Chump Lady Blog Turns 12
Been kicking unicorn ass at the Chump Lady blog 12 years today. Happy blog-aversary for those who celebrate.
Don’t you have better things to do with your time, Tracy?
Apparently not. Encouraging people to leave shitty relationships seems to be my calling.
I hope my stubborn continued existence of this place has helped you. And I hope it’s changed the broader narrative that infidelity is abuse. We’ve moved that needle, judging by the comment section in every published Schmoopie twu wuv article. Snark on, Chump Nation!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I still do this, 18 years out from my own D-Day in 2006.
Let’s begin with the sensible reasons why I should NOT.
I’ve moved on.
I’ve been solidly meh since 2010. The daily convulsing grief that was my nightmare from 2006-2007 is a stranger to me now. My sociopathic, serial cheating, protection from abuse order eliciting freakazoid lives thousands of miles away. I’m mortified I ever expended one ounce of emotion on him, yet grateful I got out alive. He is a pathetic person and a dangerous one. Which is how it is with despots and con artists.
I have a good life today. My son got through it all, he’s grown up into a strong young man, who’s educated, solidly employed and getting married next year. In fact, he’s coming over this weekend to help me garden. Imagine if I drove into a highway median over a fuckwit?
If the undertow of despair got me, not only would I not be moving mulch tomorrow, I’d never have met Mr. CL. We wouldn’t be celebrating 14 years of marriage. Why revisit a nightmare?
The Reconciliation Industrial Complex isn’t going anywhere.
Most people’s first impulse is to reconcile. The second impulse is to excuse cheating as both complicated and a singular mistake. Who am I to challenge that? My brainpower could be better spent playing Wordle or crafting listicles for women’s magazines, or figuring out the television remote. Why do I care if Esther Perel and her egregious self-promotion, terrible sentences and questionable ethics get a platform? I could go stare at daffodils until my blood pressure goes down, which is I how I intend to get through the next election cycle.
Blogging is a bad way to earn a living.
There was a time you could earn a fortune in blogging — as a food or mommy blogger. Selling cold reality to the traumatized? Not so much. My “niche” has always been a challenge. I’ve never wanted to paywall my work, because a) people going through breakups don’t have disposable income and b) I’m trying to convince you of difficult things. I don’t want to make it MORE difficult. And c) I hate selling. Ask Maryse who created the private Facebook page or Ronni who organized Chumpalooza how uncomfortable I am promoting things. The whole influencer persona makes me queasy. And yet I believe in LACGAL and Chump Nation to push me out of my comfort zone.
If it were just writing, I’d be happy as a clam. But it’s the IT that kills you. The Google updates — the latest one has wiped out a bunch of bloggers. Google now favors Youtube and Reddit in its first page search results. All these people who dominated the market with their SEO prowess are getting sidelined. Lucky for the Chump Lady blog, my SEO sucked. The last update didn’t kill me.
Why? Because I’ve been off the Google radar. When I had a full-time job, I couldn’t keep up on the latest SEO practices. (Now I freelance and run this place.) ChumpLady.com was best optimized in 2018, and then it fell off. I’ve spent the last year doing a total overhaul of the site, and cleaning up over THREE THOUSAND posts. So that’s why I rerun more columns — I have to appease the Google gods. Only for the Google gods to be fickle and change again.
Those ads that annoy you (and me) — they pay for my IT bills and hosting this site — and they pay me. Because this is a job. And Patreon — god bless you patrons! — pay for the blog and the podcast (which if you become a patron, means you get it ad free and early.)
A minority of supporters pay it forward for the thousands of people who read here each day. Take a bow, patrons. Thank you.
So, Chump Lady why do you continue to blog?
This has been the most meaningful job of my life.
I’ve made friends around the world. In Australia! The UK! Boston! New York! The amazing people I met at Chumpalooza — your MIGHTY stories keep me here. Who doesn’t love a comeback? How can anyone resist the narrative arc of chumps?
You tell me every day that LACGAL is a life-saving message. Thank you.
The RIC sucks.
Staring at daffodils isn’t cutting it for me. I have to rail at the victim-blaming, shitty advice out there and the profiteers who peddle it. Besides, there’s such a deep vein of snark in it.
The Universal Bullshit Translator isn’t going to feed itself. It needs a steady supply of your ex’s drunk texts and Daily Mail articles.
Integrity matters.
There are many different undertows of despair. The world is awash with messages that loving with your whole heart doesn’t matter. Social contracts are for chumps. You’re naive to believe in promises.
That cynicism is what I rail against. The DARVO that blames your heart and not your abuser. That rewards “one set of rules for me, and another for thee.” That celebrates twu wuv exuberant acts of defiance over the thankless grind of showing up.
Chumps show up. It matters. So, I’m showing up here. Happy anniversary.
Yes, happy, happy anniversary, AND MANY MORE.
I didn’t find y’all until I was newly divorced and still trying to make sense of the coals of that dumpster fire. My ex was trying to make closeout yet another legal battle he could win (or not) and proposing we ditch the attorneys and do our own thing. As if I didn’t learn anything about the law during the messy divorce? I was also trying to ramp up my business, having finally given up on finding full-time employment with benefits. Then the pandemic hit. Oh, my.
Thankfully, my ex finally gave up on getting at me, apparently because he has a serious lady friend. Gosh, I hope she comes to her senses but that’s not my committee.
Chumplady gave me clarity and hope, all with a bit of snark. I attended Chumpalooza. So amazing to be together in person!
And so we go on as the blame-and-shame and RIC keeps on as well. I’m so thankful for a place to counter that.
Congratulations, Chump Lady! You & this community have helped me so much! ❤️ I wish you had more resources: like more books i.e. how to date after a cheater and maybe recovery retreats, even a Ted Talk. I know this isn’t your comfort zone, but you have a gift that I’m sure many would love to see you share & expand upon. xx
I second the motion for a TED talk!!
