Does Your Cheater Hold a Grudge?
The Friday Challenge question is did your cheater hold a grudge? Are they still mad at you for some slight?
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Hi Chump Lady,
I just saw this article. Apparently James Cameron is still angry about a joke Amy Poehler made about him at the Golden Globes THIRTEEN YEARS AGO.
He has a long storied history of cheating… starting with his first wife then jumping from woman to woman associated with every film he’s been tied with — even Kathryn Bigelow was an affair partner at one point.
Here’s the joke:
Poehler, addressing the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty’s torture scenes, quipped: “When it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron.” (Referring to Kathryn Bigelow — his ex wife. They were married 1989-1991.)
There is nothing wrong with Amy Poehler’s joke. It’s hilarious. But it pisses off a FW to be made the butt of a joke for his shit behavior.
Maybe we can do a Friday challenge — what did you do that got under a FW’s skin and maybe even triggered a childlike temper tantrum like little Jimmy Cameron here?
MichelleShocked
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Dear MichelleShocked,
You win! Thin-skinned narcissists for the Friday Challenge! If you prick a prick, do they not bleed? FWs have feelings too, you know. How dare you insinuate that they were anything less than stellar? Didn’t you get the PR pamphlet? Why haven’t you signed the NDA?
FWs hate ridicule.
It’s their Kryptonite. It’s one thing to be grandiose and everyone around eats the shit sandwich of that grandiosity. They might politely go along with it. Or even believe the spin. Or think rebellious thoughts to themselves. But it’s quite another thing to make a joke that other people LAUGH at!
Now the spell of their superiority is broken. The entitlement is questioned. We cannot have that. So like any other tinpot dictator, they have a list of their enemies cross-referenced by crime.
Amy Poehler had the bravery to observe that marriage to a serial cheater is torture. And make a joke. Heads must roll!
She pulled his mask down and laughed. The mask he wears of Really Important Person You Mustn’t Question. Or Enviable Prize Man Every Woman Wishes She Had. That joke made his predation a lot harder. So of course he remembers it 13 years later.
So, CN, did your cheater hold a grudge?
Are you still paying for some crime? Did you laugh at the Emperor/Empress?
TGIF!
hahaha- this made me laugh . Mine acts wounded if I remind him that “X” “Y” or “Z” is a result of his deliberate decisions and actions. It’s amazing how actual consequences turn them into victims.
Nailed it braincramped! I was asked not to be so rude on a recent email where I politely asked him to return the photograph albums I gave him eighteen months ago for him to copy (something he had written into our divorce contract, and which he had to do within two months of our divorce which was final in July 2024!)
I replied: ‘Please resist the desire to tell me how to behave, something you are in no position to do. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that we can be on friendly terms. You forfeited that right when you chose to lie, cheat and abandon your family.’
Shockingly, I haven’t had a reply ….
That is a beautiful reply. I’m thrilled you took that power shot!
Oh yes that feels very familiar! My philandering ex never forgave me for passing an assessment he failed.(we were in the same profession) In his view I should have declined it. In fact 6 months later I did withdraw from the same organisation after the same thing happened with another qualification, such was his distress (fool me!). When the opportunity came for a qualification with another organisation I decided not to go for it. But this was NOT ENOUGH and still mentioned many years later as a MAJOR FAILING on my part that led him to have a secret affair for 18 months and then ask for me to engage in polyamory. He repeatedly said that our subsequent divorce was CO-CREATED as a result of my behaviour. the only benefit of these experiences is that I now have very sharply attuned antennae for this sort of behaviour by people in my own circle or other contexts. As a close friend put it – he felt humiliated and could not bear this. People who are not narcissists tend, rather, to be humbled and learn from failure.
Good grief. They’re all so ridiculously insecure.
Divorce was “co-created”?? Oh, that’s so funny!
If grudge-holding was an olympic sport, my STBX would bring home the gold, silver, copper and platinum medals. The latter invented just for him, because speshul. He is still pissed off at people who insulted or wronged him in middle school, high school and college..and he’s been retired for 10 years.
Mine too. He never forgot a slight. He’d bring up things from his childhood that he was still angry about. If (when) we argued about anything, he’d bring up things I had done a decade before. He was so angry about old grudges he’d yell and sometimes cry, especially if he was intoxicated. It was like they had happened yesterday. He’d also cut people off completely for a single (perceived) slight, and never speak to them again. Most of the time they didn’t even know what they had done because it was all in FW’s mind. He had a bad habit of ascribing the worst possible motives to people’s actions. So for instance, an oversight on their part was translated to be deliberate vindictiveness against him.
He’s dead now. But even his suicide letter was pages and pages ranting about how people had done him wrong and driven him to this. Oddly enough, he had very little to say about me, except that he should have treated me better in the divorce, which was a surprising change from his usual narrative blaming me for everything that ever went wrong in his life, including things that happened before we even met (?!?).
Oh wow, ISawTheLight, mine also blamed and resented me for things that happened to him before he met me. Such is our power that we can bend time and destiny! Snort! It does make me happy to hear that before he left this world, he had remorse about how he treated you. Maybe there was a tiny part of his soul that was still human. In any case, I am happy that you are free now and living a better life.
Wow. Angry dude.
My FW’s flying monkey loony bin sister, who was in on all the cheating shenanigans of course, appears to be holding a grudge on FWs behalf. My daughter reported to me at FW’s family xmas get together, her aunty told her in a very forlorn manner she found some wedding photos of FW and me, so wrapped them up and gave them to him for xmas. It was the least she could do after I had taken everything from the poor man including all his precious mementos. My daughter was trying not to laugh – aside from the fact aunty had knocked back about 5 reds – because whatever photos I have are sitting in a box in a shed somewhere “under a pile of dust” as my daughter described it, not exactly being deliberately withheld, although I am pretty sure I gave all the albums to FW due to my care factor being zero.
I know I am sidestepping the actuial point here, but..do you think your FW would even WANT those photos? In my case, I feel like only an enemy of my exFW would GIFT him reminders of the “big, bad, terrible marriage that he had to have an affair to be freed from.” So to me? It isn’t just that this auntie is a wackadoo that is assigning you “sin” you aren’t even committing, but it’s extra bizarre that she thinks she did him a favor.
My FW has never asked for wedding photos. I do still have some, they are in storage with all the photos I own. They include people who have since dioed, and I feel like my kids might want them someday? But now I am wondering if I shouldn’t have one blown up to poster size, frame it and send it to him for his birthday?
Yeah definitely very odd. I suppose if they all have personality disorders, which I think they do, then eventually everyone becomes a target, including beloved sad sausage siblings they secretly hate and want to mess with.
Some people are so immature. No wonder you’re daughter had a hard time not laughing!
Every imagined slight or snub went onto his add-a-grudge necklace. They all came pouring out during the fig-leaf marriage counseling that he insisted on after he had already decided he wanted to leave me for his side piece. They were unbelievably trivial – I didn’t like a sitcom he liked, I used to correct his stories (when he lied to make them better) (but stopped a decade before when he complained)…what he really resented was I was professionally very successful, and he couldn’t hold down a job.
Why can’t they ever hold down a job 😭
Work, like the rest of the day-to-day grind, is for the little people. You know, you, me, everyone else on this blog… He convinced himself that I loved busting my ass – I did enjoy the work, but it was killing me – and that because I made so much it didn’t matter if he didn’t work. So instead he drank and pretended to be an entrepreneur. Good times…
Wow, they really are all the same, aren’t they? My FW thought he was too good for an ordinary 9-5. He was AN ARTISTIC GENIUS and the plebians should be SUPPORTING HIS GENIUS. He was continually angry with me that I didn’t make enough money for him to quit work and pursue his filmmaking/writing full time. In spite of the fact that I made it VERY clear (and he seemed wholly on board) before we got married that I really wanted to be a SAHM. He said he would support me and I could raise a family. Riiiight. I stayed home with our (one and only) child for around two years and he made sure that I knew EACH AND EVERY DAY how much he hated me for not working. But of course, when I went back to work he was STILL angry because I worked nights (we couldn’t afford childcare, so we did split shifts) and that meant he had to actually take care of his child (“I didn’t sign up to be a single dad!” as if having to parent at all made him a sole caregiver). There was nothing that would actually have made him happy (including, I think, being a famous and wealthy Hollywood film director, which is what he said he wanted).
