Did Brain Seizures Make Him Cheat?
He had a seizure just about the time he started to cheat. A chumped wife wonders if there’s a connection between his health and his infidelity?
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Hi Chump Lady,
I’m struggling – and I should know better.
I’ve posted on your site, told my story, listened to and dished out wisdom of someone in the trenches of chumpdom…. yet, after all this time – to quote Godfather III – “Just when I thought I was out – they drag me back in.” The “they” of this latest twist are my own unicorns and what seems to be fated discoveries about the last years of my life with the ex.
I was rooting through old tax records yesterday for unrelated business, and I came across the “request for restoration of license” forms. My ex submitted them after he had a seizure and was forced to give up his license for 6 months until they got him medicated.
I had been through those return boxes a million times looking for any evidence of what the hell happened to him when I found out about the 4-year affair and I’d never come across this form before.
I wondered why I’d found it now – and I wondered if there was a reason (fate) that I did.
When things were at their worst right after the split – the hardest thing to wrap my head around was how he’d gone from a man who for over 20 years had done nothing but be a great husband, loved me, laughed with me, cherished our family – to a guy who not only cheated, but abandoned us, forced us into bankruptcy and basically told everyone that he and I were in a bad marriage (not from anything I ever saw) and how fantastic a wife the OW was going to be.
Honestly – it NEVER made sense. It wasn’t even a skein to unravel – it was like the Mirror Mirror episode of Star Trek — but instead of Spock with a beard — I had a husband who had become an evil parallel version of himself. A total flip.
So here I am in the garage, staring at this form, and suddenly it dawns on me that the location of the seizures in his brain were located in the right side of his brain – right in the area where they say that “judgment and right/wrong impulses” are controlled. (I looked it up online – so take that for what it’s worth.)
And as I stood there – I feel this wave of “THIS is the answer” shoot over me.
The seizures – for whatever reason – either triggered or altered or scared him – I don’t know. But the timing of when that happened fits perfectly with when he said he started being unhappy and then when the affair started and it all seemed too convenient.
We are days from the final decree on our divorce. He is in full plan to marry the OW as soon as the ink dries – remember – she’s “going to be a fantastic wife” according to him. He has screwed me over every possible way he can, and I have gotten both myself and my children through it. But this was just weird.
Finding this put all sorts of “what if it was the seizures” back in play.
It’s twisting me up because part of me wants to contact him, try and lay out the timing and ask him to at least consider that he might be affected by it in his choices by a physical condition.
Crazy, huh? Even as I write this I realize I sound like an idiot. He is not insane – he willfully and quite effectively cheated on me and definitely knew it was wrong. He left without a look back and just stopped caring about any aspect of his old life. Then he reinvented. And he would not listen to me about anything three years ago — so why would he listen now to any “discovery” I’d made?
But if you knew how good things had been for over two decades, and how the whole thing started to crumble definitely right when his health took a turn, you might understand how I can be given to think that maybe this is a sign. Or maybe I’m looking for validation that it was the seizures — something out of my hands and explainable — that made him stop loving me. That it wasn’t as simple as him not wanting me and finding someone new and actually I’d been in love with a pretend person for most of my life.
I wish I could alter my brain to stop reaching back to a past that’s dead and see what’s in front of me.
But he haunts me still.
Even at the end of an almost 3 year divorce and knowing all I do – I cannot stop myself from these unicorn moments of “what if this is the answer?” moments. Please kick me in the ass and wake me up – I need to make these unicorns permanently extinct with some harsh reality checks. Thanks.
Char
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Dear Char,
That’s a very tantalizing skein of fuckupedness you have presented there. Is he a heartless FW, or did he have a seizure that made him a heartless FW?
If the seizures made him do it — then you do not have to hold him responsible.
You can still give yourself permission to love him. You can pity him. And (unicorn of unicorns), hope that he’ll heal and come to his senses, (his senses having been obliterated by seizures). And the Unicorn of unicorn of unicorns — the hope that this is a temporary condition, and if he was aware of it, he would change course. He would come back, and this divorce could be averted.
So, a lot is riding on the seizure hypothesis.
Short answer: It doesn’t matter.
If he’s a heartless FW because of seizures, or he’s a heartless FW because he had a midlife crisis and is under the spell of some floozy — either way he is not partner material. He cannot be a full and loving husband to you any more. He’s gone. I’m sorry.
If it’s seizures that make him a heartless FW, well, I suppose you can only expect that his affliction will manifest itself with the Other Woman as well as you. Otherwise, it is a very selective affliction. If his brain is so degenerative that he can walk away from a 20-year shared life without regard, then he’s only a few misfiring synapses away from doing it to her. Perhaps he’ll forget who she is and she’ll wind up footing the dementia bill.
Longer answer: Brain illness can affect behavior
I’m not dismissing your Brain Chemistry Made Him Do It hypothesis. Anecdotally, I have a friend whose ex-wife had an affair with a guy who turned out to have a brain tumor. She left my friend, the affair partner left his wife and kids — the Schmoopies moved in together and six months later he was dead of brain cancer. Did the tumor make him do it? I’m sure it’s a heartbreaking question his children and ex-wife must ask themselves.
Strokes, accidents, and degenerative illnesses make people behave in all sorts of bizarre ways. Read the works of neuroscientist Oliver Sacks (“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”). There are many accounts of brain injury leading to profoundly different social behaviors. For example, someone who was previously shy and reserved, after a stroke, becomes socially inappropriate, or sexually compulsive. Personality change can also be an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. (An academic review can be found here.)
Another brain wiring hypothesis could be that he was just really good at pretending to be someone he wasn’t.
The whole anger at the divorce, at being nasty and “screwing you” and the kids over? That says narcissism and gross entitlement to me. If he had dementia, I would imagine he would just wander clumsily after his fantasy OW oblivious of the costs, just doing whatever to get to the magic rainbow. The blameshifting, once idolizing and now devaluing you, however, to me, says he has a character issue.
(Personality traits are also wiring issues. I just did an interesting podcast interview with Dr. Peter Salerno. “Could Your Cheater Have a Personality Disorder?“)
Speaking of which, here’s an interesting read about emerging science on sociopath’s ability to compartmentalize. Apparently, sociopaths “feel” but they cannot connect their actions to other people’s pain. More than a lack of empathy, sociopaths seem to have unique wiring that shelves “emotions” in a different part of the brain compared with non-sociopaths.
Whatever is wrong with him, you must let go of the thought that you could save him.
That bad case of “if only’s” will keep you stuck. If he is sick, part of his sickness is that he isn’t self aware enough to know he’s sick and cannot act in his best interests. And he has fired you from the job of caring for him. You don’t get to control that, as sad as that is. You can’t help people who don’t want help and can’t see that they need it.
As I’ve mentioned here before, my first marriage was to a man who turned out to have a mental illness that became progressively worse. He was once a perfectly functional individual. Held a good job, had friends, was social, did well at school. Whatever made him tick, that disability/wiring problem (OCD, hoarding, paranoia) over time made it impossible for me, or anyone, to live with him. He refused treatment after being dragged to several doctors. Because he didn’t think he had a problem. Everyone else was the problem. (Oh, and hey, guess what? Lack of insight is also a sign of mental illness.)
Having “proof” of a brain illness does not make it easier.
Now you can argue, part of that ex’s illness was that he was incapable of treating his illness. (I think this is true of many mental illnesses, like bipolar and schizophrenia — and it’s a hell of a societal problem.)
Was he culpable? What should I do? Martyr myself to a man who behaved self destructively and could not be a full partner to me, or a functioning parent to our child? I struggled for many years with those thoughts, and in the end, I divorced him. He’s downward spiraled ever since. I jumped off a sinking ship. You cannot help people who will not (or cannot) help themselves. You must detach. With or without love. Frankly, in my situation, I lost all respect for the man. Like your ex, he just abandoned his child financially and emotionally. It’s hard to tolerate or care for someone you do not respect, however pitiable their condition.
Seizure or no seizure, you have a no-win situation.
You were a good partner, and he cannot see that. All you can do is work from the reality presented, which is that he has checked out of the marriage. His fuckupedness is no reflection on you, your worth, or the 20 years you invested in him. The fact that you feel love or loyalty after such a shattering betrayal says beautiful things about your character and the depth of your love. But Char, it’s time to focus on yourself and let him go. If it makes you feel better to have an “answer” — it was the seizures — and that gives you a measure of comfort? I don’t see anything wrong with that.
But give up the hope, okay? Unicorns because he’s ill, or unicorns because he’s a narcissistic schmuck are still unicorns.
This is an updated post, but the question often comes up did the cheater have a brain tumor. Maybe? But probably not.
(defunct link)
Brilliant!
That’s great! No unicorns!
That needs to be on a t-shirt.
So good. New profile pic maybe.
I think we all wonder what the heck happened. Why one day it’s an OK marriage ( in my case) and the next he hasn’t been happy in years. Years! WTF I didn’t know. I keep looking back for clues and quite frankly in my case it started when he reconnected with his ex-girlfriend on facebook. One would think thatin you case if it was a medication issue that when he came out of the fog he would still love you and the children. Lot’s wife; her world (which wasn’t all that great) was blowing up behind her but she just had to look back. And she is paralyzed in time. Don’t look back; one foot in front of the other. One day at a time. Good luck
During my 20 year marriage, the ex always said he was happy, that I was his best friend and that he would never want to get divorced or part our family.
That lasted until about two minutes after dday, when his tune change to how he never had been happy once, we had nothing in common, he never should have married me, he had no passion for me and he had been miserable for years.
God only knows what his story is by now. I’m sure he tells everyone that it was ME who did all that cheating.
My favorite line ( NOW, not at the time) from my doormat “please dont leave me days” was he wanted to be happy “JUST ONCE before he died”. Just once.
Really? 23 year marriage, good jobs, nice house, beautiful children and NEVER ONCE happy? And pay no attention to the old girlfriend from facebook he was secretly chatting with.
My life is so much better now, but gosh, some days you just trigger back.
I assumed h’s cheating behavior was due to bi-polar and/or two brain surgeries in 2007. When I mentioned this while in his psychiatrists office, she wheeled around in her chair, looked at me with daggers and said, in front of him, i-polar and brain surgeries have NOTHING to do with knowing the difference between right and wrong.
In other words, sneak around and cheating are indicators of guilt. He KNEW he was doing something wrong. It was a “Gotcha” moment for me. Totally blew my mind. Keep her advice in mind. I sure did some rethinking after that.
I think people with bipolar will sometimes, when very manic, impulsively have sex w/someone inappropriate. But it’s entirely impulse, not on-going or a ‘relationship’, they’re very clearly manic at the time, and the DON’T TRY TO HIDE IT! Because everything is great, right? Sneaking around actually confirms that the person knew that what they were doing was wrong!
Sorry, but they STILL know the difference between right and wrong. Bi-polar has NOTHING to do with it. They also know murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, abusing another human being is wrong, lying is wrong, they know what they are dong is wrong. They CHOOSE to do exactly what they want to do. Their choices suck, but they are totally aware that what they are doing is wrong. The two extremes of manic and depressive are at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet they will cheat when depressed, to make them feel better and then cheat when manic, because it makes them feel good. Bi-polar is NOT an excuse for not knowing right from wrong. Took me years to understand this.
