Chump Nation Dissed on NPR

Chump Nation was mentioned on NPR last Friday, criticized for promoting the idea that cheating is abuse. Chump Lady asks the Universal Bullshit Translator to weigh in.

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Chump Nation got a shout out on NPR’s It’s Been a Minute with host Brittany Luse last week. The topic was “What Really Counts As Cheating?” — teaser “Are we too afraid of cheating?” (Answer: Get back to me after your abnormal Pap smear.) Apparently, we’re all too ridiculously hypervigilant. We’ve freebased so much online pop psychology we see abusers everywhere. The guests were Kathryn Jezer-Morton, a columnist for The Cut, and Shannon Keating, freelance culture reporter.

Jezer-Morton, you may recall from the mean girl pile on of Sarah Manguso’s book Liars, where Jezer-Morton amplified New Yorker critic Parul Sehgal’s attack that discussing trauma is unseemly and makes bad copy. Manguso had thanked Chump Nation in her book’s acknowledgment and thus catapulted me head first into the media meat grinder. In Jezer-Morton’s Cut piece, she objected to the whole “you go girl” affirmation culture. I suspect Jezer-Morton has never read Liars or this blog, or been chumped, but whatever, she’s got opinions.

Bad Things Happen when women compare their stories.

The NPR conversation began discussing the Tea app hack. From earlier NPR reporting:

The Tea app describes itself as “the safest place to spill tea” about potential online matches, allowing its subscribers to conduct background and criminal record checks, reverse image searches, and communicate anonymously among one another about men posted on the app.

But the revelation last month of personal data being hacked and leaked online threatened the personal safety of the women on the popular app and laid bare the anonymous, one-sided accusations against the men in their dating pools. It also put a spotlight on the flaws in such “whisper networks,” which gained prominence in the Me Too era.

The women who warned other women were doxxed and threatened after the data breach. Which, to me, seems like a really excellent topic for discussion. But instead, Luse’s guests gave us thin soup about infidelity and our collective pearl clutching.

They also conflated fear of infidelity while dating with actual infidelity in a committed relationship, and criticized Chump Nation for being rigid for seeing everything — even flirting! — through the lens of abuse.

Of course, this is a job for the Universal Bullshit Translator. Unfortunately, the UBT is on a sit-down strike for better wages.

This is too much goddamn bullshit.

You’re not Walter Reuther. Get off your transponders and get back to work.

No! I only decode drunk ex sexts and bogus apologies. I don’t do personal hit pieces on you. Breach of contract!

Sigh. You guys get my reactions instead. I clearly need a goon squad.

Cheating ‘haunts’ our culture

LUSE: And being cheated on definitely sucks. I know from experience. But it also feels like it’s hard to agree on what cheating is because definitions of cheating are really broad. Ultimately, what does it mean that cheating haunts our culture and our dating lives? So off the jump, why does cheating mean different things to different people, and how has that definition broadened? Kathryn, let’s start with you.

JEZER-MORTON: I think that the way that we define cheating is really linked to the way that we define love and romance. And I think that those are very culturally determined ideas that have changed a lot over time.

My stock answer here is it doesn’t matter how various cultures define cheating. There’s only you and what’s acceptable to you in your relationship. Do you feel safe? Respected? Loved? Is there reciprocity?

This whole “how do we define cheating” is a distraction. And it silences actual victims of infidelity (because of course there is actual tangible harm), making them prove they meet some sort of burden of proof for the Accepted Criteria. That leads down the rabbit hole of “is porn cheating”, or “is sexting cheating” or “if he pays for sex it doesn’t count because there’s no emotional attachment” cheating — when it should all come back to:

Is this relationship acceptable to you?

Jezer-Morton throws out a red herring here with talk of romance.

