He Abandoned His Family and Acts Like Nothing Happened
Her ex is suddenly pleasant and acts like nothing happened. Is she losing her mind? Less than a year ago, he walked out on their family with no explanation after 30 years together.
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Hello Chump Lady,
It’s been one year since my husband moved out, about 11 months since D day, and 5 months divorced.
Do you have any stories of how FWs can normalize seemingly crazy behavior and can seem “not that bad”? Because I am a mess of confusion. Is leaving so you can figure out how to be happy a legit reason to end a marriage? Sometimes I think I am the only one who thinks my ex is a lying deceitful piece of crap.
I’ve been pretty much no contact since the divorce. But before that, in the few interactions I had with my wasband, he was nice and pleasant, acting like nothing had happened. It was bizarre.
He said our breakup was “the best for both of us”.
Also, ” you need someone better than me.” Also “You deserve to find someone who loves you.” And “I’m trying not to be an ass.”
The thing is, he is a “runaway husband” after 30 years of marriage. One random Saturday in the kitchen he said “I’m moving out.” A few days later he moved out unexpectedly while I was at work. (I came home and noticed the TV was missing. That’s how I realized something was wrong.) In keeping with the theme of him “trying not to be an ass” as he puts it, he said he thought it would be “easier for everyone that way” if he moved out while I wasn’t there. (You see how sensitive he was about it? His concern was for me! Eye roll) Apparently I am crazy for thinking that was a bitch move.
Three weeks after he left, he bought an “I love you forever and always ” necklace for somebody. That knowledge plus other things confirmed to me that he was having an affair. I found further evidence that he had a girlfriend but I am not sure exactly when it started (but he definitely had contact before he moved out). When I asked him if there was someone else, he twice denied having a girlfriend.
It sounds so sanitized when he talks about the reasons he left.
Some reasons: An explanation about “not being happy, having too much to do around the house, feeling like ‘just the handyman’, and the dog waking him up at night so he can’t sleep.” Also he “Can’t pretend we have a marriage anymore.” (It was news to me that we didn’t have a marriage anymore. Distance in our marriage? Sure. But no marriage whatsoever? News to me.) He said: “We are not on the same page.” And “I’m trying to figure out how to like myself.” and “I want to be happy again like i was 30 years ago.”
Our daughters are 25 and 23. At one point about 3 months after he left, he came over to the house to do taxes. He had not seen our younger daughter in 3 months (she still lives with me and was home but sleeping), but he left without even asking about her! At all!! Not a “tell her I said hi”, not a “where’s daughter?”
I think that’s weird. Am I weird? Am I overthinking?
When my daughter found out, my daughter actually said maybe SHE was overthinking it which made me sad. My daughters were just guessing what was going on in his head. He hardly communicated much.
He showed up 5 months after he left to my other daughter’s house to work on his car. (My daughter was sleeping because she works nights). He worked on his car with my daughter’s fiance but didn’t mention a word about not seeing them for 5 months. Acted like nothing happened. I think that’s weird. Am I wrong?
When he left me, he told me, his kids, and his mother “I wasn’t happy. I just needed to do this for me.” I don’t think anyone actually bought it, but yet no one felt able to call him out on his BS. It’s like we are all under his spell, or don’t want to make him mad or are afraid of losing the relationship altogether (his kids and mother, I know I’ve already lost the relationship).
The smooth talking, the “all this is normal”, “it is what it is”, drives me crazy! I just want to scream to the universe, “You are an asshole!”
“It is what it is” is one of his favorite expressions.
The victim card is also his standard go-to. (When I asked him if he was coming back, he said, “You have to understand, I’m really unhappy with myself in a lot of ways.”)
BUT BUT he was actually seriously abused as a child so I have excused most of his behavior due to that. So his unhappiness with himself may very well be legit.
I’m a helpless frozen puddle of passiveness in front of him, but afterwards when I’m alone, I’m like, “You’re not unhappy, you’re fucking someone else, you lying sack of shit! And you look happy to be rid of me. Stop lying.” But I can’t say a peep in front of him. His This Is All Very Normal attitude makes me doubt my thinking. Am I exaggerating that he’s a bad guy? Is this just a run of the mill divorce situation?
My daughters are angry at him for cheating on me but I think they also want to have a relationship with him. Finally about 9 months after he left he started talking to the kids again. When I ask them how they are doing, my youngest says it’s a little awkward with her dad but it is okay. My older daughter says she is mad at what her dad did but she still has her dad so in that way “nothing has changed”. It feels to me a little like, “it’s all for the best-ism”
It’s all so confusing and bizarre but my kids seem to have just moved on. (Maybe I taught them that.)
