Did You Tell The Other Chump?
The Friday Challenge question is: Did you tell the other chump about your partner’s affair? Did the other betrayed partner tell you?
***
Dear Chump Lady,
I was looking through old posts for instances where married chumps told the other injured spouse that his/her partner is having an affair with that chump’s partner — and how it went.
I’d love to know how it went and any do’s and don’ts.
My heart is breaking for a young man who is married to my relative (a cheater). I steered him to Chump Nation and am giving him moral support. He just texted his wife’s boyfriend’s wife. It seems as though an hornet’s nest has been swatted.
Sally
***
Dear Sally,
There’s no good way to tell someone about an affair. But better the news comes from a fellow chump than an affair partner, IMO. Or a bad Pap smear. The important thing is that the chump knows the truth about their situation.
In my case, the Other Woman told me and she wasn’t nice about it and didn’t have the purest intentions. I’m still grateful she told me. It’s not the kind of thing they write etiquette books about. But here’s some pointers.
How to tell someone about an affair:
- Be kind.
- Be specific.
- Offer to communicate further.
- Let go.
Be kind.
If you’re a chump, you know how traumatic it is to have a D-Day. If there’s anyway to contact this person in a private manner do it. Avoid calling them at work, or confronting them in public. I know channels of communication are often limited, and you might be reduced to messaging them. But consider where you’re dropping this truth bomb.
Be specific.
Come with receipts, otherwise the FW is going to dismiss you as a crazy person who can’t get over the wonderfulness of them and wishes to sabotage their happiness. You know the cheater is going to gaslight, so send evidence.
Offer to communicate further.
This is optional, but you may be a great comfort to the other chump in this fucked up love rhombus. They may also try to kill the messenger. Offer what information you have, and maybe you can compare notes. (I’ve heard many a story how this helped in divorce cases.) But also understand if this person doesn’t want to be your BFF tied together by infidelity. They might go silent. That’s their right.
Let go.
Once you’ve told the other chump, let go of the outcome. They might reconcile. People do. (You probably tried it. We’re all out of our minds after D-Day.) You’ve done the important thing — you told. Put the focus back on yourself and your own healing.
***
So, CN — did you tell the other chump about the affair(s)? Did anyone become friends? Or enemies? Or get married like Shania Twain?
TGIF!
She knows that her boyfriend is cheating, yet is still in savage denial/ blame the co-chump mode.
Maybe she’ll wake up.
Or maybe she’ll continue deluding herself.
My duty is done.
“What I have to say I said” as the Cobalt 60 song “Prophecy” goes, and continues “You have to tell them what you saw. And what they make of that does not belong to you.”
I did my part, my conscience is clear.
May no biblical level STD plagues come their way.
I was never in a position to tell anyone their partner was cheating except my mother, when I was 16 and found evidence of my father’s cheating. I did not tell her for multiple reasons. First, for my own safety. My father threatened me with his .357 revolver if I told, and I was afraid to tell my mother anything she didn’t want to hear because she’d beat me until she was too tired to lift her arm. Second, the affair partner went to high school with me, and her family was even worse than mine, which seems pretty hard to believe after you’ve read this far. I didn’t want to expose her because I was afraid for her safety. And third I was just planning to get out of there. I left the day after high school graduation, supported myself with 2-3 minimum wage jobs at a time and graduated from college in 5 years. The affair partner never left the town we grew up in, and now has a passel of kids and grandkids with multiple different fathers. The last time I saw her, she was 44 and had no teeth.
My father told me about my first husband cheating with my sister. He wasn’t kind about it, nor was he specific. I think he told me just to stick it to me. I confronted my sister about it and her response was that I had no business talking about her with our father, and that I should just get over it. My husband admitted that he’d slept with her, but he was only doing it to be nice to her because she’s my sister. I divorced him, but it’s kinda hard to divorce your sister. I’ve seen her once since Mother’s funeral in 2015, and I kept my responses to her conversation overtures very simple. “Cool,” “Bummer” and “Wow.”
No one told me anything x2 but I did tell my brother -in- law about my sister. He was a just starting out divorce attorney so he sadly had a front row seat on infidelity. I didn’t say it well, but he dug, found more and filed. I felt bad but his choices were his on how he coped with the information I gave him. Consequences.