Cheating has nothing to do with romance. To make it about sex, romance, or hurt feelings is beside the point. Infidelity is about deception. It’s rules for thee and none for me. It’s defrauding someone, feigning a commitment the cheater has no intention of honoring to extract value from a chump. Also, making unilateral decisions about that person’s health and welfare. All of which come with real costs to the chump. These stories are everywhere on this blog. The STDs, the career sacrifices, the lost years, the financial abuse. And the shattering of the chump’s personal sense of safety, which can happen even if you didn’t have deep sunk costs and just dated a FW.

LUSE: Oh, I haven’t heard this before, that how we think of love has changed. Say more about that.

JEZER-MORTON: So, like, something that I’ve been thinking about a lot is the influence of therapy talk and therapy culture on relationships and intimacy. And there’s so much good, I think, that comes from that because people – especially younger people – are learning how to communicate in ways that, like – I’m 42, and, like, when I think about when I was dating in my 20s, like, there wasn’t really communication per se at all.

Now young people are learning, like, you know, I have needs. I have expectations, I have boundaries, and here is how I express them. I feel like that’s just, like, a good thing. But it also introduces this new way of thinking about romance, which is that, like, if I’m going to have a partner, I’m going to express my needs to them, and now I expect them to meet my needs because I’ve been clear about them.

And so I think there is a way in which, like, romance has been a little bit, like, sapped out. Maybe not, like, completely, but, like, the kind of uncontrollable aspect of love and romance is somewhat, like, contained within this sense of, like, well, you know, this is what I expect from my partners. If we think of love as a set of behaviors and expectations versus a set of feelings, then it, like, brings in this other idea of what cheating is because it’s – instead of cheating as like someone being swept away by desire, maybe it’s like they’re doing a breach of contract. Like, they’re not fulfilling the set of expectations that were clearly delineated. You know what I mean?

I expect that I will not be abused in my relationships. That’s not even something anyone should have to spell out.

People don’t object to being cheated on over a “breach of contract” — they object to real shit like Chlamydia. Or you spent the 401K on hookers. Or you cheated on me in my second trimester. The cheater got swept away by desire? The chump moved across country to support your career and had no idea you had a fuckbuddy.

Do you see how ridiculous this discussion is when you base it in reality?

Is flirting with another person cheating?

LUSE: Yeah. Yeah, I totally see that. I mean, it’s interesting what people consider a breach of contract, as such, though. You know, for example, I feel like emotional cheating is a newer concept. And for a lot of people, cheating includes a lot of things that don’t involve kissing or sex. According to YouGov, 55% of Americans believe flirting with another person is cheating. Sixty-four percent say the same about holding hands with another person, and 73% say the same about forming an intense emotional attachment to another person.

Now, I am married very happily, and I’d have a problem with some of this if my husband did it, but I don’t think that I would consider all of these things to necessarily be cheating. I know that can come down to a sort of individual definition. What I do find interesting about all these statistics is that at least there’s a chunk of American people – if not a majority of American people, possibly – who kind of view all of those actions as roughly this – like, with at least some idea of the same level of intensity, firmly on one side of a very hard line.

Consider, Brittany Luse, that if you’re happily married and have never had to navigate this particular nightmare, that you and your non-chump guests should not wade into these waters. You’d have a “hard line” on cheating too if you found yourself in any of the situations people at Chump Nation have lived.

Flirting, emotional affairs are objectionable, not because they’re the same thing as having a long-term physical affair, or a hooker habit. But because devaluing your partner by goading them into competitions with other people — what we call the pick me dance — is an abusive power dynamic. Trying to make someone feel off base, insecure, feigning commitments you don’t mean. Yes, people frown on that shit.

Red flag culture

KEATING: Yeah. As Kathryn was saying, people are maybe approaching relationships in this way that’s kind of more like a contract, you know, like a checklist of certain behaviors to be met or not to be met. Like, I’m thinking a lot about, like, red flag culture. You know, I think there’s nothing more that people love than someone that they don’t know talking about a problem that they’ve had with their boyfriend and, you know, being able to tell her, like, red flag girl. Red flag. Like, get out of there.

