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?
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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.
Fellow Chump
***
Dear Fellow Chump,
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!
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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.”
You are mighty in ways you can’t imagine!
Just want to comment on the affair partner who went to high school with you. Each child was a safety net she tried to cast for herself. It obviously failed each time, but she kept trying. She probably didn’t know she has other options – a victim mindset. It’s so sad.
“no teeth” usually means se*ual abuse, se* slavery etc. I truly hope that was not the case for your high school colleague.
I’m so sorry for these souls and can’t express in writing how I feel about predators. I just hope that the law enforcement will get better educated at spotting these situations.
OMG! You are mighty AF.
You deserve medals for valor and courage under fire.
That’s so awful, Ruby! What a difficult story you have, with some bad characters in your FOO.
I want to touch on this phrase: you said “the affair partner went to high school with me”. We should be very clear….that’s not an affair partner -that’s a victim of abuse. There’s a significant age/power gap between your father and the girl in your high school, and if she was under 18 she could not possibly give her consent, legally. That girl was *victimized* by your father.
A harsh truth. I say it because we as a society need to call it what it is, to help reframe the narrative. Your dad wasn’t only a cheater. He took advantage of a young girl, in high school. There’s a name for that.
She was 18 after having been flunked twice, but I get your point. My father was a predator, a pedophile and a pervert.
That’s good to hear she was of age. I am so sorry your father was all of those things. I agree, you are SO mighty for getting away at such a tender age yourself!
And if the girl was from a very toxic/abusive home herself (according to Ruby’s account), she may have been exceptionally vulnerable. This is probably a case where far too many young people have been victimized.
Yes! Predators look for the easiest, most vulnerable prey.
What a horrible family. Since you’ve only seen your sister once since 2015, and that was at your mother’s funeral, it seems that essentially you did divorce her.
Your cheater ex sure had a classic line:
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 hope you’ve also cut off your cheating, mean father who threatened to shoot you. I hope you’re free from all of them.
Ya know, it has occurred to me in the last day that telling the truth about my father, even 15 years after his death and to strangers on the internet has been a good thing. If I can finally admit what he did and who he was, it frees me from the burden of carrying his secrets for over half a century. And reading the replies has been freeing as well. I thank everyone who replied for the support. Really, I cannot thank you all enough!
I’m so glad we helped, and I thank you for your comment above. I am still carrying some secrets about my ex and my family. Maybe it’s time for me to share, too.
I’m free from them all, although now my sister is buzzing around looking to reconnect, and all I can think of is that she must want something.
Don’t ever let her back, she’s dangerous. I’m so sorry she put you through that nightmare.
I have dangerous family I cut off years ago and in my experience, you can’t ever let them back. They don’t change and will spend their whole lives harming anybody who tries to get close to them. You can’t put yourself back in the blast radius.
Don’t give in to whatever manipulation she’s got in store for you. Nothing good will come out of it. guaranteed
Oh RubyGAL… no cool bummer wow for your story… so sorry for all your loss and pain that should never have been part of your story. You were mighty even way back then… courageous, determined woman.
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.
Bravo for telling. Consequences indeed.
My co-chump discovered nearly a year before I did but decided not to tell me. We have exchanged a lot of messages since and I believe we have provided some small level of support to each other.
I wish he had told me as soon as he discovered, but he was pick-me-dancing for most of that year and I suspect he thought if I found out I might kick my FW out and that would push both FWs further together – damn right I kicked him out and, yes, that’s exactly what happened. May they be forever miserable in each others repulsiveness.
I understand it’s a difficult burden for a co-chump – feeling like they are responsible for ‘ruining another family’, but of course they are not in any way responsible. But if I’d found out earlier, the depth of pain may have been lessened as, for me at least, it was the length of the betrayal that shocked me to the core. The outcome would have been the same for me whether it had been going on for 2 weeks or 2 years, but that’s two years of my life that was stolen from me and two years of my childrens’ lives who also had to endure all those lies, theft and betrayal.