I totally understand your desperate desire to make sense of the senseless. But realistically, this guy is still able to get dressed in the morning, right? He still manages to hold a job, drive a car and apparently arrange his marriage to some other woman? Then I’d assume his brain issues are not the problem, it’s his character. That’s a shame, because neurological issues can often be treated, but bad character is forever.
Char,
The second guessing is so difficult. But CL and the other posters are correct.
It is heart breaking, but just break away. Walk away, and do not look back. STBX made his choices, and they __were__ choices.
Maybe the seizure played a role, but if anything, it simply highlighted traits that were already there.
My ex suffered from nightmares during the first affair. Then he suffered from insomnia for 5 years, nothing alleviated it until he left his family. He accused me of not caring for him, not demonstrating to him that I was worried about him, etc.
In reality, the insomnia was his guilt for not begin truthful about the first affair, and his unhappiness. He was in love with the OW, so he claims now. But I did not know that. In my chumpness I believe it was infatuation and I had caught things before damage had occurred.
Those were my ex’s CHOICES, not my faulty actions. He refused to come clean in therapy, and refused to be honest over the next decade when I asked about US, and as I made compromises and sacrifices for US. There is more, but I will not hijack the post.
I KNOW it is difficult, but in your case, there are no unicorns, just choices.
Hold your head high, and look to today, and to the future. The past is over. Do not second guess it.
Hugs
My cheaters public face was that of Catholic husband and father. I now believe that he cheated throughout his adult life on everyone. The cognitive dissonance he lived with in his brain likely caused whatever other mental issues he had to be triggered. He was betraying me and I think at times, he either felt bad or pitied me or deeply feared being discovered. It is not a long leap that since considering me (in this big picture) made him feel bad, at some point his dread of where I stood in all of it morphed into a general dislike / distain for me. Whether or not he loved me when we dated meant nothing…the reality is that my existence eventually caused him regular angst.
Even at a time when I didnt have full knowledge of all the reasons for him to have turned on me, I could see that nothing I could say or do would help.
Nightmares, insomnia, rage, substance abuse, blah blah its all fall out from their choices and we cant control it. Many of us think that love can conquer all and it’s a bitter pill to swallow to admit that they not only leave but do so with Scorched Earth damage to the family they created in their youth.
All you can do is spray the dumpster fire with the extinguisher of creating a new life.
This reminds me of how it used to really bug me whether my ex was subconsciously or consciously manipulating me. When he threatened suicide all those times did he ever really mean it at all or did he just say it because it was the one thing that seemed to have an effect on me? I really was just trying to figure out how evil he was… like is he truly EVIL or just a selfish asshole?
Unfortunately, I will never know. The best I ever knew him, I still didn’t know him at all. So trying to guess his motivations now, when it turns out he’s mostly a stranger with whom I have kids, is futile. And his motivations don’t change the end result. We are not together. I need to keep my guard up. Don’t trust him. He only looks out for himself.
If pressed now to think about my evil v. selfish asshole question, I land “just” on selfish asshole. Maybe because it makes me feel better than the alternative. And because it doesn’t really matter now. And if it makes you feel better to think that his medical issues could have caused him to be the fuck-up he turned out to be, then go ahead and believe it. If having a reason helps you to move on then I think that’s fine. It seems reasonable. It’s definitely no worse than some of the stuff I look to as contributing to my ex’s affair. As long as you also realize it doesn’t really matter either – the end result is the same.
“This reminds me of how it used to really bug me whether my ex was subconsciously or consciously manipulating me.”
I agonized over this, too, wondering his motives. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. He threw me under the bus. Big time. And it sucked. And I don’t want to go through that again.
honey… please look more closely. Its not actually a unicorn. Its a giant pig with a really huge snout. Any man who moves heaven and earth to screw over his children and their mother is one of the lowest life forms there is. (actually pigs are about 50 rungs higher on the food chain than this idiot is!)
I don’t care whatever wonderful other thing he might’ve ever done. THAT one thing alone, eclipses all. (not to mention a zillion other disgusting behaviors that he’s presented for YEARS!)
This is who he is!
He’s a pig! He always was and he always will be. good riddance!
I think you are definitely right on the symbolic animal. If you knew half of what I found out regarding his behavior with the OW and how he treated me………well, you are right. Pigs don’t deserve being lumped in with him and those like him.
My STBX has had issues for years. I’ve mentioned in other posts that his father had a long-term mistress. STBX was the “emotional” one in his family, which was their code for prone to sudden bursts of anger. He went on blood pressure medication that included a beta blocker. His anger turned into normal anger. 2 years ago, his father was diagnosed with bile duct cancer, and passed away before Labor Day. About 3 months later, his blood pressure meds stopped working, and he had to switch to another combination.
About then is when he started his sexting with OW. From emails, I discovered that they started having sex in the summer.
The point is that I can pretty much spot that something different happened in his brain, but you know what? CL and Yoder’s psychiatrist are right; he still knows right from wrong. That’s why he’s still sneaking around with OW. It’s wrong; he knows it. And he really doesn’t want to get caught.
Though I also think he likely gets off on the thrill of possibly being discovered.
So, to go back to another one of CL’s best lines, “trust that they suck.” Really. You have to live in the present, and in this present, he’s cheating on you. He’s getting married, for pete’s sake. Let him. The OW gets a cheater. What a prize!
You, on the other hand, are on the road to Meh. Certainly you deserve better, and you’ll certainly get it!
Char,
Chump Son here.
I have a daughter, a WONDERFUL daughter, who is fifteen. Now, someday she will be 25, 30, 35, etc. and she will have boyfriends/live-ins/partners/husbands and, I hope, if things get rough, she will come to me for advice. So, when I read many of the entries to Chump Lady (who is, in my view, CHAMP LADY) I often think this: If this were my Elisabeth, what would I advise?
OK, so Elisabeth comes to me with exactly your situation. She says, “Pops [that’s what she calls me], what do you think?”
OK. Here’s my reply.
“Sweetheart, you are not a neurosurgeon, you are not a neuro-psychiatrist. He left you. Was it weird wiring (or wiring that weirded-out) in his brain? We don’t know. But for whatever reason, he has moved on. If you want to point this out to him, you certainly can, but even if it makes him stop in his tracks (and I don’t think it will, since I’m pretty sure he was aware of his own medical condition), I’d say you would be taking a HUGE chance taking him back. I think it’s time to toss this fish back into the pond. If he somewhat comes to his senses and proves to be a great post-separation father to his kids, then leave space for that. But, honestly, you are not an expert at this, he appears to have moved on, this reconsideration-hope is ENTIRELY something that you are generating, he shows no signs of autonomous interest in this, so I’d say, if you really want to point this out to him, you can. Just for your own peace of mind. But, honey, this thing looks fatally flawed to me. Dead on arrival. Or, as the great CL would say: Dead. On. Arrival. Time to move on.
You can wrack your brain trying to figure out how much of this was biology or intentionality, how much was midlife crisis or narcissism, how much was this or that. It’s over. He made the call, and he’s moved on. Bring it up if you want, just for YOUR peace of mind, but, honestly, even if he broke down and said, “I want to reconsider,” I’d make wait for years before I took him back. (And I’d advise against it.) Your kids and YOU are too important to take this kind of chancy gamble that this was all due to some hopefully-reversible physical thing. (And, by the way, is there any indication that this is reversible?)
Now, I’m kind of an intellectual Dad, so I’d probably say too much (see above). But in the end, I’d sum up. I’d get down to brass tacks. I’d say, “Honey, it’s great that you have a big heart and that you have so much hope. That’s something wonderful about you. Even so, my advice is this: Invest that hope in someone else (when you are ready). Take some time. This one is gone, for reasons that probably combine the biological and the volitional. This is a riddle that only he can solve, and you should not wait around for him. If he transcends this mental illness/selfishness, he can be a good Dad for the kids. But YOU deserve a whole person as your partner. Move on!”
“But, of course, I’m your father, and I will support you in what you decide. I just want you to know that I feel strongly about this and I really believe that you should let this go and move on.”
Love,
Pops (a.k.a. Chump Son)
Chump son, you said: “he shows no signs of autonomous interest in this”
This is huge. Char, you could try to *convince* him to stay with you and the kids, but you would be doing all the chasing. One-sided.
DucklinerUpper:
You are spot on there! It would be not only fruitless but really pathetic on my part.
David, perhaps it is because you are a man, I don’t know, but your advisory reminds me of h’s doctors, all of them, medical, psychiatric, etc. For years they took me aside and said, if you have any assets left, get out while there is still something to leave with. And, “Don’t be afraid to take care of yourself.” And “So why are you still here?” I never could figure out what they were talking about. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was the good wife, taking care of a sick husband. That’s what spouses do for each other. I am no saint, but I do have a working conscience and I sleep at night knowing I’ve done what I expected of myself. Now I am a chump for not recognizing the feelings were not mutual. I’ve been chumped and it is a bitter pill to swallow. Okay, said it, done it and now I am going to finally “take care of myself.” Don’t ignore the excellent advice of others, start today, planning for a future without the paid, the frustration and the anger. Pull yourself together and look forward, not backwards.
It may well be that women are socialized to “take care of” others more than men, though men (and sons) can be chumps too!!!
You did what you did for good reasons and because you are a nice person. The trick in life (for Chumps) is not to let narcissists/nasty people do “niceness jujitsu” on you, i.e. turn your nice qualities against you. But there is no reason for blame in this. Happens to a lot of nice people, who then learn where to invest their good will.
I think you are going to do just great. You did the best you could for someone who couldn’t change/be saved, so now you are moving on, re-investing those endorphins, that energy, that positive lightning in people who will better appreciate them! Good work!!!!
It ain’t over till it’s over, as Yogi Berra said, but things are straight in my head now and the emotions are in control, except that I am so disgusted I can barely be civil to him, but I do. I just keep, keeping on until I can leave.
I want to repeat something.
We are Chumps. We are NOT mental health professionals. Do NOT try to take on those tasks. Mental Health professionals do not marry their patients, they treat them, and they treat them with a certain distance/a certain detachment that allows the mental health professionals to have a chance to be effective. Psychologists and psychiatrists do not marry their patients as part of therapy. So, do NOT think that you can save someone in the context of a relationship. If you want help drug addicts, don’t marry one. Instead, marry someone who is not an addict and then volunteer at a drug rehabilitation center.
I think this is important. The above (marrying/staying in a relationship to save/help someone who is really mentally ill) is chump-savior-narcissism, and it’s a bad idea.
My two cents.
I think those words are worth at least a saw buck.
A sawbuck. That’s a good thing, right?
A ten dollar bill.
Ok. Gotcha!
OK. Looked it up. Learning some new vocab here!
I am in chump recovery . My husband broke up with the OW. He is now in therapy. But still so self absorbed. Like he says therapy is hard work. It is coming up roses for me, though, with Mr. Wonderful running off twice with the other woman. He blamed his unhappiness on me. He claimed he was unhappy for the entire 30 plus year marriage. Then he denied saying it to me. His childhood sucked, etc, etc. Is he pretending all this?