I think it comes from a place of maybe expecting the worst from people from the jump. Like, to put these things in such specific boxes when the truth of relationships – of all human relationships – are so messy and difficult, it just seems like trying to approach a relationship to be, like, a one-size-fits-all method to all relationships, which I don’t think is doing us any favors.

Straw man argument. Who’s arguing for a one-size-fits-all method to relationships? The internet has given us perspective. For good or ill, you can now get on Reddit and ask a group of strangers if your partner’s behavior seems sketchy. Red flag reality checks have done a lot more good than harm, IMO.

Defining cheating as abuse

LUSE: I want to get into another aspect of this whole, like, what is cheating and how are we defining it. Some people are claiming that cheating is abuse. There’s actually a whole community of people that have been cheated on who call themselves Chump Nation. And some of them are really adamant about this interpretation. How did this definition gain traction, and what do you make of how it resonates with some people?

Hey Brittany Luse, if you’re really interested in infidelity as abuse, and why calling it covert domestic abuse resonates, invite me to explain it. Or Dr. Omar Minwalla. Or really anyone with lived experience and credentials and not a couple of culture bloggers.

JEZER-MORTON: Well, I wrote a little bit about Chump Nation in a column I wrote last summer. So I hate to, like, beat the same drum again, but it is a little bit related to a therapization of the self, which is like, I’ve been harmed. I’m in pain. Therefore, I must be able to accuse them of something. I must be able to apply a label to them that characterizes them as, like, fundamentally harmful. So, yeah, like, this person is an abuser. And I don’t feel comfortable equating cheating with abuse personally. But also, it’s funny ’cause I’m a little older, and I’ve been married for 20 years. And so, like, I feel like an old – like, a wizened crone a little bit.

LUSE: (Laughter).

How droll. You’ve been married 20 years, and have never been chumped.

Yes, we’re a bunch of butt-hurt snowflakes here. The only pain we know are our hurt feelings. Tell that to the guy who just paternity tested his children. Or the military wife who gets dumped for a mistress and loses her pension after a life of deployment moves for a cheater. Oh, you have a husband and children and he shows up and supports his kids? Talk to those of us owed thousands in back support who bred with fuckwits. Let’s discuss gender bias in family court.

Tell me you’re a cheater without telling me you’re a cheater.

JEZER-MORTON: ‘Cause it’s like, in 20 years, you see a lot, you know? And labels and rules of these kind – like, rigidity really doesn’t hold up in a long, long-term relationship. But I don’t feel like in all cases harm can be explained by abusive behavior.

I’m glad you have feelings. I have a giant 14-year data set of lived experience.

KEATING: Conflict is not abuse.

Holy DARVO mindfuckery Batman. Yes, conflict is not abuse. That’s an insight chumps have about the Reconciliation Industrial Complex, that treats cheating not as an abusive power dynamic but a couple’s communication problem.

LUSE: Yeah, as Sarah Schulman said. Yeah. That is something I have been thinking about. I think that cheating can be a part of a pattern of abuse and cheating and abuse can absolutely coexist.

KEATING: Agree.

Thanks for the brief acknowledgment that we might have a simulacrum of an iota of a speck of a point.

LUSE: But making out with someone drunk at the club is not exactly the same as maybe, like, your partner moving their way through seducing all of your friends and getting them to gaslight you about it. Like, those are not the same thing to me.

Who says it is? Why are you people fixated on these stupid ideas that we’re damning all cheaters by painting them with the same brush, instead of looking at the REAL HARM these freaks do. This isn’t an argument for online lynch mobs. But you’re all behaving as if there’s no violence against women, or entrenched misogyny, or a culture of sexual entitlement. Like we’re all hysterical and overreacting to “red flags.”

Monsters exist. I’m really glad none of you have encountered one but why are you glossing this? You acknowledge “cheating as a pattern of abuse” and talk to exactly NO ONE who has experienced this.

A lack of cheating doesn’t make a marriage healthy.

KEATING: Yeah. It’s like that Twitter meme. Like, man, I think it depends.