He was a miserable, angry person. He’d blame his job for his unhappiness, change jobs and insist that this was going to fix his life, only to end up hating the new job within a few months and returning to his angry, miserable state. It was exhausting. He had much the same viewpoint about romantic partners – he blamed his misery on his girlfriend, broke up, married me a few years later because of course, I was going to fix everything for him. When I didn’t (because the problems were HIM, not his circumstances), he got angry at me, abused me, and then cheated with someone he thought would solve all his problems and make him happy. When SHE didn’t, he started abusing her too and she left him. If he hadn’t died, I am sure this pattern would have repeated endlessly until he was too old to con women any longer.
“My FW thought he was too good for an ordinary 9-5.”
Mine was this way too. Except he had a 9-5 that he did hold down, that makes excellent money, and requires very little work. And he STILL complained constantly about how he was meant for something more. The problem was, he didn’t know what that even WAS. He just felt like a normal job was “beneath” him. He was a high school drop out that never got any formal training in anything. Yet he lucked into a position that is suer easy and pays very well. Still not good enough for Mr Special. (To be clear, I am not dissing high school drop outs, just saying that with his lack of motivation, he could have landed in much less desirable circumstances yet all he did was complain)
Wow, were we married to the same guy? My FW was also a highschool dropout (got his GED and went to college), but was a skilled bullshitter, so he managed to land a series of jobs he didn’t have the qualifications for. He too landed a job that paid really well and isn’t terribly difficult (I should know, I work the same position; oh, and he met AP there). Like, it pays REALLY well for the amount of work. But he HATED it. He wanted nothing more than to leave. He finally found another job that paid similarly and he was sure that one would be better. But he complained endlessly about that one too. Especially during COVID when my job allowed remote work and his didn’t.
To him, stability meant boredom. He didn’t know what contentment (or gratitude) was. And more than anything else, he feared mediocrity. He just couldn’t be happy living a “normal” life. He wanted bright lights and fame. I love my quiet, predicatable, anonymous life.
His job is not exciting, but it is cushy. It is a fully remote office job. And he gets it done in a matter of a few hours per day. And the money is really good. I understand that it is not fulfilling. But unless he has some other ideas for what he DOES want to do, he is in a pretty enviable position. Manbaby gets all his work done, then spends the rest of his time on the clock napping, playing video games and masturbating.
He is not qualified to do anything that is super exciting or deep, so I never understood why he was always complaining. I understand that yours is insane because so few people gwet a shot at being successful hollywood directorsd, but mine? He doesn’r even have lofty ambitions. He jsut thinks he is above what he is doing. In the meantime, with no real schooling/training/talent/motivation? What he has is a GIFT.
It has been 15 years and my ex and his flying monkey family is STILL holding a grudge. They are mad because not only did the affairs come to light, their dirty secrets and poor business dealings were revealed. The carefully curated “perfect family” appearance was no longer so perfect.
We live in a rural small town and I still hear things he and the family has said about me. I also hear about the 💩show life with the Wifetress is. He has cheated multiple times, she is 65 and he is 54 and they are broke. At those ages, they should be nearing retirement. 🤷♀️
There was a whole pile of grudges. Reportedly, I was 100% behind the failure of the marriage from courtship to abandonment, a whole litany of injustices. He had religious reasons for divorcing me as a rebel wife who wouldn’t reconcile. His family circled the wagons and backed him up. He related all that to his attorney, who, of course, was just doing his job and began lobbing the accusations and threats towards me.
But in time, his own attorney figured out who was who and told mine that I must be a saint to have been married so long to his client. They got it done, and the marriage was over.
Reportedly, he went to a family wedding sometime later with his lady friend and was all emotional again about how I had destroyed the marriage and violated our vows. I don’t know what his lady friend thought of that, but one of his relatives called me. Well, not really my committee, thank you. That just confirmed that I don’t need to be in contact.
I have a friend who is a retired pastor and licensed therapist. He worked at the state mental hospital for about 10 years, then became a pastor with a side practice in therapy. He knows my story very well and once reminded me that part of these sorts of things is for the guilty party to rewrite the narrative to make themselves the victim. Yes, got it. But he reminded me that I can choose reality and create another chapter, a good one. And I did.
“Rebel wife” sounds so cool. I think you should own it. Maybe make a t-shirt.
I really should, but “Rebel Ex-Wife” is even better.
Someone from our old church asked me a few weeks ago if I could read a short book draft. Sure, I’ll give it a few hours between Christmas and New Year’s. He emailed it. Nothing deep, just some general comments. It wasn’t my style, but it was actually pretty good.
Then when I got ready to email back, I read the email more completely. Sigh. He noted that he CC’ed his wife and asked me to CC back because I’m single. Wow. Hello, Mike Pence. I did it, but I laughed all day about apparently being a “dangerous woman.” I even told my adult kids who laughed and laughed.
Or maybe, I’m just a “Rebel Ex-Wife.”
Oh my goodness. 🤭 Really makes you wonder about that relationship…
I suppose FW had to put you down you to anyone & everyone because he feared your power. Here’s to all us dangerous rebel ex-wives!
They always seemed to have one of the better ones in that church, but who knows.
An elder there was not allowed to drive anywhere with a coworker or even have lunch in a public place with one. He joked about it when preaching one time when his wife was elsewhere, and I squirmed in my seat. Really? His wife also would hover if I spoke to him church.
I’ve never been that way, and I’ve emailed, travelled with, and eaten with male coworkers and friends many times. Sure, there have been a few “don’t cross that line again” moments and off-limits topics, but whatever.
My divorce was long and messy. My attorney became like a big brother to me, so we discussed more than the law here and there. And he commented once that I seemed indeed to be “too much” for my STBX, despite being a dedicated wife, so he had to squash me to make himself feel better about his shortcomings. The adultery was just part of a very imbalanced relationship that needed to end. Yes, I had very much come to that conclusion, but appreciated it from someone who had seen a lot of that. That attorney actually retired the day after the judge signed off, but I was very fortunate to have him.
That would be exhausting keeping someone on a leash like that- does she give him Good Boy treats too?
So funny. And is he really so weak, he can’t be trusted?
Why can’t we all just interact and call it out when a boundary is crossed?
I mean, I’ve done that as in, “You just crossed a boundary that made me uncomfortable by saying/doing X. Don’t do it again.”
I’m not reading any more of his drafts.
My first Mother’s Day, he gave me nothing. The next day, I texted a friend of mine who also recently had a baby about klootzak saying, “You’re not MY mother!” when I asked why he hadn’t even gotten so much as a card. She responded, “What an asshole!” Klootzak decided to read my texts at some point and was irate that she said he was an asshole and was miffed that she and I continued to be friends. He was angry at me for remaining friends with someone who had called him an asshole in response to him acting like an asshole. I am sure he hates her to this day.
“You’re not my mother”: Yet another thing my idiot also said.
My FW as well for our first Mother’s Day. “You’re not my mother.” Luckily, Father’s Day was a month later, and guess who was not my father?
I heard the same “You’re not my mother” for years, too. To add insult to my injury, I used to remind him over and over again to call his mother on holidays. My daughter is now 35, and I still get a flicker of outrage when I think of him lying in my hospital bed, eating my dinner, when I shuffled out of the bathroom while holding my post-surgery C-section incision together. Toward the end of my decades of torture, he was in the habit of begrudgingly giving me my birthday card later and later in the day (made it to 10:30pm by the time Schmoopie materialized), claiming “There’s still time, it’s technically still your birthday.”
He’s been married to Schmoopie for a decade now, and I wonder if she’s wearing a pained grin/grimace whenever he collaborates professionally with a former flame. I also idly wonder if Schmoopie plans to tag along next summer while he and his former grad school girlfriend will be leading a six-week study tour to the country where they first ignited their relationship. I’ve been there / done that, and I’m delighted that I no longer care.
I’m already snorting with laughter at your description of this upcoming tour ROFLMAO, schmoopie truly winning the sparkly turd
About a month before FW left me, his uncle died. I bought a sympathy card for the Uncle’s daughter (FW’s cousin) and asked FW to sign it. He proceeded to comment on how he never liked his cousin very much. I remember thinking it seemed an inappropriate time to comment on this because her dad had just died and shouldn’t one just feel compassion at a time like that? Anyway, he said his brother and her were always close but that he just wasn’t. I asked him why. He said she always acted like a “know-it-all”. I know his cousin. She definitely has an air of confidence about her. She strikes me as a confident woman and a woman who knows what she wants/likes. I am not particularly close with her but I never had a problem with her either. She was always pleasant with me and we got along just fine the few times we would see each other. I remember thinking how weird it was that he would bring up how he “never really got along with her” when I asked him to sign a sympathy card for her when her dad just died. He ended up saying, “If you want me to sign it, I’ll sign it.” I think I said something like, “Look buddy, if you don’t want to sign it, don’t sign it. I don’t care.” I signed it for myself. Jeez. He ended up signing it. It is one of many moments I just shake my head about. Death is one of those times you think makes people feel humble, sympathy, less petty, see the “big picture”, etc. But when I asked “Can you sign this sympathy card?” My ex-FW responded, “We never really got along.” Am I overreacting thinking that is weird and a bit cold?
