Dumped Cheater Asks Reddit How to Win Her Back
In fuck around and find out news, a dumped cheater asks Reddit how to win his ex-wife back. It does not go as he’d hoped. If you need some Schadenfreude injected into your veins today, this story is for you.
The saddest of sausages.
Here’s the pitiful missive that cheater (M35) sent Reddit (snark from Chump Lady):
I know, I’m aware of my faults, I know I screwed up. She and I had something beautiful. She is still the love of my life, we were together for 10 years, 2 dating and 8 married, but I made a huge mistake and cheated on her, it was just once, just one damn time! Somehow she found out, I never knew how because I haven’t been able to talk to her since then. I guess she found something on my phone. I came home that afternoon as usual and everything felt weird, the house felt emptier, I quickly realized that her things were gone. I panicked, I started calling her over and over, but her phone didn’t even ring. Suddenly I saw some papers on the table, she was divorcing me… under the divorce papers, there was a note that said “This is what you do with cheaters.”
Does she read Chump Lady? Perhaps “mistake” (singular) pushed her over the edge.
That was the last thing I got from her, two years ago now. Of course I called the contact information for her lawyer, who has been the only bridge between us. But he just told me that he was her legal representative and that she didn’t want to see me. I fought, I got angry, but in the end her lawyer just told me that it would be better if I got my own lawyer. I didn’t want to, I absolutely refused to accept that 10 years of relationship would end like this! I know I have failed, but I always wanted to fix it. I know that if she gave me the chance, I could make that sweet and special girl I met more than 10 years ago fall in love with me again. I know that I can make her forgive me, after all, many couples go through similar things and get over it! Why can’t we be one more couple in that statistic? Why after 8 years of marriage am I thrown away like garbage for a mistake? I don’t deserve so much indifference.
One mistake! How could she devalue him after he devalued her!
#KarmaSweet&Special
He makes the divorce difficult, because of course he does.
I haven’t been able to see her or even hear her voice in two years. Two years of not being able to see or talk to the person you love the most is too much of a punishment! This situation has destroyed me emotionally, mentally and even physically. I ended up consuming an unhealthy amount of alcohol, weeks of barely eating, not sleeping, I was a zombie for months, I was just functioning on automatic. I wanted to die, but I couldn’t let myself die because I always held onto hope that she would come back. My therapist says it’s really hard when you can’t get closure from a relationship because your mind can’t process that the relationship is over, so you’re always thinking that person will knock on the door or that you’ll wake up from sleep and they’ll be there by your side. The divorce was finalized over a year ago, I’ll be honest, I didn’t make it easy, I didn’t want to get divorced and I still don’t understand how we can be divorced.
Two years of not being able to line up another chump is too much of a punishment! However will he adult without a wife appliance?
I still don’t understand how we can be divorced.
Who gave this woman agency and lawyers?
He deserves a second chance!
I asked for couples therapy, but she refused. I know from my lawyer that her lawyer advised her to go at least once or twice. But she refused. It took quite a while, but finally the divorce happened. I can’t even describe the feeling, I felt and still feel, like if a piece of me had been cut out. I know I hurt her, I know I failed, but I think we all deserve a second chance.
I think your wife deserves a cheater-free life. I’m glad one of you is getting what they deserve.
When I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I decided to start therapy. My therapist doesn’t give me advice to get her back, he only focuses on me moving on with my life encouraging me to meet new people and go out on dates, but I don’t want to, at this point I’m not even interested in sex anymore.
You’re a vindictive little shit with a limp dick. I can’t imagine why your ex-wife doesn’t want you back.
How dare she move on!
A few days ago something happened that completely shattered me. I was having a few beers with my friend at my house, let’s call him Nick, we were both pretty drunk. I started talking about my wife. And he said to me “You should put more effort into getting over her, she’s over you and is happy having a life away from you, you should do the same, you can’t live in this self-pity all your life.” Something in his words hit me, but not in the way he expected, he spoke with a lot of confidence that my wife is over me and is happy now, how does he know that?… at this point, I got angry and started pressuring him to talk, he refused, I pressed as hard as I could, I cried, I begged him to tell me if he knew something! I needed to know something about her! Until he finally told me… his wife has been in contact with my wife for the last year. They were great friends and I remember Sabrina (my friend’s wife) being very sad about losing contact with my wife. The thing is that my wife went to live in Norway, got married to a guy there and is about 7 months pregnant. I felt like dying, I literally felt like dying with this information. How could she do this to me? How could it be that while I was crying, getting drunk, missing her and wanting to die every day, she was happily on the other side of the world, getting married, fucking and getting pregnant by another guy! How could it be that she didn’t have a child with me in many many years, to the point that I thought she was infertile, but she got pregnant by this new guy so easily??
The power of Viking sperm?
Where did this guy come from?? I have no answers for absolutely anything and I feel like I can’t go on with my life without these answers! The only thing I can think of is that she had revenge sex with the first norwegian guy she came across and got pregnant and decided to keep the baby. Maybe she got married because she wanted to stay in that country legally and I guess like in most countries, getting married is a good option for that, I don’t know, these thoughts are killing me! I refuse to think that she is in love with him! I need to contact her, I need to talk to her, I need to know what’s going on, because she acts like our 10 year history and 8 year marriage is nothing to her!
At this point, this guy is seriously creeping me out. NO, YOU DO NOT NEED TO TALK TO HER. What part of your narcissistic noggin doesn’t comprehend your obsolescence? She moved on. It has absolutely nothing to do with you. She’s not having “revenge” sex. (Because of YOU!) She’s having sex. And it’s none of your goddamn business.
I need advice on how to act, I feel the impulse of travel to where she is and look for her, but how could I do that? I don’t know what city she’s in, I don’t know where she lives, I don’t have a number to contact her, she closed her social media, her family is small, they don’t live in the same country as me and all of them blocked me. I’m totally lost. I don’t know what to do at this point. I still want her back, yes even pregnant. I feel like if this is a nightmare and I need to wake up now!
Yeah, there’s a reason you don’t know where she is — SHE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW WHERE SHE IS. I can’t say I blame her.
It’s really big of you to want her back, “even pregnant.” Like her uterus is a discount item in the bin, but you’ll overlook some use.
Reddit was not kind.
Alas, OP did not receive the warm embrace of sympathy he expected.
OOP is a thick POS.
He goes on with further justifications, I won’t bore you with. But gets called out each time .
Yeah, it’s really incredible. “She meant nothing to me, really”.
So, now you’re telling me you’re treating two women like shit. Not the flex you think it is, boyo.
Complaining that your ex-wife’s new husband is too blonde and tall is a hilarious level of cope.
Did we mention that the ex-wife’s new husband looks like a Viking?
OP stalks Facebook until he finds the wedding pictures.
