remember being told by my husband that if I get cancer again, I should not tell anyone unless I know I’m going to die.
What a gem he was. My 4 kids supported me and helped me through it all. He left to be with his AP. Thank God he left. Yes he love bombed me when his AP didn’t work out and I lived.
No, I didn’t take the FW back. I gained more than a positive result for beating cancer. I also gained a life of freedom from the FW, freedom from the controlling, narcissistic man he was. Married for 27 years and free at last. If it took cancer to give me that freedom then I’m grateful for it. More grateful, of course, for my journey having a happy ending – me being well and truly alive, and free of his bullshit.
It might not seem like much now, but it’s huge that you’re divorcing him. That takes so much strength with everything else you are going through and it’s the smart thing to do to protect yourself. I’m praying for you and I hope that doesn’t offend because I mean it sincerely. Please don’t internalize what he’s doing against yourself. It is not your fault. And don’t beat yourself up for not knowing who he really was, we’re all in that boat here, and happy to provide company and support.
I feel like sharing perspectives I’ve learned can help, because there is a human need to understand. In my case, I was married 20 years, and I was sick for much of my marriage. My marriage imploded when I made a miraculous recovery. Sounds weird, right? I couldn’t figure out why he seemed so angry when I kept getting better. I could do more for the family! I was less of a burden! It’s wonderful! Right?!
But it challenged his narrative and his facade. The husband I knew was not real. Just like the husband you knew was not real. But they construct a fake persona and that’s who we fell in love with. In my case, he was the long suffering husband of a sick wife. I think his plan was for me to die so he could be a widower who would inspire so much pity and attention. But I screwed up the narrative by fully recovering. They get mad when you screw up their narrative. In your case, you getting sick screwed up his narrative and his plans.
The good part is that by disrupting their plans we get to see reality, finally. It sucks when it took so much time but try not to see it as wasted time. You were genuine during that time. You were genuinely living. There are memories that will be tainted but there are others that he will just fade out of and you’ll remember the other people in them and not so much him. You lived a whole, real life and he can’t take that from you just because he chose to waste his being fake and pathetic. This is not the end, it’s a new beginning. It is hard though and I’m so sorry you have to go through it while being sick. Lean on people here, they helped me so much. There are good people in the world still, you’ve found some here. You will find more. There is still so much beauty and love in the world, he doesn’t get to destroy that. He is not that powerful.
When I found out he had a secret sexual double life, I did not lose my marriage or family.
I found out that I never had one.
I was a hostage, held in place by his fraudulent loving behavior. I had a MIRAGE, not a marriage. True family would never betray me, deceive me, stab me in the back. I did not have a family.
Con artists are outwardly Really Nice People who do Really Nice Things. Oftentimes community pillars with stellar resumes of public service, philanthropy, altruism.
That is their cover story.
Truly decent trustworthy people DON’T lie and keep secrets which belie their good deeds.
Motives for behavior are not visible to the naked eye. They can be determined by an individual’s behavior when they think no one is looking. If someone is charming and does intentional harm to others, you can safely assume their “niceness” is actually manipulation, image management.
IMHO.
I truly believe now that I was not a wife but a disguise.
❤️
My very own therapist theorized that FW hung on to me for decades to serve as a social disguise for him. Kids were mere embellishments to the disguise. Everything of course done only to HIS BENEFIT.
Michael Whyte, who sadistically tortured and murdered Darlene Krashoc and left her naked body outside in winter, was finally identified and apprehended by DNA evidence thirty years later.
He was arrested at his very nice upper middle class home. His wife, undergoing cancer treatment, was blown away. She could not believe it. He was her rock and tireless caregiver.
Even faithful caregiving can mask a serious predator.
You can still see his profile on LinkedIn.
If infidelity has taught me anything, it’s that in forming relationships with other people, the STOP signs can appear at any point along the way. They’re often not all visibly and neatly lined up in a tight grouping at the starting gate.
I am very sorry for your diagnosis and the trauma of infidelity layered on top of it. Please keep coming back. There is wisdom and strength here to help you get through this.
Sending hugs.
❤️
This is where I give my “de-evolution” spiel again because the FW in this story is literally acting like a monkey.
A humanist psychologist said that humans minus the ability to love are nothing more than feral apes. So when I want to make sense of the things evil people do, I just look at the behavior of our closest ape cousins, the regular warring, rapey chimpanzee. It’s all there, especially the sudden shift from years of seeming loyalty to backstabbing.