It is incredibly common for the disordered to deny saying things, Boston. I am not sure if they lie intentionally, or surpress things.
Boston, they all say this stuff “the marriage was dead” is often how the cheater puts it. Oh, my fav was when he told the counselor we never had sex without mentioning that he was the one that would not have sex. Telling you one thing then denying he ever said it? Gaslighting.
My ex told me he broke up with the OW 3 times and he too went to therapy and told me how hard it was for him, and yeah he made up stories about things in his childhood that I later found out were lies. Oh, and that hard work in therapy? He left his workbook behind and he’d never actually done any of it after nearly a year in therapy… If you now say you are done, I’m betting his next move is ask that you both attend marriage counseling, don’t do it.
Boston, sounds all to familiar. Together 35 years, blah, blah, blah. Are these men inter-wired? It is as if at some point in their life they just throw everything under the bus. I don’ know about you, but I haven’t had fun for several years because I was busy trying to do what I thought he wanted me to do. Trying to be quiet so he can sleep when he wants to, keeping things handy for him, just so many little things that now I have to rethink what I prefer…been so long. So looking forward to the future.
There must be a secret course these guys take. It is like a grade B movie, with an awful script. I do not want to take a leading role. The adultery hurt, but it was his blaming me for it. I was unhappy…he did not act like he was unhappy. He was bored..because of me. He did not know I cared..oh, really..I commute 3.5 hours a day for the family. Blah blah blah. It is tiring. After 30 plus years, this is how he treats his wife and best friend. Now he says he does not know if he wants a divorce…why would he, I have been such a chump. As you can tell it is a bad day. Tell me it will get better…
It no longer matters whether he wants a divorce or not. He made that decision when he cheated. Too late now. Get out now with all the assets possible. I guarantee he will try to do the same. Yes, it gets better, although the frustration continues.
No, actually he believes it. My husband entirely rewrote our history after I discovered the cheating. He NEVER was happy with me. I was a TERRIBLE wife, we NEVER had sex (really?! where did our three kids come from?), the house was ALWAYS dirty..this is what he told his family/friends. I was left standing with the WTF look on my face, as were they. He did this to justify his behavior, but you don’t make yourself look better by trying to make someone else look worse-this I learned in kindergarten.
I don’t know what my STBX thinks about our marriage. I think when he’s with OW or talking to her, he lives in that moment and looks at our marriage as an empty husk. When he’s home, marriage is pretty dang comfortable. I’m fairly certain that he’ll tell me how unhappy he was for all these years, once he’s served his papers.
So yes, they can believe it. Does it make it so? No.
But as Arnold alludes, does it matter? The point is that they’ve cheated. You have to trust that. And you have to trust they suck.
Annie – yup, my husband rewrote history too. Said he’d never been happy in our 15 year marriage. And that I was a bully. Hmmm, unless a bully is code for doormat that’s not true because I encouraged him to go off and see his friends and do his hobbies so he would be happy. Not sure what else I could have done other than helping him write his match.com and adult friend finder profiles.
Me too! In six month’s time it went from him saying “I know I’m the bad actor here, I love you but shit happens, etc” to “you were a ball busting controlling harpie who never understood my needs and the sex was horrible and my high school buddies all knew you were trying to break up my friendship with them.” I wish he’d been as creative in the bedroom as he has been in recreating our life together in his own head.
I think they recreate whatever they want to justify doing whatever they want
Dear Boston,
He is trying to keep the cake (denies saying hurtful things, in therapy etc.) and eat it too (Self absorbed, running off twice with OW). Agreed therapy is hard work…but there should be more sharing than being more self absorbed.
Mnw, these guys are good at manipulation…too often told on CL. Watch Out!
Dear Char,
That’s a heart wrenching spot you are in. I kept thinking that if I said the right thing–the one thing he hadn’t thought of, he would listen to my words and suddenly realize how right I was. Took me a long time and many tries to reluctantly realize that if there was any hope that he wanted to reconcile, he would have thought of it himself and shown me he knew he was wrong. He hasn’t, and if he did, I can’t take him back after all the damage he’s done.
I’m sorry for your situation. That really sucks.
nwrain is right. Even if he wanted to go back to you, Char, you would have to repair all this *damage*. Horrible damage. Even with a seizure, he lied and hid what he was doing, because he still knew it was wrong. Maybe the seizures affected his impulse control…..maybe. But he still knew it was damn wrong, and did it anyhow.
So the damage is there, no matter what. Trying to rebuild a relationship after that kind of damage is a heartwrenching, uphill battle. And that’s in the best scenario.
Maybe a medical explanation would help you forgive him. But it wouldn’t do anything to rebuild the trust that was shattered to bits.
Oh my gosh, that is EXACTLY how my head worked, both with ex #1 (the alcoholic) and recent ex (the narcissistic cheater). I really believed at some subconscious level that if I could just figure it all out and then get him to understand, he would change! He would start to work on his own issues, he would treat me and the kids better, he would value what he already had rather than gazing across the fence at that ‘oh so green’ grass on the other side ….
Over the last few years of this recently-ended relationship, I started just stepping back, observing, not bothering to explain stuff. Essentially gave him lots of rope, which he used for its usual purpose. Sigh.
Now I have to figure out how to find that balance once in a new relationship; how much to try to figure out, how much to explain. I think the key will be reciprocity; if he’s trying too, I keep trying. If I’m the only one trying … time to say ‘next’.
I keep hearing that word here, Karen, and with my therapist. “Next!” is right. Because of my years as a foster child, I had learned not to expect much from people so it felt like home with my ex.
I’ve gone from absolute zero to 60 since d-day. That’s pretty good. I figure the next 30+ are going to be a hell of a lot easier than the first 30.
Karen,
Isn’t that the hardest thing? You see all that you’ve built, all the joys, sorrows, hopes and hard work that created something of such great value – and all he can see is this phantom “greener grass/new life” with someone else. They look at their own back yard and see nothing. It’s like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz – she only sees home in the drabbest black and white and Oz is golden technicolor. When I was trying to get him to understand what he was doing and what he was giving up – I used that analogy. I told him that he was going to lose everything he had ever dreamed of and valued and cherished chasing some fantasy of the perfect life with a woman who made him feel “important” and “got him” because she was involved in the same teacher’s union as him and “understood and believed” in the same goals as him. I said “Don’t you get it? YOu are going to throw away everything chasing some fantasy only to find that everything that matters to you was in your own back yard – but it will be too late.” But it fell on deaf ears and dead eyes. He just didn’t see any value in our life together. And his treatment of us and the complete abandonment he enacted that left us financially ruined – the total lack of interest in our well being – truly – it was like a stranger had replaced a man who had seemed such a great husband, friend and father. I thought I’d lived my life with a man – only to find this hard, selfish, unfeeling man-child in his place walking around with crotch shots on his phone and bills from Super 8 motels hidden in the paperwork drawer. You know – if I read this as an objective stranger – I’d think I was nuts for trying to find an answer. As CL said – you can only work with the reality you are presented with. YOu play the cards you are dealt.
Char, you were living w/my ex’s secret twin perhaps? This is EXACTLY what happened here. The ex comes from an extremely dysfunctional family, and was always trying to prove that he had gotten away from his working-class roots and all the struggles that implied. So by the beginning of last year he’s finally, fairly recently, got a job that feels like a success to him, after years of studying, working, studying some more (Ph.D. and M.B.A.), working super hard, moving from job to job. We’ve got the nice house, the kids are in their early teens and are healthy, happy, smart, sweet and gorgeous, he looks like a reasonably good father, my career is well established, we can travel some, all the components of a life where you don’t need to worry and can just enjoy.
On top of that, the guy who was a skinny geek in high school has become a good-looking guy, well-dressed and fit, and has the pretty, smart, loving wife. There are family friendships (almost no friends of his own, surprise surprise), very enjoyable socializing, just generally a good life. EVERYTHING he’s always wanted, and I think never believed he could really have.
But NO, he has to be incredibly lazy about our relationship, not only make no efforts to maintain it, but also thwart many of my efforts to do so. So I stop trying as hard (still a sweet and caring wifey, still lots of good sex, but just not the high levels of before), and he resents that. Then he’s away for work, super stressed and horny and SO lonely (because a) he has no internal resources to be able to tolerate being alone, and b) he’s refused every attempt of mine to maintain our connection while he’s gone). and he decides that the cute woman at work who thinks he’s so smart will fit the bill just fine.
I actually felt BETTER last summer when I thought, for a few months, that maybe he was right; maybe he really would be happier with someone else, maybe what he was putting me and the kids through was reasonable, at some level, because he’d figured out some things he needed, and wanted a fresh start.
But last Xmas he decides to try to reconcile, and it becomes patently obvious that he is NOT happier, is not doing anything that will lead to his eventually being any happier, that he didn’t think about any of this stuff when he decided to fuck around, and that he did all this out of sheer stupidity. Absolute, complete stupidity.
Have you seen this definition of stupidity? Fits a lot of the ex’s here to a T, I think!
http://cantrip.org/stupidity.html
So I’ve given up on finding answers. He’s stupid and selfish, and that’s what he’s always been, and what he’ll always be. And frankly even if one day he gets smarter and nicer, it’s too damned late.
You said this so well. Strangers, that is what they become. A thought just came to me from many decades ago, something my mother once said, but had been long forgotten. “No matter how long you live them, you never really know them. Always wondered what she meant by that. Now I know. They let us get under their skin, but never in their heads.
I like that! Never heard that before but I like it.
What hurts the most about that is that they got into our heads and heart before they became who they currently are.
no. not nuts, honey. He is. Actually, not just nuts but also mentally ill. And unfortunately, its an incurable illness. But the good news is that its not your problem anymore!
And you are also courageous. There are LOTS of people who can’t work with the reality they are presented. They manufacture their own realities, but that doesn’t mean that they are grounded in the truth.
Thanks to all who have posted thus far and especially to “Champ Lady” (I liked that, David!)
This is the dash of cold water reality I needed to get out of that bizarre, ever hopeful dream sequence I dozed off in. It is hard to let go – but I hold closest the words “TRUST. THAT. HE. SUCKS!!!!!”
And he does.
My divorce became final 4 days after writing the letter to CL. Amazing what legal finality can do to free the mind. I suspect there will be one more hard moment – when I see the announcement in the local paper about the new Mrs. Asshole (number 3) – but I will get through it and move on. Move on. It’s all I can do. Life doesn’t live in reverse. I told great meaning when I reread The Great Gatsby and realized from my now more experienced viewpoint that it wasn’t a great romance at all. It was a sad story of a man who couldn’t let go even though the reality of the woman he’d idealized was always there. But he was determined to relive and rewrite the past to suit him. And it got him killed. Great meaning in that that I appreciate much more than I did as a college student with no real living under my belt.
Thanks to ALL who have offered (again) so many wise words and unflagging support. We are all in the same boat, but we’ll be damned sure we don’t get “borne ceaselessly into the past.” THANK YOU!!!!
It is odd how some words become so striking and I wanted you to know how much, “We don’t live life in reverse” got to me. YES! If I could live life in reverse I would never have gotten into this disaster, but I can’t go back to a time when all was well. I have to create a new time, a time in which I am in control and no one else. It will be my time. Thank you for what you clearly stated.