Only her Facebook profile is quite open, she is indeed a lady from Norway. I checked everything I could on this profile I was convinced that it had something to do with my wife. How else would a relative of hers have this woman in their friends? I saw a lot of pictures, people, plants, mountains, gardens, lakes, flowers, typical things that an older lady posts… until I came across a picture where my ex was dressed as a bride hugging a guy. I had to translate the text, the lady was congratulating her son on his wedding. There were a few more pictures, not many, there were even some members of my ex’s family in the wedding pictures. The dates of the pictures were from a year ago.
Dude, don’t pain shop. Just let it go.
Can he let it go? No.
Anyways for those who had imagined this fantasy that my ex is with some kind of norwegian Chris Hemsworth… let me tell you…it’s not like that! This guy is too tall, too blonde, too pale, hair too long and kind of chunky to be honest. He looks more like the old cartoon of Vikings and is definitely not a Chris Hemsworth. I managed to find his fb profile but he has almost nothing there. His profile says he’s an engineer. An engineer who wears metal band t-shirts at 38!
He’s too tall, blonde, and educated. Dear Lord, save her from this terrible fate.
Call me!
Clueless dumped cheater ends with this plea.
If by any chance this post reaches my ex. I want you to know that I still love you. You know where to contact me. If by any chance this post reaches the new dude: I want you to know the only reason you have a chance with this woman is because a big idiot halfway across the world completely ruined it…you most probably met a woman who was probably very broken from her divorce, you took advantage of her situation and trapped her with a baby. You don’t know how to play fair!
Sabrina and Nick: F…YOU!
Projection much? Yeah, she couldn’t possibly have liberated herself from marriage to a FW and created a new life for herself. No, she was “trapped” by another man. Total confirmation she made the right move to get an ocean away from her ex.
As for Sabrina and Nick, a grateful Chump Nation thanks you. Without that fateful beer, we never could’ve relished today’s Schadenfreude. Cheers.
I have been DELIGHTING in the reddit commentariat clowning on this guy.
The amount of projection in this guy’s rant really shows how delusional cheaters are.
“She devalued me!!” = Dude, you devalued HER. She responded accordingly and enacted consequences.
“This new guy trapped her!” = You thought YOU had her trapped and were pissed when she escaped your clutches.
I am really impressed with the quality of the Reddit comments, they’re actually pretty down to earth, It’s almost like they had read…..LACGAL.
Fucking dying at the heavy metal band t-shirts at 38! A true Swede, indeed!
An engineer who can take me to metal concerts? Sign me up!
Oh boy. That is fucking *hilarious*. What a piece of sad sausage, human excrement. Thank God his ex escaped from this self-pitying moron, he sounds like he has the potential to be dangerous if he ever found out her address.
I was cackling at this story until I got to the part where he admits they divorced A YEAR AGO. I hope their old mutual friends give her a heads up that he’s hunting her down on social media. He’s absolutely obsessed.
Stalkers are always creepy. I had one when I was a teenager and I was really afraid to be alone with this guy even in the hallway (he lived in my parents building). They get so fixated and they just don’t give up. It’s not that he was hideous or anything, it’s just the persistence and unwillingness to take repeated No’s.
My favorite Reddit comment so far:
Bear: I can’t believe you won’t let me eat you! Sure, I might have growled and waved my murder mittens in a threatening way, but that doesn’t count! And I only ate the salmon that one time! You just got in your car and drove to safety like you weren’t my lunch AND dinner plans! And no one else in this forest will even help me sniff your trail! SOME FRIENDS. Anyway, it’s really selfish of you to exercise your free will and act on your survival instincts. Won’t someone think about MEEEEEEEE?
OMG, I’m dying! That’s awesome!
Thank you for reposting. On a bit of a media diet at the moment. This is top notch Reddit and I didn’t have to work to find it. Xxxxxxx
Haha, I’m always grateful to people who wade through the stinking muck of social media and report the highlights or synopses so the rest of us don’t have to. It’s an act of life-saving kindness. But in this case I can’t take much credit because CL already played point man and declared the zone relatively friendly towards chumps. 😀
Legend. This woman found out what happened and then immediately vanished from his life, and completely broke his brain. Love it.
This narcissistic creep is no longer the center of attention and it is destroying him.
“I don’t deserve so much indifference.” Boo hoo. Within 6 words, I spot entitlement and grandiosity – he “deserves” to be central more than other people. I’m guessing when FW was all up in the AP, his wife wasn’t exactly in the front of his mind. FW seems to be receiving as much indifference as he doled out.
I’m sure he was an awful delusional nutcase long before he cheated and that the ex’s side of things would be an earful.
His entitlement is infuriating. As if he’s the one who decides if he gets a second chance or how bad his actions were.
Pure narcissistic rage. His ego was hurt and he literally can’t move on with his life until she is subordinated again. I worry.
I’m bracing for an international public safety incident.
She broke it so bad by escaping that he can’t even look for another victim apparently. She must have broke the wash cycle.
I feel like her dumping him so swiftly wasn’t entirely down to his cheating.
Wanker
I completely agree with that. I think it was the last straw but the may have even been planning an escape route for a while. We’re not hearing the whole story of course.
Through his entire rant he gives his ex no agency at all and expects that the nearest man to his wife is controlling her somehow.
The lawyer who didn’t convince her to pursue therapy, her current husband who trapped her after revenge sex (!!) – she’s literally a puppet for men.
The only time in his telling she does anything on her own volition is her ex’s take on revenge sex with a Scandinavian and even that makes her sound like a deranged toddler rather than an adult woman.
He’s got the hallmarks of a controlling abuser written all over him.
If it was revenge sex she was after I think that is available in whichever English speaking country this prat lives in.
Especially for women, sex is available just about anywhere you can swing a cat. Not necessarily good sex with recognizably human much less healthy specimens but sex all the same.
Right? Uprooting to another country and leaving no trace takes a tremendous amount of effort and planning. Most people would need a life and death reason for creating their own witness protection programs.
On the other hand when it’s right it’s right. Could be an internet romance that got hot and heavy very quickly.
I have been reading a bunch of truly bizarre alien and monster smut lately. It isn’t hard at all for me to imagine a woman finding an engineer Viking hot.
I guess it’s not impossible that the OP cheater was out-zoomed by a stealthier cheater which is rather a typical outcome when cheaters and APs make a go of it.
Or it could be scarier than that. There’s research which found that battered women– even those who might not otherwise have ever sexually betrayed a partner– may be slightly more prone than average to “monkey branch” simply in order to have a body guard on hand as they attempt their dangerous escapes. In other words, the OP in this situation might have left out the times he tried to strangle his ex or threatened to kill her or her family, etc., etc. The reason they never had children may even be because he induced several miscarriages through severe emotional abuse or violence.
I’ve mentioned this before but my father was a violent alcoholic and used to threaten to kill my mother and I which is why she stayed with him, she thought he’d hunt us down. I tried to get her to leave even when I was small but that’s what her fear was and it kept her (and me) there unfortunately. And this DOES happen pretty routinely – it’s actually common, alas, when someone tries to escape, their captor kills them and maybe the kids. It’s such a bizarre mindset to me, but that’s mental and moral illness. If you’re gonna leave a captor, perhaps a violent one, it’s good to make a plan. I have the feeling this woman planned an escape in advance and then when the affair happened, she was ready to go into action.