Even Jane Goodall was shocked into a puddle of despair in the 70s when, after many years studying chimps at Gombe, her impression of pastoral, civilized, affectionate chimp social behavior was radically flipped into a ditch after she witnessed a series of lethal raids, sadistic gang attacks and gory coup d’etats.
But Goodall herself more or less conceded she had been “chumped” and had missed a lot of “red flags” in terms of common day to day aggressive behavior among chimps because, as it turns out, chimps are deceptively two-faced and it can sometimes take years of close observation to see the masks drop.
For instance, on hitting puberty, ape males will typically beat up their own mothers as a rite of passage and first demonstration of dominance. Also females are frequently injured and sometimes killed in violent gang bangs. Males also preemptively “coercively control” females by attacking and aggressively harassing them as a means of ensuring that the targets will be sexually compliant when the time comes.
In other words, all chimps are batterers and chimpanzee social order is entirely “protofeminist” since females never form coalitions to guard against male aggression. But some females might be able to earn a tiny bit of amnesty from constant aggression or an extra bit of monkey meat (chimps are cannibals) by acting as accessories to male-on-mae violence such as joining sadistic attacks against males who are perceived as vulnerable… which sounds a lot like she-FWs betraying loyal family men for the sake of knuckle-dragging creeps. It also sounds like typical side chick/mate-poachers who will knowingly aid and abet domestic abuse of their fellow women. Monkeys, monkeys everywhere.
But what seems especially relevant to FWs is that, to chimps, there’s no such thing as love in the evolved human sense of it though chimps make a good show of it– enough to fool field observers for a decade. For example, chimp males, who for years may appear seamlessly devoted and bonded to certain other males, might– out of the blue– do a switcheroo and violently turn on their “friends” or leaders the second the latter show any sign of weakness or injury (while female sidekicks dutifully join the takedown and mate with victors).
As a side note, I think even compulsive porn use relates to “de-evolution” since chimp mating typically involve beta males acting as spectators to violent mass gangbangs led by higher ranking males while waiting and hoping for their turns to join in.
Anyway, it appears that Goodall wasn’t alone in being hoodwinked by chimps’ seeming capacity for affection and love. Chimps themselves seem to miss the red flag that any dude who will mistreat his own mother, kill the infants of rival troops and beat up females in his own troop probably isn’t to be trusted as a buddy either. In turn I think the latter could explain the behavior of “Swiss Friends” towards victims in response to human cheating and domestic abuse. They’re basically acting like apes in irrationally lining up behind the perceived “winner” of a betrayal. Humans may spew a bunch of psychobabble nonsense to justify this kind of opportunistic cowardice but it’s nothing more than monkey behavior.
All the same, the scientists who study and report these behaviors among apes aren’t making an evolutionary excuse for human savagery or inconstancy or an argument that all humans will act like goons just because psychopathy is baseline chimp behavior. Personally I think it’s just the humans who internalized crappy upbringings and dysfunctional FOO values which somehow “optimized” latent ape capacity and “minimized” and stripped away the civilized layers of higher human evolution and advanced capacity for genuine loyalty, genuine love and genuine social justice.
The good news about humans is that not everyone lives according to the law of the jungle but FWs and their proxies and enablers certainly do.
Interestingly, as FW cheating escalated including taking on an expensive escort as main sidepiece so did his verbal abuse of his mother. Who raised him as a single mom after FW own FW father abandoned them for his AP. In hindsight this was a massive red flag but I was a champion spackler 😭
I think you were a champion survivor since you lived to tell about your experience on Planet of the Apes. 😮
“As a side note, I think even compulsive porn use relates to “de-evolution” since chimp mating typically involve beta males acting as spectators to violent mass gangbangs led by higher ranking males while waiting and hoping for their turns to join in.”
That was my fuckwit. He liked gang rape porn, often with a victim was was passed out. As soon as I found that out (shortly after DDay) I started looking for a place to live so I could leave ASAP. I was horrified and traumatized knowing I had been sleeping with such a sicko for more than thirty years.
Yikes. So glad you escaped!
Aside from my suspicion that porn use triggers “de-evolution” because it fires up the latent rapey ape spectator thing, I have a theory that many cheaters first learn to lie and hide who they really are in order to cover up much creepier predilections than promiscuity and disloyalty. I suspect most are wannabe rapists and/or into S/M and/or have pedophilic tendencies. According to the Pornhub traffic, that content is the most popular.