Happy Anniversary CL!!!
You did not add the number of lives you literally saved through this blog. Me over here raising my hand up high as one..✋
As the person who asked you to add a donate button way back when, I will step up on my soapbox to ask readers to now become patrons of the blog.
Tracy touched briefly on how much this place costs to run but it is mind-blowing to see the IT bills this woman fronts to keep this site going. And it’s agonizing to then have to pay more IT people to fix the endless problems that come from running a site so huge. Worldwide translates into millions of us!
Please consider becoming a patron through Patreon at ANY level. The link gives suggested amounts but you can choose any amount large or small. It all helps support the site for everyone who needs it.
Love to my fellow chumps, especially the new ones writhing in pain and waiting for Tuesday. I promise peace and happiness will come but having this site helps more than anyone knows.
Thank you for all you do, CL!
Happy anniversary Chump Lady blog! I think I found this blog within a week or so of my D-day and so thankful for it. Would have not been able to emotionally survive betrayal & separation & divorce & heartbreak without it!
So grateful for this blog, for Tracy, for this community. I’m almost six years out but still visit almost every day because it helps me and feeds me and makes me laugh. It’s better than my crappy marriage by a long shot! ❤️
I keep reading as well because I find that I have also learned a lot about myself and how to evaluate past experiences (my cheater episodes are long ago) from Tracy and all the wonderful Chumps here and the learning never stops. This site always gives me fresh info and new ways of viewing a lot of things, and not just about infidelity.
Congratulations Chumplady! To be honest divorcing FW was easy because I hated his guts by that time. HOWEVER, Chumplady taught me all about narcs, how they play from a script, what to expect next, and just how low they really can go. It helped clear the brain fog from my head AND I was able to spill your pearls of wisdom onto my son when his wife – who he loved with all his heart – suddenly came out and said she wanted to “live as though they were single for a short while”! She got the shock of her life when he said “nah, let’s just go straight for the divorce” – and they were divorced three months later! So from me and my son, thank you so much!
Congratulations on another blog anniversary! It is truly amazing the difference this place and CN has made in the world of infidelity discourse over its lifespan. You are truly a pioneer and a “prophet.” Unfortunately, both take lots of slings and stones for being such. Thanks for courageously leading us nation of misfits!!
Yep, and it is odd that folks like you and CL have been called bitter etc for choosing to spend a part of your life helping victims of abuse. Intimate betrayal (which always includes financial and health abuse) is next to murder the worst thing one partner can do to another. Those victims deserve advocates and help just as any other victims of horrible abuse.
Read the introduction to the late, great Evan Stark’s Coercive Control. He reports that, in his 40-something years of work within the field of domestic violence advocacy and research, the theme kept emerging that, as catastrophic as the effects of violence are, victims still cited emotional and psychological abuse to be the most devastating and destructive overall.
I tried all of the RIC stupidity to save my marriage of 25 years. Not one single thing worked. I was in a fog of trauma, confusion, and gaslighting when I found your book in the bookstore. It was a pivotal moment for me because everything you wrote resonated and things finally made sense. I stopped feeling crazy and could see FW’s manipulations for what they were. It was empowering and helped me move forward with the divorce. Life is so much better with clarity, and you provided that during the most desperate and horrible time of my life. I sincerely thank you for all that you do!
Happy anniversary!!! I am so grateful for you Tracy and for the men and women of Chump Nation. I know I would still be mired in the RIC if I hadn’t found you. Thank you for helping me to freedom! I am a proud Patron, wishing I could move to a higher tier and will as soon as I’m able. It’s the only automatic payment that comes out of my bank account that makes me smile when I see it!
Happy anniversary!
This blog, the book, and this community, have been inoculation against gaslighting, for me.
I thought I was losing my mind as FW lied, misdirected, and went for the throat. Everything was my fault. I was wrong for selfishly denying him happiness with the OW. He was leaving me, not the kids, and they would be better off to have a father who lives his truth! He was so certain of everything.
I, on the other hand, had just had a core tenet of my reality blasted away. All of what he said contradicted what I felt, intuitively… but all the context I had was the person I’d spent 10 years trusting and deferring-to and supporting, and his absolute certainty that I was the problem and he’d done nothing wrong. I felt like I was going crazy. Add to this all the “wisdom” out there about taking accountability for my shortcomings which made him cheat, and it was all-around a pretty dark, fucked up time.
Reading that so many other Chumps had lived my exact experience, complete with lines which were verbatim what I’d heard and thought were uniquely awful (the AP is so much like you! You’d like them if you met them under different circumstances!), was very grounding for me. All of my “flaws” that FW had cited as valid reasons to have an affair? Well there were chumps who lacked those flaws and got cheated on and heard the same bullshit lines anyway. It was proof that this wasn’t a “me” problem.
So thank you CN. Keep on keeping on.
I’m 4 yrs out from DDay (no. 3. The other 2 were JUST FRIENDS GODDAMMIT WOMAN!). Divorce finalise 2 years ago this month, I think, or maybe it was March 🤔…. Yeah I dgaf actually 😆. Mine was a long haul. 35 years together, 31 married!! LACGAL was the last book I purchased and I was so freaking scared to read it…. I was so sure I had a unicorn, he’d see the light, he’d realise what he was about to lose…. I thank GUS everyday that I got it. Finally, I wasn’t going crazy!! Was still a sobbing hot mess but I was then armed with power. I found the book one late night while contemplating how to end my life swiftly….you literally saved my life. Then I found CN… again so scared to read the comments as when I did I was still tugging on hopium. I soon after put that pipe down and got on the train to where I am today. Wouldn’t have been able to do it without you lot here. Some great people comment here. So insightful, so snarky, so inderstanding…. always uplifting. Thank you 🤗
To any newbies…. YOU’VE GOT THIS, YOU ARE MIGHTY!!