I knew a guy who’s much older batterer father killed himself after this guy’s mother escaped and took the kids. It was only many years later that the family discovered the dad had attempted (unsuccessfully) to commit murder suicide with his toddler daughter from his first marriage after his first wife tried to escape. He gave himself and the little girl what should have been fatal doses of barbiturates but for some reason they survived.
The reason his second wife and family knew nothing of it was because the abuser was a preeminent surgeon with some kind of title and the British system covered it up and expunged the records. Then this abuser promptly moved to fascist Spain where women couldn’t divorce without losing their kids and started another family. Talk about elaborate planning and preparation, the guy I knew remembered having to escape across the mountains at night on horseback to get out of Spain.
Considering what this guy’s father was capable of, if his mother hesitated to leave before the moment she did, it was obviously for good reason
Wow, that’s a whole nother level, HoaC, you always have such interesting angles.
Some states in the U.S. have a program in conjunction with the courts and law enforcement that helps you do that.
A friend of mine went through it, starting in conjunction with her divorce, and then she effectively disappeared after closeout. My divorce was already final as hers was winding down, and she was preparing to buy property in another county and had work lined up with her new name. It was quite a process.
WOWSERS I just learnt something I would never have thought would happen in America. Not to get political but that is a programme that can’t be available in many states
Yes, I had no idea such a thing existed. A specialized police officer told her about it and helped with the application. It took quite awhile, but once the car titles were resolved and the one property they co-owned was sold — POOF! She was gone.
And it should be a model program that should be created in each state. So many examples of spouses and kids being killed when they try to leave or succeed in doing it. Just read a horrible story the other day of some guy who killed his 3 sons in front of his wife and wounded her. The only surviving child is a little daughter. These were all small kids, very sweet, handsome little boys. I think he should be executed, I am very in favor of the death penalty but maybe they’ll take care of him in prison. But we need to have more of these kinds of programs because whether they use a gun or a knife or a baseball bat, some people are gonna kill their spouse and kids. I was reading the other day about Susan Smith who killed her 2 boys drowning them in a car because her AP didn’t want kids, and she’s got all these guys sending her letters in prison and having these romances, and she’s gonna be up for parole. Not likely to get it but another one who should have gotten the Chair or something similar.
Wow, progress. I wish they’d had that option back when I was stalked by a psycho coworker. I tried moving but the DA wouldn’t even keep my new address off court documents. The most help I got from the system was from a cop working at the DMV who, when I asked if I could put a PO box on my driver’s license to evade a criminal stalker, said “No” very sharply but then dramatically misspelled my name on my new license and changed my DOB. Obviously no accident so thanks, grumpy cop lady.
Woman who knew the system and how to avoid giving her colleagues work. Kudos to the grumpy cop.
This is brilliant, I needed that laugh today. I love that she just went without a word, best fuck you I’ve seen in a long time.
Far better than the one I am planning right now.
This was hilarious. This dude refuses to admit he did anything wrong. He says “I made a mistake” but every chump knows cheating is intentional and NOT a mistake. He really doesn’t feel like he did anything to deserve being divorced by his MIGHTY wife (kudos to her!). And we all KNOW she didn’t do anything to deserve to be cheated on. This guy is the poster boy for being a FW.
His whining is really entertaining, this idiot. Karma is a bitch…
I left my hallway light on when I travelled last week. That was a mistake.
Yep. I forgot the milk at the store. That’s a mistake.
Cheating is NEVER a mistake. I SUPER DUPER HATE it when cheater FW’s say that…
Well you will pay the electricity price for that. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind. Apologies to Brits if that is in the wrong order.
The first thing I thought was “damn, this is bad for my electric bill.” But, I take full responsibility, and will pay the bill.
Hmm, maybe I should get on the phone with the electric company and go off on a semi-coherent diatribe about how I “deserve” free electricity, and “nobody’s perfect,” and “I wouldn’t have left the light on if the electric company hadn’t made it so easy.”
🤣😝. Good one.
“Who gave this woman agency?”
Snort! LMAO!
Thanks, CL, that was a deep belly laugh I needed.
A little hint that the cheating wasn’t “just cheating” (it never is) but also came with standard scary mood swings, control, intimidation and verbal abuse was how this guy got angry and fought with his ex’s lawyer in their first encounter. Another strong hint is the ex’s total disappearing act. She knew he’d stalk and, voila, she was right.
I noticed when working in advocacy that cheating is often the last straw for domestic abuse and coercive control survivors– not due to “masochistic sexual possessiveness” but because it means the danger of staying finally exceeds the very considerable risk of leaving. For some the realization is conscious but for others it’s unconscious– they just suddenly find themselves radically shifting from fawn/freeze to fight/flight. For people who sense that they’re only getting a shred of mercy and amnesty from an abuser as long as they’re of “sexual use,” the specter of being sexually replaced signals the abuser’s gloves are about to come fully off and the abuse will escalate.
I think it destroys the concept of how much the abuser “loves” them and that’s what their frequently pathological jealousy looks like to an abuse victim, as some kind of fucked up proof of love. They want me so much they’re willing to fight other people or they get impassioned and beat me up because…somehow this equals love. But when the cheating starts, you can’t say it’s love anymore…it’s a hostage situation.
Batterers who start getting an inkling their victims aren’t motivated by love in all things can become murderous. The whole point of captor bonding is to provide the full appearance of love and loyalty so of course if you ask someone who’s in the throes of Stockholm syndrome “When you did this or that odd thing, were you motivated by love?” they will answer “yes” in all sincerity. Of course this is a lie but they don’t know it’s a lie because, if they did, the abuser wouldn’t believe it and risk would go up.
Even aside from survival ruses and self-spellbinding, if you asked a mother why she thought she could lift a two ton car off her toddler as she was in the middle of doing just that, she might say, “AGGHHHHH!” or declare with all sincerity,”It’s light as air!” I don’t think most would stop and answer, “Why I believe it’s the ‘central governor’ theory of hysterical strength in which my central nervous system has increased the number of active motor units I employ due to crisis-provoked adrenaline surge.” By the time anyone reallyl thought about how they were able to do this, fear and a sense of realistic limitations would take over and they’d be unable to lift the car and save the kid. The lie that they can lift the car or that the car is light is what saves in that moment.
In other words, people undergoing extreme altered mental and metabolic states in response to life-threatening and catastrophic events mostly aren’t going to be able to accurately explain their behavior while they’re performing the behavior nor– depending on the circumstance– should they be expected to. But they should still not be dismissed as nuts since they may be extremely accurate about life and death tactical things in moments of crisis– like a mama bear screaming at someone to grab a jack to prop the car or pull her child from under the wreck… or like a battered woman who, in a state of near-raving hysteria, tells the cops her abuser will be back before midnight to try to kill her and, voila, it happens.