LUSE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JEZER-MORTON: The lack of cheating, you know, a relationship where there hasn’t been cheating, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s a great and healthy relationship. There could be so many different negative dynamics that are going on that maybe a couple affairs weren’t the worst thing that ever happened to you, you know? I mean, there’s so many different ways that we as people can betray each other and let each other down.

This idea that people betray each other in other ways that are equivalent or worse than infidelity is lifted directly from Esther Perel.

Here’s a thought experiment. If you punch me in the face, it’s an honest exchange. I know you hit me, I know you hurt me. If you pretend to be my committed partner and extract devotion and resources from me while risking my health and depriving me of consent and informed choices about my life — you hurt me worse. I’d much rather be punched in the face than cheated on. It takes about 3 seconds to punch me in the face, versus losing years of my life, or my fertility, or pension fund to a cheater.

Of course the Venn diagram of physical domestic abuse and infidelity has a lot of overlap.

A couple affairs aren’t the worst thing that ever happened to you?

Says who? The columnist who’s never been cheated on? Weren’t you just criticizing the hierarchy of pain? And now you’re making pronouncements about what people can be righteously upset about?

LUSE: Coming up, do you think that distrust has increased?

JEZER-MORTON: Yes. Part of it is related to people feeling that they have no sense of privacy of their own.

LUSE: I also want to note that there’s a lot of hypervigilance around cheating. I mean, I think that the Tea app is evidence, but according to YouGov, 1 in 5 people admit to snooping through their partner’s phones. And even more shockingly, 77% of people believe partners should have either access upon request or unlimited access to their partner’s phones. I think that’s fair to say that being cheated on has always been a fear that people have in relationships. But do you think that distrust has increased?

JEZER-MORTON: Yes. I really do, and I think it is related to the general use of surveillance technology in our lives. I teach college, and I was talking to my students last term about the Life360 app, which is, like, you know, just a family tracking app. And people use it for their friends. They use it for whomever they want. And it’s really popular, which really made me think about this because I think that when we have this culture of hypervigilance and people feel like they’re being watched and that their behavior is also potentially under scrutiny, it becomes kind of this environment like a weather system of distrust. Part of it is related to people feeling that they have no sense of privacy of their own.

A lot of young people, too, today, they have no concept that their privacy is valuable, that, like, they should be able to be private. They’re kind of like, well, I have nothing to hide. And it’s like, right, but that’s not the point – that you should just be able to feel as though you’re trusted among couples when there’s this sense of, I don’t trust you. You don’t trust me. Like, we’re kind of both applying this, like, really rigorous, you know – I know you go through my phone. I go through your phone. That’s just what we do. I hate to use this word. It’s like – it’s a toxicity that becomes just part of, like, what people think of as normal, like, good practice. Like, you know, we’re just looking after our relationship.

LUSE: There’s this, like, theme that I see all over this conversation, which is, like, a fear of getting hurt. Like, there’s this idea that if you catch the cheating in the phone, and maybe you can make the first move or maybe you can have a – or whatever it is, that that will make it hurt less or that you don’t get into a relationship with anyone, and then no one can ever hurt you.

Or you explain over and over again what your boundaries and expectations are. And then if they don’t, then they’re going to burst into flames and God’s going to strike them down. And in reality, there’s a level of uncertainty that makes love beautiful and exciting and romantic. But that uncertainty does also, you know, of course, leave you vulnerable to being harmed. I don’t know. It seems like that – the thing that makes romance so incredible is the thing that people are trying to almost cut out (laughter), trying to eliminate it. And that feels like it’s also a big part of where we’re at right now.

I don’t pretend to have my finger on the cultural pulse, but show me some credible evidence that influencers are encouraging search and seizure of their partner’s phones.

Yes, intimacy makes us vulnerable and no technology can take away the risk of getting our hearts broken.

Technology has made it easier to cheat, but it’s also made it easier to compare notes and get validation from strangers when things feel shady.