Co-chump and I found out at a similar time so thankfully didnt have that dilemma. But like you TranquilAF, he found my number and texted me to see how I was doing. So kind. I replied and then deleted the messages. Still in shock and thought it might all go away? It didn’t obviously! We would text each other occasionally, including sometimes to “fact check”. But now if one of us is feeling rough and want to text, we do. I’m very thankful he reached out and to have that particular type of support, someone on the journey at the same time, he shares the view from his window, and I share mine.
My D-Day anniversary today… maybe that’s why I’m awake after only two hours sleep… at least I’m here, at CN. 🙏
Yeah, that worry about breaking up a family is common. It’s really the FW and the AP who are responsible for that. My FW tried to claim I was messing up OW’s family by telling. I told him that no, he and she had been the ones to do that. Surprisingly, he agreed.
Wow TranquilAF!! What you have gone through, I commend you!!!!
You are a rare chump.indeed. I didn’t know I was a chump.for at least 3 years each. Perhaps you would have bolted if you knew for sure earlier, but from my 6-7 total years of unknown dancing and lies, the brazen cheaters get more brazen and entitled which led me, the Chump into the scorched earth endings of my marriages. They became such awful people there was no road back. I am so sorry this betrayal happened to you or any of us, but your courage stands strong in the face of lies. Thank you for sharing this crushing story of duplicity and may we all stand strong and keep our self respect/ physical health and spirit of true love for our precious selves.
I understand that Ex-Mrs LFTT’s AP also had a girlfriend while he was involved with my now ex-wife …. or at least Ex-Mrs LFTT, as part of her the storm of lies that she told me while denying the affair, told me that he did.
If he did have a girlfriend, then I hope that she got out in one piece and that she’s OK. I had no way of contacting her to tell her and, to be honest, I doubt that I would have known what to say if I had … I would have come across as the traumatised blob of snot and tears that I was at the time.
LFTT
I attempted to reach out to my co chump after each of our spouses decided to be together publicly -consequences be damned.He swatted me away like an annoying bug.He gave me no voice and instead told my then husband to tell me to go away and he had nothing to say to me,-ever. I believe he thought I wanted to conspire with him to get our spouses back.WRONG. AP and her then husband are 15 years younger ( shocking, right?) and I thought he should know how to protect his young children from his wife’s choice of my serial cheating now ex husband who has never been and will never monogamous.My attempt to contact him was to support him in protecting his children in being the better parent.Was it misguided? Probably. Men love to silence women and assume that my 37 years of marital experience to the man who of course did cheat on his ex wife, had no relevance or wisdom.
Co-chump had threatened to come to our house and confront my xh… I was wondering, if he had, how would I have responded? I absolutely wouldn’t have believed him. I would have assumed he was suspicious of his wife (I didn’t know them, names only) and that he was a bit of a loose unit. Xh probably would have agreed. I would have been rattled, yes. But I would have thought how lucky *I* was not to be married to THAT!! Ha! And yes, ideally wouldn’t want him to return. Maybe your younger co-chump just could NOT believe there could be ANY truth in it.
No matter whether they want to hear it or not, telling is the right thing to do. You are giving them back the right to informed choice and consent that their FW took away from them. The only case in which I think it wouldn’t be prudent would be if you knew for a fact the other chump would become distraught enough to harm her/himself upon getting the info, which is something you couldn’t possibly know in the vast majority of cases.
Consider the possibility the co-chump was also a FW who felt threatened by your ethics.
I’m sorry you experienced yet more bad behaviour from someone you were trying to help. That’s wrong on so many levels.
But you did the right thing nonetheless.
As CL says, once you tell the other chump, let go of the outcome (easier said than done though, I’m sure).
I eventually told the OW’s husband about the awful, long lasting cheating. It was a few years after my cheating husband and the ow parted ways. Apparently there was a lot of fighting due to my husband’s fence sitting… all unbeknownst to me at the time.
It did not actually occur to me to tell the other chump immediately, when i discovered the cheating, as i was so wrapped up in awful pain. The ow had asked him to leave, citing fake reasons and rewritten history, and he did move out midway through the sordid affair. This i found out much later.
When i found him on Social media, i wrote him a long letter and sent it by email, outlining what had happened, to the best of my knowledge. To my relief he replied in a kindly manner, thanking me for my letter, saying that he was about to have lunch with ow. She had been trying to hoover him back in. He told her to get lost.