Hell of a chimp…My cheater went to the edge as I was told by him to unfreeze and get out NOW.We who are covertly abused see the tremor in our abusers hands and the bulging of the carotid artery, and the dead eye stare..that your time is up. BUT Without my therapists intervention to save me stat..I don’t know if I’d be writing today. I was told it was too dangerous to leave..and to spend more time TALKING by cheater loving other therapists. . That could have been it for me. Another world away would have been perfect. This crazy cheaters is seriously dangerous.
That would be a great title for a book on DV – “Too Dangerous to Leave”. That’s why my mother stayed for decades.
Mehitable..my mother too..I felt for her always. She was very sick physical her whoe marriage with heart disease. She said she could not survive without my dad which was true. He became gentle when she was ill..fear of her dying..then violent when she was recovered. The book Steps to Freedom by Don Hennessy share the ” getting ready tactics to leave but also mentioned woman who know it is too dangerous for them to escape. They are very likely correct
Advocacy for abuse survivors is a shambles in most of the world.
Hell of a Chump posted: “I noticed when working in advocacy that cheating is often the last straw for domestic abuse and coercive control survivors– not due to “masochistic sexual possessiveness” but because it means the danger of staying finally exceeds the very considerable risk of leaving. For some the realization is conscious but for others it’s unconscious– they just suddenly find themselves radically shifting from fawn/freeze to fight/flight. For people who sense that they’re only getting a shred of mercy and amnesty from an abuser as long as they’re of “sexual use,” the specter of being sexually replaced signals the abuser’s gloves are about to come fully off and the abuse will escalate.”
I want to thank you for posting that. In the 7 years since I left my abusive, cheating ex-husband, I’ve been through five years of weekly counseling, daily journaling, the Amazon stage and even a 12 step group (because my best friend recommended it) and I have never heard this explanation for why cheating is often the last straw for domestic abuse survivors. And yet it makes so much sense, it immediately “clicked” for me.
When my ex crossed the line into physical abuse, I was so devalued, demoralized, demonized and depressed that it took me two weeks to realize he had actually crossed the line. The verbal and emotional abuse, financial abuse, spiritual abuse and sexual abuse (withholding) had destroyed my sense of self and any hint of the woman I was before he entered my life. We had been together 23 years, married almost 20. When it did dawn on me that knocking me down and claiming it was justified was actual physical abuse, I set about getting my ducks in a row to leave him. I was able to remove him from any claim on any of my money (while leaving joint funds where they were as a decoy), get my own POB to prevent him from getting his hands on any of the physical mail generated by my moving money around. open my own credit cards (and close all but one of the joint credit cards) and plan an escape. But then I hesitated. Surely knocking me down “wasn’t that bad.” Was it? Then there was the hurricane and I was stuck — no car, rentals were all moved out of the city for safety or rented out and even the buses were staying away. It was then that I had my D-day.
I realized in looking back through my journal that the abuse had ramped up about the time the affair started, and that a couple of “accidents” we’d had on our boat mimicked published accounts of fatal boating accidents almost exactly, right down to the exact location he deliberately ran our boat aground in an attempt to sink it so that he could be the sole survivor of the “terrible accident.” He had found himself a wealthier woman and wanted to be free to let her support him. I was no longer of use to him. When the flood waters ebbed and I was able to rent a car, I left with what I could carry — and the dog — and fled a thousand miles to move in with my recently widowed best friend.
The divorce was final 5-1/2 years ago — on Valentine’s Day — and I have a peaceful, comfortable life without the cheating abuser.
I have never seen the above explanation, but it makes so much sense! It was as if a bell went off in my head to alert me, “This is it! This explains why you hesitated to leave and then in one herculean effort, managed to escape with the puppy, passport, prescriptions and the passwords to everything — changed within an hour of my exit. I was shamed in the 12 step program for “letting myself be abused but not tolerating cheating.” Now I understand it.
12 step program like Alanon helped me recognize my abuser..but there is alot of readings on tolerance and my part of the triggering of these abusers. Still it kept me safe and getting stronger in who I was until the pain of staying flooded me. We advocate here on CN right? We read the PATTERN of abuse that Tracy lays before us. So so important to label it abuse..also for me it was a PROGRESSION, it was FORGIVENESS grooming..until it was all ok..it was allowing unacceptable behavior and being unable to STOP them from escalating without great gut fears you could be hurt, or the children or your pets. It is HELL’ that one “adjusts” too.
That’s absolutely awful. HOAC has some great insights which have helped a lot of us, I think.
I suppose if an FW views the relationship as transactional – which, lets face it, most of these dickheads do – then we might need to consider what was in it for them keeping us around, and at what point could we have been eliminated (the CL appliance thing). Not everyone’s FW will escalate to violence, of course, but for some chumps it is potentially life and death.
In terms of strategies to make chumps disposable, other than getting a replacement sex partner, I think my FW disposed of his need for me as a child carer not by finding a replacement, but by announcing one day he had no connection to his children (i.e. I no longer have children therefore I do not need anyone to care for them). What a genius solution. It must have been very annoying for him when he kept crossing paths with the kids around the house.
I thought previously this bizarre statement made out of nowhere was just part of his downward spiral into madness, but after reading HOACs comments I think it was strategic.
Sort of like how CN is a hangout for veterans who’ve long escaped their FW prisons but still like to polish and maintain their badass perspectives and share their support, the online forum for the service I worked for was a popular hang for veteran DV survivors and former advocates from around the world. What I learned from the “vets” is that it’s really only in hindsight that survivors realize that cheating was the last straw because it increased the risk of being killed.
Believe me it came up a lot because virtually all batterers cheat. This also makes me want to add a side note that your abuser may not have wanted you “gone” simply to pave the way for his new schmoops but to ensure that you could never, ever fully escape, recover, move on and have all sorts of real love and fabulous sex with anyone else. Think of Louis XIV’s “After me, the flood” and that’s every abuser in history.
Anyway, back to the main point… No one in the active throes of crisis ever stopped to say, “Zounds! It appears that my captor bonding is being eroded by the realization that my abuser will sexually replace me to the point that his already intolerable abuse may increase to the point of homicide! I think I will now have a ‘fight or flight’ adrenaline surge that will propel me past my terror of reprisal if I attempt to escape!” No, they just find their feet automatically moving towards the door as they pack up the kids and the pooch and their hands shuffle critical documents.
By a similar token, those who find too many real and practical obstacles in the way of sudden escape aren’t thinking, “While, upon learning that my abuser is employing sex workers, I experienced a sudden adrenaline surge and intense desire to escape, the fact that he completely controls my finances, has ties to local law enforcement and has the power to take my children away has pushed my cortisol levels to the point of life-threatening adrenal collapse and, instead of fleeing and fighting, I must go lie down for a month in a dark room before my heart stops.” They just shut down. They may even sink fully back into captor bonding ruse and think, “But I love him!” because this helps them invest in the ruse and therefore helps chances of survival in the interim.