Yoder,
Right back at you!
My ex’s behavior was so strange and out of character (a man I never saw cry curled up in a fetal ball on the couch and sobbing hysterically for days) that I also suspected a brain tumor, or the beginning of dementia which runs in his family. He played football in high school and had numerous concussions, so I wondered if those old injuries were now coming to light. Could there be brain damage? But after our divorce was final I came across a document my ex had written that explained everything. It was 8 pages long and detailed his obsession with his married coworker (former grad student). It talked about how he didn’t have to live within society’s rules, how anything worth having was worth waiting a long time for. It said he was planting seeds to break up her family and have her as his wife, and they would live happily ever after with him raising her children and loving them as his own. It was some sick shit. My counselor read it and said she couldn’t believe a man in his 50’s would write something like that. After I read that document I sat up until about 4 am thinking about it, and when I went to bed I said a prayer thanking God for removing me from such an painful situation. I think we all look for reasons as to why we weren’t the cause of the demise of our marriage, especially when we are blamed by our ex’s for everything. It was a hell of an awful way to end a 36 year long relationship. Here’s a quote gives me comfort, I repeat it like a mantra — “He didn’t leave because of who you are, he left because of who he’s not.”
Lyn,
“He didn’t leave because of who you are, he left because of who he’s not.”
That is pure gold. I may put that on a pillow in my bedroom for those wee small hours when it all creeps back into my head.
What Yoder said! I can’t tell you how lonely I felt in my marriage. I didn’t realize it until STBX cheater pants left for OW. But being over a year past D Day, I have absolutely no desire to go in search of unicorns. I’m finding MYSELF again!
And Lyn – love that quote. I will keep that one filed away for future reference. When one is still reeling from the shock of betrayal, it’s very hard not to blame yourself or wonder what it was that you did to drive your spouse away. But it truly IS about “who he’s NOT.” Priceless.
Thanks, Chumps, for always inspiring me to keep moving forward!
A wrong relationship will make you feel more alone than when you were single.
I was puzzled, as well, by my first wife’s decision to serially cheat. She became an alcoholic(allegedly, although she may have just invented that to justify her behaviors). I read and read about possible causes for her descent into serial cheating.
Was she personality disordered? Did alcohol play a part? And, especially, did I cause all this(she was very invested in putting forth this reason).
I was fortunate in that a memeber of her family came to me and explained that her sister had always been troubled and that they expected something like this would happen.
It is very difficult to understand why they do the things they do. Why would my XW wake me at night to describe the body of the man she had been with? Why would she absent herself from her toddler’s lives so much?How could she feel comfortable being physically intimate with men she barely knew?
Bottom line, I will never get it.But, I do understand that she is toxic and I avoid her.
((((Char))))))
I vote with those who say your STBX’s ability to hide his behavior indicates that he knows right from wrong and is not compulsive in the true sense. The time to make excuses for him is over; you have to think of yourself now. And what is *your* situation? Well, you’re standing in a hose on fire. Leaving is your only choice, that is, if you want to have a life after this cheater. As you run out of the burning building, I suppose you can wonder how the fire started, but does it really matter whether the toaster short-circuited or the waffle iron?
Nomar – Yes! You can analyze the reasons for the fire, but in the end you just have to get out of the burning house.
Another way to think of it:
The Titanic is sinking. Get the heck off! Staying on the boat and trying to figure out exactly why the boat is sinking is tempting (after all, it was such a strong, sturdy boat, right? It was so well-built, right?) Trying to figure out the reasons does you no good. Just get the heck off, before it’s too late.
GREAT analogies!
Char, I’m glad you are already getting more peace about your decision. I was in a similar boat as you, a few years ago. My STBX’s bad behavoir was so absurd – nothing like the man I dated. Where did that man go? He had wanted to get married and have kids. How could he be so different, act so badly? And why was he so darn moody?
I chalked it up to undiagnosed bipolar, or some othe brain problem. I researched the condition online, and considered giving him vitamins & herbs that are supposed to help alleviate it (he wouldn’t have taken them, though). I prayed and prayed for his brain to be healed. But it never was.
Later, I learned from our marriage therapist that he is a classic narc. Even if there *was* a chemical imbalance, the narc-part would still be there, and that was the biggest part of the problem, by far. There isn’t any medicine for that.
Just get out of harm’s way.
Char,
congratulations on your divorce! I am so happy for you even though you may not feel it yet, you will 🙂
I understand the pain I think. I was with my ex for 17 years. He always had mental health issues, but there was a time when he was in hospital in 2004 and a drug they gave him made him violent, or maybe allowed the violence to come out. I too wondered if it made a difference, did something to him. I too wondered for a long time, was everything he did a facade to be secure, to use me over the years? Sometimes I think I’m lucky because his mental health issues led to his threatening my life (and his own). It made it so clear that it did not matter if he was sick, I could not help him and I could die trying. The truth is I was already dying emotionally and mentally long before that happened.
It was harder to accept what he had become when he was killing me with my love, before I realized he might really physically kill me.
There were many years with my ex that were good, that were happy. I reconcile this without trying to figure him out because; I was happy with him for those times, it does not matter if he was faking it, it does not matter if all that time he may have been lying to me. It. Does. Not. Matter. What matters is, I was happy, those years were not wasted no matter what they may have meant to him. I cannot be happy with the man he is now, that man doesn’t love me or respect me. I won’t let that destroy the good memories. I do recognize that is all they are, memories of a different life, with a different person than the one my ex became.
Char,
My take on your letter is that there is no “Eureka” moment when it is all explained to you. You are not going to know the reasons…it’s like trying to understand the moment before the Big Bang created the universe. It is just not going to happen. Accept that and things get a lot easier.
Healing is hard work but eminently doable. Bad feelings go away when new feelings take their place. It’s the “gain a life” portion of CL’s motto. Have some new positive experiences to generate new feelings.
And finally “Know your worth.” He didn’t cheat because of you. He cheated because of him. It is totally unrelated to you. What you can and must do is let go of your defenses to his cheating. Blaming his cheating on his health issues is your form of denial. In order for you to know your worth you have to be strong enough to know what you are doing wrong –here that is trying to find a justification for him.
Good luck with your healing.
Char,
This is so interesting, and common. There was always something “cold” about my X, even when he was white hot for me. I attributed to his (allegedly) bad childhood, subsequent drug addiction (he got clean, was clean for many years), bad luck (he worked really hard but had trouble “keeping” a good job). It’s all so confusing. I don’t even know what is true and what is not any longer.
But the things that he did to hurt me with the OW’s I could never imagine in a million years, and with no apology. No shame. As if I was a stranger. He actually complained about the one I finally left him over, calling her a f-ing bitch to me and telling me what she did to him, as if I care! Like he wanted my sympathy or advice?!
Bottom line is, I know there’s something wrong with him, known it for a long time. I spent countless time giving him pep talks, telling him how much he was worth and cheering him on to not give up. And apparently he just wanted to give up on “pretending” to be a good human being the whole time.
But this I know, no matter how hard I try (and God and my family know how hard I tried) I CANNOT fix him, and now I have to work on fixing me. If I were you, I would get out. I know how hard it is. We are here for you.
I know I’ve gone through many of the same thoughts of trying to figure out why. Was it the many years of her use of anti depressants? was it her low self esteem? Was it her childhood, Was it her midlife view of reality not matching her expectations? It doesn’t matter, She made the choice to follow her adulterous thoughts and feelings. Her feelings of entitlement for sneaking/cheating/lying/stealing were/are stronger than her feelings to not act on them and protect those that love her from the pain she is inflicting on. As one of us chumps wrote and told me last week or so. “Cheaters are impaired”.
Bud, you used what has become a magic word for me; ‘protect’. That’s exactly the choice I feel my ex made; “I can follow my entitled desire to get some easy admiration from someone who doesn’t actually know me, combined w/a bit of strange, or I can protect my children, and the woman I supposedly love, and the life we’ve worked so hard to build together.’ Clearly a hard call, took him about 2 weeks after arriving in another city on a business trip (coming home each weekend for 3 days, so it wasn’t even severe deprivation).
Obviously his real goal was cake, he didn’t expect me to find out, but in the end that was his choice.
And that’s the word that serves as my guide since I recently started dating; I know that for the long term, I want to be w/a guy who WILL protect me, as well as he’s possibly able, and will recognize the value of my protecting him as well as I’m able, from the avoidable parts of life’s difficulties.
I’ve come to the conclusion that there will never be a clear cut reason as to why our exes did what they did. I spent a few years trying to figure it out and also trying to save him and our marriage. In the end the only person worth saving was myself. Part of that salvation includes letting “it” go. Its hard and there are some days when “it” still bothers me, but living my life without the “what if” daily has been a godsend. With everything that all of us have put up with, taking care of ourselves and kids is THE most important thing!
‘I’ve come to the conclusion that there will never be a clear cut reason as to why our exes did what they did. I spent a few years trying to figure it out and also trying to save him and our marriage. In the end the only person worth saving was myself. Part of that salvation includes letting “it” go. Its hard and there are some days when “it” still bothers me, but living my life without the “what if” daily has been a godsend. ”
BRAVA! Margo, I agree with this wholeheartedly…
yesterday was one of those ‘what if’ days for me. I was in a real funk. Was transported back to the days when I thought the OW was a Jessica-Alba look-alike. Not that she is unattractive. She isn’t. She is attractive. There are those RARE days when I get into a funk and have a pity-party for a day. I hate those days. They suck.
I regress to all the wondering why he did this or that…doesn’t last long, simply because of what you have said, there IS NO POINT. I am so glad you came to this conclusion. Makes a difference, eh?
Valentine,
Funny, isn’t it? I built up this portrait of the OW as beautiful, slim, with better legs. Recently I unexpectedly came face to face with her (bound to happen, she lives in the same town). All I could think was “Wow, you look older than in your picture” What I matter-of-factly said was “Motherfucker”. Not my finest moment. I think she was more surprised than I was.
Way to go! I would say you were in fine form that day.
so–help me figure this: mine snored…I mean SNORED! during his affair. Hardly since, and hardly before. So what the heck was that about? Can your sinuses be passive/aggressive? He even had a sleep study done (after months of my begging, needless to say). And, needless to say, the snoring was an excuse for us to sleep separately, and hence, for him to sext his whorefriend, and all that nasty stuff. (Me asleep in my bed, visions of sugarplums and what not…innocence personified.) But honestly, it’s not like you can make yourself snore (or not). Weird, huh?
Some great stuff here.
I’ve seen relationships where one partner (in the cases I’ve seen, the female partner, not saying it’s always so, just my experience) tries to find that mysterious intricate key to their other partner’s happiness. This same person says to the kids, “If only…dad had gotten that promotion/if only he’d gone to law school/if only he didn’t have such a terrible job/if only I had said this/done that, etc.”
After a while, the “if onlys” really start to pile up, one on top of another. The pile gets suspiciously high, and if you look carefully, it begins to wobble…..
Yes, life’s difficulties can frustrate, but true good character is not conditional. Chumps should not have to be safe crackers for other people’s happiness. They should not always have to be alert to moods, to listen and hear every nuance, to take responsibility for other people’s being satisfied (or not satisfied). It’s too much. Not fair. And it’s not possible.