You’re not overreacting, he sounds like a cold-hearted freak who’s missing an empathy chip.
I don’t think you’re overreacting. I think one can’t have normal empathy and also cheat, and you were just recognizing the empathy gap without knowing about the cheating part.
Some FWs are great fakers and act like “husband/wife of the year” while carrying on an affair, but for mine cheating brought out the worst in his nature. Not just toward me but towards my family and his mom.
I don’t mean to be political, but I know another somebody, a famous one, who can’t ever seem to respond appropriately when someone dies.
Their response to the death of another is a big red flag, unless they can get something out of it. My children had a wonderful lady who looked after them for a few years at a childcare center in our small town. I kept in touch with her afterwards. At age 40 she died suddenly. We exchanged messages a few days before where she told me she was waiting for knee surgery and was in a lot of pain. She said she was feeling sick, and a week later she died. It was so incredibly sad I couldnt stop crying. She had made her way from pretty difficult personal circumstances to completing university but she passed away a few weeks before the graduation ceremony.
The upshot of all that was I put a simple notice in the local newspaper to acknowledge her passing and contribution to our community.
FW’s response was that I was “attention seeking” by doing that. He never went to the funeral whilst the husbands of other mothers did, and were visibly upset. She was very well loved. I assume he was jealous of the attention she received by her passing. Psycho.
You’re very right. My ex was one way with the funerals on his side, and another with the funerals on my side. There was clearly an ugly dynamic going on there.
I’ve buried several of my relatives since, and it’s so much easier without my ex making comments and trying to undermine everything.
Instead of travelling overseas for my grandma‘s funeral, my FW stayed home. And wow, last minute, some „friends“ decided to meet up for the weekend in the mountains. He told me on Dday that the „friends“ was just OW – but he was helping her. She was in a tough place. I am your wife and mourning my grandma, but this whore that I have never met has some sadz?!?! I told FW, can you imagine when your grandma died, if I said I wasn‘t coming to the funeral and instead met up and had a romantic weekend with another man. How would that make you feel? How does that look to the whole family? His reply „But my grandma is different“.
No, you’re not overreacting. A normal person does not act that way.
Nope!
After the divorce was final, mine blocked me on everything. I think it’s because I’m the one that was hurt the most by his infidelities, lies, secret cell phone, etc. and I got half of “his” stuff!!! I know exactly the kind of person he is. His mask is off. After 30 years, I am free of him and I have no problem telling people why.
Mine hates that I told people and for a narc that’s one of the worst things to happen to them, somebody seeing them without the mask!
It makes me persona non grata forever to FW narcopath because I won’t play along with covering up for him.
Her only grudge is the grudge of consequences, lol.
So yeah, she’s still mad that I left.
This. When trying to excuse the cheating, he had this list of my failings. But he desperately didn’t want to divorce me, so I can’t have been that bad. What he continues to hold a grudge about until this day is the divorce, because how dare I, after saying “until death do us part!!” I guess it’s all my fault for not eating the shit sandwich 🤷
My ex could dish it out with the best. He was perenially making cutting “jokes” at others’ expense. One clear-eyed near stranger told him at a gathering “You’re a snot!” Which he was.
So when I made a little joke in front of him about him not spending a lot of time at home with the kids in (which was entirely true – he traveled a LOT for his work and missed a lot of the kids’ big moments. Howeve, I didn’t make the joke from a mean-spirited heart/intent to hurt him, I was simply trying to make light of our reality), boy did I see his fragility and rage. He didn’t like that ONE bit!
My ex told me last year that he would never forgive me for failing to bring tween to visit him in his senior living facility during COVID lockdown, because he was lonely and frightened by the dead bodies stacked in the hallway outside his door.
Tween and I are both high-risk, visitors were not permitted (schools were closed, too), and per court order he was to have no contact with tween ever due to his prior abuse.
I doubt there were dead bodies stacked in the hallways of an upscale facility, but if there were, he was safe inside, yet he thought I should violate court orders and tween and I should be exposed physically and psychologically.
(shrugs) Beats me, I am no contact with the idiot and am coming up on 2 years since her last direct outreach attempt.
The closest she ever got to directly screaming at me was in that weird period in between D-Day and when she moved out. She apparently didn’t like that I wasn’t pick-me dancing anymore (I think I still hadn’t discovered this site-you will forgive me if my memory of that period is VERY hazy), we were making some brave attempt at friendship/normalcy. We were talking about the “breakup” and I made some obtuse remark about getting fucked over by her. She visibly vibrated, rasped “You think you got fucked over?” and things went silent for a bit.
I mean, perhaps she was right. I only got left with bills that she ran up, debt I incurred running the household because she couldn’t bother to contribute financially with a new excuse every time, the complete theft of my reality, and permanent damage to my ability to trust any other living being again. Or the loss of time and effort I made in trying to build the false future that she promised while she did as she pleased and left to “start over.”
In fairness, she hadn’t moved out or had a chance to finish stealing from me yet. I should probably show more empathy to the fact that I didn’t give her the open relationship that she wanted and that she and Schmoopie had to work around me and the fact that I had mood swings watching my world fall apart. I guess I DID fuck her over!
(audible eyeroll).
Unless lightning struck her or she was personally visited by J-Town for a heart to heart since last contact, that idiot could hold a GRUDGE and I imagine she still does. There simply was no questioning her and her uninformed unintelligent world view(made all the more worse when he was radicalized toward the end.) She ended friendships for any perceived slight and talked massive shit on them(me? I just go cold after the “one and done” talking to when that doesn’t work out). I imagine I am the villain in her narrative as her former friends often were in hers. If nothing else my going no contact robbed her of ending things on her terms. There is only her side of the story-that I had my mood swings and was getting dark. Perhaps she has lost even more friends who bothered to ask why?
Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!
Did you ever see Citizen X on real life Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikitilo? It’s brilliantly done. Anyway, your ex’s attitude reminds me of the scenes where Chikitilo– who typically blends into crowds and wins the trust of his targets by appearing exceedingly bland and benign– becomes increasingly frustrated and enraged because his compulsion to kill is being thwarted by the operation designed to catch him.
You could say he felt very fucked over.
Ex-Mrs LFTT is still (10+ years after we separated) bent out of shape about the fact that I get on well with her mother and sister. She does nothing to facilitate a relationship between our kids and her family …. and yet the fact that I go out of my way to make sure that our children still see their Aunt, cousins and Grandmother apparently marks me out as a weirdo and her mother and sister as disloyal.
She really is a POS.
LFTT
FW had “le vin mauvais” as they say over here (he was an evil drunk) and would beat the shit out of me regularly, at least once a week. When I had finally had enough and filed a DV complaint against him he sobbed “how could you do this to ME”??? F you asshole, and I hope Schmoppie is enjoying it!
As you know, they don’t batter because they drink but drink so they can batter. There’s no Assaholics Anonymous for those hopelessly addicted to being malignant douchebags.
Thanks for posting this CL! FW’s biggest grudge against me was that he thought I was powerless when he left, and found out quickly that he made a terrible error. When he left me in 2015 to move right in with his coworker schmoopie and her 2 boys, he laughed at me that there was “nothing you can do! You have to wait a year of separation.” He was so certain and full of himself. And of course too lazy and egotistical to Google the law in our state.
But I Googled and discovered that we are still an at-fault/adultery state. Oh and it turns out there’s no legal separation here either (meaning, I could still prove adultery after he walked out). So I quickly found a lawyer, hired a PI, got everything I needed to prove adultery (with help from FW — he kept bragging about all the things he was doing with AP so I used that info to help the PI find them and get what was needed)… and served that a$$hat in 2 weeks right in his office — with AP there too… with photo evidence.