Happy Blog Anniversary, Tracy!
I happily support your site via Patreon because you saved my life.
I had been doing the Pick Me Dance with my former FW for several years after finding out about his double life. On my final day of dancing – when I realized that things were never going to change – I found your blog, your book and the Chump Nation. I read that book 3 times over the next few weeks as I begin the process of disentangling myself from a 25 yr relationship with him. I needed that support to preserve my sanity and push forth through divorce, selling our home, cleaning out 25 yrs of family stuff, etc. Your book helped convince me that I was doing the right thing, and that it would all be worth it!
6+ years out now and my walls sing. Life is good on the other side. I even have a new man who is kind, thoughtful, honest….
I will be forever grateful!
Happy anniversary to you Chump Lady!!!👏🍾🎉🥂🪅Woohoo!!!!
You are a force of nature! That tiny sprout in a forest that’s been burned to the ground, daring to regrow and start again. What an inspiration you have been to myself and to so many followers on this site as well!
You provide a tiny glimpse of the hope that exists when nothing at all seems real anymore and your trust in humanity seems completely unsalvagable.
That’s the seed you plant every day in our hearts.
You have changed the narrative on abuse and rescued countless souls in the process.
I see why you still do it! You get daily validation from CN that what you are giving is life nourishing, a hand reaching out to keep others from sliding off the cliff. You are that to many.
You know first hand what it’s like to want to cash in your chips. Because the pain and shock of betrayal is beyond anything any of us could ever have possibly imagined we would experience in our lives.
And no one in our lives but you and CN can understand that.
Thank you, thank you for your extreme generosity! You literally save lives on the daily with your blog and there is no one who could do what you do any better. No one!!!
You’re what Tiger is to golf, MJ is to basketball, Brady is to football, Phelps is to swimming. You are that to infidelity, lol. 😝
Granted, it makes a HELL of a lot less money than the athletics!
All the more impressive you do it from your heart. It’s not about the money.
I’m a proud contributer to Patreon since 2022. It’s the best money I could possibly spend in a month. The entrance level is $3 for anyone who hasn’t looked at the site.
Imagine if everyone that reads here and greatly benefits from this site contributed a cup of coffee a month or more if able to helping the next one in line be helped by this truly gifted, wonderful writer and human being?
As you read and gain wisdom daily, just imagine CL right next to you, why not treat her to a cup of coffee, or maybe lunch or possibly dinner?! 🤷🏼♀️
What she does makes the world a better place to live!
We have all greatly benefitted from her wisdom, wit, astute observations, mad writing and illustration skills and her heart.
Her ridiculously big kind, loving heart, what a gift she is to this planet!
Just feels good to pay a little of it forward. Even if you can only swing a cup of coffee in gratitude. It will multiply one thousand fold.
You have changed this narrative and you are greatly loved.
God bless you awesome lady!! ♥️
My DDay was in October 2022. The one thing I knew with absolute certainty (as did he) was that I would not tolerate cheating. If I discovered or learned about it, that would be it. After 20 years together (4 dating, 16.5 married) he told me of his sordid double life. It had been going on for 7 years. He had a “girlfriend” that he wanted to be with.
I had never felt such pain. I had never experienced such betrayal. I needed to know I wasn’t losing my mind when he would say things like “it’s not your fault I married the wrong person” or “I’m just not attracted to you anymore” or “I needed stuff in the bedroom that you couldn’t do,” etc., etc. You all know the tropes.
Thank God that on my Amazon search for a book to help me through (research is what I do), LACGAL came up. It was the ONLY book I saw at first that made sense, that didn’t encourage me to try to work things out–something I had no interest in doing. I had it in my hands in a couple of days and it became my bible. I read it twice then bought the audiobook. It was astounding to read my experience on paper, written down just as it happened to me. I could reflect and see when the cheating started, the behaviors on his part, and the spackling on mine.
Then I googled Tracy to learn more. I needed MORE of her wisdom and found out about the blog and then from here the Facebook group. I refer to the Facebook group as my online infidelity support group and to this blog as a supplement to the book.
2023 was the worst year of my life, trying to get through everything with the divorce, the self doubt, becoming a single parent, learning to live mostly on my income (1/3 of what we had combined) with whatever he felt he could “afford” to give me. I watched my 17th wedding anniversary come and go — he took a 4-day weekend with the child mistress. This June we will have been married for 18 years. It will likely also come and go because he has been dragging the divorce out for over 18 months to avoid Discovery and court. (In fact, his lawyer should get the motion to file a court date today. I’m done playing games.)
I believe Tracy, LACGAL, and all the Chumps in Chump Nation saved my life and sanity. Your stories–painful as they are/were–showed me that I was not alone. I found understanding, compassion, and love that I had never experienced from virtual strangers. Your lived experiences and advice have been invaluable. You have offered the guidance, tough love and support that I needed so badly. And I hope I can help do the same for the newbies to the group.
Money is tight right now because FW doesn’t officially pay child/spousal support yet. But I can definitely buy you a cup of coffee, Tracy. I’m heading over to Patreon now to see what I can swing.
Tracy, you have done a beautiful thing and sacrificed a lot to do it. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Happy anniversary, Chump Lady! CN manages to remind me both of the ubiquity of asshat behaviour, of duplicity and cynicism everywhere, of the absolute mundaneness of cheating, AND of the resilience of the human spirit, the existence of good people who value character, and of the power of a good laugh that takes the piss out of these abusers.
Yes! Exactly. Taking the piss out of them is the best form of resistance as well as being heaps of fun.
Happy anniversary and many many more. Not many people in this world do work that is literally life saving for others but YOU DO. I can’t tell you how many times I have referred Chumps in person and on line to LACGAL and this site, with the statement that it is the best, more realistic, most honest site on the topics of infidelity and divorce that exists. Personally I often wonder what my own life has amounted to, maybe we all think like this from time to time, but you have helped SO MANY PEOPLE, and all of the people, especially children, that stand behind them, you really have been a blessing to the world. Thank you for pursuing this mission!!!