What’s more, folks who persevere through difficulties (instead of using those difficulties as rationalizations for bad behaviors) will usually triumph. Those who fall into the “excuse trap” (using bad events to excuse their bad behavior) often never get anywhere.
Two more cents.
Chump Son
Here I am cutting and pasting some excerpts written by a BPD female on Another blog-site. This is of help for many of us to understand, what is going on in that “Beautiful Mind”:
I Have Borderline Personality Disorder
The Joyful Life of a Borderline/sociopath.
By: Phage
Written on February 18th, 2009
I live in a world where everyone is a cardboard cutout, a puppet, a means to an end, a fling to be discarded, a way to find connection, to plaster-over the lonelyness of my irreperable disconnection from mankind.
I’m a borderline, but I’m also a sociopath. It’s a really weird combination. I’m both sensitive, vulnerable, and overly emotional, and yet detached from humanity. I’m virtually unable to find connection with others, and yet I need attachment, that completion.
When I’m by myself I default to a state of emotional vacancy and intolerable boredom, every moment must be filled by some activity or entertainment, and nothing holds my interest for long. The only interruptions are those of my own making, occasional manic episodes followed by deep troughs of depression.
And so I seek out people. Clubbing is my favorite social activity, constant superficial mingling combined with an environment friendly to drinking and drug use. A little intoxication goes a long way, people are drawn to me. I seem bright, happy, filled with life. My mix of total arrogance and self depricating humor is somehow magnetic, it makes it relatively easy to find friends or sexual partners, at least for the short term. I get bored of people just as quickly as everything else.
But in some ways, this is good. I’m usually attracted to the wrong sort of guys, the ones who share at least a small bit of my sociopathic nature. Men who’re weak, the nice ones, the stupid ones, are just temporary amusement, people to mock and toy with until they realize they’re not going to get laid and look elsewhere. I’d have to be desperate to sleep with someone like that.
And yet when I spend time with individuals, or small groups, I become hypersensative. Little things become big deals, small hurts bleed freely, and the cool, smooth emotional void that fills my days alone is replaced by a roller-coaster of wild reactions. Sometimes the presence and demands of others becomes an intollerable burden. Slowly, and then all at once, everything becomes horribly irritating.
Their words crawl under my skin and cannot be shed, everything they say to try to make things better only makes it worse, their presence alone is intolerable. I burst, scream at them, obscenities perhaps, or maybe I just tell them they should never have been born. Then, realizing this is sort of thing will harm my relationship with them, I apologize quickly. It’s incencere, of course, all my apologies are. Sincerity of that nature would require I thought there was anything wrong with screaming at them, that I thought they were a real person. There are no people in my world, just placeholders where people are supposed to be.
Amazingly, most people seem to be able to tolerate this kind of behavior long enough for me to get bored with them. They might get upset, but I apologize so quickly, I’m obviously not myself and it usually doesn’t last long, especially if I can get stoned to help calm myself down. I’m good at manipulation, at making everything seem reasonable and okay.
But the more I get to know someone, the less I respect them. I don’t know why exactly, perhaps because in one way that matters greatly to me they are invarriably weak. I don’t have a concience, I’m glad I don’t, it’s something I would never change, but invariably the people I’m with are different. Things like right and wrong matter to them, and that’s just stupid.
Or maybe it’s simpler, sooner or later everyone becomes subject to my manipulation, and so lose a portion of my respect. It’s unavoidable, I never stop. I’ve tried not to for the purpose of relationships, but I’m unable. Any time I talk (at least, when I’m in a rational headspace) I’m accutely aware of my word choice, I say things the best way I can to get what I want. Even at my saddest, most miserable moment of depression I’m acutely aware of how I express my emotions, controlling that expression for the purpose of presenting the image which provides me with the greatest advantage.
When I was young, my mother learned never to trust my tears. Sometimes I think some of the worst ways she treated me during my teenage years were actually defense mechanisms. It probably helped her, but as my borderline blossemed in my late teens my emotions were never believed. She could inadvertantly hurt me, and then tell me it was my fault for over-reacting, or never even believe that I was hurting at all.
But whatever the reason for the lack of respect, and perhaps it is just familiarity breeding contept (I’m good at contempt), I eventually become mildly sadistic to everyone I know. I order them around, constantly needing to assert my dominance. Mild putdowns are the norm, and while I make an effort to say both positive and negative things, it’s usually the negative ones that come out of my mouth. If someone is catty with me, all the better. I enjoy that sort of thing greatly, and usually it escalates until all we’re doing is bitching at eachother. Then I get bored and tell them to chill out.
Having just told you all these terrible things about myself, you might be surprised to find that I generally consider myself a decent person. Oh, I get depressed and hate myself sometimes, but it’s not because of my minor cruelties, or even my intermittant criminal behavior (a good subject for another story, perhaps), it’s more… vague. Open ended self hatred, I’m a loathsome person because . There isn’t really a reason for it at all.
But most of the time, when I’m not really thinking about it, I’d say I’m not a bad person, maybe even a good person. I’d tell you that I’m nice most of the time, and in some ways I am. I tend to be free with things that don’t matter a whole lot to me, like small amounts of money, drugs, little favors. I’m a good listener, and a good confidant. And with the people I’m close to I reveal some of my vulnerability and confusion, and that’s always endeering.
But I rather doubt most people could look at me objectively and say, “yeah, she’s a good person.” More likely the opposite. But the thing is, the parts of me that I see as bad are those that are broken. My emotional hair-trigger, my inability to keep friendships, the fact that I have no self-discipline to speak of. My unfortunate vulnerability to the opions of others, my constant need to assert my superiority (which, frankly, is tiring as hell). These are what I see as bad. The hurts I do people, the things I steal, the people I use, the way I treat those close to me, none of these are bad at all. I have no concience, and so I have no guilt. Well, I should say no guilt for immoral acts. I still occasionally feel bad about a few occasions I got cought stealing or the likes… it’s just that it’s the getting cought I feel guilty about.
Surprisingly enough, I have been in love before (another topic for another story perhaps, it was a very violently turbulent romance), and I even have a best friend. My only real, true friend, though I usually use the word casually. She’s a hippy, a nice person, she recycles and feels it’s her purpose to help people. I don’t understand how I formed a connection with her, it’s something I rarely do with anyone, but strangely enough it happened. And for that matter, I don’t know how she can tolerate me. Perhaps in part it’s because she doesn’t play along with my superiority games, and is okay with being bossed around a bit. And she doesn’t have a hard time with my emotional surges, she’s very empathic, and she’s bipolar herself so she goes through similar problems. Sometimes I even (awkwardly, because I don’t have much empathy) comfort her. I try, anyway.
Anyway, that’s who I am, or at least my current perception of who I am. It changes frequently, I’m an unstable person and my self-assessments are naturally influenced by the moment.
Chilling. Very much like my ex-wife with just two differences: 1) replace clubbing with playing World of Warcraft (similarly make-believe and juvenile); and 2) eliminate the rages (my ex wasn’t BPD and just more of a pure sociopath). But very, very similar to what I observed.
Now 4.5 years out of the marriage it *amazes* me that I lived with such a monster for 22 years. Like checking out of a motel and realizing a huge alligator was lurking under your bed all night long. How the hell did I ever survive that?
This is very strange, but it sounds exactly like my h – even the clubbing. I think there is probably a veil of truth to it. Like she admits, her truth is situational. But what I see here, and with my h, is a bizarre form of introspection. “The world according to h”, a fascinating realm of study, he always thought I should hang on his every word when he decided to gift me with his inner thoughts.
I thought and thought…what should have been the motive of this lady to write of her monster self…but might be…that even this is not the entire truth. I dread. How did we chumps survive with them? We should have been long dead, Nomar? Kudos for surviving n moving on 🙂
I don’t understand why anyone should believe her pathetic dissertation on herself. She is a self admitted liar and manipulator. Why take anything she writes as truth? Seems like one more narcissistic cry for attention to me.
I have a lot more sympathy for the guy. I think it is possible that his seizures damaged his brain and changed his personality. It is also possible that his medications have affected him. Or the seizures could be a sign of an underlying problem.
I am not sure if this makes a difference. I think it would make a difference to how you look at him and your past and how you feel about him.
I have not had the experience of being cheated on, so perhaps I have a different attitude than many here. I think in a similar situation, I would at least talk to him and try to get him to have a brain scan. I would try to talk to this doctor, although they might not be willing to tell you anything. The doctor should know that their patient has had a dramatic personality change so they can treat the person properly.
However, this might not help you now. It is likely that your husband will not listen to you or do anything to get treatment. I don’t know if you can use any of this in legal proceedings to have him declared incompetent or if that would be useful.
This is the real issue – if brain damage has made your husband a person you can’t trust who mistreats you, should you try to stay with him? If there were no cheating involved, but he was abusing you or gambling your money away, I don’t think you would stay even if the problem was caused by brain damage. So perhaps the issue becomes, if there is a physical illness, is he willing to get treatment and is treatment possible?
My best guess is that even if this was caused by the seizures, the drugs, or an underlying problem, it may be too late to do anything to fix your life. However, it might change your attitude towards what happened to you and help you enjoy the memories of the good years you had with him.
And I think for other reasons, even if it’s too late for your family, it makes sense to talk to him and his doctor and his family about the possibility that he has a medical problem he needs to deal with.
My XH openly bragged about being a sociopath. He claimed it did not mean he had no ability to feel sympathy or empathy for others, but rather that he had the ability to “turn off” his sympathy/empathy when he felt like it.
Make of that what you will.
Mine said he was really good at compartmentalizing, so that’s why he could carry on the double life for many months. Turns out, he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was and I wasn’t as dumb as the thought i was. I had caught on to his strange behavior quite quickly and busted him, caught him red handed, within a span of 5 months. Which is still a long time, but our brains won’t let us go there at first. Denial. They weaponize our love and trust and use it against us.
Ex told me point blank one day that he didn’t think he had the ability to love. And I comforted him like I thought he must just be dumping on himself. Looking back now I can see that it was an accurate confession – one of a handful of lucid, truthful moments that he bread crumbed to me.
I suspect that Char was struggling to accept who she had learned that her FW had become. Whether they were always like that and hid it, or they made a conscious choice, or it was the result of a medical event that changed their personality she will likely never know with any degree of certainty. The really hard bit involves gritting your teeth, accepting that “this” is who that person is now (regardless of how much you don’t want “this” to be the case) and adapting your life accordingly.
I hope that Char made it through and built herself the better life that she deserved.
LFTT
Mine was always like that, clearly. And he had done things (to a lesser degree) that were red flags. I had never even heard of narcissism or NPD/APD before he did what he did to me. It blew open my world in many different, albeit, unpleasant ways. This was HIM, he was showing me and the kids who he really was.
But you are 100% in saying that you have to accept who they are when you find out. Just so sad that it seems we always have to find out by betrayal or some other nasty way. They are so good at hiding it. Until they can’t or wont…
I think it would be the same sort of painful questioning and grieving one would have to go through if he had just died. Either way, the person you knew is gone and you have no choice but to accept it.
