Cheating Wife Doesn’t Understand Why They’re Getting Divorced
His cheating wife doesn’t want a divorce. Instead she’s blaming him for quitting on their marriage and not abiding by their commitment. That’s rich.
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Hi Chump Lady,
I could use your UBT right now. It’s been months since I messaged you and you answered my letter, which itself was months since I first started seeing signs of an affair.
It has broken me.
Ever since then I have been struggling with the betrayal, the disrespect, whether to stay in the marriage, and the lack of self-respect that I felt by staying. And we also tried couples therapy, which was pretty useless except for two things: it demonstrated that my wife was still not forthcoming about the affair, and it resulted in her prompting me to take the month of April to decide if I wanted to be in this relationship.
Finally, after months of agonizing over whether I could tolerate myself staying in this marriage if it meant sacrificing my self-respect, I chose myself.
Last night I asked my wife for a divorce.
And then I cried like a child. She cried, too. She asked why? I said because I couldn’t stand the face I see in the mirror, and that I felt tired and empty and I don’t want to feel that way anymore. She said I deserve to be happy. I told her we both do. She said if I had already made up my mind to just walk away, she wasn’t going to fight me on that. There was some brief talk about finances, and then she went to an already-planned dinner. It was late when she returned home (she was not with her affair partner, no need to read too much into that), and I was asleep.
Today was round two. She asked if I had anything to say. I said that I didn’t really have anything else to say.
She said that she would never understand my choice.
That she had married me for life, and that she guessed everything we said in our vows was all conditional to me. I brought up the affair. Then she said: “So that’s it. That’s the nail or the straw as they say. I thought we were getting past all that.”
I told her that just because time is progressing doesn’t mean I am past it. I am stuck there. And I know that in the past you have felt I have some weird hang-up about my ego, and maybe that’s what this is, but my sense of self-respect has just been completely absent for months now.
And then she asked when I started to feel this way. I told her it was the day after Christmas, which was when I found all of her sexting with her affair partner. She said that was bullshit. So I revised my answer and said that I have been feeling unhappy for a while before then, but I would have worked through everything else if it wasn’t for everything with her A.P.
She said she disagreed. That as soon as the going got tough, I was willing to just walk away. I told her I didn’t see it that way. That when the going got tough, I tried everything I knew in order to try to make things work.
But I can’t get past the disrespect.
Then she said that she felt like I had associated her with my depression from last year (when I was unemployed). That she used to make me feel amazing, but now I associate her with those dark times. And that was why she felt she needed to share her feelings with her “friend”.
I ended the conversation there, because I did not want to have another argument about how sharing feelings with friends is not the same as sexting them and fantasizing about things together, and I didn’t want to relive that disrespect. She said that it wasn’t disrespectful of her. I told her that when it is my feelings and I am the one being disrespected, then I get to define if it counts as disrespect.
And as I ended the conversation, she said, “See? As soon as we get to the hard stuff, you just shut me down and walk away and get upset.” I told her I was not trying to get upset, and that’s why I was ending the conversation. Then she said, “So, this is really happening?” And I said yes and walked away.
And all I’ve wanted since day one was just a little shred of accountability from her.
Just to acknowledge the truth, and that she hurt me, and that she is remorseful of it and would change something, anything, to fix it. But she’s still friends with him on social media. She made it clear during therapy that she wouldn’t cut him out of her life before knowing that I wanted to stay married. So here I am, feeling devastated and sad, but at least showing a little bit of spine for the first time in a long time. My gut says I’m making the right decision. But it’s messing with my mind. How can someone say they love me but act this way?
Moron Communicator
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Dear Perfectly Fine Communicator,
Please don’t stick your head in the mindfuck blender. You made a decision to divorce. (All of Chump Nation cheers you!) She doesn’t have to like your decision. In fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed she won’t. So STOP DISCUSSING IT WITH HER.
This whole tilting at the consensus windmill is a rookie chump mistake. You do not need her buy in. Did she ask you when she had an affair? No. This isn’t tit-for-tat. This is you recognizing that you can’t stay in a relationship without trust. She destroyed that trust AND you gave her a shot at reconciliation. That was a GIFT. She shat on that gift. Now you’re doing the sensible thing for your own health and sanity and are getting divorced.
You don’t owe her reconciliation.
You never owed her reconciliation.
The fact that thinks she’s entitled to an infinite number of chances with you proves that she never lost the entitlement-thinking that got her into this mess. You have nothing to work with. So kudos to you for recognizing it and leaving the field.
Now to the Universal Bullshit Translator.
She said that she would never understand my choice.
I understand your choice perfectly well. I do not like it. So I’ll wear the cloak of moral superiority and be above such base, vulgar decisions to quit on the sacred sacrament of marriage.
That she had married me for life, and that she guessed everything we said in our vows was all conditional to me.
You vowed to be Plan B for however long I wanted and provide essential spouse appliance benefits. I demand unconditional commitment!
I brought up the affair. Then she said: “So that’s it. That’s the nail or the straw as they say. I thought we were getting past all that.”
One set of rules for me, another for thee.
Dance, monkey.
She said that was bullshit. So I revised my answer and said that I have been feeling unhappy for a while before then, but I would have worked through everything else if it wasn’t for everything with her A.P. She said she disagreed.
I have a fundamental disagreement with the concept that you are an individual separate and apart from my desires. Fetch me a Pepsi, husband monkey! And look snappy about it!
You are not my servant? Bullshit!
That as soon as the going got tough, I was willing to just walk away.
Whereas I fuck randos to express my displeasure. #winning
I’m sorry you’re a bummer.
Then she said that she felt like I had associated her with my depression from last year (when I was unemployed). That she used to make me feel amazing, but now I associate her with those dark times. And that was why she felt she needed to share her feelings with her “friend”.
The unconditional love only works one way. Your hardships are a bummer and my attention is required elsewhere.
She said that it wasn’t disrespectful of her. I told her that when it is my feelings and I am the one being disrespected, then I get to define if it counts as disrespect.
And as I ended the conversation, she said, “See? As soon as we get to the hard stuff, you just shut me down and walk away and get upset.”
My mindfuckery wasn’t finished! We still have the pulverize and ice crush settings.
Then she said, “So, this is really happening?”
What are these consequences? Cheating doesn’t mean you divorce your wife! It means you pretzel yourself into more pleasing shapes to win me. How would you like your cognitive dissonance — scrambled or over easy?
she’s still friends with him on social media. She made it clear during therapy that she wouldn’t cut him out of her life before knowing that I wanted to stay married.
Well, Communicator, she’s still got Facebook.
Don’t worry one bit about her. Get yourself free.
I have one of these. My ex-FW still believes that I am a “bad Catholic” because I didn’t abide by our marriage vows of “for better or worse” and when it got “worse” (ie: his serial cheating and hiding thousands of dollars from our retirement, etc.), I left. He actually says he abided by our marriage vows because he “would never have left” me.
Of course, I don’t give a rats ass about his opinion on this because consider the source.
They love that “for better or worse” vow, and don’t seem to remember the “forsaking all others” part. They broke the vows first, they voided the contract.
Ask any corporate lawyer or judge how it goes down when one party is in breach of contract – they have to pay damages.
Agreed. It’s the best response.
He wouldn’t have left you…..he would have just kept MAKING IT WORSE.
Well I’m a Catholic going through the process of an annulment so you can tell him from me, that one of the requirements for a Catholic marriage to be valid is both spouses have to vow to be FAITHFUL to each other until death and MEAN IT! He clearly did NOT mean it, so, when if he ever comes out with any guilt-tripping guff about it again, remind him of this!