“In the interim” is meaningful since most abuse survivors do escape even though it may take an average of seven attempts to get to that point. But I don’t think that, during any of those attempts, survivors had time to theorize about the influence of stress hormones on subconscious impulses or how their subconscious lizard brains processed intangible danger cues.
If you can get your hands on a copy of Post-traumatic Stress Therapy and the Victims of Violent Crime (I recommend ordering it through a library since even used copies cost a fortune), read the chapter on DV by the late Evan Stark and his wife Anne Flitcraft. It’s basically an ode to the strategic genius of victims in surviving and a bitch slap against generations of blamey-shamey helping professionals who subscribed to the “psychological deficiency” or “addiction” theory of domestic violence.
A bitch slap against generations of blamey-shamey “helping professionals” is well worth tracking down. One “helping professional” told my second cheater/first physical abuser that, “As long as you haven’t put her in the hospital, you don’t really have a problem.” I guess he took that as license to try to strangle me to death.
I could go on and on, but instead I’m going off to the public library.
I had a similar experience with therapists. I think the bar for what constitutes “acceptable” levels of domestic abuse is still in hell to this day. Every bit of progress made on that front only lasts as long as anyone’s actively fighting to maintain it. It’s such an uphill climb.
“This also makes me want to add a side note that your abuser may not have wanted you “gone” simply to pave the way for his new schmoops but to ensure that you could never, ever fully escape, recover, move on and have all sorts of real love and fabulous sex with anyone else. ”
AND, it occurs to me, sometimes so YOU WON’T TELL ANYONE ELSE. Image management, court dates, and a whole lot of other evil shit. Insurance policies too.
You just sparked a connection for me that I had not made before.
Cheater reminded me that he could snap my neck in an instant if he wanted to but the most real threat to my life was his Rage-Driving…there were plenty of times I really did not believe that I would leave the car alive. A few of those rages coincided with me interfacing with his work people. I believe most of his cheating was work-based and he terrorized me to limit my ability to discern the subtleties of his interactions with his female coworkers.
On Dday when I found the smoking gun and he knew he was about to deal with some real accountability for his relationship with Susan of Seattle, he sat down at the kitchen table, steadied himself and said “I have never driven in an unsafe manner with you and the children in the car”.
WHAT?!? We’re about to discuss your adultery and you make a claim about your driving which happens to be completely untrue.
In some bizarre way, those compartmentalized boxes were associated.
I think the reason he didnt kill me is that he didnt want to raise the children by himself.
His claim on Dday, apropos of nothing, that he’d never driven unsafely is really spooky and sort of reminds me of the line in the Nirvana song Come as You Are in which Cobain sings “I don’t have a gun, no I don’t have a gun.” As it turns out, he did have a gun (and eventually shot himself with it).
It sounds like he’d already imagined what would be said about him in divorce proceedings to the point that this was the first thing he blurted when you discovered the affair. At the very least his blurting this means he knows what he did was domestic abuse and knows that he meant harm by it. It also suggests his mind has always “leapt ahead” to imagine potential consequences of his behavior which suggests that he’s preemptively done things to offset the risk of these consequences… for instance, using terror to paralyze you and skew your perceptions so you couldn’t– or were too afraid to– pick up cues from his coworkers regarding cheating.
Of course I think abusive terror campaigns and enforcement of one-sided monogamy are all of a piece because one is required to enforce the other. Here’s a completely speculative scenario to illustrate the idea:
He fucks around with coworkers, then his mind leaps forward to what could happen if you picked up a hint and found out: you could leave him, realize your value, then move on to a better relationship and his kids are being raised by another man. He imagines seeing you happy and carefree in a brand new life and is flooded with rage at his own future projections. How does he stop even the possibility of this happening? He could kill you for one. He ponders this, imagines how, sees himself carrying it out in great detail but then he imagines either getting caught or having to raise kids by himself which takes the steam out of this idea for the moment. But he’s still left with a surplus of murderous rage towards you since he recognizes– even if you don’t– that you have the ability and resources to build a better life. Plus he’s still got the more immediate problem of how you might detect cues from his coworkers. Rage driving kills several birds at once– it lets off the steam of his murderous rage; it flexes to you what he’s capable of doing to you if you cross him; it floods your brain with panic so you’re less likely to trust your own perceptions in the case you detect clues about his double life; it’s also a form of emotional and sexual hacking sort of like psychic FGM to ensure you can never be happy or enjoy sex again, especially not with someone else.
Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham– a former protegee of Jane Goodall and author of Demonic Males: Apes and the Evolution of Human Violence– has argued that these domestic human rage displays are done for the same reason dominant chimps periodically rage around, drag branches and beat their chests: it’s to get everyone back in their subordinate boxes for the larger– if not immediate– purpose of maintaining sexual control.
Infidelity is so often minimized in our society, but when we look at situations like yours we see how not only devastating it is, but that it is often a MARKER in relationships that they have deteriorated past any salvage point, and it really is one of the last steps of abuse in DV situations, perhaps before actual murder. It shows that the abuse victim no longer has ANY use for the abuser at all, perhaps just a hindrance.
Never seen this explanation. Really makes sense.
There’s an unfortunate reason why you haven’t heard this explanation before. What I learned as an advocate for domestic violence victims (aside from the fact that most batterers cheat) is that DAs will often automatically drop the cases of victims who allude to cheating in the course of reporting assault, violent threats and other forms of criminal domestic abuse. The reason the cases are dropped is because of the old-timey misogynist assumption that women are prone to fabricate false allegations of violence due to “sexual jealousy.”
Because the details of criminal cases often supply data for social science research, the fact that victims of domestic abuse are discouraged from including reports of infidelity in their legal testimony has skewed the actual research.
He’s a walking red flag.
His reaction to her pregnancy was a great example of how he views her.
Hit enter too soon
He was pissed that she’s making a baby for another man rather than for him.
He blames her for 8 years without a pregnancy – even though the most glaringly obviously answer would be that HE’s not particularly fertile – at the same time that he can’t seem to figure out that she may well have not wanted a child with a volcanically angry abuser.
Yeah, my first thought was she saw red flags even before he cheated and ensured he never got her pregnant. This guy is so categorically awful that I can’t imagine he wasn’t a shitty husband before this.
Thank you for saying this, HOAC! That was ME to a T. It explains why I took it and took it until Dday #2 when my brain suddenly went into flight mode and I made plans for a stealth escape which I carried out 3 days later.
That was almost 3 years ago now but I still sometimes find myself wondering what strange force was at work making the urge to leave without him knowing so strong. Very out of character for me. Thanks for shedding light!