ChumpOnIt,
That’s exactly the rationalisation that my youngest daughter uses.
She will happily talk about having two mothers: one was the mother that she thought she had and whom she loved very much. Youngest daughter knows that this “mother” is gone (if indeed she ever existed) and that she will never see her again. Second “mother” is the person who Ex-Mrs LFTT has revealed herself to be and whom youngest daughter clearly sees for who she is … which is a very selfish and self centred person who refuses to take responsibility for the hurt that she has caused.
It took my youngest daughter quite a while to come to grips with grieving the first version and coming to accept the need to put a distance between herself and the second version of what was essentially the same person.
LFTT
It sounds like your daughter has learned a valuable lesson about people that many of us don’t learn until we’re older–if ever. Observe the person before you and accept the reality of their behaviors. Then decide if you will keep them in your life and, if so, on what terms. That applies not only to romantic relationships but to others as well. It took me until I was nearly 40 (after some therapy) to understand my mother’s limitations (especially her insecurity), and once I did that, I could have a relationship with her on terms I could accept that worked reasonably well for us both.
I believe people CAN change—but I also believe it rarely happens. From my experience, some people are incapable of change and many, many others are too lazy or unmotivated to put in the self-reflection, hard work, and guts needed to do so.
My friends mother has dementia. She says the man she married isn’t the one shes with now. She sets the table for 3 people. She says the man she married is the nice one and this guy is the mean one, he’s not my husband. My friend says her dad is a Narc, so her mom ain’t wrong.
Sad? Yes. So sad. So yes.
Mine had an awful bicycle accident. Head injury. I did wonder. Then again, broken moral compass. FOO habit.
God knows, but in the end, the CL question always is what’s acceptable to you, aka what level of justification/explanation will untangle that skein and does it matter. Start gaining a life.
My guess is that when Char got further out, she discovered, or recognized, that his bad behavior started earlier than the seizures.
Even if it didn’t, literally millions of people who have brain injuries and other brain damage do not cheat, carry on affairs, run away from their families, or destroy family finances. Millions of them also do not embezzle from their employers, burn buildings, assault people or commit robbery.
While it may seem the seizures would be an easy out for loving someone who treated their chump and family so badly, it still comes down to a bad person, not a bad brain.
In Char’s case, the seizures were treated years ago, before or around the time he started an affair. So despite treatment, he continued the affair for FOUR years, abandoned the family, and during the protracted three year divorce, forced the family into bankruptcy.
Char wrote, “But the timing of when that happened fits perfectly with when he said he started being unhappy and then when the affair started and it all seemed too convenient.”
Yes, it IS all too convenient. Whether it scared him or not, he decided that his WANTS were more important than his family’s needs, lied to everyone that he was in a bad marriage, and dumped the family that loved him.
Since he did all this AFTER treatment, there’s no logical reason to want this amoral man back.
My thoughts exactly. I have worked with seizure patients and they can often struggle just to hold down a job. Nevermind a secret double life and the years of financial abuse the OP described!
If she told FW, all it would have done is hand him the perfect excuse for the ABUSE.
GoodFriend, thanks for pointing out that millions of people don’t do horrible things when they have an illness. Like my FW, it really came down to his character and personality disorders. His mania was just the gas in the bus, so to speak, stoking the fire. HE, with his NPD/APD was driving the bus and making all the decisions. It’s who he IS. Which is why other people don’t do that when they have something going on with their brain. The behavior is intrinsic to who they are deep down.
My father was bipolar, a state that increased in frequency and intensity, and eventually included paranoia. That paranoia eventually took over his life 24/7. He believed people were in the house, outside the house watching him, calling him and hanging up, following him, and shadowing him everywhere. My father had been a brilliant scientist with his own company, and a skilled pilot, and he lost both his company and his pilot’s license to his illness. He ended up killing himself at age 72.
Like CL’s husband, he didn’t believe he had a problem. No, for him, the problem was us, because we failed to believe his paranoid fantasies. My mother divorced him after he plunged a knife through my sister’s picture in an attempt to convince her that “the kooks” had threatened my sister’s life, and she concluded, reasonably, that my father was dangerous. They’d been married 30 years, and despite decades of his cheating and numerous suicide threats and attempts, my mother had been unable before that to come to the decision to leave. I know that she stayed with him for a number of reasons, but one of them was the phrase in her wedding vow, “in sickness and in health.” I wish for her sake and ours (her children) that my mom had had access to CL and her wisdom, especially this post.
When my husband started exhibiting his own strange behavior, I, too, wondered whether he had a brain tumor. Now I think the death of his beloved sister’s son in Afghanistan, and her grief, was the precipitating event that led him to and propelled him through the door of his sexual basement. And he, too, like my dad, thought I was the one with the problem because I wouldn’t accept his account of himself, although the attitudes and behavior he was exhibiting, and the delusional things he was saying, reminded me of nothing so much as my father. And, like my mother, I really struggled with my sense of duty (that old “in sickness and in health”). Luckily I found CL, and, because of my experience with my father, was able to see she is right that you cannot help a person who does not think he/she has a problem, and that such a person is not available to be a partner.
Like the letter writer, after I left I did struggle occasionally with whether I’d made the right decision, and wondered whether if he came to his senses and apologized I could/should seek to reconcile. But his behavior during the divorce was so egregious that it convinced me that even if that change and apology came, he was showing me something about himself that was not something to which I could ever reconcile myself.
My FW fell, hit his head, and got a concussion during our separation, and actually became a lot nicer for a while. That wore off eventually.
I sawthelight…I never thought of brain diseases or TBI making one a better person!! Ha!! I’ll go with that one!!
OMG, this hits close to home. Let me share my story in hopes that it helps somehow.
For my FW, his change in behavior was so extremely aberrant, including a physical attack on me, that he ended up having personality testing and a MRI. The worry was that he had early onset FTD dementia. Turns out, he didn’t have FTD, he just had the brain of a psychopath -low blood flow to the pre frontal cortex and something with his amygdala – and the personality testing came back as positive for NPD with super high traits in APD. He was also diagnosed with Bipolar I, which for him, was the magic “get out of jail” free card. Before that, he was so sorry and didn’t know what was wrong with him. He was doing all this self help, reading books, doing to therapy, etc. He then stopped all of that, started taking his Bipolar meds and just said, “it was the bipolar mania that made me do things I wouldn’t normally do, and I’m taking meds now, so it won’t happen again.” So basically – “just accept it, I have a good excuse now,” This, coming from a man who also cheated on his first wife. And there I thought I was special and he’d never do that to me. Doesn’t matter that he waited 27 years to do it (that I know of), he still did it. Past behavior predicts future behavior, at least for my FW.
But this was a wake up call. One day I ordered Tracy’s book and everything changed. He refused to acknowledge his personality disorders, just focused on the Bipolar, which was his excuse to betray me and his family, but the testing dude told him “you are a great guy as long as you get your way.” And this says it all. He may have had some mania involved, true, but it was his character flaws that made him choose to cheat in mania. And his sneaking around, lying and deceiving, hiding it, proves he knew it was wrong. No matter what he says was going on with him, he still had that awareness, so to me, meant he at least had some measure of control.
The fact that he stopped all self improvement speaks the loudest. And is what made me finally say, “I can’t do this. I can never trust him again and this relationship is no longer acceptable to me.” And I also deserve peace in my life and you can never get that when you feel like you’re waiting for the shoe to drop, be stabbed in the back again or being marriage police. And he was proving he had no intention to work on himself, so it was time to bail. Just because someone has an illness, and mine certainly had many, doesn’t mean you are obligated to stay and help or take care of them. Especially when they are being abusive in every way.
Bipolar disorder does not make one a sociopath NPD. Neither does epilepsy / seizures. This hijacking of psychiatric issues makes my blood boil.
You’re a rare one to have your FW diagnosed complete with MRI which is gold!
FW just love to fake or grasp onto some pop psych diagnosis because GREAT EXCUSE for their sh**type behavior. Mine convinced himself of anxiety and ADHD and even taking the medicine just to have a handy excuse for his NPD sociopath pathological lying.
Impression management sure is easier when armed with bogus or irrelevant psych diagnoses!
Re bipolar disorder. One of the people I supervised in a previous job was behaving in a problematic fashion and I suspected he was lying to me about work-related matters. I had actually taken the HR-sanctioned step to visit his city (he worked in a satellite office) to put him on warning. Time passed, and he continued to be a problem. I had just told my partner I was going to start meticulous documentation of his shady behaviors with an eye toward his termination when this guy called me the next morning, clearly sensing his job was in jeopardy. He told me he had rapid-cycling bipolar disorder and that was the root of his flakiness on the job–he said he had trouble falling asleep at night, and then would oversleep and have difficulty starting work on time.
Because we worked in a healthcare-adjacent organization, and because I believe in second chances (but not third, fourth, etc.), after HR received confirmation from his physician about his diagnosis, I worked out an accommodation with HR that he could start work later, but he was to call me every morning when he got in and then again at the end of the day when he was leaving. At that time, my partner noted that it’s possible to both have bipolar behavior and also be an asshole. I said time will tell, that he’s fortunate to have another chance, but he would get fired if his behavior became unacceptable, despite the accommodations we gave him.
The assholery won out. The guy was jerk who thought he could get away with doing what he wanted, something made easier by his working in another city. He’d claim to be in the office (he had his work phone calls forward to his home) while he was at home. I caught him lying to me about being in the office by having the HR person at the satellite office check to see if he was in. And there were other problems with his work. It could be quite good, but it was uneven. Once again, just as I started documenting problems with an eye toward his being fired, he sensed that was going to happen and he called me up and resigned. When I asked him why, he said that he sensed that he and I were “clashing.” Note that he phrased it as if it were a personality clash. I told him to email a resignation letter right away and I would process it. He wanted to work a few days beyond the 2 weeks notice period (meaning he’d get a paid holiday) and I told him that we would do that but he absolutely needed to finish up some work that was on his plate. I really wanted those projects completed, or I wouldn’t have thrown him the undeserved bone of a paid holiday.
Surprise, surprise: He did not do the work. A few days before he was due to leave, I had the HR person removed the laptop from his office (empty on a day he was supposed to be there). For some inexplicable reason, though, she balked at collecting his company Amex card until the last day of his employment, when conducting the exit interview. A month after he left, his Amex bill was forwarded to me from the satellite office, and I discovered he had charged close to $20K in computer equipment and furniture (which I confirmed had been delivered to his condo). I notified my organization’s very competent legal staff, and they let him know in no uncertain terms that he had to pay it off or the company would have him charged with fraud.
So, he had a mental illness AND he was a lying jerk who met kind behavior with a sneer. In the end, it doesn’t matter what was the root cause of his behavior, only that his behavior was unacceptable.
By the way, he contacted another department at my organization and started doing some contract work for them. When I heard about it, I let HR know, because since he left on bad terms (I noted in the paperwork that we did NOT recommend him for future employment with our organization). His contract was cancelled. One tiny triumph for me after all the grief he caused me.
I really stuck my neck out for this guy, something people here at Chump nation can relate to, and he kicked me in the teeth. I felt great satisfaction in having his contract cancelled. At least he was smart enough to pay the Amex bill from his own funds and avoid a lawsuit and possible criminal charges. Good riddance.