Signed,
Confused Skeptic and Exhausted Overthinker
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Dear Confused Skeptic and Exhausted Overthinker,
Oh yeah, this is the common mindfuck known as I Fail to Understand Your Hostility. I don’t know what you’re so worked up about there, Chump-o, but I’m glad one of us can be the adult.
It’s totally maddening. The problem isn’t what he did (bail), the problem is your reaction to it (grief, confusion, anger). The answer is to stop trying to untangle his skein and focus on radical acceptance:
He’s the sort of person who can casually abandon his family after 30 years.
His entitlement is so ingrained, so deep, so accepted, that he thinks his “happiness” is a complete answer.
Well OF COURSE! You’re obsolete! Services no longer needed! Do we need to call security?
You can’t understand it because you’re not a sociopath.
Okay, I don’t actually know what exact nut cluster this guy is in the DSM, but I’ll say it for the umpteenth time: normal people BOND. Abnormal people TRANSACT. To be this shallow and disconnected says everything about him and nothing about your lovability.
I’m not saying a person cannot end a long marriage, but most humans find breakups — even ones they want — painful. There’s a bond there to break. A guy that just goes poof one day never connected. You believed a comfortable fiction that he was bonded, based on an assumption that he was like other people. And that worked for him until it didn’t.
Is leaving so you can figure out how to be happy a legit reason to end a marriage?
There’s no jury. You don’t need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to leave someone. He can divorce you because he hates your haircut. But that would be obviously frivolous and reflect badly on him, so instead he’s gone sad sausage. Woe, he wasn’t happy! Surely you care about his happiness?
He knows how to be happy. He’s been happy at your expense for God knows how long, having an affair. The point is, he didn’t leave his marriage ethically. He cheated and abandoned.
But before that, in the few interactions I had with my wasband, he was nice and pleasant, acting like nothing had happened. It was bizarre.
Acting ‘pleasant’ after behaving unpleasantly is a deliberate strategy.
Who’s the bitter bunny here? Gosh, he just doesn’t understand where all this anger is coming from. Do you hate happiness?
It strikes you as bizarre because you expect that someone who left you after 30 years might feel a wee bit awkward and ashamed. Or even grief stricken. Greeting you with all the social niceties of the Maytag repairman is, yes, demented.
But how nice to have you off balance. All the better to manipulate you further.
In keeping with the theme of him “trying not to be an ass” as he puts it, he said he thought it would be “easier for everyone that way” if he moved out while I wasn’t there. (You see how sensitive he was about it? His concern was for me! Eye roll) Apparently I am crazy for thinking that was a bitch move.
He’s a coward. That’s what his behavior says. Don’t listen to his words. They’re completely incongruent with what he does. I’m abandoning our marriage but I’m being NICE about it!
When I asked him if there was someone else, he twice denied having a girlfriend.
He’s a coward.
but he left without even asking about her! At all!!
He’s a coward. And did I also mention — he’s a coward?
He worked on his car with my daughter’s fiance but didn’t mention a word about not seeing them for 5 months. Acted like nothing happened.
HE IS A COWARD.
Please, just call a thing a THING. Your ex is a coward. Overthinking isn’t necessary — bypass the pain and go directly to a conclusion: He is a Bad Person. Your Ex is a COWARD. Make a definitive pronouncement and drop the skein!
The smooth talking, the “all this is normal”, “it is what it is”, drives me crazy! I just want to scream to the universe, “You are an asshole!”
He is an asshole. You don’t need to shout it, you need to decide it. Blah blah happiness. Blah, blah he was abused. His abandonment of you is either acceptable to you or it isn’t. The person either deserves a place in your life or they don’t. I vote him off the island.
Gee, that’s awfully binary of you, Tracy.
If chucking your 30-year marriage for your fuckbuddy isn’t a deal breaker, I don’t know what is. He cannot smooth talk if you’re not there to listen to him. Total no contact. Showing up to do taxes or WTFever is him having a portal to your life. He wants out? Cast him OUT and quit asking questions or listening to his lame nattering.
Stop doubting yourself.
I’m a helpless frozen puddle of passiveness in front of him, but afterwards when I’m alone, I’m like, “You’re not unhappy, you’re fucking someone else, you lying sack of shit! And you look happy to be rid of me. Stop lying.” But I can’t say a peep in front of him.
Don’t be in front of him. If you shouted at him, he’d have the satisfaction of you losing your shit and him being able to be the smarmy adult in the room. It would have zero effect on him, except as kibbles of centrality. Don’t say a peep because he is DEAD TO YOU.