He had a complete temper tantrum on me over it. He tried to say a lot of it “wasn’t true!!” (It was of course… but gaslighting no longer worked when there were photos) Waaaaaaaaaaa
What a baby. It also ruined what FW & AP thought would be a lovely one year honeymoon while he controlled all the finances and f***ed over me and our 9 year old son. Those idiots. And yes, he still holds a grudge. lol
That is absoluutely beautiful, Michelle. I love when these jackasses think the “know” the law, but haven’t so much as googled the basics.
LOL. That’s fantastic. Good for you.
My FW was similar. He expected me to completely crumble without him, and when I didn’t and in fact was getting advancements at work (and more money), paying off my debts, and doing well, he was furious.
My FW also thought that adultery didn’t count once we “separated” but like you I am in a no legal separation at fault state, and even though we lived apart it still counted as adultery. I am sure the affair started before I moved out, but he denied it and I didn’t have proof. However, due to his ignorance about the state laws, he admitted (to his attorney, who in turn informed my attorney) to it happening after he kicked me out.
Oh, and HE asked for the divorce and then got completely bent out of shape when I got a lawyer. He dragged his feet and fought me every step of the way for the divorce HE wanted.
My FW had his first meeting with his lawyer, then came to a divorce negotiation with me and the mediation lawyer and pronounced “Everyone is against me.” He had an idea that after 35 years of legal marriage he could pick and choose which of the divorce laws he would follow. Apparently his lawyer set him straight on that count. FW would say things like “You can have alimony or half marital assets, but you’re not getting both.” And this stellar brain fart in front of an officer of the court: “I’ll sign the contract but I’m not going to do what it says.” One of my blessings during this time in my life was that he was being guided in our divorce by Mrs. Bendover, who was multiple times divorced and thought she knew everything. Once again, “Thank you” to our most ninny-headed humployee!
Mine told everyone that the “crooked lawyers” and his ex screwed him over in the divorce.
Now, mind you, he signed of his free will (no trial), and what was required for closeout is boilerplate. Change the car titles and divide the retirement assets, marital shares 50/50.
But it was something to complain about.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Standing ovation.
Cue Rihanna’s Take A Bow
Love and HUGE hug to you baby!
♥️
Thank you
Yes, you rule!
😄 They don’t do their homework.
Mine didn’t have a clue about the law either and was dismayed when his lawyer told him that a divorce wasn’t an automatic 50/50 split as he had thought. While he was cheating he had been threatening me with divorce every time we argued, based on his faulty understanding of divorce law. His lawyer told him I could easily get more than that if it went to court. That was a sad day for poor FW.
Oh, poor FW! (/s) ha ha ha!
Yes, that’s why my ex’s attorney basically threw the case. He didn’t want to go to court for an adultery trial with a mentally unstable client. Experienced divorce attorneys want some level of win before they go before a judge, and he had none.
After DDay I got in as much ridicule of the FW as I could before I left. There were tons of zingers that must have really stung.
He probably still holds a grudge about that, seeing as he’s massively insecure with a fragile ego. We don’t communicate so I don’t know for sure, nor do I care. He has a brain like a sieve, so he has probably forgotten most, if not all, of what I said, so he can’t justify holding a grudge with anything concrete. Not having a concrete reason doesn’t stop them though, does it. No doubt he does remember that he hates me and he doesn’t care why he hates me. That is a perennial theme with FWs- the hatred, the resentment, all with no justification and they don’t care that there’s no justification. Every story on here seems to confirm that. So I tend to I doubt there is a FW who does not hold a grudge.
“I tend to I doubt there is a FW who does not hold a grudge.”
Absolutely. And if they don’t have, or can’t remember, a good enough reason to see you as contemptible, they will make one up.
100%
My FW EXH held the honeymoon sandwich grudge for 35 years. We were traveling in the car in France. He was driving. I made my sandwich first. Mr I’m More Important Than You Are was furious that I didn’t make his sandwich first. I told him it’s like an airplane; I was putting my mask on first.
I heard about The Sandwich for 35 years. He never forgave me for The Sandwich. But he expected me to forgive him for fckng prostitutes for I don’t know how many years.
This is one of the most bizarre stories I’ve read on this site, and that’s saying something.
This reminds me of my decades-ago honeymoon in France, PAL. We stayed in Autun during a stretch of 100 degree days, and as I stood naked in front of the window of our hotel room trying to catch a breeze, he trudged back and forth to befoul the communal toilet down the hall when he wasn’t puking in the small sink in our room. I had warned him about eating the rest of the huge amount of pâte he had bought the day before and then decided to store overnight in the glovebox of our rented car, but FW knew better. What a dope. That night was among the first times (of many) that I wondered what the heck I had done to my life in marrying him.
As the thousands of people poured out of the Roman amphitheater that night following the spectacle, I watched two thieves smashing car windows while they made their way up the street toward our rented vehicle (on which we had declined purchasing the supplementary insurance). Luckily they fled before they reached our car, but that would have been the icing on the cake of my honeymoon trip.
FW and their food poisoning. Mine insisted on eating leftover fish soup that had been sitting in the fridge for at least a week. I told him not to eat it. Then it was all my fault I didn‘t stay home from work to fawn over him while he was sick. It was a topic for years afterwards.
This story is kind of funny, and also revealing – after 35 years that’s all he had on you: a second sandwich! You could have pulled the 1960’s dad thing of “If you want to cry I’ll give you something to cry about” but sub in “bitch and moan” for “cry”.
We were friends who fell in love, maintained a long-distance relationship before moving in together before getting married. Best friends, never ran out of things to talk about, friends described us as “couple goals”. His affair was a complete blindside after more than 35 years together.
In one of the “we can save this relationship” therapy sessions following D-day, he described with deep bitterness the reaction I apparently had decades earlier on first seeing his small john thomas. He provided this painful anecdote as Proof that I had always made him feel diminished as a man, and how that had festered in his heart all those years until he desperately needed the sexual healing offered by this other woman.
“We were friends who fell in love, maintained a long-distance relationship before moving in together before getting married. Best friends, never ran out of things to talk about, friends described us as “couple goals”. His affair was a complete blindside after more than 35 years together.”
Me, too, Chumpgrr. 34 years for me. 🙁
Mine threw this in my face during separation: apparently I once turned off a horror movie we were watching and said that I didn’t enjoy watching women get tortured to death for entertainment. Oh no anything but that
Mine pulled this nonsense as well. After 20 or so years of marriage he wanted to watch porn (soft core, but anyway), and so I agreed. At one point I made a comment about the “members” of the cast and made a joke about how I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting a new career in porn. Fifteen years later he brought that up during the discard and told me that he was man enough for Mrs. Bendover. (To be clear, I myself was/am as far from a porn star as is possible, even as a young woman.) Additionally he never mentioned his feelings about it until the discard. They just have to reach far and wide to justify their choices and behavior.
I doubt you pointed and laughed so is he just bitching about your lack of bug-eyed gasping and theatrical trembling as if that thing were terrifyingly giant?
As soon I confirmed the cheating, after venting on Reddit, someone told me “You don’t have to preserve his reputation any longer”.
Because I didn’t wanted to talk or say thar our marriage ended due to FW cheating on me.
So, I posted on Instagram a story telling that my marriage was over because of “emotional dishonesty from my spouse”, and “I didn’t want to stay in a toxic bond”.
So, I did expose him to all his friends and family.
He told me I humilliated him, then I told him that I was the one humilliated, but he was exposed.
This is it exactly! We are the humiliated ones, they are just unmasked.
The grudges are jealousy and resentment used as justification for cheating. He’s resentful that I did better in university than he did 25 years ago (we have the same degree), that my parents helped me pay for university, that I hold a full time office job, that he has never been able to hold a full time office job, that my siblings go on vacation??
A whole litany of injustices done to him that I must pay for. Insinuation that my accomplishments are just flukes. He says I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth as though my family are millionaires. My parents are immigrants with primary school education who worked in food service earning just over minimum wage their entire lives.
But it’s my fault that he now has a shit job and that he won’t look for a new one. With all these injustices he must therefore be “allowed” to go fishing online for women half his age. If I dare bring up that these online relationships are all scammers because no 20 or 30 year old woman is interested in supporting a 54 year old overweight balding man, there is hell to pay.
Oh wow, that is some delusion.
James Cameron likely got a big narcissistic head after all the accolades Hollywood threw at him for his movies. So it’s not surprising that his ego would be fragile if Hollywood then threw a barb at him.
FW has dropped me an email here & there under the guise it was concern for one of our kids. I suspect it was to test if I’m still interested. He probably holds a grudge that I didn’t bite. I don’t know that for sure or not, just going on past observance of his character. FW too has a fragile ego and couldn’t take a joke. He always had to come back with a mean one in response.