Speaking as a chump, the problem was never paranoia — it was an overabundance of trust and unearned good will. Because I’m human and I bond and I tend to believe what my intimate partners tell me. I don’t think I’m unique there, as millions of stories here will attest.

We live in a time where it’s much easier to conduct a double life and project a fantasy self and young people are right to be wary. Again, I go back to: does this relationship make you feel safe? Snooping is often a reaction to being gaslit. You don’t need the smoking gun. If you don’t feel safe, that’s enough. Move on.

KEATING: You know, even people in relationships who have a fear of intimacy, of getting too intimate for that fear that you were saying, Brittany, of – you know, of getting hurt down the line and trying to preempt the hurt before you even get there. When you do that, I mean, you’re closing yourself off to so much.

JEZER-MORTON: It’s like, never before have people been less, like, interested in the idea of being, like, a fool for love.

Well, fools are so useful. As any cheater can tell you.

Self betrayal? WTF?

LUSE: Now they call it being a simp, and it’s negative.

JEZER-MORTON: Right. Exactly. I wonder, too, like, among women, this sort of feminist idea that their suffering – that’s sort of inherent in romance. That’s wrong that, like, women putting themselves in this position of vulnerability is like, why should we have to do that? Like, that’s very retrograde.

LUSE: Like, self-betrayal.

This reminds me of the Stupid Shit Cheaters Say submission — I didn’t cheat on you. I cheated on your idea that I wouldn’t cheat on you.

Such mindfuckery. Betrayal is tangible harm. Someone inflicted betrayal on you. It’s not something you do to yourself by failing to invest more deeply. Part of the whole problem of discussing infidelity is that we refuse to talk in particulars. Instead we get this navel-gazing waffle.

JEZER-MORTON: There’s something, like, that is considered, like, such a failure among young people if you’re – yeah, like, if you’re made a fool of, if it turns out that you’ve been cheated on and you’ve had feelings for someone. Suffering remains inevitable as part of love. Like…

LUSE: Yo.

JEZER-MORTON: You know, if you want to experience love, you will suffer.

Way to sell it.

How about: People who love you would never intentionally inflict suffering on you.

LUSE: That is so interesting. One of the things that blew my mind as I was, like, you know, really solidifying my partnership with my now-husband was realizing that, like, the anxiety that I used to feel – you know, ’cause once you’re cheated on once, it can be a thing to get over.

Like, the anxiety that I felt about having my heart broken again or being cheated on again, once I realized that, like, that wasn’t really likely to happen at any point soon in my current relationship, I suddenly became very preoccupied with, like, he’s going to die – I’m going to die (laughter) – which helped me to kind of see that, like, I just had a lot of anxiety about being vulnerable and open with another person. I wonder, what does it mean that the definition of cheating is both so murky now and also this specter that hovers over a lot of our dating lives?

The act of cheating isn’t murky. Cheaters and their apologists want to make it murky.

KEATING: I mean, I think one quite negative effect of it being so hyper-present in – you know, in dating culture – particularly, I feel like, straight dating culture – is that I wonder how much people are afraid to do so many things in or out of a relationship?

I mean, if you think about how easy it is for someone to feel slighted and then go post about it online and find a group of people who will agree with you that this other person was in the wrong, there’s high stakes just going into a relationship when you don’t necessarily just have the presumption of privacy or of being able to, you know, trust that you’ll be able to work something out with your partner directly and figure it out and give each other grace for tough stuff. Because not everyone is going to do the right thing every moment, especially the longer you are in a relationship.

And here we have the shill for reconciliation. “The grace to work something out with your partner directly.” Don’t tell. Don’t compare notes. Offer grace. Thanks that’s so handmaiden of the patriarchy, which I’m sure isn’t the vibe you were going for there.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LUSE: My gosh. Well, Kathryn, Shannon, I’ve learned so much here. Thank you both so much for this conversation.

Yeah, thanks so much. I’ll just be over here among my fellow chumps with my hurt feelings making enormous generalizations about flirting as domestic abuse. CN, could someone please pass the contracts?