His This Is All Very Normal attitude makes me doubt my thinking. Am I exaggerating that he’s a bad guy? Is this just a run of the mill divorce situation?
If he dressed up as the Queen Mary would you curtsey? He has a delusion that he’s above reproach. You don’t have to share that delusion with him. Why are you doubting yourself? Only YOU decide what’s acceptable in your life and what’s not. A man who casually abandons you after 30 years of marriage and two children is not someone you want to make light chitchat with. He’s incredibly creepy. Who are you presenting evidence to? YOU ARE THE DECIDER.
Just because it’s not uncommon in the history of misogyny for men to callously discard women after they’re done using them doesn’t mean it isn’t WRONG. A “run of the mill” injustice is still unjust. This is YOUR divorce. No one gets to tell you how to feel about him.
My daughters are angry at him for cheating on me but I think they also want to have a relationship with him.
This is their cross to bear. Perhaps they can stare across a field as he changes his oil in their driveway.
The victim card is also his standard go-to. (When I asked him if he was coming back, he said, “You have to understand, I’m really unhappy with myself in a lot of ways.”)
Oh! He had a sad! You must understand.
No, you don’t have to understand. Leave that tangled skein and walk away. It is what it is — a fucking mess. Created by a cowardly, selfish goblin. You don’t know that guy. You probably never knew him.
Omg, did I write this? This one hits real close to home and is extremely relatable. Thank you! This is an excellent post!
I could have written this too!
Yes, I also did a double take. Between penchant for “it is what it is” and nighttime pet noises cited as the chief reason for exit affair, this could be my very own FW.
Yup. Change the gender from male FW to female FW, and add that she’s a bit more subtle than this FW, and you have my FW XW.
Why can’t we just be friends? (She asks)
Um, because you threatened and hurt me physically, mentally, and emotionally with your actions, which you admitted you decided on doing in cold-blood?😳
That’s why. These people, as Tracy has said, are too much further down the sociopathic spectrum for me. They’re not the people we thought they were.
Exit, stage right! As Snaglepuss used to say. We need to get away from these fuckwits, or risk further harm to ourselves. We’re too worthwhile to do that to ourselves, my fellow chumps.
I also liked where you said he had a sad.
The crazy drivel that these FWs spew would not be believable if not for us living through it in real time and sharing this stuff with each other. My serial cheater of 37 years who finally left because he fell in love with his “last chance at happiness” blames me for tearing our family apart by not agreeing to family vacations (without the side piece he has yet to marry) and all the family occasions we used to share. Why am I keeping the family apart ? Why am I so cruel to him? Last I checked, cruel was telling me on my actual birthday, he wanted to leave to explore a future with his AP. Run, don’t walk and don’t listen to his nonsense.
Do these people ever LISTEN to themselves? Rhetorical question, and I know the answer.
OMG! The FW was furious with me when I didn’t go on family vacation the summer we got divorced (after 25 years of marriage). He told the kids that I had made the vacation “very difficult” because he couldn’t bring the kayaks and bikes that I always brought with us. One of our kids has a disability and he even said at an end of year school meeting that if our daughter seemed anxious it was probably because I wasn’t going on vacation. He was fully capable of taking care of her, but angry that he wasn’t going to be able to do whatever he wanted because I wouldn’t be there to provide the 24/7 supervision she needs. It was further validation that I was of use to him, but not of value.
He wants to celebrate family occasions yet chose to make your birthday memorable by telling you he was leaving. Almost like he wanted to be sure you’d remember HIS big day (New start! New life!) forever. Blaming you for tearing the family apart is classic DARVO. As for the happy family holidays, I suspect he needs YOU present to make sure the kids will join him in his image management pretense. And if you give in and agree to family vacations/events, I wouldn’t be surprised if his AP unexpectedly appears.
I hope you can reframe your birthday as both the day you were born and the day you got a serial cheater FW out of your life.
At first, I was surprised at my fw’s complete and total inability to take responsibility for the affair and abandonment.
But when I sat down and thought about it, I realized that this was a core personality trait. In 10 years of marriage, I could count on one hand that number of times fw had ever apologized for anything, and even then it was only when there were witnesses, and it was a grudging “Ok fine BUT YOU WERE WRONG TOO” apology.
And then fw would find a way to continue doing whatever they pleased while just not doing that specific behavior, or make a greater effort to hide the behavior.
Confused, I wonder if you would have a similar revelation if you look at his track record.
It sounds like he exhibits traits of covert narcissism.