12 years of political resistance!
I don’t think I’m being grandiose about it. What Tracy is doing is political– at least to me since I tend to have a pretty holistic view of politics related to human evolution. Basically anything that gets us further away from rapey ape feudalism is good for the planet and the species. It doesn’t matter which part of the “rock” one is trying to push uphill in a Sisyphean sense– whether it’s the “feminist” part of the rock or the social or economic justice part of the rock or the child protection or eco part of the rock, etc. It’s all good as long as one recognizes it’s all one rock and you can’t push one part of it downhill and expect your own niche cause to progress; and as long as one recognizes that gravity (and the human tendency to rapey apery) rules and the coordinated effort will need to be continuous.
This is why I consider Esther Perel and her ilk to be enemies of progress in a more sweeping sense than the seemingly limited pit Perel et al are hissing in. Sorry to flout Godwin’s law but Hitler himself started out hissing in a limited pit when, as a corporal in the German military sent to spy on the tiny, badly organized German Worker’s Party, he decided to blather on against the secession of Bavaria. In other words, you never know where that hissing may lead or what larger chorus it could end up contributing to. If you apply the fundamental principles Perel spews to any important arena pertaining to justice, it’s quite obvious the woman deliberately blurs the line between perpetrator and victim in what (since I’m already flouting Godwin) Holocaust survivor and historian Primo Levi described as “a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators or truth.”
What truth? Any truth that’s true regarding any cause involving perpetration and victimization. It explains why Perel is getting such wide media promotion in an age when the “fourth estate” is pretty much owned by all sorts of nasty, exploitative, top down corporations that recognize the value of and reward line-blurrers, truth-negators and victim blamers regardless of subject matter.
Someone has to talk back to the blurring in every instance before it metastasizes. Historically that’s always been left up to survivors of the particular line being blurred. Anyway, even if I’d never been chumped in my life I would still recognize that by planting her hands on the place on the “rock” with Perel’s mugshot on it and pushing back, Tracy is doing well by us all and the whole shebang to boot. In a roundabout way, maybe even the lemurs in Madagascar will be better off not to mention millions of hapless survivors of the form of coercive control so cutely dubbed “cheating.”
HOAC, I completely agree that this blog and CN represent a form of POLITICAL resistance. And well said: “Someone has to talk back to the blurring in every instance before it metastasizes.”
Thank you for naming the rock “rapey ape feudalism.” LOL. Push!
The S in Tracy S alternatively stands for Sisyphus. 😀 Always a good moment for the Camus quote:
This month marks 8 years since I first discovered this blog, and I don’t think I’ve missed a day in all that time. Just as chumpdom is a part of me (in the best possible way), there’s an unquenchable need to hear the stories of other, draw strength for their resolve, and both pay it back AND pay it forward at the same time.
In 8 years of SO MANY highlights, friendships, and opportunities to entertain and (hopefully) find the humor in our situations, being able to work with the 10 incredible tellers at last year’s Chumpalooza was by far the most rewarding.
Thank you so much Tracy. It’s an honor to be a patron.
UXWorld,
I am grateful for the years of laughter your song parodies have provided us all during times when there is much to laugh about.
And your work with the storytellers helped the participants feel on top of the world! I laughed so hard that night and loved every second of each performance. What a gift you gave us all. ❤️
Your Moth radio hour style storytelling was the highlight of the whole weekend. This site is better because of your song parodies. Thank you!
Happy Anniversary Chump Lady. Nine months post D-Day, three months post divorce. I found you maybe six months ago. Oh my god, the amount of dancing, spackeling, and smoking I did. I read or listened to the book, the blog, the FB group, and the Sunday meetup. Mentally it all made sense, how dare she do that to me. But I kept the magical thinking going. Fortunately a month or so ago we wen’t very low contact, and that absolutely opened my eyes. We all process it on our own time, and need to not beat ourselves up when the switch flips, and we wonder how we could have been so blind. Thank you and all of CN. I need to head over and check out Patreon.
Congrats on the low contact. I remember when you first came here. Your pain was so raw. I’m so happy to hear that the switch has flipped and it’s getting better.
Your blog started one month before my first D-day. If only I knew in that moment what I do now. All came apart in my world when there was no voice like Chump Lady saying “Get out! Run!” My gut was telling me I had to get away but there was no support out there for it. Within a week I was in the clutches of the RIC. In the intervening years I suffered so many more D-days and FW just got better at covering up and lying. A babysitter of ours had suffered a TBI at the hands of the FW she divorced and she was concerned for me. She quietly loaned me her books about narcissistic personality disordered people, and I saw FW in those pages. Then FW said he wanted us to move 4 hours away and that after we moved, I should then find my own place to live. He wouldn’t say the word divorce (too timid!) and when I asked if there was someone else, he said no. He made it out that I had discarded him. Classic DARVO. After that I read LACGAL and it changed everything.
After I read the book I came here. And here I found a lot of support and I stopped feeling stupid for my efforts to reconcile. And though the weight is not all lifted, I wouldn’t be as far as I am if not for Tracey I am a Patreon supporter because I want future chumps to keep getting the message. The audience needs to get wider. The dialogue needs to change. I put LACGAL into little free libraries and tell people about it. A VERY happy anniversary to this blog.
Happy Anniversary! Thank you so much for the time, energy, and devotion it takes to keep this blog going! I only wish I had found it earlier.
Congrats on 12 years!
My D-Day was 8 months ago now. I was warned about this place when I started down the long road to healing…something about “bitter” and “snarky.” I dunno, I was too busy dissociating to listen to carefully.