For what it is worth, until the day he died, my FW dad was still seething about the “pretty girls with cute little turned up noses” who rejected him *in high school*. My dad lived until 75, so that is a good sixty years of grudges (and misogyny).
My ex held a grudge for 20 years because I “disrespected him.” I have no idea what I did to disrespect him. I, after working a 12-hour 7pm to 7am shift, was sound asleep at around 9 in the morning, and I woke up to him shouting at me for “disrespecting” him. When I asked what was wrong, what I had done, he refused to speak to me. For days. To this day, I have no idea what I said/did/didn’t do while sound asleep that upset him so. But for 20 years, every time we argued, he dredged up that old grievance about me “disrespecting him” while I was sound asleep.
And that I stayed 20 years with that kind of crazy is crazy in and of it self.
I too was bizarrely accused of disrespecting and hating FW narcopath but I finally had a decent therapist help me realize it’s all narcissistic projection.
In reality FW was disrespecting ME and our family! Once you see it you can’t unsee it.
Sleep deprivation is a recognized form of torture.
In the past, borderline personality disorder was clinically weaponized against battered women to pathologize and silence their attempts to fight back, protect their children or speak out. But, more recently, researchers turned the tables and discovered that, while the traits attributed to borderline are a very poor fit for domestic violence survivors, the traits are actually quite a good fit for most batterers themselves, particularly the tendency to “split”– shift from radically idealizing someone to radically condemning them– and also to paranoically confabulate and invest in false claims against their own victims.
Wiki actually has a pretty interesting general overview on splitting in Cluster B disorders, including a description of how an individual with borderline in particular will tend to fabricate claims against targets designed to make third parties as angry at the target as the disordered person feels without cause (and then believe their own invented accusation).
I thought that was a good explanation for something that had mystified me for ages: why psychos make shit up about the people they’re trying to control and will even change the story according to the audience. For instance, if they, say, want a political liberal to hate you, they’ll tell the liberal that you’re a rape apologist or anti-LGBT, etc. But if they want a deeply religious person to hate you, they’ll say you’re a Satanist or support late term abortion, etc.
In any case, I think you dodged a bullet since “borderline” in men is associated with violence. And that also kind of exonerates you for not ditching the crazy “sooner” since doing so was extremely high risk, like defusing a bomb. Sort of like a bomb squad technician with all their limbs, the fact that you lived to tell is proof of your sanity and general competence.
Thank you, this is a very helpful analysis.
I could never understand why so many abusive men have flipped out on me for no reason and smeared me to the heavens with ridiculous accusations. You just filled in a lot of gaps for me.
As for why abusers get so angry at their own victims, there are a few theories that, together, might explain a bit of it. One is the idea that abusers typically “suffer” from reactive attachment disorder and tend to have zero faith or trust in anyone so, when they abuse partners, they’re delusionally convinced they’re just landing the first blow against someone who would ultimately abandon/betray/destroy them.
The problem with preemptive strikes is that the targets may not have done anything yet to warrant punishment which creates bad optics. But, via “neutralization,” that’s an easy fix: the abuser can just fabricate things the victim did that are proportionately bad enough to warrant whatever abuse the abuser meted out. Doing this both snuffs guilt and can convince bystanders that victims are perpetrators and had it coming.
There may even be a third purpose to this which is something called “projective identification” whereby the abuser “displaces” all their own sins and crimes upon victims and, to the extent that victims feel guilty or “tainted” by the crimes done against them (as many rape victims irrationally do), the perpetrator is temporarily “relieved” of their own self loathing.
In turn the above might explain why “every accusation from a narcissist is a confession” though the idea is that the projection only works to unburden perpetrators of their own crimes and negative self-images if victims actually internalize the debasement. Getting bystanders to gang up on victim is an added assurance the victim will feel properly debased since social “shame”– just the sense of being condemned by social context regardless of whether the reasons for this are real– is easily confused with “guilt”: the sense of having actually done something wrong.
In that sense, triangulation may not only be about isolating victims socially and avoiding consequences through blameshifting. Additionally, triangulation increases the likelihood that victims will end up internalizing the “hot potato” of abusers’ negative self perceptions.
In other words, abusers mean harm because the harm is instrumental for the purpose of genuine scapegoating in the tribalistic sense– where all the collective sins of the tribe are placed on the sacrificial goat.
The main reason I find this idea useful is that survivors might consider that all the negative emotions they feel following abuse or betrayal may not actually be their own feelings but instead a kind of emotional infection from the abuser’s own pessimism, nihilism, self-loathing, despair, suicidality, etc.
He sounds like Eric Cartman
You must respect his authori-tie
I doubt he ever gave me much thought after the D was final. He was too busy trying to save his sorry heinie at work. However, I do believe my eyes were cleared of the scales and I was able to see him for who he was instead of who I thought he was. Wasn’t funny so much as frightening. It turned to pity down the line, but in the beginning it was a bit startling.
Crimes I have committed against the fw (according to the fw):
– leaving water spots on the spoons
– cashing child support checks
– making new friends
– buying a house
– not curling up in a ball and waiting for death to take me
Yes, I think mine thought I’d shrink and die without him. Nope.
Not curling up into a ball and waiting for death to take you as you feebly cry his name is quite a grievous offense (snort).
#1 cheater’s dad died. A sweet FIL who told me he loved me, even after the divorce. He would come over and talk to me at times I had to be with cheater and kids. Never ignored me as XMIL had to do when cheater was nearby. At my XFIL funeral, it was an open mic. I got a chance to say out Loud how much love he showed me when no one else did. Fast forward to the death of XMIL. I asked about funeral plans and daughter said to me…they are NOT having a funeral for grandma because you talked out loud at XFILs funeral and dad said he can’t have that happen again!! That was 15 years from my open mic testimony. Cheater Never forgot.
It’s been 3.5 years of “emergency divorce” and in that time she has dragged her feet on the oh so emergency divorce.
I’m now moving from where I currently live.
I found a bunch of stuff that she left behind.
Contacted her family, “hey does she want this”
They said yes she does.
Whole week goes by, date I’m actually starting the engine and rolling out fast approaching. (Tomorrow)
Suddenly she just can’t get here or have anyone else get here and it’s just sooooooooo problematic.
What a damn bitch.
I’m being as polite and considerate as I can be because there’s no point in being aggravating.
And she just…
I’m supposed to drop everything for her still yet she can’t be bothered to get important personal paperwork that she left here, probably so she can claim abuse!
Don’t be a doormat, Matt.
Maybe quick scan photo of the stuff and shove it into a storage locker as HOAC suggested.
I Know of several she-FW in real life dragging out the divorce for years because their chump husbands are conditioned to accept prolonged abuse as being “considerate and polite”. Accept the painful truth she’s your enemy combatant, as we say here at CN. Act accordingly
Maybe do what others here have done as the zero contact method of handing off FW junk: pay the first month for a storage unit in her name, document sending her the key and have done with it.
Ballbag McGee doesn’t – he still tries to greet me though if I’m unfortunate enough to encounter him- I meant it back in 2013 when I said I’d never speak to him again.
Dickhead McCluggage most definitely does.
He didn’t expect me to call out his behaviour, serve him court papers after he abandoned me, track down and rescue our family cats that he abused and abandoned to die in the middle of nowhere and certainly not restart the court case and track down his new insurance company when he thought he’d solve his issues by burning our house down.
He thought the bogus Domestic Violence order he took out on me when I went to our home to collect my things would put a stop to my pestering.
I’d say he’s a little fucked off with how that all worked out for him- but he did have the bonus of Victim Kibbles which no doubt he’s still cashing in on.
After the fact, he even had the delusional chutzpah to try and use MY lawyer to serve me divorce papers- she asked me what I wanted to do and I instructed her to tell him to go fuck himself- which she did in Legalese.
I still can’t get my head around the abuse of animals on top of arson.
Me either.
I’m not sure I ever will.
Yes, he holds all sorts of pathetic grudges. He has “resentments,” because I was so often wanting him to be a responsible adult. He felt I was judgemental when I didn’t like his betrayal objects or want to spend time with alcoholics and repeatedly convicted felons. He didn’t want to have spend his precious time off work with his family ( it was fine for me to spend every moment off work with the family)…. and he insisted I just didn’t understand why he took those road trips , nights at bars and in hotel rooms, with betrayal objects. He surely is the victim here, since people know what he did….he blames me still for peoole avoiding him…. so glad to be rid of all that.