Bottom line: Mental illness deserves clear-eyed compassion, emphasis on “clear-eyed.” Unacceptable behavior has consequences. Sometimes and asshole is just an asshole.
My FW with professionally diagnosed by a specialist (took over 5 hours of testing and cost over 5k) as having both Bipolar I AND personality disorders. He also had an MRI that showed low blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex (and something about his amygdala), Just for clarification. So he has both, but the Bipolar doesn’t make you lose all sense of right/wrong and doesn’t make you “choose” to do things. His choices are who he IS intrinsically, which lies with the personality disorder part of his diagnoses.
His Bipolar was just fuel for the fire – he CHOSE to set the fire!
But he definitely was/is a very sick man.
I was just thinking something like this about my FW. I know it’s not true but it seems like in the past year since a few months before the affair started and D-day, he became increasingly more selfish making unilateral choices that affect me and our young kids. Since the affair he has made some astoundingly self-centered choices while totally justifying them to be fine and not a problem for the kids. It feels like a switch flipped in his mind during the trip when the affair started. A week camping in the wilderness and he decides he will only prioritize himself going forward and not hear anything to the contrary. The kids just go along for the ride. It’s so frustrating that he doesn’t want to hear any other opinions on his choices. He fights with the child therapist and is hugely defensive. It’s definitely “no one is the boss of me” mentality. I wonder if schmoopie is encouraging the behavior. Either way, he sucks.
Another thing to consider in radical personality change and aggression is the side effects of AEDs.
I worked with a disability rights attorneys who often dealt with clients whose children had life-threatening seizures. These parents were forced to use anti-epilepsy medications to keep their kids alive while also loathing the side effects which very commonly include aggression, reduction in empathy and the ability to love, personality change, violence, etc. Worse, sometimes the damage was permanent but, even when able to demonstrate stark “before and after” evidence, it was very difficult to sue drug makers or prescribing doctors because apparently all AEDs have these effects and because, without these drugs, the children would die.
In many cases, the lawyers were contacted to defend children from civil rights violations because schools were pressuring parents to engage in what is called “polypharmacy,” which is to drug the side effects of the drug that came before and on and on until these children were on up to 13 different medications and had become completely unrecognizable.
Like all meds, not everyone reacts the same way but the risk seems particularly high with this class of drugs. In any case, the attitude of the lawyers who saw the fallout up close was that drugs are the absolute last resort and, unless seizures are directly life-threatening and chronic, they’d never put their own children on these meds in a million years and would never take them themselves even if they had to give up driving or change careers.
Another side effect of certain AEDs is reportedly similar to benzodiazepines which are notorious for fast-tracking people into alcoholism because they carve out the same “holes” in neurotransmitters as advanced stage alcoholism and because people may self-medicate with alcohol to address worsening rebound anxiety caused by the medication.
But all the above is not to say that an adult whose personality was altered by drugs is available for any kind of intimate relationship. Even in addiction recovery from substances that don’t necessarily cause such serious permanent brain damage, some people can never manage to complete Step 9 and “make amends” because they can’t face or cross over the whole mountain of terrible things they did under the influence. Even according to long term AA and NA members, these groups tend to be packed with victim-blamers who simply can’t take full accountability for how they treated people and, because they can’t take full accountability, they remain too emotionally dangerous to get close to. One friend who’d been in AA since his teens and took what he needed form it while also remaining aware of the limitations used to joke that there’s no “Assaholics Anonymous” for those chronically addicted to assholery.
My #2 cheater Ex had a certifiable mental illness diagnosis per the DSM -5 giant book of mental disorders. He was on meds and zoomed his psych MD monthly for a 10 min update. He started cheating who know how many years in but 3 years that I eventually found out about. And yes it was part of his compulsive addictive disease progression that” FORCED” him to cheat. And also blaming me for his outbursts of rage, his need for added meds and his gaslighting lying nature. All part of this disease DSM criteria. I’ was in Alanon already for #1 cheaters abuse and child damage so I had a few years under my belt. This is where Tracy, my saintly truth telling came in with her wisdom and cartoons. What is acceptable I had to ask? WHY is this behavior acceptable, blame him blame the disease and now look at my contribution to this enabled addict of strange and co- worker woman and years of abuse of me. I loved CL analogies of allowing myself to be hurt in the interest of someone else’s disease. I Enabled horrific behavior in the name of tolerating an illness, a marriage and for the children, allowing any illness including a diagnosed mental illness, alcoholism, horrible childhood, and terrible track record with others to TAKE ME DOWN. I’ve learned that hurt people don’t always have to hurt people and I am not to sit there as a target🎯🎯🎯allowing harm to my precious self. Nope,never ever again. Both these mentally ill alcoholic mean cheating abusers are out of my life..FOREVER because I cannot go down with them into the grave of giving up my life for theirs. NonoNO!
Adding to this..my cheater was telling me how good it was to teach me a lesson as to his worth by showing me how much other woman adored him. I said directly to him…BUT but BUT this is part of your diagnosed mental illness..look !!! Here are the symptoms!!! It’s all in this book. Please call your psychiatrist..he knows what’s going on with you!!! He can HELP YOU!! My then hand turned to me in a RAGE and said…oh no!! I am perfectly fine!! I don’t need more meds or to talk to anyone. THIS IS ALL ABOUT YOU BEING A HORRIBLE WIFE!! NO sex when I must have ir, not doing what I say..it is YOU!! I had absolutely nothing to work with and an unstable husband with zero insight. I had to save myself in the end. I think I beat having to care for a man with a progressive mental illness thar someone else now has to deal with. I am most grateful 🙏
I totally get it. My FW was on psychiatric medications but stopped taking them and got progressively less herself and more deeply involved in affairs with scumbag men much beneath her. During our separation she got violent in the home and I got a temporary restraining order. The judge stipulated that if she wanted to see her kids she had to verify she got back under medical supervision. She got more rational after that but the damage was done. In her mind I had done this too her and could not see see did it too herself.
Bruno, In my humble but experienced position…neither of my cheaters apologized, changed their cheating ways, took responsibility, got into treatment, took time for therapy ALONE and ongoing…nothing. My last cheater told his adult kids he was sorry for NOTHING. So there is nothing to work with. Zero. One of my first therapists used the Bible story of the prodigal son and told me my #1 cheater husband could repent and become a new man, a unicorn 🦄 if you will and work hard to get me and his newborn plus 6 year old son back as a family. Not one finger has EVER been lifted in 38 years . The proof is in the pudding, mental illness,compulsions, addictions, brain tumors,seizures…it’s all the same..just more to pity.
I dunno, in the scheme of things, the marriage needs to end in these types of situations. Their belief that the next relationship will be sooo much better is frankly delusional. Everywhere you go, there you are. The same problems will remain and will likely blow up the next pairing.
I struggled with all this, trying to figure out why my ex blew up the marriage and second-guessing myself. My ex was a long-term prescription drug user, beginning when the doctors were prescribing narcotics and claiming “no chance of addiction.” He very likely had brain damage from over a decade of that, according to what multiple specialists told me. He also had mini-strokes that showed up on one CAT scan. Plus, there were signs of significant, worsening mental illness from the beginning.
But in the end, the only reasonable answer for me was to refuse to reconcile after he left the second time. At that point, it really didn’t matter who filed the divorce. It was over. He ultimately did, but I was very much on board and viewed the whole thing as a necessary process. Nothing during the divorce indicated any remorse on his part, and his own attorney struggled significantly at times with my STBX’s worsening mental state.
I felt straightly neutral when it was final and kept closeout all-business even though it took a long time because of my ex. When my part was finished, I stopped initiating contact, and eventually, he got into a more stable relationship and moved on. It’s been a few years now since I heard from him. And that’s fine.
Those MRI Photos on this topic are perfect!!!!! Tracy!!!!
The steep escalation of behaviour made me think.
But it was probably the realisation I was no longer under control and wanted answers that kicked that off- it was very odd though.
I think the big test is how are they in public and with others compared to their behaviour at home and with us.
Grateful for the Spock beard reference. So similar to how my ex’s “new” personality came alongside a never before seen beard. Just another way he is utterly unoriginal. He used to excuse cheating by saying it was a “brain fart”. Not quite a seizure, but still enough to distance from one’s agency. I notice people do this: “heart wants”, “brain farts”. Blame a “third party” rather than say I cheated because I wanted to.
I also thought FW had a brain tumour. Mind you, I did not reach this conclusion due to the affair itself or even the (by itself astounding) change in personality, but because of two things that happened as he moved out and we started divorce proceedings:
(1) He agreed to take everything that was his and/or belonged to both of us (no properties to be divided, just household items). He then proceeded to leave here half “our” things, and even some clothes, hanging on his side of the wardrobe, and then told me he didn’t know if those clothes were his. You’d think he’d have recognised his own shirts, hanging on his side, that he had put there himself.
(2) A few days later he asked me if he could reply to an email from the attorney we shared and I said sure, just copy me in. He then asked “What’s that?” This guy has an IT degree and at the time had an online business.
This got me thinking that there must be a brain tumour or something similar. I asked a friend who used to love him too and was also quite shocked. I told her the above and she simply said “He’s just being very good at being a FW”. I listened.
However, I did always wonder, still do. In FW’s case it could have been a number of things, from an old accident to medication. I’ll never know. It would change my perspective though – I think it would make me regain trust in my own discernment when it comes to choosing a partner, which I completely lost. He had been an amazing partner for 10 years.
But what I do, still very often, is remind myself that the reason I didn’t realise what was going on is because FW was really invested in me not knowing.
After D-Day my FW as well became suddenly stupid over everyday things. Keyword “suddenly”. He was perfectly capable of leading a double life and deftly hiding everything from me before then. My theory was that after D-Day when consequences hit he was like a rabbit caught in a snare, panicked and desperate. It definitely affected his brain, as he continually shot himself in the foot during negotiations and, very surprisingly, at work where he was known for being very precise in his tasks and quite savvy on the business administration end. He made many, many bad business decisions as well as a whopper of an error during a patient surgery (a “no harm, no foul” situation thank God). About three years after D-Day he ended up having a mini-stroke, but honestly who would not have done being that he lost his family, the respect of extended family and our community, half of our assets. And all he gained was a mentally ill “true partner”. She is a problem to be dealt with in his life, creating more stress. Oh well. Choices have consequences.
Totally this. Mine became a blithering idiot too. It throws them that their actions have consequences. The cognitive dissonance of that turns their brains inside out. I was flabbergasted by how stupid my FW was, completely contradicting himself within the same sentence and unable to make the most basic of decisions. The things that would come out of his mouth would have embarrassed him if he’d had the brain power to see how idiotic they were. But he couldn’t. He was perpetually puzzled by my laughter when he would produce a howler, and even if I explained it he remained puzzled. That’s how dumb the things he said were, that even in the midst of my trauma they were funny. I wrote some of the better ones down to look back on and laugh at as part of my healing.
…completely contradicting himself within the same sentence and unable to make the most basic of decisions.”
Exact same! That was scary as well.