Yep my bet is when he rocks up to change the oil immediately prior to that or perhaps even planned afterwards are some sort of shenanigans. Its all about impression management or balancing the moral ledger. My ex is like this I find it particularly creepy as you never really know how depraved they actually are because their fakery is quite convincing (until you work it out) Ducking out with an affair partner starts to seem tame in comparison to what they are potentially capable of.
I find it helpful to remind myself FW never apologized, never initiated a discussion/solution and usually prioritized his family and friends
He obviously had some wonderful qualities (married 30 years) but I was never going to get an honest explanation for the affair. At least I was spared any blame shifting.
REMINDER – take advantage of these “timid forest creatures” and file for divorce while they’re baffled.
Confused, so sorry this happened and keeps happening. My ex did such horrible things he can have no contact at all with our child. I have more than 500 pages of evidence from him documenting financial thefts and more. I showed that evidence to a few key people, and they cut him out of their lives. Six years on, and he still emails them to complain that they are judging him and excluding him solely because of lies I told. One of them wrote back that they are judging him and excluding him because of what he did, not what I said.
Your FW also wants to sweep everything under the rug and pretend he didn’t do anything wrong. Sadly, it seems your daughters are doing the same, even though he ignored them for nine months. Going silent for months, then showing up while one daughter was asleep to use her tools and her fiance to fix his own car speaks volumes about what a selfish, entitled user he is. I wonder if his reappearance is related to her upcoming wedding and his desire to be there as father of the bride, at least in public, if not financially.
As for the “I love you forever and always ” necklace he bought three weeks after he left, me ex also had a “sole mate,” per emails he sent, along with tens of thousands of dollars. That person was followed by a series of “life partners” and others that crashed and burned. Still, it stings to hear they appear to be so devoted to someone else, even if those relationships are just as shallow as the one with you.
Keep reading the archives for comfort and insight. You’ll see more and more of his behavior. I also suggest reading both LACGAL and “Runaway Husbands.”
He’s an asshole and you don’t have to pretend otherwise.
No, you’re not wrong. It’s all extremely odd behaviour, a sure sign that he isn’t normal. So why even see him? You don’t have to continue to be passive, but otoh you don’t need to get in arguments with him about him being a lying liarface. He already knows he’s lying and he’s never going to admit it. Your task now is to become indifferent to his lies. Not that you should ever indicate you believe him, but if caught in a situation where you can’t possibly avoid him and he’s lying and pretending everything is fine, an eye roll and a sarcastic “Yeah, right.” are all you need to indicate your disdain. The most important thing, though, is not to be in those situations. Your kids are grown so there’s no custody and visitation to worry about. Why is he even coming to your house? Just hire somebody to do your taxes and anything else FW comes over on the pretext of doing. He’s really only there to mess with your head. Your kids can just arrange to see him somewhere else, not at your home.
Btw, lots of people are abused as children and don’t turn out this way. He is choosing to be this person, the one who runs away from his family without a second thought, cheats, lies and pretends everything he’s doing is okay. He will continue to do that, but he can’t do it in your presence. Draw a hard line there.
An abused childhood may in part explain this kind of behavior, but it doesn’t mean you need to accept it. You cannot fix it it, so you need to get away from it.
Exactly so.
I totally agree. For that matter, Ted Bundy had a truly horrifying childhood. Like the Coed killer and several other serial murderers, there’s evidence Bundy was repeatedly beaten and sexually abused by a psychopathic family member (grandfathers in Bundy’s and Kemper’s cases) and witnessed other family members getting the same treatment.
But, the thing is, not all former victims are “survivors” in the sense of emotional survival. Some end up emotionally and spiritually “undead” and, like poltergeists, zombies or vampires, go around tormenting the living and subjecting others to the worst of what was done to themselves or worse. You can feel sorry for the tormented children they once were while feeling zero for the monstrous adults they became (and also not pulling a single punch when meting out consequences).
“….but afterwards when I’m alone, I’m like, “You’re not unhappy, you’re fucking someone else, you lying sack of shit! And you look happy to be rid of me. Stop lying.”
THIS is the reality, please listen to your gut saying these things when you are alone.
I learned in this whole awful process that my gut senses are FAR smarter and more accurate than my rational mind. My case was similar in that my ex’s core personality took years, separated then divorced to see. His mask being a good guy was very, very slick. But my gut knew long before I could articulate it.