Before I understood what was happening, I had a phone conversation in which I expressed hurt and shock by what was a sudden discard. His response was to say that my hurt and shock meant that our 30-year “friendship” was over. So he discarded me but my being hurt and shocked meant that the discard was now acknowledged and final. He could not tolerate the idea that he had actually hurt me.
We were 21 and 22 when I married my first husband. His IQ was in the stratosphere, but was sadly lacking in common sense. We were poor college students, and so our “vacations” were always camping. (I say “vacations because as most women know, we still have to shop, cook, do dishes, and do it all with a smile, but we’re doing it in a different place with no running water, electricity or refrigeration.
Greg had a brand new red and blue polyester baseball jacket, and was extremely proud of it. He was so proud, he was wearing it camping which was probably not the smartest choice. And he was wearing his polyester jacket to start the charcoal for roasting our hot dogs. Everyone knew it was the man’s job to start the fire and cook the meat . . . .
The fire had started, but it was just a puny little fire. And for some reason, Cheaters seem to equate the size of their fire with the size of their penis. At least, Greg did. He wanted a bigger fire. So he went and got his pipe, of which he was also very proud, and stuffed it with tobacco, and then lit it with the special lighter I had given him . . . not any old Bic you could buy at a gas station. This lighter was engraved with our initials and our wedding date. You had to fill it with lighter fluid from time to time, and Greg never went anywhere without his pipe, his tobacco and his lighter fluid. As I looked on in horror, he squirted most of the contents of that can of lighter fluid onto the little fire, because he wanted a BIG fire.
The fire followed the lighter fluid right up to his arm and ignited the brand new polyster baseball jacket, which ignited his long, curly hair. He just stood there holding the can of lighter fluid and staring at his arm, never noticing that his hair was on fire. At which point, I tackled him, shoving him into the river running alongside our camp site. Mr. Genius never learned to swim, so he was thrashing about in three feet of water and screaming that he was drowning, and I had to jump in after him to drag him out of the river. One side of his hair was burned nearly off, and his jacket was ruined but he was miraculously unharmed. Except for his dignity. And his hair, which finally got neatly cut.
For the rest of our marriage (not that long, actually), he complained about how I had ruined his brand new baseball jacket by shoving him into the water. Never a word about how I shoved him into the water because he was ON FIRE! His sister tells me he’s STILL complaining about it.
In at least one of the infinite alternate universes– one where your shock was more paralyzing or you’d wandered away to pick berries and weren’t there to dunk him– that might have been the first Burning Man festival.
I guess he would have preferred to have major burns, or even die, rather than lose his precious jacket. Which could have been replaced.
SMDH.
We had just gotten married and he needed to get a US drivers license. He failed the written test on the first try. He was so angry since he is a very confident and experienced driver. It was of course my fault, because I didn‘t give him the link to the learning book. How was he supposed to know how many feet clearance you need to pass an Amish horse drawn buggy? It was a sore topic for years. Probably still is.
Oh lordy. My cheater was outraged for YEARS that I wouldn’t forgive him (even though he once told me he didn’t need my forgiveness because he’d already forgiven himself).
I eventually got tired of his harassment and finally started telling people what he did to me. To my surprise, community reaction was swift and outraged. I didn’t expect anyone to care, or clock his behavior as abuse, let alone rape.
Cheater didn’t see it coming. He was shocked when people got in his face about it and his excuses fell on deaf ears, and being called a rapist shattered his ego in ways I don’t think he’s ever recovered from.
He’s lost jobs and significant standing in the community as a result and now avoids me like the plague. I’ll take it.
Winning is when they do everything in their power to avoid crossing paths with you. I’ll bet it hurt him especially because he’d initially tried to hoist you on that petard by getting bystanders to believe you were the devil.
Interestingly, he didn’t portray me as the devil but as some poor crazy girl who is still obsessed with him, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I’d actually turned down his invitation to move in with him, immediately went no contact as soon as he cheated, and have avoided him for for the last 15 years.
He seemed surprised people didn’t buy his story (I’m successful and never mention him), and even more surprised when he realized how much people hated him even before word got out about his abuse. His perception of reality is so skewed that I suspect his accusations of mental illness are projection.
I can imagine types like this hope their crazy-baiting becomes self-fulfilling prophesy. For instance, if his crazy-baiting campaign of Dickensian social ruination had worked and you’d become a total social exile, you might have actually gone off the deep end, thus actualizing his projection.
Well, I was severely mentally ill when I dated him. Apparently it never occurred to him that he was the cause.
I think this has become harder for him to reconcile over the years, as I improved in every way without him. I went from obviously traumatized and waiting tables to a thriving corporate career. I’m healthy, got a bounce in my step, keep getting picked for leadership roles, people like me, and I never look at him.
Fuckwit can’t square that with what he claimed about me. Plus he’s approaching sixty without a pot to piss in. It might be slowly dawning on even him that anyone with eyes can see the facts don’t align with his narrative and that it looks bad for him.
But but but… truth to a nihilistic narc is only that which they can make others believe is the truth. Otherwise there is no truth and other human beings and their feelings aren’t real.
Yes, they are deeply mentally ill. I gave up on trying to understand him because he doesn’t operate in reality with the rest of us.
Even if they’re not nuts to start with, I think abusers can eventually end up that way.
I think of these people as more criminally disordered since those with actual mental disabilities usually aren’t as skilled at covering up and evading consequences. But that said I suspect that, over time, these abusers can become increasingly dysfunctionally crazy as they begin to lose track of the difference between their own lies and reality.
There’s this great scene at the end of The Constant Gardener where the high-powered, cool as a cucumber villain at the center of an international scandal starts to genuinely lose his shit when he’s publicly exposed. Bill Nighy plays it brilliantly but I think the reason the moment was actable is that it’s a “thing.”
I’ve spoken of my disdain for bad therapists here. One of them was actually helping FW during false reconciliation whinge on my so-called flirtations at a party decades ago where one of the guys was clearly interested but had only kissed me on the forehead (in private away from FW) to let me know that he was waiting for me, if I were to leave FW.
Somehow that ‘transgression’ meant he was justified in decades of porn & escort addiction on top of asset theft and emotional abuse. Also during that youthful period FW was cheating on me with hoho #1.
I should have dumped FW narcopath that evening long ago!
You’d think some paid others to pass them and earn their so called qualifications.
Some are pretty terrible at recognising operant conditioning – and encourage more of the same.
Bad therapists get away with it because, historically speaking, science and social science have always been prone to weaponization in service to power. David Price’s Weaponizing Anthropology, Peter Breggin’s War Against Children of Color, Edwin Black’s War Against the Weak and Benno Muller-Hill’s Murderous Science cover the horrifying weaponization of science and social science in the twentieth century. But the corruptibility of neurology, genetics, psychiatry and psychology are nothing new. For instance, the modern-sounding “conversion” or somatoform disorder is the same as the old-timey “psychogenic hysteria” which, according to law and history professor Barbara Young Welke (author of the mind-blowing Recasting American Liberty: Gender, Race, Law, and the Railroad Revolution) was originally conceived as “litigation symptoms” by physicians hired to consult with rail companies in the US and Europe in the early accident-prone days of train travel.
The model for faked-up “tobacco science” was actually “railroad science.” These medico-legal consultants proposed that psychogenic delusion was triggered by “fear of technological progress” and the theory was used successfully to beat back a growing number of passenger and crew injury claims for “railway spine,” aka, whiplash, which didn’t exist in clinical literature until the advent of high-speed travel.
At first is was mostly men showing up with “railway spine” and the condition wasn’t regarded as an overwhelmingly feminine diagnosis until the “founding father” of modern neurology and paid consultant for the French national railway Jean-Martin Charcot blended psychogenic theory with a metaphorically Platonic gynecological hypotheses (aside from believing disabled infants should be thrown from cliffs, Plato believed the uterus wandered around women’s bodies, strangling and inhibiting various physical processes).
Despite the fact we now know that whiplash is real, the bs theory originally developed to snuff injury claims still zombies on and is still misused by power. Like when students at a high school in upstate New York developed high rates of seizures and tics after the district leased school grounds to a fracking company, the NY Times reported that the students all suffered from “conversion disorder.”
I guess compared to covering up mass industrial atrocities, relying on moldy, debunked victim-blaming theories to pathologize abuse survivors probably seems like a drop in the bucket and no big deal.