Then add that he hasn’t just broken his vow to you, but to Almighty God Himself and furthermore, as he is a serial adulterer he’s mocked God and God does NOT like that! At all! He’s betrayed you AND God and then added insult to injury by mocking God! He has no right to be on moral high-ground at all and if he tries, he’s trespassing!
Cheek of him!
I am Catholic as well. Please tell me more about annulment and what/why?
P.S. The 3 main criteria are:-
I applied on the grounds that STBX never intended fidelity to me until death. Have a think back and see could you apply on those grounds too. As we all at CN find out, cheating only the once is a very rare thing- most of them are wired up that way from a young age, because they have disordered characters. They’re not fit for marriage!
If you’ve any more questions, fire away, I’ll be only too happy to answer and I would be glad to help you! God bless.
What I did was look it up online first. Pope Francis has simplified it and made it free-of-charge, thank God because I’m nearly broke! Then I contacted my Diocese and I was sent out forms to fill in, quite simple ones. I also had to nominate 2 witnesses and get them to fill out a short form each and agree to be interviewed regard the “marriage”. I then had contact from the Marriage Tribunal in Cork City and had to go down there to have an interview with a priest, who is one of the members of the Tribunal.He told me that had to also contact STBX to tell him I had applied and give him his say plus send him a form to fill out and sign, but now the other spouse can just agree to an annulment and that’s what it seems he’s done as I had a letter from them a couple of weeks ago telling me it’s now being investigated under “Ordinary Process” which is the longer one. They’ve yet to contact my 2 witnesses, but I’m presuming that’s the next step. The priest also asked me would I be willing to talk to their psychologist and I agreed, as there was alot of dysfunction in the relationship and in bothe our FOOs I have realised. The priest was young and well sound; he was really understanding and kind, plus he gave me a lift back to the railway station, saving me a bomb in taxi fare. He told me he’s into Ska music which I am too so we were chatting about that, lol!
So, it’s still in progress and I’m waiting to hear. I’m now waiting to get cracking on sorting the house out to put it on the market, so I hope things don’t drag on too long, I’d like it done and dusted before I sell up and leave but sure, so long as it’s granted, I’m happy out!
I hope this has been helpful to you? It’s for the best to have the spiritual tie to an adulterer cut if possible, even if like me, you’ve had it with men! And as we all know, life can surprise you in nice as well as bad ways, so it’s for the best to be free to marry in the Church again, just in case God sends a decent fella along! God bless!
The Catholic Church regards marriage as a lifelong sacramental bond. Officially, it doesn’t PROHIBIT divorce; but doesn’t formally RECOGNIZE divorce either.
Generally, it only becomes an issue when a Catholic divorces and then enters into a new relationship and/or remarries. As far as the Church is concerned, the person is still married to the original spouse, so the new relationship is considered adulterous.
A civil divorce is the ending of a VALID marriage (you were once married, but now you’re not).
A Catholic annulment, by contrast, declares that that marriage was NEVER VALID in the first place (one or more essential elements were absent at the time of the marriage, so you were never truly married under Church law).
There are different grounds for annulment—for example:
Bigamy—Either party was already married to another person at the time of the marriage
Forced Consent—One of the spouses was forced or threatened into marriage and only entered into it under duress
Fraud—One of the spouses agreed to the marriage based on the lies or misrepresentation of the other (e.g., originally claimed to be open to children but later refused)
Mental Illness—Either spouse was mentally ill or emotionally disturbed at the time of the marriage
Mental Incapacity—Either spouse was under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time of the marriage and was unable to make informed consent
Inability to Consummate Marriage—Either spouse was physically incapable of having sexual relations or impotent during the marriage
So, again, an annulment is not dissolution of a marriage, but a finding that there never was a valid marriage in the first place.
If you’re a practicing Catholic—but divorced and want to remarry—the Church requires a person to obtain an annulment before marrying another.
Contrary to popular belief, the children born from an annulled marriage will not be regarded as “illegitimate.” As long as one party conducted the marriage in good faith, all children born of that marriage will be legitimate.
I know many people see annulment as a “fiction,” which is certainly their prerogative (especially if they’re not Catholic).
I am a practicing Catholic and a Dad with two daughters under 13. I unknowingly married a woman with a personality disorder—an intensely angry, unstable, impulsive, and alcoholic serial cheater.
For most of our 10+ year marriage, I did not set enough boundaries with my STBX. Today, I absolutely do—and want my daughters to understand that there are rules in this life that we all have to follow. I also want them to understand marriage as something deeply meaningful.
To me, the annulment is important both personally and to help set an appropriate example for my children.
Agree 100%. I am getting an annulment as well and clearly the cheater does not understand their Catholic faith and what a true Catholic marriage is. If the cheater ever bothered to go speak to a priest they would understand this but alas that would be consequences! Somehow the religious ones think the rules of their faith regarding adultery don’t apply to them because they are somehow “special”.
Oh, I hope your appliaction is successful, please God!
You’re right that “Catholic” cheats don’t seem to know the Faith very well- thay might not be adequately Catechised or maybe, they’ve just rewritten the 10 Commandments and the 7 Deadly Sins in a way that suits them better??
STBX started coming to Mass with me but he would NOT go to Confession! Last time I suggested it, very gently, he barked “I don’t need to! I’m fine!”. Deadly Sin of Pride on top of sinful Lust? Well he didn’t want to tell a priest what he was up to anyway, and I think it was because he wasn’t remotely repentant! Sure God knows what they’re up to anyway, there’s no hiding from Him but cheats operate not on right and wrong, but what they can get away with. Until they’re made face consequences, they think they’re getting away with it!
Maybe things have changed greatly since I got my annulment, but the priests really didn’t care about what my husband did or didn’t do. All of the cheating and the secret double life just struck them as “mischievous.” They were more concerned with the fact that I admitted to being on the pill — for hormone regulation. My annulment was granted. On the basis that I “refused to welcome children lovingly and joyfully into my life” as evidenced by taking prescribed medication for endometriosis and a hormone imbalance.
Blimey, I’m sorry they scapegoated you, that was kicking you whilst you were down and anyway, they were wrong to do that- your X’s serial cheating was what invalidated the marriage because serial cheats are liars and they are lying when they make their vows! Furthermore, they’re lying not just to us, but to God Himself ( which is rather daft as He knows everything but cheats think they can fool everyone, don’t they?) I’m glad to say the priest I met with from the Tribunal was nothing but kind and understanding of me and he actually said my STBX “sounds like a psychopath!”. I hope this means that things have changed for the better!
That is utterly infuriating! I suppose, you got your annulment and that is the most important part, but wow, that should never have been granted because of your medical situation over his infidelity. Unbelievable.
Yes, agreed! Thank you! That’s what I tell myself. Telling him sure wouldn’t matter. That’s the frustrating thing with these FWs—it’s so utterly insane, their mindset.
Ah, I know what you mean, sure it’d be like talking to the wall talking to them! But I reckon it’s as Dr. Simon says, it’s not that they don’t see, it’s that they don’t agree!
Oh, of course he would never have left you. Until he would have. And even if he didn’t, why should you remain tethered to a lying abuser with a wandering dick? G-d is all about consequences. FW just doesn’t like them and wants to make your divorcing worse than his cheating. As Divorce Minister might say, this is sin leveling.
For all the Jesus cheaters out there, I like to point out that 2 of the 10 Commandments say that “God hates adultery.”