It’s all about image management and attempting to control the narrative. If he’s overtly cruel, it would be too obvious who the villain is. My own ex FW was passive aggressive and tried to sew seeds that he was “concerned” or some sort of “can you believe what she said?” (while taking anything I said during this traumatic time out of context if he could – so the lie was more believable – to try to make me the bad guy). There is a special sort of insidiousness that exists with the smooth talking, I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m such a nice guy sort of FW. Two can play at that game, but in reverse. Keep him at the furthest distance you can, ban him from your space, no/minimal contact and all of that – and give him a little dose of that silent and non-violent “well surely you can understand that you’re not welcome here” to match his “I fail to understand your hostility” bullshit. You know he’s an asshole, and frankly that’s all that matters. Your kids will come to see his lack of substance and connection in time. No matter what picture he tries to paint, the truth always has a way of surfacing.
Ugh FW narcopath tried to pull this exact same playbook on me! claiming he was going moving out due to being unhappy and said some of those exact same lines about me finding someone to love me.
What FW was trying to do was blameshift EVERYTHING to me and hide the real reason for our divorce – his secret double life of porn and escorts plus pregnant AP!
Within a few days of this mindf**k I started to find evidence showed to friends and soon got a PI. I wasn’t going to be blamed and smeared by a sniveling coward POS and above all I learned from my MIL’s example to never be passive or trusting when divorcing a FW.
OP please do not model passivity and tolerating abuse to your daughters. He’s busy hiding assets as well as the AP and busy smearing you, plus whatever else. Start digging to help you anchor your sanity. In the early days having video, screenshots, bank statements to look at helped me accept it’s not a bad dream and helped me counter the mindf**k. I wasn’t going crazy like he says.
I’m so angry on your behalf at the manipulation and gaslighting your FW is getting away with!
Treating what they do as all la-dee-dah normal also stinks of a strategy to pave their ways to return in case their juvenile adventures don’t work out and they want to “return” to the comforts of home and be loved. See, if you never say “sorry,” no one can be mad at you.
I guess that’s the one thing I see differently regarding whether abusers “bond” with victims. They do in a sense but not in any way that benefits their victims. It’s more like having a demented, hairy, two hundred pound baby raging for their diapers to be changed because former partners are sort of like parent figures to these stunted freaks. At best they’re like entitled teens flying the coop who expect to be able to move back to their old rooms, raid the fridge, have “mom” coddle them and do their laundry again in case their unrealistic plans to, say, become rock stars or billionaires don’t quite work out.
If you need validation, I’m happy to give it to you: Your ex is a freak and his behavior is insane… literally.
I grew up with disordered people, dated more disordered people, and got roped into a cult in my 20s. So unfortunately I’m something of an expert on people like this. You have to understand folks like your ex are disordered. Brain scans document they often have brain abnormalities. They’re not playing with a full deck. You will never get them to feel bad or take responsibility for anything, because they don’t live in reality with the rest of us. They’re incapable. This is science.
The only way to heal from these freaks is to go completely no contact. Do you have everything you need from him after the divorce? Don’t collaborate on taxes going forward. Don’t invite him to family events. (He fired himself from that role.) Certainly, don’t invite him to your house anymore.
If you need info from him, send a text and stick to business, no discussions about feelings or the past. If he tries to goad you, don’t reply. Once all business between you is concluded, block him.
He’s a horrible person and a delusional freak. His opinions and “validation” are as worthless as the rest of him.
Would you let someone with severe dementia do your taxes? Same thing
Regarding the childhood abuse, I have two things to say.
One is plenty of abused kids don’t grow up to be covert narcissist abusive cheating POS so stop making excuses for your FW. Been there done that I even tried to get him a brain MRI 🤦
Two, is I got yet another shock of my life when I upset with MIL about how FW living in poverty as a child made him this way recounting specific stories from a near 30 year marriage. Incensed she refuted several, FW had grossly exaggerated his childhood hardships for attention and sympathy. In therapy we examined FW pathological lying and he’d been lying since the beginning in smaller ways. He lies always to gain sympathy or impression manage. A covert narcissist.
So I’d take FW account of abuse with a boulder of salt.
Why are these FWs so eerily alike? Do they have one hive mind that rules them all? My story is so similar. FW announces he’s unhappy after 30 years of marriage, and moreover, he tells me I’ve never been happy in our marriage. News to me! Flash forward through 1.5 years of devaluing, DARVO, gaslighting, lies upon lies.
Finally when I Miss Marple my way to the truth about his AP, he still refuses to utter the words divorce or separation. He insists that holidays will be normal going forward. He says we will all travel as a family, but he’ll never travel with just me again.
He tells me I’m the asshole for not empathizing with his poor AP (her friends are judging her, she’s a good person, etc). He bullies me to stay silent, telling me I am vindictive. He had included our adult children in the deception, bringing AP to events they attended, giving them gifts she bought for them…she friended them on social media. So naturally, when they find out the full extent of his double life (which they both strongly suspected because he dropped a shit-ton of 12-year-old-level clues), they are furious and go no contact immediately. Guess whose fault that is? Yep, mine. Because if I’d just kept quiet, he would still be the supreme god of our family and a beloved pillar of our community.