Yes, that makes sense. FW outright admitted he had started to lie and sneak around since he was a teenager to cover up porn use. He got good at it, so I guess he figured it would work for cheating too, and it did, until he messed up because he wouldn’t say no to OW’s stupid whims. I think she actually wanted him to get caught, because she was bored and needed to ramp up the evil by destroying a family. She was like that, except too cowardly to be a true bunny boiler.
“…because she was bored and needed to ramp up the evil by destroying a family.”
I read something about how people with antisocial personality disorder don’t really know they exist unless they can see evidence they’ve had some “effect” on other people. I imagine it’s normal for people to want to leave their mark on the world to some degree but apparently the issue with ASPD is that they don’t care whether this effect is positive or destructive.
I’m not sure I completely agree with the view since it almost seems to presume that antisocial types would be just as happy with having a positive effect as a negative one. But I suspect the preference skews heavily towards negative, both because being destructive takes way less effort and because there’s also sadism at play.
That’s another interesting development in recent research: a preference for the “dark tetrad” view of negative personalities (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy + sadism) over the older “dark triad” view of dark personalities (which doesn’t include sadism).
OMG, my husband was a chimp. Instead of husband and wife we should have been pronounced Chimp and Chump. It would have been far closer to the truth.
It also explains his behavior of discarding two friends as soon as he learned they were sick/dying. And his love of violence, weapons, porn preference of tortured, bruised and bloody women and glee at any pain or suffering I experienced, coupled with a complete lack of empathy. None of which I knew when I married him.
OP, we are rooting for you. I am praying for you also. I am thankful you found out who he was before your treatment, because you need all your strength for yourself and not tending to a feral chimp. They are all feral chimps, these destroyers of their spouses and family.
I’m also pondering that Jane Goodall, whose professional life consisted of observing chimp behavior all day, every day, was unable to recognize the secret ferocity some posessed.
Lol, I’d rather belong to Chump Nation than Chimp Nation! The company is better for sure.
Hmm, interesting question about whether Jane Goodall might have been spackling and seeing what she wanted to see. I think that might be partly true because the main mission in Gombe assigned to her by her mentor Robert Hinde was to sell the human-like, kinder-gentler wonders of chimps to the world to raise conservation efforts and funds.
But I also think that chimps– like some (not all) humans– have a very dichotomous nature. Very much like chumps, Goodall didn’t see the masks drop until she saw it, which took several years of field work.
The fact that chimps– just like FWs– can take years to show who they really are and can fool professional observers into thinking they’re all sweetness and light is pretty interesting.
My sense of it is that, just like humans, chimps tend to deeply invest in their own ruses. For example, if apes could talk and you interviewed a beta ape as he was affectionately grooming and kowtowing to a higher ranking male whether his apparent devotion was genuine, I have a feeling the beta ape would burst into sonnets of love and loyalty and really think he meant it. Until the opportunity arose to perform a coup d’etat and quite suddenly he didn’t mean it anymore.
Maybe that’s why our species is so bloody diabolical. Like our ape ancestors and ape cousins, we seem to believe our own bullshit. But the view also pretty much exonerates chumps (or chimps or Jane Goodall) for buying into the ruse because it’s a pretty skillful con job.
OMG he sounds like a true sadistic psychopath.
Dear OCW2T, you are so mighty and brave. Wishing you all the best during your treatment. CN is behind you. I had a cancer scare a few years ago. My anxiety was understandably through the roof. And my FW got angry (very unusual for him). He broke our laundry drying rack in a rage. I couldn’t wrap my head around his reaction for years. Who does this when someone is potentially sick? But once I had my D-Day and found CL, then it all made sense. Sending you a virtual hug.
I am so sorry you’re having to go through this! There’s evidence that stress can cause obesity, hypertension, auto-immune diseases, diabetes and even cancer. After 20 years with my ex-husband, I developed most of those. He didn’t leave me when I had breast cancer — he carted me to every lab draw, doctor’s appointment, test and surgery and performed the hell out of a “good husband” facade. My colleagues and his all thought I was so lucky to have “so much support.” But when we weren’t at the hospital (where we both worked) for my treatment, appointments, whatever, he was nasty to me. No physical abuse, but verbal and emotional abuse and yes, he was probably cheating then, too. By then, I was so accustomed to the abuse that I didn’t realize until six months after my final radiation therapy treatment that I had gotten no emotional support at all.
I wasn’t savvy enough or brave enough to divorce him then. You, the OP are truly mighty! I know I should have left him for the abuse alone, even though I didn’t know he was cheating or that the stress did permanent damage to my health. But you actually DID it. You are my hero!