I shared this before on the site, years ago when I was in the throes of rage and grief. Meh now, but this challenge just reminded me:
After an emotionally fraught conversation with my ex, he tried to make me answer his hypothetical question: ‘If someone had a gun pointed at my head, your mom, and your sister and you had to choose one to die, who would you tell them to shoot?’ I was horrified and refused to engage. Then he told me he would choose me in the same scenario. Years before dday, but unsurprisingly, he was already cheating.
He never apologized. It was one of those, ‘it’s not what I said/did, but how you reacted to it.’ For years, he brought up me being hurt by it (and believe me, my chumpy response at the time was a gross under-reaction) when we “fought” to demonstrate how unforgiving and oversensitive I was. But he always brought it up! He had a grudge against me because he said that hideous thing, years prior, and I was hurt. Effing insane.
So, we buried my mother finally yesterday. Had the Catholic mass in the mid-Hudson area of NY, then had a funeral procession down to central NJ, for the burial next to my father’s plot, her first husband (she married once more after my father died and buried her second husband in 1999).
This is my way to lead in to the fact that my mother was a loyal and loving spouse for both of her husbands. She lived a good, moral and ethical life when it came to her familial relationships. She was living proof It is possible to do that.
And no, she wasn’t perfect. She had plenty of big flaws. And yet, she also had a lot of love for most people. She was contradictory, like most people, and yet, still a beautiful soul.
To this, I compare the FW XW. No, I don’t have an Oedipal complex. I loved my mother for how much she showed her love for me, my siblings, my father, her friends, and people she didn’t even really know. That’s why I loved and cared for her.
She was a REAL, caring person to a great extent. With her, it wasn’t image management. Or if it was, it was not for other people, but because she believed God and Jesus wanted us to be that way. And she thought we’d be held accountable for our actions while alive.
So, she embraced many of the really important values in Christianity: caring for and loving others as much as possible, even if it makes your life harder. Being truly kind towards others, with no hidden agenda for your gain. Treating others as you would want to be treated.
My mother cared for the FW XW like another daughter. As an example of this (just one), she gave us $20K to help us buy a book store back around 2003-2004. I was told it was because she knew the FW XW is so hardworking and smart, that she had faith in her. Unfortunately, that didn’t make me feel so great, but whaddaya gonna do?🤷♂️🫤
I had been asking the FW XW for around six years if we could try once more for a son. We had two daughters already. I wanted to try one more time. She never said no. She never gave me an answer at all. I know, looking back, I should have realized that was her saying no.
But, I try to answer people as truthfully as I can , whenever I can. The FW XW never did. She’d lie to me repeatedly on little things, or never tell me about other things (lies of omission).
And I loved her, well and truly, in my own dumb, stupid way. It didn’t help that at this point in my life, I was working a job in pharmacy, where the hours of my schedule made me effectively drunk in my ability to think (midnight shift one week, regular the next. Back and forth, for roughly seven years, killing me physically, but supporting our family well financially).
Then the FW XW’s mother died. And when we came home from the funeral in central NJ, she announced her unilateral decision to me that she didn’t want any more children. Now, the women here may say that was up to her, and they’d be right. But, she was married to me, and therefore had a serious relationship with me.
In a relationship, I believe you should be able to have your boundaries (FW XW wants no more children? Ok.), but you should discuss them with your partner, and try to make them understand. Hopefully, you both agree, or compromise on things.
There wasn’t any discussion. There rarely was on things of magnitude, I realize now, looking back. My job, I believe, to the FW XW’s mind, was to back her up no matter what she wanted done (usually for herself). If I had a different view, too bad. Suck it up. And usually, I did. I’m not fond of conflict, so many times I would go along to keep things peaceful.
But, if something was important enough to me, I wouldn’t budge. It was usually small things (and a rare event), but occasionally big things like the question of more children cropped up (that was one of the biggest, if not THE biggest).
I’m pretty sure my FW XW held it against me anytime I stood up for something I felt was important to me in our marriage. Also, anytime I didn’t meet her expectations, regarding anything. Towards the end, I couldn’t even load the dishwasher correctly, according to her.
So, unfortunately, my response to her unilateral decision against one more child was anger, over the fact that she didn’t even feel I was worthy of her discussing it with me. She made her unilateral decision that affected our relationship, and I was supposed to fall in line. Instead, I withdrew myself from her.
When I get angry with someone I care about, that’s what I tend to do; withdraw. I know it’s not a great response. But, I’m a very flawed human being. I’m very aware of that, especially now.
So, after two to three months of me being withdrawn, she told me she wanted to have sex with me. Nothing sexual had happened during this time period of my withdrawal, between her and me, at least.
I was pretty cold in the relationship at this point, but like everyone else in CN, never contemplated fucking around on her. I told her good for her, but I wasn’t up for it. She pleaded with me.
I finally said fine, but I’m still really angry about how you just announced you want no more children without even talking to me about it. Just a unilateral proclamation, and as usual, I was to go along with it.
At that point, I don’t think she heard me. She just wanted sex. She then told me we’d have to use a condom. I said no, I’m not using a condom. I’m not the one wanting sex at this point (an extreme rarity in the history of our relationship). So, she agreed to that, reluctantly, but asked me not to ejaculate in her (she was no longer taking birth control at that point).
I agreed verbally, but in my mind, because of my anger at her, I did not. This is where I especially am not proud of myself. I’m really not proud of myself for this whole period, but on this point the most.
I had only had sex with her (I believe we both took each other’s virginity), and never had hate sex or anything like it with her, my only sexual partner.
However, I’d never been this angry with her before. Because I was so angry, I made her initiate everything. I don’t think I could’ve. She crawled on top of me, inserted me, and effectively rode me to her orgasm.
I did not tell her I orgasmed as well, which felt extremely bizarre at the
time (and I was not light on my ejaculation volumes, and we got her pregnant easily in the past. Like, at the drop of a hat easy). But, I said nothing, and she seemed to notice nothing (which in retrospect, seems crazy). Within a month, though, she came at me, angry, saying she was pregnant. And that it was my fault.
I started to cry. She told me to stop shedding crocodile tears. She said I knew this would happen, that I planned it. I vehemently protested the truth in her assertion. I never planned it, but I did nothing to stop it, in my anger.
I told her that though I’m not for them (personally, that is. I think everybody else has to make the choice for themselves), I wanted her to know she had my blessing if she wanted to have an abortion. She told me I knew she’d never have one, and that she was against them.
That was bullshit on her part. We’d never discussed that before, and she’d always (like me) stood up for a woman’s right to have an abortion. So, I told her I was crying because, although in my life, I was personally against my partner getting one, in this case, she had my blessing, because of my bad behavior. But it wasn’t an easy situation to feel good about her aborting a child of ours in the best of circumstances, let alone these circumstances.
I also said I’d never seen her this angry with me before, which was also why I was crying, though I understood her anger at me. I wasn’t happy with myself at all at that point. Not to imply I ever got happy about my behavior during this time.
So, despite my offer to give her my blessing on an abortion, she never did it. She continued to have sex with me, although I could tell she was still angry at me as the months went on. I have a vivid memory of me giving her my all orally for foreplay when she was eight or nine months pregnant with what would become our son, but her only angrily enjoying it.
I hoped that by doing all I could to take care of the kids we already had and taking care of the finances in our life, as well as doing my manly chores around the house, I could make her forget about this. How wrong I was to think this.
Not that what I did was anything good, but in hindsight, my sister-in-law and I came to the same conclusion about all of it around the same time after the FW XW exit-affaired me. I may have damaged her trust in me by not being upfront about my ejaculation in that bizarre sexual encounter, but I never forced her to have sex with me, and never forced her to climb on top of me and initiate sex with me.
I told her I wasn’t interested in having sex with her, and that if she insisted on having sex with me, I wasn’t going to use any protection. And she fucked me anyway. Which, as my SIL and I both realized, put her at risk of getting pregnant the moment she put me in her.
I realized after she left me via an exit-affair with her married boss, that she never forgave me for getting her pregnant. But, though I am not proud about lying to her about not ejaculating, she had all the evidence to know that I did, and by engaging and initiating sex with me without protection, she was willingly putting herself at risk for pregnancy whether I ejaculated or not.
The psychologist I saw for a few months after she left me for her boss told me that one thing he noticed in my story is that I never, unlike her, went outside of our relationship to try to solve my troubles in my relationship with her. She doesn’t have that defense, by committing her infidelity.
It’s still a painful memory for me as to how stupid I can behave. But it also illustrated for me how everything even slightly bad that I did in our relationship was held against me by the FW XW forever.