My FW had a series of psychiatric issues that got progressively more serious. She would not really talk to me about it much, but she obsessively pulled out her hair, constantly worried about what others thought of her and when in a group of women she always was calculating if she was the best looking. She was seeing a therapist and psychiatrist who was prescribing powerful anti-psychotic drugs. Again, she wouldn’t talk to me about it, so I had to sleuth it out. She also drank heavily at times. All this, plus actively chesting with co-workers made married life nearly impossible. She of course blamed our divorce on me and my issues because her reality was really distorted. I loved her and didn’t want the divorce, because I could see that things could be better with help, but she was not capable. I had to stop trying and just let her go.
After talking about FW and his sudden personality change (brain tumor/aneurysm excuse fan here) in therapy one fine day, my therapist said to me “He sounds like a narcissist.” And I said “Oh no, I don’t think so.” I had been with him 37 years, and I knew everything (ha). So she gave me an assignment: go back in your memory and write down every incident that you can remember when you felt devalued, insulted, dismissed, etc. I sat at my computer and started typing out incidents that made my gut feel wrong, and I couldn’t stop typing. Memory after memory came pouring out and I was flabbergasted. How could I have been so stupid, so blind? It was willful ignorance, spackle extraordinaire. It dawned on me that, yes he did have a personality change, but it was not as severe as I thought. It was an escalation of what was always there, hidden under his veneer. He even said it out loud during an argument; after his vicious tirade about how I was a piece of dog shit I said “You’re so mean now, you’ve changed” and he said “I am more me now than I have ever been in my life.” Good to know, take care then, bye-bye now. I recommend this exercise for all Chumps who feel like their FW was struck by a thunderbolt and Frankenstein came alive. You may be surprised at how you have been fooling yourself for years. And as an aside, I still struggle with this aspect of Chumpdom. I get it on an intellectual level but still can’t quite understand it in my heart. I guess that’s a good sign.
Shriek, shudder… “I am more me now than I have ever been in my life” said the long con artist to his prey.
Just a random thought… I wonder if two-faced abusers are very sensitive to political zeitgeist and might be emboldened and more prone to letting their freak flags fly high when there’s an authoritarian political shift. DV rates and sexual assault rates always shoot up in times when democracy and civil rights are waning and at risk.
The point I’m trying to make is that while many abuse survivors are looking around for a specific trigger or medical cause for the “sudden shift” they see in these kinds of presto-chango abusers, the actual “trigger” might be sociopolitical. Basically it’s like a very dark, twisted circus mirror of LGBT people living in repressive times who longed for a world where they could openly be themselves but, until the political tide shifted, choose to remain closeted to avoid being attacked, fired, imprisoned or worse. Except of course longing to live freely as LGBT is a genuine civil rights issue and not a condemnation of character whereas longing to live freely as an abuser is about robbing others of their civil rights and is the ultimate condemnation of character.
Yeah, that’s the difference between cognitive and affective empathy. You can intellectually understand fuckwit behavior, but you can’t understand it emotionally because it’s completely alien to you. Further, you don’t care about whatever issues made them the way they are, because the suck is the suck no matter why it sucks. It is indeed a good sign.
I find it very hard, if not impossible, to believe that the FW in this story had a seizure serious enough to alter his brain without her noticing anything at the time. How do you keep a health problem that dramatic a secret? More likely it was a relatively minor seizure which did no lasting damage.
As CL says, it wouldn’t matter even if it did do that kind of damage. The person he once was would still be gone, replaced by a heartless bastard.
The But We Used to Be so Happy argument doesn’t work either. Loads of chumps had supposedly happy marriages to supposedly loving spouses. Maybe they were happy before the FW got restless, but truly loving people absolutely do not behave the way the one in this story did. Most likely it was a facade that he could keep going as long as he still wanted the relationship, in order to keep it, but also because his identity and self worth was tied up in his happily married respectable guy image. When he didn’t want it anymore, off came the human suit, because why not? He wanted a different partner and a different life, so there was no further need to keep himself in the old partner’s good books. It’s easy for somebody without a stable, genuine personal identity to just decide they aren’t the same person anymore and don’t want the same things. It does speak to, if not an outright personality disorder that can be diagnosed, at least a disturbed personality. The ability to seemingly become someone completely different is tied to this lack of a core identity IMO.
This is quite similar to what our trauma informed counselor said about FW and narcissists in general. There is no stable personality inside the NPD void. FW rewrites history that he’d been unhappy for decades. Meanwhile decades long friends shocked by the events were volunteering that they thought we were happy and FW seemed to be so loving.
They’re all Elizabeth Gilberts without the fame. Charm, soul mate love, narcissistic discard, reinvent self. Rinse and repeat
I agree that the lack of core identity is typically key to this kind of “mutability.” Like CL and others mentioned, whatever the cause (drugs, stroke, seizure, autoimmunity), mental illness typically comes with generalized irrational behavior, not selectively irrational behavior. In other words, they start doing all kinds of crazy shit that they don’t have the wherewithal to conceal. That’s basically the difference between “crazy” and “criminally disordered.” Criminally disordered people know what they do and know it’s wrong which is why they elaborately cover it up and why they tend to be pretty good at cover ups.
A good coverup artist will know to cover up everything associated with the offenses they commit, so the fact this guy both had a late-onset seizure disorder and also covered it up suggests that it may have been secret lifestyle choices that caused it. Developing seizures in middle age isn’t really that common unless associated with a tumor or vascular problems, but then why not tell your spouse?
That’s the part that makes no sense. For instance, why continue to drive the kids around and risk their lives or the lives of other drivers or pedestrians while waiting for the medication to kick in? I think the only reason to conceal this from a primary partner is that this FW had a pretty good idea of what caused the seizures and was trying to hide it such as a diagnosis of neurosyphilis, long term excessive secret drinking, secret pill addiction or use of club drugs, all of which may have been associated to a hooker or hookup habit.
HOAC I believe you are onto something here. Leading a secret double life was causing ex narcopath recurring skin issues, eye problems, stomach pains, insomnia and premature baldness, amongst other things that (before DDay) I began to worry about his longevity! Now I see it’s the stress of so much deception. Would not surprise me the least if he had neuro syphilis.
Lol– hair loss, skin issues, eye problems, sleep issues– check, check, check. Also cavities (the AP had terrible teeth from booze, ultra-processed diet and bulimia and caries is actually contagious) and his gut cantilevering over his belt for the first time in his life causing a major self esteem crisis.
If we’d only known what they were up to at the times they were experiencing physical disintegration, we might have gotten a bitter laugh out of it instead of scurrying around trying to fix it all. D’Oh.
I doubt a seizure made this FW cheat. That would have to be a very, very severe seizure. Or a series of small seizures over time that went relatively unnoticed until the cumulative effects caused a rewiring of his brain. Which would be very difficult to diagnose without a lot of visits to a neurologist.
And even if that was the case, what difference does it make at this point? The damage is already done. The cheating already happened, the divorce is filed, and the OW has already slotted herself in. If all of it was caused by seizure activity then what exactly would OP do? She can’t go in there and perform brain surgery to get the old version of him back, and the cheating bell can’t be unrung.
It’s too convenient of a “it isn’t my fault it’s the seizures!” excuse. I would put money on it that a lot of cheaters who try to use the “it wasn’t me, it was the seizure/brain tumor/head injury/cooties infection” excuses were not that dramatically affected by a medical condition that it caused them to very specifically change the loyalty aspect of their personalities but leave the rest untouched.
Quite right. What’s done is done.
Dear Char,
If it is any comfort, I grasped at a similar straw in the dying days of my blessed “mirage”. My FW claimed he had had a mini stroke. If it was true, and that is a big IF, it was likely self-induced from the illicit drugs he was using. Crystal Meth is not kind to the body of a 61 year old man with chronic health issues.
I asked my therapist at the time if he thought this “mini stroke” might be an explanation for all of my FW’s bizarre behaviour. The therapist paused and said…well it was possible. But the bizarre and entitled behaviour, and the serial cheating, the lying, the gaslighting and the manipulation went on from the start of our 20 year relationship. I even had evidence it predated my marriage to him.
So…in my case…the mini stroke was unlikely explanation. The impulse to grasp at such straws is a common reflex as many here have already stated.
No matter the cause for his behaviour…it is incompatible with a loving and mutually nurturing relationship.
In all my discussions with my mum about my father’s atrocious behavior when he was still married, the one thing that always surfaces (along with her insistence that he would never pay the child support) is that *he was a sick man* and that she couldn’t abandon him. This was back in the 60s/ early 70s, when much less was understood about mental health and SSRIs had not yet been invented. but the crazy, the erratic, the dramatic highs and lows, the black cloud moods, the screaming, the throwing things and punching walls, the overwhelming anger — *and* — the refusal of his (psycho)analyst to do anything about it when my mum called him, terrified that his mood was so black and angry that he might throw her down the stairs — this all rings true.Undiagnosed and untreated mental illness was and is rife. And it gets so tangled up with unacceptable, selfish behavior that it is *impossible to separate* what the person *could* control (i.e. character) vs what s/he did because they were genuinely ill (i.e. illness). Sidebar: in my dad’s case, he *did* improve once divorced, remarried, got the SSRIs he needed. and found a stable job he really liked. But he still remained both limited, and self absorbed.At least in this case, it was both character and illness.
Sometimes I go around (mentally) with this question: “Did my dad cheat on my mom and treat her and me like sh*t because he was an alcoholic? Or would he have done it anyway?” And the answer is, I don’t know, and I never will know. Thinking about this is trying to untangle the skein.
I know my mom had trouble deciding to leave him because of his illness. But she finally came down on the side Chump Lady did and decided to save herself.
Fellow Daughter, my dad never did improve. He kept drinking and eventually drank himself to death. The collateral damage I know of was 3 marriages (including first one to my mom), 1 long term live in relationship, at least 1 job, and his relationship with me.
All I can say is that addiction is a terrible thing and wrecks lives. And sometimes not just the life of the addict.
Yes, addiction *is* a terrible thing. It does wreck lives. It is hard to know where the chicken is and where the egg is — does illness “cause” addiction (i.e. addiction starting off as self medication) or is it the other way around? In the end it doesn’t matter, because addiction of any kind is a life long thing, and if the person doesn’t recognize the addiction and stop it, then it is going to end very badly indeed. We were much luckier; my dad eventually did get the meds that he needed, and he did stabilize quite a bit. He also remained profoundly selfish (if intelligent and with a good sense of humor) and weak, pretty much to the last.
What I can say is that the effects of alcoholism/ addiction / mental illness *do* ring down the generations. My mother’s father was an alcoholic. When given an ultimatum, he did stop drinking, but he took out his inadequacies on my grandmother in a thousand nasty ways. When my father was drinking too much and lied about it, my mother finally threw him out. But not before I had modelled hypervigilance, and before my brother modelled needing to care for an asocial, troubled wife who turned out to be … alcoholic.
The roots of alcoholism/ addiction/ mental illness are likely genetic (why does one person become dependent on alcohol while most who drink do not?). But what one *does* or does not do with what one has genetically is down to character. Many people, are as it turns out weak and/or self indulgent.
He was a great husband, as far as she knows. He may have cheated the entire time. He only got mean and left when he got caught. After years I’m still having OMG moments where I realize FW was lying. I trusted completely, never questioned his lies