And that is very clear throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, and in the stories as well as the laws. NO GOOD EVER COMES OUT OF ADULTERY. Or polygamy for that matter (which I consider legalized adultery). From Abraham to David and on, adultery has always had bad consequences. Even Jesus did not forgive the woman taken in adultery….he told her to go forth and sin no more. THAT would be her redemption, generally changing her character and behavior….not just saying she’s sorry for what she’s done. That’s a good start but it doesn’t really mean much, everyone is sorry for getting caught. It’s what you do going forward.
Yes, and Jesus told the woman caught in adultery that He wouldn’t condemn her but to go and SIN NO MORE! That’s the bit that serial adulterers like to ignore, because they like their sin and want to carry on committing it! Jesus never gave adulterers permission to carry on committing adultery!
Yes. Ultimately, FWs will take what matters to the Chump (like their faith, or their fidelity, or the honesty) and use it against them. You can see it here with MC, where his wife is calling him a quitter for leaving arguments and asking for a divorce.
Dear MC,
I remember your last letter. This is all so hard, and it is very difficult to make decisions when your head is in a mind blender. I recognize a lot of your feelings. I remember looking in the mirror and saying “who is this person?” during the last few months. I remember internalizing my FW’s criticisms of me (you call yourself “Moron Communicator,” for example). I remember she would castigate me for removing myself from fights – that would really enrage her.
You don’t recognize yourself in the mirror because you are living in the hurricane of her narrative. I imagine you have a lot of amazing qualities, which you will re-discover after all this hard stuff is fading in the rear-view mirror. Those good qualities are much better spent on people who actually value you.
I think my advice to you last time was to not attempt to gain consensus. As you are finding out, you will be mind-fucked into submission. She is NOT going to allow you to be “right.” She doesn’t have the equipment for it. The decision you are making is for you, and judging by your letter, you’re totally on the right track.
Your spouse has done so much damage to your self esteem, and when you call her out on it, she clearly disagrees and doesn’t care. She does not have your welfare at heart. You are making the right decision by leaving.
This. She is not your friend and is not on your side. She doesn’t care. It is so hard to internalize when they have you all twisted up in their false narratives. Only distance will get you clarity.
Amen to “living in the hurricane of her narrative.” A trauma psychologist once told me that what abusers primarily do is commit “perspecticide” against their victims by slowly and insidiously eroding the victim’s personal world view and view of themselves and replacing it with the abuser’s warped, sick and nihilistic views.
I think this ends up being one of the most diabolical bars of the cage keeping victims’ captor-bonded and entrapped because, even more than eroding their self esteem, the abuser erodes the victim’s esteem for the world and humanity. The message ends up being: “There is no hope for future happiness out there in the world for you, only more crushing betrayal and danger because people are all betrayers. It will be out of the frying pan into the fire if you leave. There is no place to run.” This coupled with FWs’ requisite post-separation abuse and retaliation (whether this entails financial skullduggery, life-ruining reputational attacks, weaponization of any children in the mix, possibly even violence and stalking) can make the risk of escape seem worse than staying.
Everyone tends to mesh their thinking with romantic partners to some degree as a way of reducing potential conflict. Unfortunately when one is “meshing” with a scary, bent nihilist, this can be psychologically dangerous. Healing becomes about reclaiming one’s own healthier perspective very much like leaving a cult.
This is, I believe, the worse things that malicious abusers do – they erase their victims very sense of self. Luckily my ex FW wasn’t one of those (lovely guy for 20 years till he fucked off with a psycho bitch but he wasn’t abusive during the relationship) but I did have a short relationship with a malicious narcissist and was utterly brought low over the space of 1 year of emotional and psychological abuse. I did not recognise myself. The gaslighting alone was so crazy making, the sleep deprivation, the isolation, the constant verbal battering. I lost all my sparkle, all my chuztpah, all my wit. I started to agree with his warped world view and was utterly trauma bonded and treated like absolute garbage and had no self respect left. To do this to another human being, to try to destroy their agency in the world, to minimise and lessen them by means of terror is unspeakable. My heart goes out to anybody still in this situation. Please get away as soon and as safely as you can. There is life, love and joy on the other side.
So true. One of my biggest red flags is isolation. I’m so sensitive to it, that it gets me in the gut when I hear it. If a person is like “let’s move to Paris together!” my gut says “run away from this person!” Now I do this when I watch Property Hunters International on HGTV, lol. But more seriously, in addition to the entrapment you describe is the isolation. They control your world, emotionally and physically.
The process of perspecticide and boiling frog social isolation always remind me of some lesser known episode of Star Trek in which Captain Kirk gets trapped on this planet that’s telepathically controlled by a giant brain in a jar. As his thoughts are replaced and controlled by the alien brain, he does a classic hammy Shatner soliloquy about “I… am losing…myself… slowly… forgetting… who I am!” and can no longer resist or escape. Then Scotty beams him up and, once out of mind-control range of the disembodied brain, he recovers his identity.
Anyway, isolation, yeah, horrible. Also I think that abusers engineering this isolation for victims has many purposes. Of course the first order of business is to disempower the victim, make them more vulnerable to suggestion and rob the victim of key social supports that might eventually help them escape or, gasp, even move on to form new, healthier and more fulfilling relationships. But sort of like the theory that some FW’s cheat as a kind of compulsive reenactment of their own childhood traumas and suppressed terror of betrayal and abandonment (but with victim/perp roles reversed), in some senses social isolation may be FWs’ worst secret fear. So of course they ritualistically displace this “worst fear” on victims as if making someone else experience something terrible might spare them (the abuser) from the same fate. The key thing in their nihilistic, mutant, bleak perspective is that life is nothing more than a zero sum game in which one can either kill or be killed (and cheat or be cheated on).
Similarly, I think attacks on victims’ self esteem are multipurpose. One purpose is obviously to– like the old practice of cutting the hamstrings of slaves to hobble them– rob the victim of any hope of a happy future without the abuser by casting the victim as such a crazy, unattractive social leper that no one could ever possibly love them. But again I also suspect this is externalization, projection and displacement. For instance, I had a gut sense that the reason the FW in today’s post is weaponizing the OP’s past bout of depression is because she, the FW– like every compulsive liar who projects a false image to the world– suspects and fears that if anyone knew her real, shitty, empty, twisted self she’d be thrown out of the tribe and cast into the wilderness to die alone from kibble-starvation.
Furthermore, I think the attacks on victims’ self esteem are often attempts to convince victims that their actual strengths are liabilities, both to weaken the victim and make them more pliant but also as out of sort of “dog in the manger” envy.
Bear with me in trying to explain this because it’s a newish thought. If you remember Aesop’s fable of the dog in the manger, the dog doesn’t like and can’t eat oats but is so jealous of the fact that the horse enjoys them that the dog lies down in the oat barrel and dies. By that token, I think that, deep down, no one understands better than a sociopath that emotional sensitivity (the very thing the abuser lacks in their empty, charred souls) can be a superpower that furthermore can, in a social sense, make someone’s social stock price soar but only if the latter knows the value of it themselves.
See, that’s the rub. Kind of like preventing Dorothy from understanding that all she ever had to do was click her heels three times to be beamed back home, if a domestic abuse victim can be convinced that their very best, most promising, lovely and gifted traits are, in fact, proof of their loser/mutant/reject status, then the entrapment is complete. It’s almost like a self esteem lobotomy.