In my darkest days, I wondered if he was planning my demise. Because I was the only thing standing between a shiny new future with AP and the current mess he’d made. If I conveniently vanished before I told anyone what he’d done, he could have continued to be worshipped by all. I read a lot of thrillers/mysteries LOL
And on D-day, FW’s overarching theme? His happiness. He deserves to be happy, he explains to me as if to a toddler. I have been a bad romantic partner and therefore I cannot make him happy. SHE does. She excites him. He NEEDS to be excited. This is all delivered in serious, rational tones. Meanwhile, I’m looking around the room for cameras. Are we on some bizarre reality show? It’s surreal.
Chumps, we can’t make this shit up. These FWs are beyond delusional. It really is creepy how they transform seemingly overnight. I bet if they had brain scans we would see they all are missing some huge, crucial section of the brain that makes humans able to empathize and feel shame/remorse/humility.
I am nearly a year out from D-day and I’m doing really well. It’s been the worst year of my life but I’m here to tell you it does get better. Tracy and this community are a big reason why. I’m also grateful in a way that my children had even more evidence than I did about what their father had done. It would be much harder for me to navigate this if it was just my word against his.
Stay mighty, everyone!
I’ve written before that my FW narcopath was considering a fatal accident for me in addition to calling divorce lawyers years before D day #2. How far he and main AP escort got exactly in the planning, I’ll never know.
At first I was so chumpy I thought the idea was outrageous, but when lawyers and therapists didn’t laugh at me after I laid out the circumstantial evidence… my blood ran cold! It was one of the saddest and darkest days of my life. Then the animal rage or self preservation took over and it powered my determination to escape.
But for the grace of God, I’d be six feet under.
RIP Shannon Watts, Lacey Peterson, Jennifer Dulos and many others.
And Lisa Sellers (my childhood friend, murdered ten years ago by the piece of shit who was her partner).
And Ana Walshe.
I think it’s probably common to wonder if these sort of FWs were planning to knock us off. When you start putting the story together of all their decades of bs. The weird I thought vacant looks ex used to give me i now look back and wonder if he was planning something. Their obvious fakery at appearing normal but no one else seems to realise (but we didnt so why would they), who would question them. I cant stand listening to my ex’s weird fake voices (when he picks up our son, he calls out a cutesy name to him which i used to think meant he was a good dad, but now blergh) as he tries to impersonate a human. Even the way he moves just seems rehearsed. So gross.
If brain scans showed more than generalized “changes” or “differences” in brain structures (which could be from any number of causes and don’t consistently manifest as criminality or lack of empathy in everyone with these structural anomalies) and actually expressed the truth of human character, I think what we’d see is that some critical but paper-thin shield of civility and capacity for enduring love and loyalty that separates humans from our rapey ape ancestors has “broken down” in abusers.
You could say they’re “de-evolved” except human evolution isn’t “teleological”– meaning programmed to necessarily improve. In any case, I think all abusers become classically ape-like in their behavior and mentality, even the ability to deceive and conceal their predatory intent. The only difference a bigger human brain makes is the ability to rationalize it all.
Personally I suspect this “monkey-fication” is a result of being raised in FOO environments that were brutally ruled by the “laws of the jungle” like “might makes right” and the weak are destroyed, etc. This kind of toxic, traumatic role modeling and socialization may even have begun before birth since domestic abuse tends to spike during victims’ pregnancies and fetuses have been shown to react to all of it, showing lasting differences in immune response and possibly even brain functioning and structure.
I guess the reassuring thing about our species is that not even the majority of people raise this way end up as dangerous abusers but some definitely do. Domestic violence is also known to commonly cause physical injury to fetuses and literal brain injury. For instance, I once worked with a guy who had a visible dent on his forehead that was apparently from one of the times his professor father beat his mother when she was pregnant with him.
Whether due to closed prenatal head injury and/or being drown in cortisol and adrenaline from inception (the placenta does not filter out mom’s stress hormones) or the addition of other factors, the guy was a classic sociopath who was a nightmare to work with and destructive to the entire company. I also saw evidence that he was physically abusive to dating partners.
We didn’t have to wait too long for him to overstep and do something unbelievable enough to justify getting him fired. Probably because the other people who wanted him gone were too powerful to mess with and I looked like an easier target, he literally spent the next year trying to wreck my career. I was apparently Moby Dick to his crazed Captain Ahab.