We have written sporadically back and forth to each other over the last 6 years or so, catching up on each others lives, and discussing the tragic consequences of infidelity. Unfortunately he is down to his last bit of money and is in a retirement home. ( i am 75, he is probably in his 80s)
If i had not told him, and she had hoovered him back in (her 4th partner in life, not the father of her children) he would be in better financial circumstances living with her.
So i have that sorrow to live with. Cheating casts a very long shadow over so many people.
It does indeed cast a long shadow, but it’s better to age alone in the relative safety of a retirement home, than with a FW (by definition an abuser and manipulator) at the mercy of a sociopath just as one’s increasingly vulnerable.
Quite right; he might have had an “accident” while there was still money left.I suspect this happens more than one might think.
I second Goodfriend’s take on it. Had your co-chump stayed with that scary monster, he might not even be alive.
Don’t blame yourself for his financial situation now. If she had hoovered him back in, chances are she would have found a way to get his money from him, for herself or her four kids, and continued cheating.
1000%
I didn’t get in touch with the fiancee-then-husband of my ex’s AP. I would have if I knew his last name and could find his contact info. He lived in a different country than me and was from Germany.
My ex was a MASTER at withholding information as a habitual power play. Info that he held the very closest to him was an ability for me to directly contact the AP. And the only possible way to contact the German co-chump only knowing his first name was through her. In my D-day aftermath, no way was I going to able to have the brainpower to try to crack that code which my then husband made nigh impenetrable.
This is only slightly relevant to today’s theme but here’s a morally relativist article in Self magazine on handling the discovery that a close friend is a cheater. https://www.self.com/story/my-friend-is-a-cheater
I may let go and keep quiet about their recycling methods, but not this one!
Yeah, some people consider blind loyalty to a friend more important than human decency. I don’t want to be friends with people like that and wouldn’t have any use for blind loyalty.
I’ve pulled back in friendships if I observed the friend taking too much sh*t off of other friends because of the dark side of the Golden Rule again– that it’s inevitable the friend would eventually expect me to eat the same grade of sh*t sandwich.
It’s not the same dynamic if a friend is entrapped in an abusive relationship so I don’t judge it the same way. But if someone is in total denial that a partner or ex is generally dangerous or verbally abusive to friends and keeps willfully exposing other people in their lives to that risk or toxicity (“Oh can Dirty John come with us so I don’t have to drive myself home?), I’d have to draw the line.
Couldn’t agree more.
My cheater’s brother texted me that my husband at the time was cheating with his ex-wife. I didn’t believe him because my ex-husband constantly said he wanted nothing to do with his ex-wife because she had cheated on him. My ex-husband even refused to attend his father’s celebration of life because his ex-wife was helping my mother-in-law plan the celebration of life and would be present at the celebration of life. A few years later we retired and moved to Mexico and I suspected my ex-husband was cheating on me with someone he met at a party we both attended. I thought back to what my brother-in-law had told me and I realized my husband had probably cheated with his ex-wife. Particularly as I discovered my ex-husband had emailed his ex-wife shortly after we arrived in Mexico, saying to her,“so you have my e-mail address”.He had always claimed he had blocked her on his cell. This information from my brother-in-law became so important to me putting together the pieces that my ex-husband was a serial cheater. I left my ex-husband a year and a half later and am now finalizing our divorce. Unfortunately when my brother-in-law told me, I advised him I thought his allegation was disgusting and I blocked him. However, it goes to show that even if chumps react initially with disbelief and anger, that information isn’t forgotten and can play a helpful part in a chump’s life a few years later.
For my first FW, she was cheating with her male boss. I found his wife on FB and reached out to her. A day or two lateer, she posted a bunch of pictures of her and her cheating husband being all kissy face and lovey dovey and never responded to my message.
For my second FW, she was cheating on me with a woman (had no idea she was Bi). I reached out to the lady and she was appreciative and kind at first, but then sent me a message about 2 weeks later that our mutual FW told her that I was totally obsessed and trying to win her back (completely untrue) and that I was shady and then blocked me everywhere. Last I heard they were back together.