I agree with the premise that disordered and shallow don’t see spouses as people so much as appliances but the article you’re quoting was retracted. There was an error in the coding that exaggerated the results, https://retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21/to-our-horror-widely-reported-study-suggesting-divorce-is-more-likely-when-wives-fall-ill-gets-axed/?ref=benjaminkeep.com
First off, I’m really sorry about your illness. I fervently hope you recover. ❤️
Now, to your question. He’s a no good, completely selfish bastard. That’s why he acts that way. The loving husband you knew was not the real him. He was wearing a mask the whole time.
So was mine, for more than thirty years. They can do that. I was shocked to find out narcs can keep the mask on that long. It does tend to drop under times of stress. With my FW it was the death of his father.
I got a hostile reaction from the fuckwit when I became very ill with Graves disease. I suspect this is extremely common with selfish people.
I can’t imagine how mighty you have to be to free yourself from abuse while going through TWO traumatic events.
Not nearly as difficult for me personally, but a very recent story of a useless indifferent FW during a major health event:
My FW loves to play family, and doesn’t even do a bad job of it…when it’s convenient for him. He’s been away most of our kids’ lives, both during and after marriage.
Last week my 12 y/o son collapsed face-first onto the heat register in his room and had a seizure. My boyfriend called an ambulance while I held my unconscious child.
I called FW after the ambulance dropped us at the hospital. He’d been living almost four hours away for a one-year university program. The previous week he had made sure Grandma took the kids out of school a day early to travel to his graduation ceremony. I didn’t care that he did it, but the kids (being seen) were sure a priority that day.
I wasn’t sure whether FW was in town when I called him. Well, how lucky, he has just moved back. I told him about our son’s seizure and that we were at the hospital, and I don’t doubt that he was genuinely worried. But the second thing he said to me was “uh…well I have to return this u-Haul…and I have to…” I told him, that’s fine, kid is stable but groggy, and we don’t know anything yet anyway.
But later I thought about it, what a dickhead. When my boyfriend saw my son seizing and called for me, I screamed and ran and flung myself to the floor. I got the tooth he knocked out and was choking on out of his mouth and I didn’t leave his side until the EMT’s arrived to see me in my disheveled bathrobe with my son’s blood on it.
But his dad’s first reaction? Went and made sure he didn’t get charged $39.99 for an extra day.
He didn’t have to put his inconvenient son first. That’s my job.
Don’t get me wrong. Later on FW stayed at the hospital for hours. But my mom got there first, even though she was watching my Kindergarten-age nephew and had to bring him. FW didn’t exactly rush over.
If you read all that, my son was diagnosed with epilepsy after two days hospitalized. He appears to be doing fine and has no memory of the seizure, but there are so many new things we have to learn about his condition and change about his environment. Thank you for helping me redirect from worrying about my son to being petty about the FW 😣😅
And people wonder why I never wanted to marry!
Cw2T, in addition to Chump Nation and related supports, be sure to seek support from breast cancer groups. They often have a in-person help in many communities, especially at the treatment centers, and you are likely to connect with other women who are or have experienced the same two traumas.
He’s angry at you because that’s his defense against guilt and blame for cheating on his wife of four decades.
Since he started cheating–as far as you know–two weeks before your diagnosis, both of you may have already known you had a health problem, or even known it was cancer. Trust that he’s lying about the timeline–cheaters are famous for trickle truth, only admitting to what you already know, if that.
He’s mad because you’re making him look bad, to himself and others. He’s mad because he doesn’t want to have to do anything for you; he expects you to do for him. He may be mad because you’re divorcing him and he can’t profit from your illness or death. Harsh, but he’s been harsher.
It’s an extra whammy because you’ve been together for so long.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to your friends and even acquaintances ASAP, and don’t be afraid to tell them he cheated after he learned you learned about your illness
It’s shameful that men so commonly abandon their sick wives. Fortunately (for me, not him) I have an excellent role model in that regard. In fact, I think I’ll call him now and thank him again for being so devoted to my Aunt including during those last five terrible years.
I have stage four cancer, I found out my whole life is a lie (emotional and physical affairs all the while playing the part of the perfect husband and father) and he makes all the money (I had to retire). He’s getting meaner and meaner. He asked me yesterday why I took two slices of pizza when he only took one. He gets mad because I can’t do things I used to be able to do etc…He’s always suggesting things to do that he knows are impossible for me. He takes me to all my appointments, but it’s not for me. I want to be mighty too, and I want to leave so bad, but to what?