Needless to say it was this place that I channeled in my last direct contact with my FW and the place I call “my recovery home.” There are times in healing that call for chocolate and hugs-and then there’s cool older sister Tracy going “yeah, fuck them and fuck that.”
Couldn’t be doing it without you all! Here’s to 12 more!
Happiest of Anniversaries to you – you do the work of the Gods and I am grateful.
I found Chump Nation between Ballbag McGee and Dickhead McCluggage and merely enjoyed the read until I was chumped yet again.
I have drawn so much strength from you all over the past 6 months.
I save posts that speak to me in Notes so I can read them over again to harden my resolve and to remind myself that some really do understand and I’m not crazy .
I will read them yet again today before I march through what is still legally my front door and uplift a few more personal items .
You all lift me up and strengthen me.
I am grateful indeed, CL.
Tracy, you have saved many a chump’s sanity doing this blog and we all give you our sincerest thanks and appreciation!
I know I would have not made it without your blog and words of wisdom, no matter how harsh the truth. I am more than happy to put up with some ads and such, if it means you are able to still help the thousands of abused chumps looking for comfort and real advice. To me, this blog is like oxygen and it makes my day, each and every day, to read it and what the CN followers post as well. Feels good to know one is not alone in Chumpdom Land of Misery!
Again, many thanks and congrats on the 12 years of being an awesome human, sharing your own horrible D-Day story that helped others who had been kicked down and left for dead as well!
We love you Tracy!!
Congratulations on 12 years of resistance to the RIC and the abusive scum they defend.
When I found this blog I was already working on getting away from the cheater. I didn’t need to be sold on the value of that. What I was not aware of was the commonality of our stories and how the cheaters are virtually identical.
I was not aware of the insidiousness of the RIC, though I had seen a few books that were garbage and dismissed them. One of them was the awful “Why Good People Cheat.” A few pages into that I was laughing at how messed up it was. I was not aware at the time that that there was a whole industry devoted to assisting cheaters and keeping the cheated on down. To me, this industry is political in nature, designed to crush people who have integrity and empathy and to elevate the disordered and abusive. This blog is about fighting back. I’ve been spreading the message of resistance far and wide ever since I first came here. It helped me to heal. I still come here nearly every day because there are so many people who need support and advice, who need to find their righteous outrage and start resisting. I also come here for the best snark on the interwebs. I especially love the UBTs. I read those to my daughter and use a special voice for the UBT (it’s kind of like The Great Gazoo from the Flintstones) plus a whiny, oily one for the FWs. The humor has also helped her to deal with the loss of her FW father. Many thanks to CL and CN for all the good you do. 💜
Happy birthday!
I found the LACGAL book 2 days after my cheating FW walked out on me and my son. It is the greatest gift I have ever received. I’m only 4 months in now, but absolutely thriving. Everyone I talk to mentions how sane I am given the depth of the betrayal and how recently I found out. And it is primarily down to the blog, book, and reddit community.
Knowing that nothing that FW said was true or original was the most important thing to start my healing. I already new in my brain that it had nothing to do with me, but Tracy, you helped me feel it in my heart.
Four months out? That’s incredible. You are mighty! Thank you so much for the kind words.
Thank you Tracy. I feel mighty. This is my second chumping, so I know what it’s like to recover without your blog, and it’s absolute hell. Keep doing what you do, you are touching so many lives.
Happy Anniversary!!!! I would not have survived without this blog. I come daily to read the blog and comments. I tell everyone about this site and how much it has helped me heal.
I’m finally at Tuesday. My separation agreement is done and my divorce papers will soon be in the mail. It was so helpful to have a place to go for daily humor, advice and to hear all the success stories.
Thanks to Tracy and CN I have left a cheater and gained a life.
And to 120, I’d say! Congrats! I wish I had seen this blog and your book before I threw away a bunch of cash and time at a place I found onlline called “Affair Recovery. ” What a load. It was a waste; my FW had a lifetime of sordid paid transactions (plus porn ,strip clubs, nude massages, etc)sprinkled across North America. There was never any recovering happening for me. As I endured the 13 week “seminar,” and an unhealthy dose of evangelical preaching, I eventually found you just as I was learning of the vacations in Hilton Head, the ranch weekends, the “fishing” trips in the Keys, the long weekends in Toronto, the 2nd or 3rd home in a Georgetown historic townhouse, the infected prostitute on the boat(turns out her neighbor is the delightful daughter of a 35 plus year friend! Whoops!) and so much more…but you were there to support me in my jourmey to truth and health. When I first went to the doc for STD testing and then told my dentist, then my clergy person, and then friends and family members, colleagues and neighbors…you were there. I gained strength to do what had to be done and take care of myself. It got easier over time. Far easier. Now, it is hard to imagine I ever married or lived with or gave a crap about that sad, little old bald guy who will turn 75 shortly all alone. No party,no one to celebrate him, no candles and cake. Yeah, and I just made res for me to go to Toronto in September. Alone. Happy Anniversary to you, dear CL. Your good deeds reverberate across the globe. Thank you.
This blog started 3 months after I got married, which was right about the time that I started to suspect that something fishy was going on, so you’ll always have a special place in my heart. I didn’t find you until many D-days and years later, but you’re the reason I made it out. This community is the reason that I made it through that Master’s program. I’m one of the many people that is out here gaining a life because of you.
Thanks for continuing to fight the good fight.
I’ll never forget your story at Chumpalooza. You and that MA program — MIGHTY!
That was a fricken HONOR.
Funny continuation– I’m doing a small graduate certificate this semester (10 admin credits, NBD) and it’s at the same university where FW failed out of his first Master’s attempt.
At exchange one day, he looks at me and says, “You know, I should go back to [university I’m getting the cert through] and finish that M.Div.”
Cue my awkward laughter.
He really CANNOT stand to see me succeed.