The idea that emotional sensitivity or even a proneness to depression can, depending on circumstances, actually indicate promising qualities can be hard to grasp in today’s environment of psychiatric inquisition where the pharmaceutical industry and various shill schools of therapy (RIC is only one of many) have monetized the pathologization of every human trait and where corporate culture almost normalizes insensitivity in the same way it worships psychopathic, power-mongering CEOs, etc. But I’m a big fan of Kazimierz Dabrowski’s rather beautiful, kinder-gentler theory of “positive disintegration” (summary on Wikipedia) which posits that emotional sensitivity and even proneness to a few dark nights of the soul are part of the price people pay to evolve and transcend to a sort of higher ethical and creative plane.
Anyway, no one but a charred out husk of a human like an an empathy-impaired, antisocial cluster B FW type who knows how nightmarish it is to be incapable of love understands the potential upsides of emotional sensitivity, even a slight excess of it.
I cannot elaborate on the wisdom, sanity, and snark that Chump Lady expressed in her reply. Which is good because I couldn’t because my jaw is on the floor after reading MC’s letter and may remain there for the next two weeks.
This so-called wife does not have the skills or the emotional maturity required for a committed relationship. She is not wired properly. She has the skills and the emotional maturity required to swim in the Ashley Madison cesspool with all the other lying lowlife soul-sucking creeps. With her faulty psychological wiring, she’ll fit right in. It’s best if she remains in her natural habitat with her own species.
My jaw was not on the floor as I got the same reaction from my FW. Things ended with schmoops just before he moved out, he claims it was his choice, I’m certain she dumped him. Either way, here came the hard press for me to be plan B. I was not interested in that for what are obvious reasons to everyone here.
But I can’t express enough just how utterly flabbergasted he was that I was unwilling to reconcile. Mind you, D-Day to him preparing to move was a long time. And during that time, he NEVER had any interest in giving me, his wife of decades and mother to his children, a second chance. He was quite clear that he had essentially won the soul mate lottery and was only interested in pursuing that route. He also made sure to go over exactly what all of my failings as a wife appliance were, in painful detail. Because of that, and a sense of the LAC aspect of LACGAL- I never gave him any inclination that I was interested in reconciling.
Yet once he was left , a sad monkey with no new shiny branch to swing to, he couldn’t believe that I was “so willing to just throw away decades of marriage”. That my eyes ever resurfaced after rolling so far back in my head is an absolute miracle.
The only people who really know the whole story are my closest friends, and as my closest friends, they believe me. But I swear, other than them, only CN would. This stuff sounds made up.
That’s a good way of looking at it – they’re like another species. They just don’t have the same wiring as people who will stay faithful and honest in marriage – even in bad marriages – and I’ve seen that too. You either have the wiring or you don’t. I don’t even know if it’s something that can be developed if they want it to be. I do think once a cheater, always a cheater, not because of the “cheating” but because their faulty wiring predates and creates the cheating. If it wasn’t sex, it would be something else. I’d say they were not “normal” except there are so many of them, but I think the idea that they are a separate species…is basically on the mark.
This FW is a DARVO master. MC’s choices are either 1) agree with FW or 2) be labeled as a quitter. She is using his fidelity and honesty against him. What a damned creep. This is psychological abuse.
DARVO master, veteran grifter and extortionist. As much as it pains me as a lifelong feminist to acknowledge that disordered women sometimes fabricate allegations of violence against men (albeit less than 5% of the time), if any subset of woman are prime candidates for this kind of thing, it’s she-FWs. I’ve seen it happen a few times and it’s reportedly happened to quite a few male chumps here.
All the more reason to get quickly out of the orbit of a FW, go as NC as possible and document any obligatory interaction or have witnesses. Even run of the mill financial scam artists who target strangers are said to be highly retaliatory and score high on psychopathic and sadistic traits. I have to imagine that goes double for the types who betray those close to them. Beware.
As a sensitive Chump composed of caring, depression over losses( like trust, safety of home, health and emotional pain..).this will not be easy to break free from, but you can and you will. Your wife is saying all the things both my cheaters did especially making it my fault. Switzerland 🇨🇭 friends chimed in too weakening my resolve. The question remains, is this acceptable to you and can you live like this? The target is always moving🎯…let’s say you improve in one area…then there will be another excuse and more Blame…hey youre weak here too. Cheating to communicate her love for you? Really? The problem of forgiveness is dumped in there too. My cheater wanted me to watch forgiveness movies while he looked for his next person or hook up. Plus you will always walk on eggshells and keep doing the pick me dance. It is a horrible way to live.
My cheater blamed his affair(s) CHEATING with multiple woman on my PTSD from working with dying children for 10 years. HOW did his affairs help my ptsd??? My sister,who cheated on her husband, just called and brought up my abusive XHCHEATER and said to me, hey Thats a reason!! Your PTSD did it!!!!! Really?? With CL and CN I was upset by this but i considered the source. Always consider the source. You will need No Contact very soon. Im so sorry!!Stay with us, keep reading, getting your own therapy and taking care of yourselve. I am so grateful for Tracy and CN in how she answers
1:1 sometimes if you need an extra kick in the pants with the truth, encourages and tells us we have nothing to work with. This helped me file and get out. I’m nobody’s plan B.
I think part of the shock and trauma in these situations isn’t just the betrayal but also the unfathomable horror of realizing one has been living in proximity to someone incredibly dark, maybe even outright evil for a long time. I’d run to get an STD check and hire a forensic accountant to dredge finances to see what else this FW might have been secretly getting up to all along if only because, according to the sample of mindfucking and blameshifting she’s dishing out to the OP, I would argue her thinking pattern in this case isn’t “crazy” but definably criminal. People can get lost untangling the skeins of NPD and borderline/Cluster B which obviously apply in this instance. But for practical purposes, it really means the person has a criminal mentality regardless of how that manifests. Unlike an actually mentally ill person, these types “take control” rather than “losing” it, excel at evading detection and consequences and at spinning their own offenses as somehow justified and playing victim to their own victims.
Seriously– click “download” for a free read of a short paper on something called “neutralization”– the gymnastic mental processes by which a range of serial offenders (from college exam cheats to serial killers) rationalize their offenses at others’ expense. https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/2/46
From working in advocacy for survivors of domestic violence, I started to think of the above self-exculpatory Jedi mind trick (that almost all batterers have polished to high shine) as akin to one of those magnetic security tag removers that shoplifters carry with them. Basically, no normal, law-abiding person goes around with one of those things unless they’re planning to commit a crime. The end. No alternative explanation. By the same token, no one who hasn’t been serially abusing/betraying/offending for a long time would ever have developed, honed and polished such an elaborate system of blameshifting and deflecting guilt and stigma. Neutralization has no other purpose and no normal person develops the tactic. It’s the ultimate earmark of a criminal mind.
The FW in this case clearly had all the neutralizing blather polished up and ready to go like she’d been building that mantra all her life. This is what makes me doubt this was her first cheating rodeo and even wonder if it’s the only form of shady offense she commits.
“But for practical purposes, it really means the person has a criminal mentality regardless of how that manifests. ”
THIS is such an important realization to me….it’s not so much that these people are “sick” or mentally ill or deranged or whatever term we want to ascribe to anti-social behavior….THEY HAVE A CRIMINAL MENTALITY and this will come out often in other ways too. They are the ones who cheat on tests. They are the ones who will take extra samples or even shoplift or steal some small thing. They are the ones who lie about what they do – even small lies when they don’t have to. They are the ones who cheat on taxes or try to defraud others. They are the ones who run up debt on secret credit cards. They always seek to control and beat the other person(s) in some way. They are predators and they’re usually aggressive even if they pretend to be helpless. They use our own kindness and good feeling and desire to work with others AGAINST US.