I twice informed a chump. In neither case did it make any difference. My sister in law was teaching in a school where the principal targeted new hires. He bagged her and my brother caught them with a tape recorder on the land line (a long time ago, obviously). I phoned the chumped wife of the affair partner and told her – the AP got on the line shouting “That’s a lie!” I said “It is not a lie, it is not the first time, and there are children involved” and hung up. She later met with my brother, took a copy of the tape (which was lurid) and stayed with her cheater. The second time I told the chump of my FW’s AP and gave him proof. My marriage dissolved. AP’s went merrily along. So, I am two to nothing, but I would still tell the chumped spouse because the feeling that everybody knew except me – that is just indescribable. Avery private humiliation became so public a humiliation that I developed agoraphobia. I am still on medication.
It hardly could have gone merrily along. It must have just limped along on a bogus basis of lies and denial, which is miserable.
So sorry to hear about the agoraphobia.
It has been more than 15 years and they are still together. I believe she continues to cheat.
You have nothing to be ashamed. You did nothing wrong. It’s not your humiliation, it’s forever theirs! Please forgive yourself. Be grateful that you are free from someone so deceitful.
I am sorely tempted to tell one of the two main prostitutes that he paid her considerably less than the other one. Does that count? 🙄
😂
I got a stitch in my side from laughing 😀
If you have proof, do tell!
What should I have done?
I encountered this situation at work, a few years back.
A “Lady” was juggling 2 guys at the same time. One of them was my colleague, who unknowingly was playing the affair partner, while she had a boyfriend/fiancee in her homecountry.
The shoking news that the boyfriend was coming to work in the same company shattered my colleague.
I was dealing with my own discovery and I was set on telling the boyfriend. Tell! But how? I didn’t know him, I met him briefly in some meetings. At some point we were in the elevator and all I could think was how crazy I would look to tell him the truth. What to say in the span of a few moments between floors? Seeing how serene he was with his new life, how could I burst his bubble?
But he was only serene based on a lie. Did you have an email contact for him? I would have created an anonymous account and done it that way. Considering the chump was a colleague I would have taken that approach, because you wouldn’t want to be drawn into a drama at work, presumably.
I had no relevant information about him.
Then there was little to nothing you could have reasonably done. You had to protect yourself at work, so cornering him in the elevator or whatever wasn’t prudent. No reason to feel bad about that. In fact I would argue that being anonymous is prudent in any situation where there might be repercussions on you, such as the cheater becoming enraged and attacking you or a chump who wants to stay in denial doing the same. Killing the messenger is all too common unfortunately.
Thanks for your wisdom OHFFS. Nicely said. Appreciate it.
I told the other chump by email and I never heard back from him. I heard from somebody who knew him that he didn’t leave at that time but beyond that I don’t know what became of him. I hope he eventually left, especially because I told him about evidence I had that OW involved their underage child in her dirty deeds by repeatedly and deliberately exposing her to her “friend” (my FW) on occasions when they were seeing each other on the sly. I do feel he should have left immediately and forever for that as it was disgusting behavior on OW’s part, but it’s really not my business how he dealt with it. I believe that unless it is a person who is close to you it is wise to inform, answer any pertinent questions if asked, then just let go. For the sake of your mental health I believe you shouldn’t get caught up in the other couple’s drama if you can avoid it. For that reason I would not consider befriending the other chump. Fortunately that was not his desire either.
FW narcopath choice of OW were paid hohos so I haven’t had a co-chump to tell.
Our explosive divorce actually exposed a number of cheaters, the ones that quickly distanced themselves and I randomly got info elsewhere on the cheating. Not hard evidence but enough to believe 99% especially with the wisdom of CN.
Since the chumpy women also abandoned me and my kids at our darkest hour I see no need to tell them. They probably suspect but don’t want to end up a single mom like me.
If they had been decent people who reached out to help, I would have shared my suspicions. Reciprocal relationships only, learned that here at CN.
This is something I can related to!
I can’t understand the distance married women take from chumped mothers. It felt like I had a contagious disease.
Fear would be my guess. They are scared to death it could happen to them. Better to think it is because a cheater is unhappy, or the betrayed is at fault.
Hear, hear!
The problem is that cheaters usually disguise their affairs very well.