How did I find my true ❤️ love Tracy? Well, while I was in a fetal position in my bed one night..googling cheaters..I I had filed, served a restraining order and gotten a voice mail that the sheriff in his Southern drawl had given my armed to the teeth husband of 31 years..the papers. When I started reading her blog here with you all…it felt like I was getting a daily injection of titanium directly into my spine. It kept me from answering word salad texts, gave me the courage that my Chump self did not have..to BLOCK EVERYTHING and go NO CONTACT.That alone saved me from a mental breakdown. I told Tracy I couldn’t give a penny to Patron and she said..no worries..give when you can. So in-between legal bills and retirement funds left after the smoke cleared..I am giving back. I must. Because Tracy has the only truth out there!!! It’s like she has the cure for a disease that millions are catching and knows the symptoms and the cure. There was no way to stay and keep cooking, cleaning, working, doing 90% of everything and still being found wanting..never enough. While my husband is out running around to whomever will take him. I thought I had gold when all I had wasa big pike of manure. Now that I’m almost 2 years from D day and 8 months post divorce I know Tracy has the only key to my dignity and my freedom. I thank God hourly for releasing me from that prison. One cheater 35 years ago left me on the delivery room table, this one just at retirement. I have not had one regret except for staying too long in shock. Tracy was like 911..a fire truck that pulls up.with sirens going and Tracy says . Mame, your house is on fire, we are pulling you out
Just take my hand. And I did. Thank you CL and thank Mr. CL,your son, pets and Sarah and anyone else who says..WE NEED YOU!!! Please don’t let us chumps go on without you!!! We can’t do this alone. Go Patron too!!!
2x, that’s one hell of a testimonial. Thank you.
You are one Hell of a chump lady. The mold is broken ,there is only you.💞
I wish this place had existed in 1981 when I kicked my first husband out of our home and changed the locks after learning about his double life. My parents told me “You made your bed and now you have to lie on it,” or “everyone cheats, it’s no big deal and a man has needs.” My pastor told me marriage is a sacrament and I have to work on myself to figure out what I’m doing wrong, then fix myself so “he doesn’t have to cheat.” My therapist wanted to know what I did or didn’t do to “make him cheat.”
This place didn’t exist in 1988 when I left my second husband (because he tried to kill me) and my pastor told me that marriage is a sacrament and I needed to work on myself to figure out what I was doing to make him so angry, and then not do that so “he won’t have to get so angry any more.”
In 2017 when I left my third husband who was emotionally, verbally, physically, financially and sexually abusive . . . and cheating, I didn’t know this place existed. I found Chumplady in 2019 when I was getting ready to fly back to Florida for my divorce hearing, and wondering what was wrong with me that all these men were cheating on me. Finally — someone that made sense. There was no way I could MAKE anyone love me, respect me and stop cheating on me because the problem wasn’t with me, it was with them. I’m five years divorced for the last time, and I still read every day because I’m learning so much from the blog and all the commenters.
Thank you, Tracy, for all you do to promote an anti-RIC view and talk sense in a hilarious and entertaining way. And congratulations on 12 years of blogging!
What you went through is a travesty. I am so sorry.
I only had two asshole exes, so I feel like an amateur at getting rid of scumbags. To get rid of three against the church RIC and family trying to make you stay takes guts. Bravo!
It’s the blameshifting bullshit like what you went through that keeps me going. I am so sorry the people who should’ve been there to HELP you like your parents and pastor, blamed you. A pox on them.
I know 2 cheaters for me set me on fire. 3 would have been the end..but look at you! What gets me is you TELL your boyfriend what happened and how hurt you were and they marry you and do it to you again! What kind of a monster does that? The good news for me is I am 71 and have zero stamina to even talk to a man again. I see a cheater in every one. It’s sad but true…no one looks safe to me. But that keeps me enjoying my little cottage apartment, woman friends, my grandchildren and son and daughter…that leaves me with A LIFE! For that I am grateful every second of every day. My years under a cheater being sapped of my dignity, self respect and autonomy are over. Tracy is my sanity life line! Happy Anniversary to You!!!
A little cottage apartment sounds fun — I’m glad you’re enjoying your life post cheater as well! Three cheaters pretty much is the end — I have no interest in dating. Evidently my picker needs a major overhaul, and I’m still working on that. But dating? No way I’m giving up my cute, quirky condo, my peaceful life or time with friends or even by myself to “give it another try.” (Plus in my age group — pushing 70 — men are looking for “a nurse and a purse.”) Not interested in signing up to change someone’s LVAD batteries or colostomy bag when I haven’t even known them for that long.
Haaaa!! And an LVAD has to be changed in the OR..but you might have to do the dressing changes post op,The colostomy bag might be true, so are plastic sheets, blue pills, support hose….oh no way!!!!!!! I love my cottage!!!
I’d forgotten about the joys of putting support hose on someone else. I’d usually rip a fingernail. Having changed colostomy bags for others, I don’t recommend it. I’ve also changed sheets because the ex had ulcerative colitis and would shit the bed from time to time. And I thought skid marks in the drawers were bad! Loved getting out of bed two hours before the alarm went off to change the sheets . . . NOT. As far as LVADs, the pumps are changed in the OR but the batteries are strictly do-it-yourself. It’s not difficult, but for some reason cheaters cannot manage it themselves and the chump has to help. Ditto the dressings.
I love my cute quirky condo, my *peaceful” condo.