From what I understand, he’s dead now which is no surprise to me because the guy was what my mother called a “walking abortion.” All his bs worked pretty well for awhile in terms of moderate career success but things eventually caught up to him and I think he died of a heroin overdose. Anyway, the reason I learned about his tragic background was because I sort of grilled him about it once I realized how toxic he was. He simply couldn’t resist the chance to throw a self pity party and wax romantically tragic for effect. But, as I learned, just because someone can describe the things that turned them into monsters and genuinely made them miserable human beings doesn’t mean they can be fixed or ever redeem themselves.
Can he pop over whenever he pleases? If so, I would suggest that you change the locks and focus on boundaries. My sense is that this guy hasn’t felt many consequences of his behavior, so, for him, thing are going quite well indeed.
Dear Confused,
There is a reason we call them Fuckwits. You have now found out why. I got the same rude awakening myself, and it sucks. I am sorry.
The thing about disordered thinking is that there is rarely the accompanied self-awareness that the thinking and associated actions are in fact wrong/immoral/unethical/illegal. There are some mental gymnastics-why doing such a thing is actually ok and perfectly acceptable (never you mind that there is a legally binding contract, vows taken in front of the federal government and Jesus, etc.)
Playing it off is just another rationalization and way to escape accountability. We are used to believing that those people are honest and have our genuine best interests at heart-“love be like that.” It turned out that no, no they didn’t. It’s hard to break yourself of that line of thinking. It will come with time. The logic turned out to be flimsy, the decision making turned out to be self-centered and impulsive. We are not worse or less valuable people as a result. Nor do we have to buy into their bullshit anymore-in fact it is best if you dismiss it outright. You are halfway there-you recognize how poor the logic was that said it was completely OK to just up and move his (and your) things out while you were out of the house.
Part of the mindfuck is that they are trying to get your buy-in so really, this was all your idea/you are ok with it! Mine couched the whole thing as “we grew apart.” She was quite gobsmacked when I asked if she thought that allocating all of her time and energy to a relationship outside of the “marriage” might have had anything to do with that.
You and I have had the same sort of challenges in our lives-we picked “right” over “easy” when presented with that same choice.
It is still early for you(I am not too much further down the road than you are.) You would do well to start to objectively examine the messages you got from the idiot over the years and work toward dismissing them one by one. What happened is not your fault. None of us were perfect partners. That said there was an ethical way to end things that was not observed-at least before the actual betrayal happened.
He is no longer your problem. Let him self-destruct.
Continue Picking You.
Have a Mighty Monday!
Very similar story here – It amazes me how they normalize/justify their actions!! He left the house after 27 years of marriage..we had done about 2 years of wreckonciliation after several DDays with the same affair partner (also married). I should have bailed way sooner! After he left 1.5 years ago, I got an apology that said he was he has a “bad moral compass” and “we could stay together and be happy enough but neither of us should settle for happy enough” and “you deserve someone who loves you better”. All while declaring he was not in contact with the AP. We are no contact; grey rock via text as needed and I am moving forward. For the past year and half I have confirmation that he has been still seeing his married AP on/off; which is no surprise to me. However our 3 adult children – 26,24,22 (who know why we split and that he was in affair) believe that he is no longer involved with AP and they feel sorry for him cause he is alone. He sees them occassionally but our divorce is never discussed. I am so tempted to tell them what I know so they understand he is continuing to lie to them and sneak around with a married woman (bad character) but I don’t want to cause them any more pain – they have already been through enough…so tough to sit back and watch this play out – Would love any advice!
Please tell your adult children. Covering for the cheater makes YOU a liar
Tell your adult children. Do you enjoy being lied to? By commission or omission?
I’m pasting here a good summary of the pathological lying we read about on CL:
a pathological liar lies more deliberately for personal gain (attention, status, control) and is often manipulative, lacking guilt, and sometimes unable to distinguish lies from reality, with their behavior linked to personality disorders like narcissism or antisocial personality disorder
The problem here is CONTACT with A MIND blender👨🍳 where you should be ABSOLUTELY NO CONTACT so you can detox and stop the fawning in front of this abuser. These PROFESSIONAL LIARS keep the love of a Chump under their caps and have an easy job manipulating the story in which ever direction they please. With years and years of cheating, they reach the highest level( like a gamer,and it is a game to them) a liar can reach and have numbed themselves along with any conscience they MAY have had. I am sick to death of how I blamed all my husband’s abuse of ME on his rotten childhood. Look up Dr Peter Selerno and see that plenty of us have had rotten childhoods and don’t use a mind blender and abuse to unhinged the people they love. Abandonment is an ABSOLUTE NO CONTACT Situation. There is no coming back from that. Never.