They may never have a really big crime, but it’s surprising how many small “crimes” or anti-social behavior they engage in. Some of them may even physically attack others or destroy their things. It’s an entitled, self absorbed state of mind in which they have to win all the time and when only one person can win, someone has to lose. It’s not about conciliation or reconciliation or compromise. IT’S ABOUT WINNING.
Amen. One of the quirky little things I learned from working in a competitive, narc-filled and perv-laden industry is that sex pests– whether power-mongering harassers or the usual patriarchy-dick-suckers– also tend to be skeazy, klepto, plagiaristic, criminal, embezzling and terrifying in every other way imaginable. In short, cheating on a committed relationship isn’t a mere idiosyncrasy but rather telling about the rest of a person’s character. I would never hire someone like that to manage my finances or care for my kids.
She is completely unaccountable. She could stab him in the gut and then say it was his fault. I’m guessing he’s leaving arguments because his lizard brain is making him flee to a safer place.
I just wrote in another comment that it’s not unheard of that this type may fabricate false allegations of violence against their own victims. So I agree that the OP’s need to flee may reflect that, on whatever level, he’s got a gut sense that it’s just not safe to remain in any kind of proximity to her– not without neutral witnesses or at least audio/video surveillance.
This is an excellent point and I would urge our LW (letter writer) to RECORD ALL CONVERSATIONS AND INTERACTIONS WITH HER. It doesn’t have to be for any court records or 3rd party (or it might be depending on state laws) but you have to be able to protect yourself from false charges because this does happen. I’ve seen it happen. The more you document – with recording – what goes on between you, the better. And when you are not in the same living space, try to meet in public places or places where there are witnesses because there are people who will try to make false allegations, esp of domestic violence. You never believe this could happen until it does. AND IT DOES. Many of them will do ANYTHING to win.
Another reason to record interactions is because when you play it back the manipulation will be laid bare for you to see. They know how to keep us on our back foot in the moment so that our minds are just reeling and unable to latch on to reality.
I recorded only one conversation between me and my spouse and it was a real wakeup call. I sounded small and afraid – I didn’t recognize myself. I could hear myself capitulating to him in an attempt to not invoke his anger. I could hear the constant DARVO. If I brought up any grievance, whattya know, he had a similar grievance with me (even if he had to make one up.) If there was nothing he could DARVO me he would switch to: “You just love judging everything I do. I would never judge you like this, because I don’t want to be mean to anyone. You love being mean, it’s your hobby.”
One listen made it crystal clear why I felt unhinged and half insane all the time. I was being psychologically tortured.
You can also document things via emails or things that you even send to yourself that are date stamped. But do not trust her on any level now, you never know what people are really like until you’re in a fight.
GET FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can do it, excellent communicator!
Hi MC,
my cheating ex-husband said the same thing, almost verbatim.
When I uncovered his affair with justafriend coworker AP, he said he didn’t want a divorce.
I told him that in order to save our marriage, he’d have to cut all contact with her. I’m not sure how I imagined that would work in practicality, since neither of them was changing jobs, but I never had to worry about that, because my ex said:
“Maybe the communication has been a little excessive, but AP is my friend and she will stay in my life regardless.”
I said, “Okay, I guess you’ve made your choice then.”
This July marks 15 years since he and I had that discussion.
By leaving, I saved my own life. I’m at peace, I’m content, I feel joyful, purposeful, and hopeful.
For what it’s worth, my adult kids all believe that given the chance, their dad would take me back in a heartbeat, and I agree.
I guess that means one of us is happy with their choices, and the other isn’t.
I predict in 15 years, you too will see that by leaving, you saved your own life.
Re: “I never had to worry about that”. I also had a couple of moments like that – trying to come up with some way to save the marriage, and worried that XW would accept the proposal and then I’d be dragged into something that I didn’t think I had the emotional bandwidth to handle. XW refused to take even the first, smallest step so, like you, I never had to grapple with how I’d actually try to save the marriage, since she wasn’t interested.
It didn’t prevent XW from accusing me that “you used the word divorce first”, of course.
Same here. After AP dropped my FW and I thought she might want to work on things, since her options went down, but no, her mind was made up. I guess in some ways it ended up being an exit affair, and she finally got her courage up.
I’m sure even that last jibe was a lie. The “D” word seems to be a very popular part of foreplay in affairs to string APs along even if they don’t mean it. At the very least, FWs will float the concept with their flying monkey allies (along with dribbling out a list of complaints about the chump) as preemptive image management/blameshift/face-saving in case they get caught and dumped.
Oh, I’m sure that she and AP had discussed and planned everything. It’s no coincidence that she left me the same week he left his wife and kids.
However, it is true that she went right up to the brink of uttering the D-word – declaring the marriage over with no prospect of repair (though without explaining what, if any problems, there were in it) and agreeing with me that we wouldn’t stay in a loveless marriage simply for the sake of the kids (as we have some friends who did this, with disastrous consequences). Logically, there was no conceivable outcome other than divorce, but she waited for me to say the word first.
I suppose I could have responded “silly woman, you’re being hysterical – to get your hormones checked” but I had more respect for her than that. At the time I didn’t want a divorce but I could see that she did even though she wouldn’t say it out loud, and she has been blaming me ever since for taking her at her own word and drawing the logical conclusion for her. Kind of ironic: she is the ostentatious feminist but I took her opinions of our marriage more seriously than she did herself.
IG, I’m forever grateful that my ex never pretended to agree to my conditions at that point. We were 18 years in at that point, and 15 had been objectively unhappy.
I gave him the marital home and got myself an apartment, thereby setting myself up to be thrown under the bus by him to our kids:
“Mom left *us*, I dunno why, guess she wanted to live the single life…”
And still. I have no regrets.
Just like your situation, me staying would have been untenable.
Well done you on getting this far; you have made a decision which is right for you. Executing it will not be easy but you will get there and the space in your life that will open up when you let go of this entitled twat will be amazing and can be filled with lovely things. My husband died before I found out about his double life which makes the “no contact” pretty easy for me at least, but whilst I feel like he stole my past reality (Dr Omar Minwalla is on the nose on that), the discovery restored my sense of a brighter future without him in it. Mourn the past (your marriage) but walk away now and give yourself a better and brighter future!
MC,
What sort of therapist or marriage counselor still saw you two after your wife refused to end the relationship with the AP?! That’s awful! Nothing to work with there. She has chosen the AP over your marriage by refusing to end it. You are just facing that tough truth by divorcing her.
It does get better.
Cake eating, she likes the security the relationship brings and allows her to do what she wants without consequences. Now that she is facing a loss of security and having to craft a narrative on why she’s divorced when she is dating, she isn’t liking that too much. They all hate consequences, it’s their kryptonite. Here’s to getting yourself free and on the path to becoming healed.
Okay, this is what it comes down to. IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT SHE FEELS OR THINKS ANYMORE. This is about YOU. You are the injured party. She has already shown what she feels about you and thinks of you. She fucked another man and had a relationship with him that she hid from you. There’s no reason to think she won’t do this again either, when she’s dissatisfied or unhappy with you. So don’t even bother listening to her, it’s all self serving bullshit. YOU HAVE TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR YOU AND MAKE YOURSELF SECURE HERE. Self respect is incredibly important, how can we live without it. If you tried to bury this down, you will never respect yourself again and she knows she can shit on you whenever she wants and you’ll take it. DON’T TAKE IT. You are in the right. Save yourself.