Also, how unwilling she was to see her part in getting herself pregnant with our son. Beyond accepting that she was putting herself at risk of getting pregnant by me just by agreeing to have sex with me without protection, she also failed and continues to fail to understand and/or accept how upsetting it was to learn that I was not part of an equal relationship like I always thought we were, but was only there to provide money for the lifestyle she wanted, and sex when she wanted it.
I am not condoning how the sex came about. I am still very ashamed in how I behaved. But it wasn’t pre-planned behavior. I was deeply hurt that the woman I loved couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to me about my desire to have another child (and I told her I would gladly welcome a girl if that’s how things turned out. I just wanted one more chance to see if we could have a boy).
But, by acting unilaterally as she frequently did in our relationship, she effectively was telling me my input wasn’t wanted or necessary. Which is not a fair, equal, or healthy relationship.
So, my anger about that came from a real acknowledgment of how frustrated I was with how she treated me and our relationship. Without fully realizing it at the time, I now know she looked at me as just an appliance husband.
Over a six year period (roughly), she refused to answer me about whether she would be willing to have another child with me. Then, decided to tell me it wasn’t going to happen when she reached that decision on her own, without even talking to me about it first.
I can’t tell you how shitty that made me feel. And that’s where my anger came from.
Now, fast-forward through the years. She still blames me for betraying her and getting her pregnant. Again, not saying I’m blameless, but she refuses to take any responsibility for what happened. She acts like I raped her, when if anything, she effectively raped me, by aggressively wanting ssx with me at all costs.
Oh, and she loves our son. But hates the act that created him, and the person besides herself who made his birth possible (me).
Last December 19th, roughly nine years after she started her affair with her boss (now former boss, current life-partner), she texted this note to my eldest brother and I while we were caring for our dying mother (along with our sister). My mother who died six days later on Christmas Day. Here’s the text from the FW XW:
S****** & J** (I no longer have contact info for S**** & D***) [my sister and next older brother], I am so sorry to hear about your mom’s condition. I’m so glad that you are all there with her. I’m sure she is very happy to have her family with her now. Your mom is a wonderful person and I have always loved her very much. In many ways she was more of a mother to me than my own mother. I hope that she is able to be comfortable, and I know she feels loved by all of you. This is such a tough time and I’m glad you are all together. If it feels like something you can do, please share with your mom how much I love her and am grateful for her. Please also let S**** & D**** [my sister and her husband] and D*** know that I’m thinking of them. Thanks. Take care.
I got angry all over again at her ridiculous sense of entitlement. My eldest brother simply implied that she was a poor writer, as she was redundant a few times in her note. And we both confirmed we weren’t going to answer her. No contact. I previously wrote how I was tempted, but ultimately avoided the temptation.
If she wants to hold all these grudges and grievances against me? Fine. But she can’t have it both ways. She can’t hate me but think she’s still entitled to my mother’s heart, which she broke when she left me and blew apart our family through infidelity with her boss (literally, her fucking 40 years married, rich boss!🤬🤣 I mean, cliche-city!🙄).
I realized during our marriage that I could hold a lot of her awful shit behavior towards me (and sometimes our children!) against her for the rest of my life/our lives. Or, I could realize that I loved her, that she was the woman I wanted to be with for the rest of my life, and that I was far from perfect myself.
Well, the first two parts of that last sentence were a mistake on my part, but my heart was in the right place, I believe. I feel strongly that hers never was. But she sure fooled me. Until she let the mask slip off. However, like everyone else, she can’t have it both ways. And that is what she has never seemed to grasp in her life. Actions have consequences. For all of us.
Happy New Year, CL and CN.
You have a heavy heavy heart right now thelongrun… you have lost and farewelled your beautiful mother… be kind to yourself.
Sounds like you are trying to untangle some skein there? Some questions have no answers and are best let go to float into the heavens above.
Having said that, from how I read your account, it almost sounds like she wanted to get pregnant (?!). I mean it was a pretty big risk as you said, and around the timing of the affair…. was it to give you something you wanted to assuage her guilt? Or to give a “legitimate”, in her mind, excuse to leave you? And (bonus) she gets to blame and dump on you. Who knows? And withdrawing from someone when we are hurt is completely normal. I would do that too and my XH would come and seek me out and ask “what’s wrong honey?”, and patiently wait while I tried to find the words to express what was going on inside. Unfortunately she didn’t have the empathy to do that with you it seems. And your reaction to her statement about not wanting to try for another child no doubt would have been an accumulation of years’ worth of not being included in decision making. I just don’t think you need to be beating yourself up about that night/situation. Enough.
The farewell for your mother sounds special. Just try to be present with your grief and your family for that. Don’t let your attention go back to FW XW and have those harsh memories rob you of the love and healing around this sad time of holding your mother close in your heart. Be kind to yourself. ((Hugs))
Thank you very much, MrsCrumpetChump.
I wrote and am still writing from my dead mother’s house. I’m doing a last clean, then heading back home. So, yes, I have a heavy heart right now.
I’m sorry if I didn’t make it clear in my rambling post from yesterday. The FW XW did not want to get pregnant. She got pregnant with me in January of 2005. She gave birth to our son in early October of 2005.
She held me getting her pregnant with him against me from the moment she found out she was pregnant. It wasn’t in her plan, you see. Again, I’m very proud of my daughters and my son. So is the FW XW, I believe. I’m not proud about how his birth came about, my part especially. But I couldn’t be happier about him, and my daughters.
I’m just useful to the FW XW at this point as someone to blame for her getting pregnant when she wanted to do other things. At the time she got pregnant, she hadn’t had sex with me for a few months. So, she was pretty horny, which was not the norm. Looking back, I was, for lack of a better phrase, her socially acceptable live dildo/appliance husband.
Therefore, she wanted me to scratch her itch at that point. The fact that she acquiesced to my demands at that point about no condom is my fault in her mind, I believe. The not telling her I ejaculated is still on me, although I still can’t believe she didn’t know it from the physical evidence at the time.
But it doesn’t matter to her. She is immature regarding relationships, I’ve realized, and doesn’t like to own up to her own responsibility for her actions. That’s on her.
The only thing I’m happy about is that at least I’m trying to work on being a better person. I don’t think she’s done much of that, or anything substantial, on herself since then, or since the affair.
And as you could see from her text, she still thinks she’s entitled to be a part of my life and my mother’s life still. To me, that’s unbelievable, but yet so her.
Thanks again, MrsCrumpetChump. You made my day with your answer. You’re a very kind person to do so.
I hope you’re doing well in your quest to survive and thrive after you were made a chump. And I hope you have a great New Year. Lots of peace and love to you, and gratefulness.😊
Dear thelongrun. Thank you for your reply, and kind words that brought a smile.
No, you did make it clear [SHE SAID] she didn’t want any more kids. But just seems to me her actions didn’t align?? I just think if she were SOOOO adamant not to get pregnant, then she wouldn’t have taken those risks and possibly opted to meet the horny-needs by other means. I just don’t wonder if she thought “Well if I do get pregnant it will shut him up and I’ll have a proper reason to hate on him and I can tell everyone what a terrible person he is”. I don’t know. I could be entirely wrong. But it just doesn’t seem to add up that, as you said, she didn’t realise the full extent of the event until a positive pregnancy test. Could (or would) she have taken a morning after pill if she was that concerned? Just seems mixed messages – saying one thing, doing another. And not fretting for six weeks afterwards, worrying about being pregnant? However, I do also try to do what my psychologist from 20 years ago told me about his practice: “I work hard not to make assumptions.” So, I get I could be completely wrong. But I don’t trust what she said, given how she was that night and that she did get pregnant .(regardless that she had been adamant for years about not wanting another child. Maybe something changed just prior and she could see it could give her some power. Weaponise the pregnancy? Either towards you, or her AP? Who knows? A skein that maybe she isn’t even conscious of herself. And sounds like she wouldn’t go near untangling it herself when it’s so much easier to blame and hate in you.)
She may never forgive you for that night. But that’s on her and her journey. It’s definitely time to forgive yourself. Stay in your lane. Weed the thistles from your verges and plant flowers in their place that bring colour and beauty and gentle joy. Forgive yourself for being human, for being hurt and manipulated by her, for wanting to share your love and life with another child. Look for the good. And yes, I know you are grateful for all your children. Look for the good and be grateful as you make your way each day In Your Lane. (Am reminding myself of this here as well lol!!).