Ruby gained a life. You know you hit the nail on the head about sick older men and the nurse and a purse. I did that with #2 cheaters bipolar mental illness and 13 jobs in 32 years, 25 cars, 7 motorcycles, a crashed business. How did I stay?I SHOULD HAVE HAD AN AFFAIR AND BOOGIED!!! But the problem now is exhaustion and low tolerance for anything I mean anything. Never mind learning CPR for someone or doctor visits or strokes or the new man’s family taking him away if you get sick or he gets dementia?? The Family literally runs your partner and you are nothing but a girlfriend even if you marry them. The adults kids are worried about their money, their stuff and their saintly mom whoever she was!!! You have to try to fit in with another family!!! Im way too tired for that and too irritable!!!There is no such thing as love..you can’t be serious in your 60s and 70s right,? I can’t push a wheelchair either!! My good friend married an older guy and she ended up pushing his wheelchair, feeding him, wiping his butt. The Family let her until he was in hospice, then crowded around for their pay out!! $$$$
She was OUT at the funeral and the fights began. Who needs that?? I’ll take my peace and quiet, add up the good years I had with my 2 remorseless cheaters and call it good. Amen hallelujah!! I am so done!
I hear you! I watched my favorite aunt take care of her older husband and the family disrespected her at the funeral after all the money she gave them. It was her money, too, because the husband didn’t have any.
Congratulations on your anniversary! Thanks for all you do for us Chumps. I have to admit that I haven’t read the book and most likely won’t. I found your website a few years ago after my whole mess was done, over and dead (literally).. I had one of the cheaters who died and then MORE shit (and shitty other women) kept popping up. I felt like a fraud for years because people thought I was the grieving little wife…nope, just didn’t have enough time to divorce him prior to that last surgery he didn’t make it through.
Anyway, your site opened my eyes to how similar these shitty people really are. My story was not unique and that made me feel much better! I wasn’t alone, and I was not crazy! I’m fortunate in that I didn’t have to fight/split things up in a divorce. I feel for those that dealt with nasty divorces.
I’ve sent a few friends to the website who needed you. And will continue to do so. I’m good with my life situation, job situation and am ok money wise. I did a little online dating way back when but haven’t pursued dating in 3 years-and I’m fine with that. I won’t rule out a relationship again but I currently have just no drive to put energy into it. I’m very comfortable on my own.
Keep up the good work-
LACHAL has definitely saved my life since last August..DDay. I recommend it to the numerous, sad to say, fellow chumps I know. Once I recognized that my cheater was spewing the same garbage, it made kicking him to the curb all that much easier. And good riddance!
CL, this site literally restored my faith in humanity. Thank you so much for creating a welcoming space where kind people share wisdom and experience and caring advice. I’ve been reading daily since the very early days of the blog, and the community you created has saved many, many, many people searching for some decency in the world. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!
I’m so glad I found this site. It’s full of such wonderful people and it has genuinely helped me work through a lot of my leftover trauma. It’s a hard walk in a society that constantly says cheating isn’t “that bad” and is often your fault. Thank you for your sacrifices, Chump Lady. They don’t go unappreciated.
Happy anniversary! With you, Tracy, I think this site–not just your posts but also the conversations that occur in the comments–gives readers access to a unique and life-saving critical perspective, one that enables us to FREE OURSELVES from both the ideology of the RIC and the mindfucks in which cheaters and their enablers specialize. Over and over, I see the truth and power of this perspective. Glad this blog is still here!
Thank you, Tracy. You have helped thousands directly and allowed them to recover enough to care for their families. You did it without requiring appointments or co-pays. Your advice was and is accessible and practical and ethical. Simply the best.
Happy Birthday CL
Thank you for being there for me. Thank you to Mr CL for supporting your efforts. I am 1 1/2 years out from D-Day when I discovered, after 35 years of a very unhappy marriage anyway, a burner phone and condoms and evidence indicating 5-10 YEARS of sex with “masseuses” at Asian Massage Parlors. I was beyond mortified. It was great to read that this had happened to others. You reinforced my inclination to divorce and kept me from wobbling over shared experience and hopium and what-if -he’s-better-for-the-next-one. Your snark made me laugh. You are a great writer.
I asked STBX how he could celebrate Valentines Days and Anniversaries with me for YEARS while this was going on. (He cops only to blow jobs.) He said, “It’s simple. I love you very much”. He was saying, “I only want you”, but still had the burner phone. He said, “I never gave up on our marriage” because he called a marriage counselor in! I told him he gave up on our marriage the minute he put his penis in another woman’s vagina. He told me “this” was all my fault even after the marriage counselor (our MC was not quite part of the RIC) told us “it” was 100% not my fault. He said, “I was hoping you would forgive me. “ I said, “forgive what?” He said, “forgive ME”.
Thank you for putting me wise to the cheater saybook. Divorce is still in progress and difficult, but not so bad as watching him trot off to “massages” with Viagra in his pocket. There is nothing worse than living with a cheater or being in Soviet Spy mode. Loving my peaceful life alone without him. Pretty sure I’ll be at meh once the divorce is final. Luckily the children are now adults, so I’m NC except for divorce discussions. It’ll be total NC once divorce final. He is not my friend.
Thanks again, CL. The French say it best. Merci Mille Fois!
Tracy/Chump Lady- thank you. You took my mind out of the blender and gave me clarity which led to courage. It helped me stay unbreakable. My dday was 2+ years ago. My twins, yes I was pregnant with them during dday, are almost two. I celebrate my freedom from FW regularly. And I thank you for that. I was certainly sucked into the RIC. And it took 6 weeks to get out and never let FW back into the house after his short stay at a mental health and addiction facility after a dday DARVO disguised as mental health issues. I would not be where I am without your help. Thank you happy blogiversary!
Happy blogiversary! I thankfully found this site about six weeks after my dday when my marriage exploded without warning. Reading here felt like the only thing that made any sense in those incredibly hard and foggy weeks and months right after. Thank you so much for all you do, Tracy. You have have helped me and so many others survive the devastation and and rebuild better lives. Thank you.
Tracy, thank you! One of the highlights of last year was getting to meet you in person (and so many other fabulous chumps!) at Chumpapalooza. It was a personification of the mighty blog you created — it was filled with GOOD KIND PEOPLE. Just as your blog was eye opening for me, seeing the actual sweet humans that were inexplicably harmed and abused by FWs — if you didn’t believe the words of the blog, meeting everyone would certainly seal your trust that FWs are at their core, rotten and fucked up.