Never seek consensus from liars and idiots. Cheaters are both.
That’s not snark, I’m being serious. There were points where other people came to me exasperated from their own dealings with my ex and said, “What is WRONG with that guy? Is he brain damaged?” He has a pathological inability to empathize or understand consequences or why people are constantly irritated with him.
To this day, he claims he never cheated and doesn’t understand why I hate him. I stopped arguing years ago and went no contact. He still whines to people that I’m so mean and he dOeSnT uNdErStAnD, until more recently when he finally admitted to someone that he “treated me terribly.”
So, he knows. But he’s selfish in everything he does, and would’ve wasted more years of my precious time refusing to accept responsibility and harassing me to forgive him.
The game is rigged. Don’t play, just walk away. You don’t need permission and you don’t need bad players to admit wrongdoing. You don’t need them for anything.
It took me a year to leave and a year more to file for divorce ending a 30 year marriage. I agonized over the decision and did all the legwork. He – the ex FW – did nothing to stop me.
Your wife’s indifference to your pain and her continued contact with the AP is the evidence you need to get your own therapist and your own lawyer.
This limbo is as distracting as having the AP in your backyard with a can of gasolne and her in the front with matches. Protect your future, not their options.
This is brilliant, Step. I’d add that not only is the limbo distracting, but it can be destructive. The longer you wait, the more time they have to screw you. If you are still legally married, they can take out loans, credit cards etc, that you could be half liable for.
Options. Exactly, we are plan B. They never want to cut out the AP, in case we leave AP can be promoted.
Greetings ENLIGHTENED Communicator(as you are no moron),
You chose…wisely!
There is a reason they are called “fuckwits”. And this is a large part of why.
Your opening statement nailed the whole thing beautifully-“It has broken me. Ever since then I have been struggling with the betrayal, the disrespect…”
Disrespect may be able to be mended. Betrayal cannot. I am going to go ahead and guess that her handling of the revelation was probably about as “but that’s beside the point” as the handling of your depressive episode last year-“well, let’s just sweep that under the rug.”
And she’s running the standard fuckwit blame shifting playbook. “I needed an escape from you(never mind the vow about ‘have and to hold in sickness and in health’), my boundaries are shit, it’s actually your fault it’s like this so it’s ok what I did.” As clearly if self-fulfilling prophecy actually extended to other people we wouldn’t be in these messes.
And clearly, her morally impaired choices are YOUR fault…or some dumb shit like that. I don’t know-I wasn’t born under high tension lines or wherever these cheatin’ cretins come from. As the couples counselor I went to after the affair(after D-Day it turned out) stated(after mine stormed out), “you don’t just slip and fall on some dick.”
Couples counseling was similarly revelatory with mine-she copped to more than she did on D-Day and ended up doing more permanent damage when she got called on it.
I struggled with the same choices, friend. Mine pulled the same faux-remorse and then reversing it into “well you had needs that I decided that I no longer was willing to meet and I wouldn’t let you meet mine anymore so ‘we grew apart’ so what I did actually is your fault and not that bad.” The calculus of it is simple-they need to live with themselves and its easier if they can exploit the trust they no longer enjoy with us to get catharsis from their dipshittery.
It’s victim blaming. It’s abuse. It’s wrong.
And it comes from the person closest to you that was supposed to love you instead of…this.
I am so sorry.
You cannot trust her ever again. She had that honor, she abused it, and she has made it extremely clear that through what she did/continues to do is ok and will continue to do it/do it again if you permit it. It was just May the Fourth-“Lies, Deceit, Greed, and Mistrust are (her) ways now.”
I am not yet Mighty. I remain on that journey. I can tell you where I am on it that I am far better off mentally-particularly since I am no longer walking on egg shells, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and living in constant fear, paranoia, gaslighting, and abuse. I still struggle with “I made promises-I should keep them.” Honestly though? All bets were off when mine stormed out of couples counseling. You honored your vows. She didn’t. Contract void.
We kept our vows.
They did not.
That’s not our problem.
Very well said. It’s just marriage on HER terms. Our Chump is just someone to abuse and manipulate.
“All that”? What a usefully vague turn of phrase.
It’s wonderfully dismissive.
Wow just wow…She uses everything from the cheater’s handbook. Reading your letter your cheater 1) said she takes commitment to marriage more seriously than you (while crapping on every vow to you) 2) that you are a poor communicator (while lying her ass off about everything 3) says you shut down and refuse to face hard issues while playing the “I thought we were past this” card while staying in touch with sexty the wonder clown on FB and finally 4) says you associate her with depression from being unemployed, while mentally abusing you.
It is no wonder she doesn’t get it – she lives in opposite land. Maybe she could chat with my cheater. She built a damn estate there.
As a veteran of 20 years of these types of “crazy-making” arguments, a big lightbulb for me was that they weren’t arguments at all, or even conversations, it is a simply a game they are playing to win. I am sure if we could see OP’s wife during these arguments there would be smirks and not-so-veiled glee when she manages another particularly hurtful turn of the tables.
So well said. If any of us were in an argument with her, we’d leave, too. And it’s not because we fear conflict or run away from problems, but rather because there is no use in arguing with people like this – it’s a waste of time and emotional energy. What value is there in having an argument with someone who is a demonstrated liar and an immoral person? What would you gain by finding agreement with them, even if you could have attained one? Congratulations – you found common ground with a person who cheats on you! [sarcasm].
Just an aside – look at how often someone writes to CL and chooses a negative user name…I saw one from the past the other day “Worthless” , now our poor letter writer here “Moron Communicator”. This says SO MUCH about how the FW’s have degraded these good people’s sense of self respect and worth and how they have internalized this abuse and negativity. You are not “worthless”…or a “moron communicator”….you are someone who is being abused and psychologically beaten down by a person who is selfish, defective as a human, and who wants to use you for their own purposes….and then probably discard you at some point convenient to them. ENDING THIS shows that you have self respect, there is behavior and treatment you will NOT tolerate, that you can see a better future for yourself, one in which you live by your own sense of right and wrong and model that for your kids instead of the sloppy moral, self serving grayness your FW exhibits. People on this site may have been “chumps” at one point….but most of them are champs now. You will be one too when you put your foot down finally and say “THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANT FROM LIFE AND MARRIAGE, THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO ME, I WILL NO LONGER TOLERATE YOUR BEHAVIOR, LIES AND ABUSE.”
Marriage is NOT a suicide pact.
Hear hear.
Perfectly Fine Communicator (and you are, everything you said made perfect sense), this particular mindfuck was one of the things that made me absolutely sure divorce was the right decision. You cannot win; it is nothing more than a transparent and all-purpose way for her to keep you prisoner.
Ex husband begged me semi-tearfully on DDay not to divorce him. Months of separation and marriage counseling followed. I put so much into reconciliation that he got confident I wouldn’t leave. Bring in the “you’re a quitter” bullshit. I ended marriage counseling because we were at an impasse with our second counselor. He had started saying things like “you have to forgive me eventually,” and “I can’t never have sex again” which I had never threatened the latter. Seriously it had been maybe 4 months – he had voluntarily left me for longer just for work. So when I filed saying I could never trust him again after he betrayed his vow “forsaking all others,” he shouted back at me, “Well YOU said ’til death do us part!!'”
What a load of false equivalency bullshit. I called my lawyer and asked if that could be considered a threatening statement (it could, she thought).