Take my own example: my ex used to text and call me in a caring, loving way. Later, I figured out he was displaying this ‘care’ while he was actually with his affair partner. Triangulation at its best!
If someone had told me then that my husband was cheating, I would have dismissed it. I probably would have even shared it with him. He certainly would have been amused by how easily he was deceiving me.
Eventually, the penny dropped. The shift came with a simple question: ‘What if?’ I started questioning his statements, and suddenly, all the little details came together as if a giant magnet was pulling them from my memory. I began looking for proof on my own. The deeper I dug, the more lies I found.
Please, tell the other ‘chump.’ Accept that they are in denial, but help them realize the truth with that one simple question: ‘What if?’ Then, let go. Let the penny drop for them.
The advice to offer communication is valuable; it’s like an island of sanity in a sea of deceit. Feeling understood while everyone else judges you (due to character assassination) is key—especially when children are involved. It’s shocking what some people will do just to avoid paying alimony.
Mine did the same. He would have lunch with OW every day (they worked together) and call me while they had lunch. Luckily I was busy and not near the phone, didn’t have a cell so I usually couldn’t pick up, which he already knew but apparently he couldn’t resist trying. After DDay he actually whined about me not picking up while he was on his cheating lunches and used it as an excuse for cheating!😆 They are so stupid.
So sorry to hear yours did that to you as well. It is triangulation and they do get off on the cruelty of it.
Yes I agree. They hide it well, and they hone their craft. Having a trusting partner of course helps them.
Had someone told me in the middle years, I likely wouldn’t have believed it at first; but I do think as you say the penny would have dropped at some point and I would have begun to go hmmmm.
People like to think that us loyal spouses are blind/stupid whatever, but most of us are just really busy investing in and supporting a committed life. We are giving our betrayer the B of D that they are doing the same thing. Meanwhile, they are using our good will and trust against us.
My FW used to show up with boxes of bakery treats for the entire department when I had to work late. I thought it was an expression of love and support. My co-workers adored him! Looking back, I am pretty sure he was confirming that I was where I said I was, and confirming how much time he had unsupervised. I never suspected a thing until I was using hindsight to examine my history.
Yes! You nailed it! They are more controlling while they are cheating.
I wish someone would have told me over all those decades! I told those I could locate, yes. The FW was so angry. I recall he screamed: you will ruin her marriage! He didn’t want one of the husbands of one of his betrayal objects to find out. I learned they were always appreciative. They wanted info. So, yes, tell. Calmly, and answer questions as best you can. I am past this now, but yes, tell. There were many I couldn’t locate, and wish I could have told.
You did great!
“Ruin the marriage” is the reverse side of “Save a chump’s life”.
FWs always seem to believe that the *telling* is ruining the marriage, not the cheating.
Yes , contact by Facebook. His wife was cheating with two guys at work , one my Husband. He could not understand why she wanted a guy so much older. I could not understand my Husband destroying a 20plus year marriage with so many memories and love. He had cheated once before at least that’s what I’m aware of. This was a marriage that people were envious of . My ex married her and her ex has remarried recently . I’ve remained single 10 years . The adult kids have never really recovered . I quit trying to make sense of his choices. Life goes on.
You remained the mother of your children. I think that counts the most!
♥️
Life goes on, but we are never the same and neither are the children.
Schmoopie’s boyfriend found out before I did & moved out. He didn’t know about me to tell me. Turns out I’m friends with his boss & we connected later on. He wanted nothing more to do with it, just wanted to move on. He’d had enough of Schmoopie’s theatrics (drinking lots and cocaine, etc) and was okay that she monkey-branched onto someone else; although he was sorry it was a married man.
Sorry he wasn’t interested in communicating with you. I’ve found real solace in comms with co-chump, even though it might only be a couple of times a month. And just having some of those questions answered. But you are at/en route to Meh nevertheless!
Yes! I got together with the other chump 1.5 years post D day. We are going strong after many years, because we’re both kind givers. We’ve created a calm and regulated home where the kids gravitate. The cheaters’ relationship flamed out quickly, a few months after it was out in the open and subject to the emotions and judgement of the kids. Turns out two extreme takers don’t work very well in a relationship.