Coercive control expert Dr. Christine Cocciola has frequently expressed amazement over how she herself could have been educated up the yin-yang in recognizing the cycle of abuse, the mechanisms of learned helplessness, etc., and still not be able to stop herself from succumbing to captor bonding and learned helplessness within her own coercive marriage. I think it’s because this stuff is almost autonomic and hardwired from the time of our ape ancestors who, if you think about it, all had to bond with violent alphas to survive. And, no surprise, chimp alphas use the same operant conditioning tactics as human abusers. The whole damned cycle of abuse appears to be hardwired.
All the same, blamey bystanders and incompetent helping professionals typically assume paralysis in abuse survivors is pathologically masochistic loyalty due to blah blah psychobabble low self esteem/FOO issues, whatever. Yet captor bonding/Stockholm syndrome is so predictable and even expected in veteran intelligence agents who are captured and interrogated that, upon escape or release, they’re routinely deprogrammed to break any survival bonding or learned helplessness that formed in captivity.
When applied to captured intelligence agents, it’s understood that the intensity of captor bonding hinges on perceived level of threat, not the whatever blah blah childhood background, psychological deficiency or self-esteem issues of captives. It’s the reason intelligence agents are never given whole parcels of state secrets but only bits and pieces because, if caught and subjected to certain pressures, it’s known they’ll all crack like eggs and spill whatever they know.
There are all kinds of studies and social science data regarding the latter (not to mention descriptions of it in John Le Carre spy novels) yet the same principles suddenly magically don’t apply when it comes to domestic abuse victims. And this is even in spite of years of research finding that professional interrogation and psychological pressure/fear tactics used to trigger ego collapse are virtually indistinguishable from tactics used by domestic abusers. Furthermore, victim-blamers ignore the fact that captor bonding exists because it’s actually effective in promoting survival since most abusers/captors are not fully immune from being “moved” by seamless displays of loyalty from victims and therefore more likely to show mercy.
“Seamless” is the key word though. For the loyalty ruse to promote survival, victims– like captured spies– have to believe it with every fiber of their beings which one DV researcher explained may relate to abusers’ (and talented professional interrogators’) almost telepathic hypervigilance for signs of dissembling and rebellion in victims. Obviously the downside of this level of survival bonding is that it’s hard to deactivate. Again, the more actual danger the victim perceives, the deeper they’ll invest in appearing loyal and the harder it will be to deactivate.
Like domestic abuse victims, the cue that may suddenly break the spell of captor bonding and fuel sudden efforts to escape in professional hostages is when the danger of remaining captive exceeds the danger of trying to flee.
The good news is that, though captor bonding looks and feels exactly like love, it’s the farthest thing from it so, when the spell is broken, love and loyalty evaporate like they never existed. If it doesn’t evaporate, it’s probably because the victim senses they’re not yet out of range and still fear retaliation. The tragic thing is that some abuse is so terrifying and traumatic that victims may continue to fear their abusers even after the latter are dead.
When you see, experience it, in practice….it’s conditioning like oh, many kinds of conditioning you might have in any situation where someone’s personality is being torn down and rebuilt to satisfy the abuser’s specs. I think people either break down or rebel. Maybe some people are able to wheedle their way around it or manipulate their abuser. But it really breaks down someone’s personality and reactions…..I remember hearing stories about my mother and seeing pics of her when she was young and not recognizing the same person at all after many years of an incredibly abusive marriage. She became like a zombie. I, on the other hand, fought it and became a rebel, but that comes with its own set of problems. After my father died, she not only looked 10 years younger, at least, but she got a job, she started having friends again – she was not allowed to have friends – we really need to address this as a society and infidelity IS one of the core behaviors. Perhaps the last one.
I don’t think it only breaks down to personality and state of mind but moreover whether an abuser can actualize and carry out a particular threat and whether the victim has the practical resources to defend themselves against the threat or whether the legal resources exist to help them. Things like, say, how prone the local child welfare apparatus or dependency court is to remove children from a domestic violence victim because an abusive spouse randomly claims the victim parent is “alienating” the kids. Or if the victim parent gave up work to care for kids and has no control of finances and therefore no means of escape. Or if the victim has a chronic illness and is dependent on spousal insurance, or has iffy immigration status that can be used as a stick to beat them with and on and on.
I really appreciated Jennifer Freyd’s book “Blindness to Betrayal” because she creates a kind of practical algorithm which associates individuals’ actual, tactical vulnerabilities and disadvantages and whether justice even functions in their region as deciding factors in whether or not they stand up against many forms of repression and abuse.
The victims really ARE victims and they lose a very real sense of their own ability to do anything, to find help (there often isn’t much help other than therapists but these folks need practical level help) – it’s like they lose their will to act or even conceive of it. And the System often or generally gives the power to the abuser….my father would drive my mother into literal nervous breakdowns where she couldn’t sleep for days and went temporarily insane and then he’d have her committed to mental hospitals and this happened several times when I was a child until I reached 16 when I went WITH them the last time and I told them what was really happening and that HE was the problem, so I was able to prevent that. I had to advocate for her as she was too broken to advocate for herself and they were all too willing to listen to him until they got the real picture from ME. Too often there is no one else to step in at that point and the System is skewed to the abusers.
My mother was seeing a psychiatrist/therapist for many years – decades in fact, and the only help she could really give was drugs which made my mother even more fucked up and I think, probably contributed to her dementia in old age. I’m not really blaming the therapist because I think she was a kind woman who meant well but what she did wasn’t really useful. It was actually destructive but it was the way she was taught. What my mother & others like her need is practical advice and assistance in GETTING AWAY, BEING ABLE TO LIVE INDEPENDENTLY AND TAKE CARE OF THEIR KIDS. People need PRACTICAL assistance and there’s so little of that, even now.
Reform psychiatrist Peter Breggin has a whole chapter in his book Toxic Psychiatry about the misuse of pills as a tool of patriarchy to prevent women from standing up against it. He uses several examples, including one of a woman who develops severe anxiety in response to her husband gambling away family assets. Rather than being helped to recognize that the anxiety is a perfectly valid reaction to the very serious threat of financial ruin and encouraged to act on that cue to protect assets and herself, she’s sedated by a shrink. Without the anxiety to propel her to take action, she goes limp and ends up destitute.
It goes without saying that, just because some behaviors and instincts stem from ape ancestors isn’t an alibi to commit abuse and doesn’t lessen the responsibility of abusers because… human free will. At the same time, victims are not equivalently “responsible” for reacting to abuse in primal, knee-jerk ways precisely because the nature of abuse is to rob victim of “free will.”
So much for the “evolutionary” excuse for domestic abuse. Aside from committing routine battering and rape, our ape ancestors and closest ape cousins the regular chimp also commit/ted infanticide and cannibalism but you never see cheating/abuse apologists trying to justify the latter as “human nature.”
Oh, dear. He’s wrecking his life over someone who wisely closed the chapter and moved far away. There’s probably more to this than we are being told. It may not have been “just” infidelity, and going no contact and moving to Norway may have been a well-thought-out way to move on that included being far, far away from this jerk. His thoughts of traveling there to find her are disturbing.