After I saw through this entitled argument, anything negative he said about me was powerless because I could just answer with “sounds like I’m pretty terrible, good thing we’re getting a divorce.” Anything nice he did like sending flowers was easily dismissed as a manipulation tactic.
Trust that very little of what she says has anything to do with you as a person. It’s all about her and what she can get out of you.
oh,my goodness.
“After I saw through this entitled argument, anything negative he said about me was powerless because I could just answer with “sounds like I’m pretty terrible, good thing we’re getting a divorce.”
Mine kept flip flopping. One minute he was trying to reconcile, the next he was itemizing my flaws. Which was crazy-making, but did allow me to say exactly what you did, “good thing we are divorcing then”.
It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so utterly insane.
Dontfeellikedancin, you have identified what for me has been a crucial, empowering tactic, as follows: “After I saw through this entitled argument, anything negative he said about me was powerless because I could just answer with ‘sounds like I’m pretty terrible, good thing we’re getting a divorce.'” That is, when the chump makes a firm decision to STOP CARING what the FW thinks of him or her, that is when the freedom comes. And at that point, arguments about who is a good or bad person can then be nipped in the bud by a simple, “Yes, I see you don’t think much of me, and all around it’s clear we don’t get along. So we’re getting divorced.”
Dear Communicator:
You communicate perfectly well: all of us here understand and empathize with everything you’ve written. The only issue is that you don’t speak FuckWit-ese. You know, the language the disordered use to manipulate, obfuscate and jiujitsu the blame back to you. Please celebrate your blessed normalcy and stop trying to communicate with her. It is pointless. You could just as well tell her your reason for divorcing her is the color chartreuse, or eat a pot full of beans and poot it out in fart morse-code. She’s not really hearing a thing you say, and never will. (Ask me how I know,)
I am worried about you because you sound like you are on your last tether and worn down to a nub. Talk to your town’s shark lawyer and do what he says. Your self-respect is non-negotiable and everyone here is rooting for you.
MC – we have to change that Moron to Marvelous! – I’d like you to consider her nature and behavior generally aside from the cheating. Does she have other flaws in communicating with you and others or treating you or others? Does she tell lies, even small ones, in general? Is she always boosting herself up and tearing down others, even subtlely? Does she overspend or seem entitled to things? Is she envious of others? Does she look down on others or seem to use them? I’m betting if you look at her and her behavior over the course of years, you will find that she has real personality flaws that you’ve overlooked because you are a good, kind person and she fulfilled some of your needs, at least for a while. But I’m willing to bet….you’ll see other red flags about her basic nature that are not directly related to cheating. Cheating is not just about the sex-romance….it’s a personality flaw that comes out because of other factors – self absorption, entitlement, devaluing others, lack of general honesty, acceptance of bad or anti-social behavior, looking for excitement all the time. If you look back, I think you will see other things. The cheating is a result of her basic personality flaws, it’s another expression of how much she thinks SHE is worth and how little she values you and others. And this is why she will not change…..because it’s not about stopping the cheating, it would be about changing herself and how she views life and other people. That ain’t gonna happen.
MC- oh mate…
She’s not seeing why she can’t have alllll the cake.
Instead of being a good little monkey and dancing for all you’re worth, you’ve chucked a big banana skin in her path of righteousness and she’s going for a big skate.
Dickhead McCluggage thought he could just ghost me while I was overseas when he realised he didn’t like his current reality and keep everything but swap out his wife for a better enabler.
Just make up multiple stories about what happened, bask in the much elevated victim status and carry on like nothing happened- easy.
He got a rude shock when he saw me walking up our street seven months later, an even ruder shock when he came home and saw my car he’d appropriated missing
and was positively apoplectic when I appeared again in our hallway a few weeks ago calmly picking up a few personal items.
He yelled, abused, lied, threatened and as a grand finale called the police and put a Family Violence order on me .
I’ll be picking that up when I’m back in the country in a few weeks and we have our first hearing next month.
He’ll never admit and never apologize- but he will definitely pay what he owes.
MC,
My story has some similarities. FW wanted a divorce, I don’t believe she ever honestly wavered on that. But, she did string me along with promises of “working on things” while the process played out. I helped her move out, gave her “advances” on our settlement, and she would throw me a bone here and there. Walking to the courthouse going for our case I asked her if she wanted to change her mind. Of course not. But she “wanted to stay friends”. A one sided friendship, but still a friendship to her. And of course the image management. My advice, go no contact. That is what finally helped clear my mind. Looking back now, I can’t believe how gullible I was. But I guess that’s how normal people act, you trust your spouse and believe that they wouldn’t betray you. All of us here are testaments that that isn’t the case unfortunately..
Wow! Thank you to Tracy and to this community! I just wrote a whole tome as a follow up, but the site reloaded and I lost it all. The cliffs notes are that even through the process of grieving and mourning, she still managed to try to one-up my own grieving and mourning. But at the end of it, she said although she disagrees with me decision, she respects it. And then she said she was sorry in a way that felt genuine and real for the first time in our relationship.
This community has been an incredible resource. Thank you for helping me rediscover the language of truth and of self-respect. I told myself how proud I was of myself for navigating this whole thing with honor and respect. It feels like exiting a boxing ring with swollen eyes and a bloody nose, but my head held high. I think I’ll go have a burger with bacon on it, since that was prohibited for so long in our house.
Thanks again to all!
Did she prohibit bacon due to some health or fitness philosophy or because (eyes rolling back into infinity) she objects to cruelty towards living things?
Haha the latter. How did you guess?
Communicator: One thing I love about this blog is that as people have a chance to read the latest entry, new comments continue to stream in, sometimes many hours later. You responded quite a few hours ago, so you may want to check in again before going to bed to see what other pearls of wisdom and encouragement await you.
MC – Hope you’re not sharing this ongoing blog conversation with your wife. No reason to give her details of any of your plans.
Whoot! I disagree – I think you should have two burgers with bacon on it. If you get full, you can have the other for lunch tomorrow.
PFC,
You are communicating just fine. The only problem is that your Cheater just doesn’t want to hear what you have to say and so twists everything that you say in a desperate attempt to avoid having to own the consequences of her own unilateral choices.
If my experience, you should anticipate her being “difficult” when it comes to agreeing a financial settlement. Ex-Mrs LFTT went into full “conflict mode” to punish me for having the audacity to divorce her; in her mind, only she could decide that the marriage was over and only she could divorce me. Her financial demands were outrageous and her mindset could be summarised as “Either Ex-Mrs LFTT gets the money or the lawyers get the money … either way, LFTT is going to be left with nothing.” Make sure that your lawyer is the best that you can afford and remember that your soon to be Ex does not have your best interests (emotional or financial) at heart,
LFTT
It actually does not matter what your cheating FW thinks or doesn’t think. What matters is you. What you need, what you feel okay about, etc. It takes time, but you will realize that their needs, feelings, desires, etc are irrelevant. As I told a friend, once he put his hands on the first slut, it was over. The next 20 or 30 or whatever did not matter. The cake cannot be unbaked. The whore cannot be un-f***ked. It is done and no matter what you may have once thought, it is over. Yes, I wish I had known decades ago, to save all sorts of time and hassles, but once I knew, it was over. I knew he would never touch me agian. Ever.It felt odd the first year or so, I admit, but I found it freeing and safe, and never regretted it. It got better and better. I enjoy hugs and contact with other men,but never again with him. You will be okay. It will take time. You will be better than okay eventually. Much better than you ever were.
What I said (after seven years)
“I’d like to be married and have a family. I want to do that with you, but if you don’t want to do that, I need to leave.”