I only wish I’d found you early on in my journey. My DDay was June 2015 and I was divorced by August 2016. I’m not sure exactly when I finally found you, but I think it was 2017. No matter, I still had a ways to go in my personal journey. I still had 3 more years of dealing with a covert narcissistic FW who took pleasure in hurting his son (for 5 years — ages 9 and 13). He played games to hurt him in order to get me upset. And his crazy ass AP was the worst of it… calling police on the kid and trying to drive my son and me mad. But I fought back with attorneys and spent a lot of money to get my son a choice in it and now he’s safe and old enough to stay away from that crazy.
And I had your blog to help me. I got added encouragement to stay my course and get to meh and live my life. I got a good job and have been dating a nice man for 7+ years.
And as soon as I could afford to, I joined PATREON.
What you do is important. What you do is life saving. And whenever I can, I try to comment and add to your very important message: “DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO GET FREE OF A FW.”Every day that a chump remains in a FW’s control is a day they are held hostage by them. Freedom starts off scary and difficult… but chumps are not alone and freedom is WORTH IT. WE are all worth it. Whatever time we have left in this world is better once we leave a Cheater.
Love you Tracy! Thank you!
Thanks CL for all your work. I do a very negligible donation each month to patreon but I suppose it all adds up.
I must admit one of the highlights for me is how HOAC seamlessly segues from FWs to serial killers.
I think there was even one thread where we chumps realised a lot of FWs have a weird oily smell, which again brings us back to Ted Bundy.
All amusing if not traumatic stuff.
Tracy, I just passed the three year mark of financial and litigation abuse with nothing on the horizon except more for the foreseeable future. Things are frankly pretty dire and it is emotionally brutal. Nothing, nothing — no person, no helpline, nothing! — has helped more than Chump Lady. There are no words that convey the depth of my gratitude, so I’ll just say, thank you.
I just now saw a quote from George Burns: “Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” That’s basically what my FW was all about, all of his life. Coming up on four years ago my husband of twenty years, the Cheating Bastard, called to inform me that he was leaving me for the twenty-year-old he was screwing behind my back. (Not in so many words — he didn’t mention there was a Schmoopie but I found out pretty darn quick when she was the only one helping him get his shit out of the house). My family, friends, and I were 100% blindsided because he was so good at the fake sincerity.
105 days later I’m divorced, sold the marital house my dog died, my cat got lost (but 🎵 came back the very next daaaay🎵) and I’m moved into my own home. Not long after, as I was Googling “WTF just happened,” I came across this blog and almost immediately bought the book.
Chump Lady is good medicine. Hard medicine at times, but without CL and all y’all I doubt I would have healed as much as I have — I’m preaching to the choir here.
And Chumpapalooza!!! That was such an amazing weekend! Saturday morning I came down to breakfast not knowing a soul, but by the end of the day we all were a brother- and sister-hood.
I knew that adultery was definitely abuse, but when one of the presenter went over different kinds of abuse and talked about FINANCIAL abuse, I thought, motherfucker…. The CB always kept us broke. And when we declared all finances for the divorce, turns out he’d had hidden debts and had already been to a debt counselor. Less than two years after D-Day, I became debt-free and still am to this day.
I haven’t laid eyes on him in — almost four years. He tried to message me once a year ago, but I blocked that shit. Why? “Weird Al” Yankovic’s song “One More Minute,” which I listened to over and over again after D-Day to retrain my brain, now applies wholly to my life.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart Tracy. I feel so grateful for this site.
Your work (mission) is pioneering. It helps thousands and thousands of primary victims of cheating and than extrapolate that to all the otherwise secondary victims that are connected to the chump- their children, friends and family.
Then there are those who benefit from the chumps work and skills in the professional and community spheres as well. How often in this community do I read of nurses, teachers, thinkers, creatives, homemakers, community workers, volunteers.
The world needs chumps 😃
By preserving the well being of so many of us, you’ve preserved the well-being of millions connected to us, (no matter how many degrees of separation there might be) – the reverberations of what you do – incredible.
During the last 20 months of separation under the same roof, FW’s next level gaslighting, and FW’s fighting the legal process at every single turn, I have managed to continue my professional work in the field of children’s rights, stayed close and steady with my adult children, remained a good friend to my friends and completed a heart’s desire qualification in writing. I will probably be able to retain my home.
That’s not because of me, it’s because of me AND this site, 50/50. Together.
I honestly don’t believe I could have gotten through ANY of those things without you.
Thank you from me and all the people connected to me.
Most of all thank you for creating an environment so that our hearts are bruised but not permanently damaged. An environment that we can turn to constantly, to remind ourselves of our right to be loved with respect and authenticity.
Thank you Tracy, for your compassion and sheer gutsiness in doing what you do!
Happy Anniversary 🌸💕
Thank You so much Tracy.
Happy Anniversary Chump Lady! You saved me so much pick-me dancing when I found you in June of 2019 after a mid-may D-Day. Your wisdom, snark and this community helped me navigate the murky waters of divorcing a covert narcissist. Thank you for all that you continue to do to change the narrative.
Happy anniversary, Tracy! Thanks so much for continuing to be there for your fellow chumps. You’ve made our pain a lot more manageable, understandable, and validated our own feelings and thinking. Really, we can’t thank you enough. SO glad i found you, and i suspect everyone here at chumplady.com feels the same.
It’s also my dad’s birthday. If he had lived, he would be 99 years old. I think he would have admired what you’ve done for chumps. At least, i hope so!😁
Speaking of Chumpalooza, are you planning another?!
Happy blogaversary Chump Nation, and THANK YOU Tracey.
Tracy!!! Sorry for the typo!! ack!