I doubt that my ex ever really pined for me, which did make it easier. With me, he was blamed and game 95% of the time, which completely ended it for me on top of his taking off after years of addiction and mental health issues.
As the ex said, “he’s just in a rough patch.” Dude’s mental.
Wow! So this is what “centrality” looks like without all of the other mind-fucking word salad. Every time I read or hear someone say “I don’t deserve this” I think about a line from the movie Unforgiven. One of the main characters is laying on the ground and he says: “I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was building a house.” And the other main character responds: “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
Why the EFF YOU to Sabrina and Nick? Because they wouldn’t tell this jackhole where his ex-wife is? (And it’s EX-wife. Super creepy how he keeps calling her his wife.)
Also, I have the feeling that he didn’t cheat just one time. She lawyered up so hard and so fast that she must’ve been prepping for a while.
Sabrina and Nick need to realize this guy isn’t their friend. Why is Nick trying so hard to maintain ties with this asshole? He’s part of the problem.
He also didn’t mention the trajectory between the cheating time and her leaving. If he had a “one time mistake” (🤣), why would there be anything in his phone to find? Oh… the mistake was accompanied by photos? Texts? Emails? Phone records? One incident and he could have said “Three weeks later she is leaving me!” But when there are many incidents one cannot give a simple timeframe.
(Dying laughing!) The only conceivable way for the chump to leave was if she scored Chris Helmsworth!?! Cheater egos are hilarious! Or! Hear me out, the new guy treats the chump with dignity and respect and LOYALTY! That sounds hot.
Haven’t bothered to see if Chris Hemsworth is who I think he is but Mr Heavy Metal T Shirt sounds like he could scrub up well enough to be a body double if he went to the gym as well.
Ahh, Reddit actually hit gold for once!
It was one of those “if I didn’t know any better” kind of things. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that’s about what being chumped feels like. Sounds like our guy here was force fed some empathy. And doesn’t like the taste of what he did.
This is the sort of thing that should be required reading for people thinking about “getting creative with their boundaries”(I do not imagine too many people go into those sorts of things calling it “cheating”-that would, after all, be tantamount to admitting wrongdoing.)
So this one goes out to the (prospective) cheaters that have found their way here:
Yes-you really can lose everything to one “mistake.” That is actually how the rest of life works. I will spend the rest of my life compensating in some small part for an injury I sustained years ago. Life can change-or end-in an instant. You only have to fuck up once for it matter forever. That is how causality works.
Cheating is not a simple “mistake.” A mistake is grabbing the wrong detergent at the store. Cheating is a transgressive, abusive act that can and should have major consequences. The Reddit poster here violated the trust of his partner and the sanctity of his marriage.
Consent was violated. A sin was committed. A price was paid.
The cheater here is correct in one regard-she could have forgiven him. But she didn’t. And that is her right. Asking somebody you have harmed like that to stay is a ginormous ask. It is asking them to live with the hurt and the possibility that you will do it again. It is asking them to live without trust for the person that they wake up next to.
It is asking them to be ok with being victimized because YOUR feelings would be hurt if it went any other way, even though, well, you started it.
Would you be ok with that if the roles were reversed? Would YOU be that understanding?
Our Redditor here wasn’t. Hell, he seems to be pretty sure that he was getting away with it. We see hints to his real behavior in his narrative.
We all have our own sliding scale for what is acceptable and what isn’t. Nothings says we have to do…anything, really, it turns out. And personally? When you break your vows, THE vows are broken.
This idiot is paying for his choices. Again-it sounds an awful like the heartbreak I have been going through since my D-Day almost a year ago. I have no sympathy for him-he was the traitor.
I am very happy for the ex-wife in this story-it sounds like she found her happily ever after(at least in this moron’s distortion of events.) She still will remember what betrayal tastes like. Let’s hope (insert Viking name here) gives her the love and happiness and grace that she needs-and that she gives those things to herself as well. Fuckwit here did permanent damage that she has to live with, too.
You are not special. The rules apply to you, too. Your choices can and will hurt the people you claim are closest to you. Things are wrong regardless of whether or not you got caught or there was some bass-ackwards justification. And one way or another, it WILL come back on you.
If you are unhappy in your relationship-it’s time to be an adult and either talk it through, learn to go without, or end things ethically. The world owes you nothing. But trust that it will take from you.
And ultimately? It sounds like this fuckwit got off light with an ass-kicking from Reddit and some much needed perspective. I don’t know if anybody else here watches Last Week Tonight-but there was that lovely anecdote at the end of the most recent about the guy on the prison baseball team-“what’s he in for?” “Oh, he caught his girlfriend with another man so he set her car on fire. With them in it.”
I saw this on Reddit and a few things struck me.
Firstly, the man consistently refers to his Ex-Wife as his Wife throughout his posts. He just cannot accept that she has divorced him, severed all ties with him, that their marriage is over and she has moved on of her own free will. The fact that he seems to think that they aren’t over until he says so (ie she gets no vote in this) is pretty scary.
Secondly, his therapist might want to point out to him the fact that, as the Universe has no known centre, he can’t be it …. his sense of centrality is staggering.
Thirdly, that the Reddit community did an excellent job of cutting him down to size.
LFTT
PS. I am really glad that his Ex-Wife found her Tuesday and her happy ending. More power to her elbow.
I also noticed he kept calling her his wife. My jaw dropped when I saw he’d been divorced for a year and was still this obsessed. This is bunny boiler levels of delusion.
And he’s willing to take her back with the baby from what he says. Stalker be stalking. I hope he doesn’t find his way to Norway. The therapist, some therapist, needs to point out how unhealthy his obsession is for HIM. He needs to learn to let go of this and maybe raise plants. They can’t travel at all.
I want , I want, I deserve, me me me, whine, sulk, it’s not faaaiirrrrr….
Just like a dog with a bone he’s just dug up after ignoring it for years- he doesn’t really want it but puts his paw on it and growls whenever another dog approaches.
Another one who hates being beaten at his own game.
” it was just once, just one damn time! Somehow she found out … I guess she found something on my phone. I came home that afternoon as usual and everything felt weird, the house felt emptier …her things were gone… Suddenly I saw some papers on the table, she was divorcing me… under the divorce papers”
World Class Minimizing…he wasn’t an abusive avoidant asshole for months, no he had sex with another gal one single time and his wife has such awesome skills that she found out from his phone, packed her shit, moved out, filed for divorce and had papers on the table by the time he got home,
Wow…we should all do this well.
Right! She is the mightiest of mighty if she got all that done so fast.
My guess is that this dumbass has been a shit for quite a while.
I want an interview with her on the next TMHYM podcast!
I doubt very much this was just a case of “I cheated just once” and she was done. He sounds like a raving lunatic and I bet/hope his ex-wife had been making plans for ages to get away from him. Good for her. I hope she and her Viking are very happy together!
Yeah. Also, some things you only need to do once. If he said “I only stole $1,000 from her savings account once!” then I doubt anyone would have any sympathy for him. He’s not getting sympathy now. His only argument is “everyone cheats,” which is a terrible, terrible argument.
