Cheating Wife Won’t Sign the Divorce Papers

Sigh. I think the chump problem with trying to date before the ink is dry is dual. It’s the same problem we’d run into trying to have “revenge affairs.” In principle it might be perfectly justifiable since cheaters pretty much cancel all contracts with their behavior. But I think that, in practice, normal people still some an internal “guilt brake” about moving forward before being officially free. Plus, again, we tend to be pretty suspicious of anyone else who could cross that boundary. Like, ew, are they secretly drawn by the sick thrill of poaching someone taken?

Cheaters have such an advantage over us in that sense because their bar is basically in hell… and hell is pretty crowded lol. Anyone willing to do Freddy Krueger or any local rotting zombie crack Madonna could quickly fill up their dance card and feel like the hottest kid in school! 😀

Of course. And abusive personalities know this better than anyone since it’s what they counted on to enforce one-sided monogamy (by the way, virtually all domestic abusers cheat). She won’t win in the end but it won’t be for lack of trying.

Even if the statistical rates and degree of domestic violence tend to differ between genders, it’s not like women can’t be batterers or dangerous. She belongs in jail.

Every abuser on earth has excuses. None are ever the instigators and all are “victims of their own victims.” The magical ability to shift blame, completely rewrite events and even fully believe their own fabrications is apparently largely what perpetuates abuse. If you want a hopium-free explanation for the behavior, click download for the following paper and then bear in mind it’s about serial killers: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/2/46

So far I’ve never read anything in the clinical literature about serial killers being fixable with a little therapy, hugs and understanding. If this theory is right and the blameshifting mental trick is one of the roots of serial criminality, it’s probably not much of a stretch to assume serial domestic abusers aren’t fixable either.

Anyway, bottom line is you’re a survivor of what sounds like very serious domestic abuse. I gather that it can be harder for men to be stuck with that label because of cultural expectations and also harder to find support. But I hope you consider it. I think in the past decade there’s been an increase in support groups and therapy resources for survivors of coercive control that are often more inclusive and more welcoming to male survivors than traditional domestic violence survivor resources since coercive control– due to being a “subviolent” form of abuse– is a bit more “equal opportunity.” In other words, it’s generally more often recognized in that arena that women can be coercive controllers because it doesn’t take greater physical strength to be a master mindfucker.

The same recovery principles apply as they would for battering survivors plus advocates and therapists who are really versed in the clinical research of Evan Stark– coiner of the term coercive control and spearhead of the movement to criminalize it– will understand that the vast majority of survivors count the emotional and psychological aspects of abuse as even more paralyzing than assault. Some survivors of coercive control were also physically abused but simply find the construct of coercive control more comprehensive and more likely to address the psychological torture they experienced than traditional DV advocacy. I’m also starting to see more recognition in that arena that cheating is often part of or even instrumental to psychological torture and control.

I imagine one of the bigger hitches for male survivors can be that most of the standard approaches to domestic abuse are based on a feminist construct– that some men see women as inferior and feel entitled to keep women under their thumbs to flex their power and increase their sense of masculinity and dominance, etc. But then how are male victims of female abusers supposed to reconcile this? And how can they process what may be different injuries to identity that have different ramifications for men than women? When I worked in advocacy for abuse survivors back in the day, those questions always bothered me because the network I worked with did occasionally get approached by very credible male survivors. But it seems I wasn’t the only one bothered by the hitch and, in recent years, I’ve been seeing more social research attempting to bridge that gap.

One particular angle is starting to make sense– the idea that “toxic masculinity” and “toxic femininity” (exaggerated identification with rigid and destructive concepts of gender) have a lot of overlaps in terms of negative belief systems and coercive relationship strategies. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1046&context=doctoral_dissertations

Since all of this is new thinking, it may take time for support groups and therapists to catch up never mind the usual pop-psych rant forums. Frankly the whole arena of domestic abuse research and advocacy only started crawling out of the dark ages in the last half century, consequently every survivor who seeks support is taking a risk that their personal experience hasn’t yet been fully understood or codified. I remember how, back in the bad old days before coercive control was even a recognized thing, survivors of “mere” psychological torture felt like they were wandering alone between wagon circles and were often rejected from shelters and support groups because they didn’t have broken bones and bruises. The network I worked was among the few that didn’t set the bar for domestic abuse at fists and fire irons. I guess that momentum grew and thankfully this eventually got the attention of social researchers like Evan Stark and others.

Anyway, advice is cheap and even as anyone urges you to seek support, I understand that it’s not always easy to find the right fit but all survivors deserve to to be heard and get consensus. You’re certainly not alone here.

From what you describe, your STBX doesn’t sound “borderline” anything. She sounds like full-blown real-deal psychopathic.

Bear in mind that, in domestic violence advocacy channels, financial abuse is considered to be a form of nearly literal “violence” because of the life-altering, sometimes even life-shortening effects of it. Not to add unnecessary worry to your already stressed-out situation but just imagine what her antics could cost you if you suddenly developed cancer or another life-threatening medical condition that required certain out-of-pocket treatments. Or if you suddenly needed to help a sick child in the family. Not that– God forbid– anything like that is going to happen but these things are always in the realm of the possible which is what makes her behavior particularly unconscionable.

As far as feeling like a hostage, some of the leading academic DV experts I read when training to work with survivors argued that many of the psychological and tactical control methods used by domestic abusers are “virtually indistinguishable” from the methods used by professional interrogators to “break” political captives.

There are many decent, intelligent women out there who are looking for someone simply responsible and honest in all things including finances, not necessarily rolling in material wealth. To paraphrase CL, with or without bank, rest assured your stock runs very high with the right kind of people. You can well afford to table those concerns for a bit and channel your energy into recovering and rebuilding your life and perspective.

Speaking of which, a trauma therapist who consulted with the advocacy network I worked for said something that stuck with me, that one of the chief things that abusers do is commit “perspecticide”– insidiously erode and damage victims’ world views, views of other people and views of themselves and replace these things with abusers’ own nihilistic, twisted, sick perspectives. Even parts of the trauma itself like the “telescoping sense of time” or the feeling time is not on your side may simply be part of the “infection” your STBX transferred to you. I think it can take time to exorcise those toxic alien views and reclaim your own outlook and sense of self again.