He replied, “I love you and I want you to be the mother of my children. Will you marry me?”
What I said (after three months of dating)
“I want to learn the skills for a healthy long-term relationship and I don’t want to date someone unless they want to learn them with me.”
He came to counseling with me on a regular basis for twenty-seven years. It is now and forever unknown how much he lied while going to counseling with me.
What I said (more than once)
“Are you having an affair?”
He replied, every time, laughin, “No!”
When I asked if he was angry, because he seemed angry, he always (literally) said no.
Continued to act carefree, easy-going, Nice Guy. Every. Single. Time. I. Asked. Literally.
But after DDay I learned he had a warehouse of grievances and resentments and complaints bigger than the warehouse in the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Why talk about and resolve shit with the therapist on board when it comes up when you can store it up and stew in it?
After seventeen years together, he was the baby cheerleader. I wanted to have a baby, but was scared of the responsibility and waited a long time because I wanted to be sure the business we built would support me being a full time parent and our marriage was solid. He was unmistakably the baby cheerleader. And after DDay abandoned us both for a sex worker from China whom he met in a massage parlor via Craigslist, whom he described as his “sole mate” [sic].
YOU are not the Moron Communicator. The LYING FUTURE FAKING DECEPTIVE AGREEMENT BREAKING BULLSHIT SPEWING FORK-TONGUED TWO FACED BACKSTABBING TRAITOROUS FRAUDULENT SO-CALLED PARTNER IS.
And let’s be clear. He also started a business with the Sole Mate. They are the proud owners of an illicit Asian massage parlor and escort service. Evidently he is cool with her vocation, which includes sex with other people. One of the reviews says she “is not worth it” and describes her as an “augered-out worn out bitch.”
He was caught on Tinder while we knew he was living with her. Ads for their business feature images of Asian girls that look like children’s faces on women’s bodies.
Just please get past appearances (Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew had super shiny outsides, amazing real estate, jet set lifestyles, and the ultimate in wealth and social connections) and how much time you spent with them. Have a closer look at the Nice Guy/Gal behavior which is the weapon of choice expertly employed by the con artist to gain your confidence to use you and hurt you. Trust and believe that cheating is irrefutable evidence of deep dark skanky gross scummy dangerous rotten insides and all you need to know.
First, the whiney “but whyyyyy”. Like fingers down a blackboard for 3 decades.
Second, absolving oneself of responsibility to end a dysfunctional relationship. I wouldn’t have ever got married if I had worked out to start with the other person (who by happenstance turns out to have a PD) doesn’t have to consent. There is a lot of infantilising that goes on in these sort of relationships, believing the other person just doesn’t geddit. They know.
Me: Tries to point out marriage is dysfunctional (for some unknown reason) FW: “But whyyyyy. I’m happpeeeee”
In the words of the youngins, kms
Dear Communicator:
I truly hope you don’t lose one more wink of sleep over your incredibly intelligent decision to choose YOU. It’s a beautiful thing when a chump rises from the tar pit of mindfuckery, refuses to engage in any further pretzel-twisting, and makes the decision to save themselves; they figure out (some sooner rather than later) that they’ll be waiting forever for the cheater to care enough to toss them a life buoy, and forever is just too long.
From her perspective, your “committed-for-life” STBX wife is such a rare and special flower that her having a full-blown affair with someone-who-isn’t-you can’t possibly be the REAL reason you’ve decided to move on without her.
Her: “So that’s it. That’s the nail or the straw as they say.”
You: “Yup, that’s it. That’s the nail that YOU, dear Wife, consciously, deliberately and intentionally drilled into the cross of our marriage. For me to stay with you for one minute longer than necessary would be lunacy and I won’t do it.”
Communicator, her top priority is for you to submit to her irrational, illogical, immoral, irreverent and irresponsible argument so she can be… right. Keep going on your present course no matter how many opposing opinions, insults, ultimatums or rationalizations she hurls at you. PEACE awaits you!
Please keep us posted on how you’re doing!
I think this sort of thing comes from the entitled attitudes of a character-disordered partner. Basically, they are so wonderful that you are a fool for wanting a divorce. You are supposed to ignore all the trash and the stink, by the way, because they do. My ex certainly viewed it that way.
When he called to say that he wanted a divorce, he asked why I was refusing to reconcile, pointing out the many advantages of being with him. He had even promised to buy the house of my dreams. I’m not sure how he was going to finance that, but poverty was worth it if he was out of the picture.
So I gave him my slightly longer elevator speech. My therapist had warned me about that and had me write it out and practice it. If nothing else, it was for me, but she said that I might have to say it to him one day. And I did.
“Yes, I botched up.” That was the only real apology I got. And then he gave me an ugly, soul-sucking divorce, the woman he said in that phone call that he’d “love forever.” But love doesn’t behave the way he did. Not at all.
Yes- how they behave during the divorce and property settlement process is a good pointer to how much they ‘love’ you or the level of respect and consideration they have.
It’s very telling.
My attorney warned me about that. I was expressing how bad it made me feel to be sitting there at his big conference table, plotting strategy against someone I loved. He said that from his chair, it seemed like the divorce had to be. Likely, I would see in time just what my STBX thought of me as well.
Yes, I was a bug to be squashed. That’s how little I meant to him.
You are talking too much. You don’t ask a cake eating cheater for a divorce. You don’t need her permission. Just file.
All you’re getting is a big dose of the cheater script. They all do it.
Wake up and realize your wife is a typical cheater. Nothing special.
Your marriage is over. Finish it off.
No one can be a chump unless they allow It. Free and save yourself. She doesn’t give a damn about you.
As always, my advice: LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE LEAVE
This whole thing reads like a nauseatingly deep guilt trip, Perfectly Fine Communicator. SHE’S still loyal (despite cheating, so clearly not loyal), look at her! And you’re not actually upset with the cheating! She doesn’t believe that! No, it’s your mental health! Sounds like my ex/FW. Lizard pulled really similar lines out of his ass when I left. It doesn’t get better from here, trust me on this.
You started to associate her with your depression? Even if that was true, okay, and? I can confidently say my depression WAS worsened when being with a cheater, even before I knew he was cheating.
Take your depression and divorce her. Once it’s all over, you’ll find that life is a bit brighter, and burdens a little lighter. Leave her to her Facebook coworker love.
Yeah, their entitlement is ubiquitous, both during the affair, and after, and it is SO hard to live with. And it’s all OUR fault as the chump, that we can’t seem to understand what they were going through to cause them to cheat, and that we can’t just get past it. What is wrong with YOU that you can’t just get over it and become my spouse/partner appliance again? I have needs! And it’s all YOUR fault anyway.
It’s is the main theme the FW Cheaters always use, projection and deflection. HATED that with a passion when I got that crap from my FW Cheater Husband. And they are then just shocked and appalled that we chumps won’t stand by them and show our commitment to them, after “wreckconciliation”. Obnoxious!
Your wife cheated but she’s acting like you are the villain? Hell no. You have the right to exit that shitshow. And you don’t need her permission!
Don’t ask her for a divorce. You don’t need consensus. Get your documents in order and see an attorney to file.
It will help if you stop living with her as if you see yourself as married to her. Separate bedrooms. Don’t eat dinner together. Don’t do her laundry or put gas in her car. No conversation other that what’s absolutely necessary. Keep your money separate and run a credit check.
“Oh no! What are these consequences? How dare!” 😮
Cheaters are both hilarious and so very, very predictable.