Also bristling a little on that little “closure” thing right now. Dude earned “empty house.”
Most of us don’t get any sort of aesthetically pretty closure.
Further to yesterday’s post-we don’t get closure, we get Meh in these parts. The last I saw of my fuckwit was her storming out of couples counseling with tears in her eyes after I called her out. The last I heard from her was her demanding that I leave her mail in the mailbox for her (because “they” didn’t change her address.) The last she heard from me? Me calmly explaining how to collect her things from the storage unit. That has to be that.
Again, actions have consequences. You reap what you sow.
He doesn’t want “closure.” He knows exactly why she left. She stated it as clearly as humanly possible: because he cheated. Period. There’s your closure.
What he wants is another confrontation with her so that he can explain to her why he’s right and she’s wrong.
And you’re right: we Chumps never get closure. The closest we ever get is some sort of warmed-over half-apology of “I know what I did was wrong, but you didn’t [insert banal relationship imperfection here]!”
I think even that interpretation is generous. Sounds like he wants to kidnap her and drag her home by force.
Of course! He wants the last word. Part of why I was bristling. He doesn’t see that he’s done ENOUGH damage. More than enough, really.
The entitlement and audacity are mind-blowing! The pity party is epic. My STBX is low-key this oblivious. FAFO, indeed!
Totally snorted my coffee at this:
How could it be that she didn’t have a child with me in many many years, to the point that I thought she was infertile, but she got pregnant by this new guy so easily??
The power of Viking sperm?
The power of secretly staying on birth control the whole time because, deep down, you know that your husband is a psycho?
This, that would be my guess too.
Can you say controlling? He comes across as a psycho. No wonder she vanished. He presents himself as dangerous.
Also the cheater’s verbal diarrhea. Good gravy I would lose my mind if I had to listen to him whine and whinge about everything. I’ll bet he can’t let anything go, “5 years ago you got that stain on my favorite chinos”, “You never make mashed potatoes the way I like them” and on and on. I’m sorry for her pain, but I think getting away from this baby-man was a good idea.
Almost tempted to get on AITA again! Not sure I can believe the story. Very reminiscent of a book I was discussing yesterday. “An English couple!” was the offending phrase.
ETA, a number of people on the Reddit thread make the point that her moving prep (very hush hush) and his obsession sounds like someone who has been abusing her in more ways that talk. She got out of town, across the ocean, no contact trail… Yeah she’s keeping this POS out of her life for a reason.
She didn’t just leave town, she left the damn continent. This woman would’ve fled to Saturn if she could. That’s telling.
Not only did he abuse her trust, but he also abuses the poor comma. It’s being asked to do the heavy lifting of periods in many of his sentences. That’s grounds for divorce right there. jk 😜
I have a feeling this post may set a record for comments. What a truly lovely story. Sabrina sounds like a rock star. Would not surprise me at all if she took counsel from this website.
“He’s too tall, blonde, and educated. Dear Lord, save her from this terrible fate.” Absolutely hilarious.
What a POS the dude is. Ends his tirade with “Sabrina, if this reaches you I still love you. Oh by the way Sabrina, F You!” Yeah dude, that will win her back.
I know this is 2 days old now, but your last sentence suddenly made me remember the voice mail message fuckwit left for me after I ‘d walked out of his flat, wasnt answering his calls, and had started divorce proceedings: “Listen you fucking idiot, are you coming back? Just call me.” How did I manage to resist such an alluring invitat invitation? 🙂
Wow! Anyone would think he’d been cheated on!
Supercalifragilisticschadenfreudelicious!
I wish I wish I wish I had done the same.
She is my shero.
His thinking is beyond unreal.
Where do we send them a baby gift?
❤️
NO VUN ESCAPES FROM STALAG 17! YOU MAYBE HAFF RELATIVES IN NORVAY?
I think our LW views marriage as a prison and she plum escaped! She ran so fast that the hounds couldn’t catch her! There’s obviously a LOT more that was happening in this marriage than we have been told by The Warden. My guess is the affair (and I bet there was more than this, there usually is) was the last straw. How could she find stuff on his phone if this was a one night stand? That means they were communicating back and forth. I admire this woman for just setting the line and that was that. When he crossed that line, she was gone and she’s gone to something that sounds pretty damn good. I hope she’s really happy with her Viking engineer and new baby and it all works out. My one concern would be that she may have jumped into that too fast, but….we’re all adults and sometimes it’s a calculated risk, especially for a woman who wants a child and time is running out.
And obviously The Warden needs to……GET OVER IT!!!!! Just grow up!!!
Wish this story was all of ours. Tracy would be planting a bigger garden, working on her yoga posses and doing stand up comedy at a local club to rave reviews. I mean this is the gold standard…the writer is an entitled, arrogant King of What he can’t have. Oh I wish we all had this courage.
Note of caution..don’t share Info with the friend of a cheater!!!
AND be careful of relatives who might share as well!
Is there no one to trust? Actually no not really. Anyone might turn. My one sister, a Chump herself could not believe the stories..and was all forgiveness on FB. Just because you are a Chump does not make you automatically savvy and strong, especially those who were left and had no choice..they are still in the throws of a holding on Chump. Assume they are not necessarily on your side. I’m sad to say this .
Mehitable
Wow. I just…wow. SMDH.
I’m so glad Reddit kicked this FW up one side and down the other. I guess in his crazy, narcissistic brain, this is some great romantic epic where he’s going to win in the end? Yeah, no, I don’t think so.
I need brain bleach after reading that creepy, yet at the same time incredibly tedious screed.
Loser of the century, this guy.
Just want to say, OHFFS — I always love your posts. 😂
Hey thanks! Likewise. 🩷
Holy Delusions Batman! This guy is extra.
In short, this is what narcissistic collapse looks like. The clear entitlement and rage that his very shrewd chump vanished and went NC.
Cheater is incandescent that his EX is completely out of his control and that he has no power over her anymore.
There isn’t remorse but plenty of rage-y blameshifting indignation as cheater continues to choke on chopium (cheater hopium)… he is scary AF though. Let’s hope the therapist is low key keeping tabs on him for mandated reporting in case he flies to Norway.
I figured I’d find this talked about here. I’m with a lot of the Redditbin that this fuckwit sounds very, very dangerous… He’s basically delusional. Making up stories about his ex being baby trapped and his friends “betraying” him and always deserved a second chance… Eek. I’m glad she ran away to another country.
I love the badass aspect of this story. I admire a Chump that had the clarity and resolve to act quietly and decisively. No whining, no “Pick Me Dance,” no giving FW a chance to lie, and justify with false DARVO. We all know her heart was broken and she felt betrayed. We can all understand her shock, but somehow she was strong and brave.
I wish more chumps had the option of a clean break like this and it saddens me that we don’t see more stories like this.
I know it’s not possible when there are children involved, but I wish this was the standard way of handling infidelity whenever possible.