Yup, I blamed my STBX’s behavior on his still loving his late wife and feeling guilty about loving me, since what they shared was so special, their love so amazing. Jeez, what a total Chump I was: I buy spackle by the hundred pound barrel. Anyway, the real truth is that he told me he can’t even remember what she looks like, and the day she died, while her body was still in the house, he was in the garage, hugging and comforting her friend and wondering if said friend would let him kiss her.
Principledlife! It is incredible the stories I sucked in, spackled with thick white paste and turned myself into a Savior of a very disturbed cheater, I mean deeply disturbed. I think as chumps we spackle so well because as they were cheating ( my 2 husband’s did so for at least 3 to 4 years each) as they were cheating, their behaviors became so unaccountable and unacceptable, I had to make up missionary stories to make it all seem NORMAL.so abnormally like mean, raging, disappearing, bread crumbling, future faking, hot cold, …you know..it all became OK because of…fill in the blanks on childhood trauma or crazy Ex, or dead spouse..So while we are spackling, we spackled the lies in there too and made ourselves the cake of the month. Looking back I can see clearly now, it was a dance that works so so well for the cheater and zero for the Chump, zero. I often can’t believe who I was.
Hugs to you, 2xchump. I think part of it is that every few days it is one step lower, so that it occurs slowly over time. A one-step lower increment is small and you (I) got used to it. Problem is, over time, you can descend all the way to hell.
And(( hugs))to you principled life- same as how.do you eat an elephant 🐘…one bite at a time…you do have to know when you’ve had enough. Reaching your Chump bottom or fill of hell or elephant !
That’s horrifying.
OMG. With the body still in the house?? Ooohhh noooooo. That’s scary.
Some cheaters already have a person waiting until the spouse dies and then wait a “decent” amount of time…then marry. I also know a man who married his wife’s hospice nurse. Think on that
Confused,
Your ex’s behavior is such a classic example of psychopathy that, for his novel Catch 22, Joseph Heller created the infamous character of Aarfy Aardvark (as well as Milo Minderbinder) as an expression of how the chaos of war can bring the psychopaths among us to “full flower.”
I think it’s no accident that Heller made Aarfy a very familiar, banal type of character, someone who might, in civilian life, be written off as the imperturbably peppy if slightly irritating but otherwise “harmless” social climber you know from work or the tennis club. The point is to make people question what others are capable of given opportunity and protection from consequences. Aarfy also exists for the protagonist Yossarian to react to as an expression of how crazy-making, infuriating and downright dangerous it is to deal with someone who can rationalize any atrocity, is accountable for nothing and has no remorse.
Spoiler: Though the original black comedy version of the film has some disturbing scenes, by far the most chilling is when Yossarian confronts Aarfy after nearly tripping over the mangled corpse of a little girl that Aarfy has just raped and thrown out a window.
Aarfy: I only raped her once.
Yossarian: You killed her.
Aarfy: Well I had to do that after I raped her. I couldn’t very well let her go around saying bad things about me, could I?
Yossarian: Well, what the hell did you have to touch her at all for, you dumb bastard! Why didn’t you get some girl off the streets?
Aarfy: Not me. I never paid for it in my life.
Yossarian: Aarfy, are you insane? They’re gonna throw you in jail. You just killed a girl. You threw her out the window. She’s lying out there in the street!
Aarfy: She has no right to be there, you know. It’s after curfew.
In the scene, there is a brief moment when, for the first time, a flutter of fear crosses Aarfy’s typically placid face as the MPs stomp up the stairs of the hotel but instead of arresting Aarfy, the MPs arrest Yossarian. This is because the other chilling thing Heller meant to express with the character of Aarfy is that, not only does the chaos of war bring out the full grisly potential of psychopaths, it’s also where they thrive and often get away with it.
So of course this glimpse of the depths of human depravity you’ve endured– even if it didn’t quite manifest as the ultimate lethal expression of psychopathy– has driven you nearly mad. The point of these characters and scenes in the book and film is that watching psychopaths prevail and thrive nearly drives Yossarian out of his mind.
.
And no wonder you, your ex-mother-in-law and daughters are playing passive possum towards your ex and are, as you put it, afraid to “make him mad”: because you’re basically the “head on the pike” giving a little clue of how your ex treats “subjects” he has power over who “displease” him. He can step over their broken, bleeding souls like they don’t exist so it’s really just a tiny leap to imagine him walking over broken bodies.
In any case, you’ve all been given a terrifying hint of what your ex may be capable of given the right time and place and a chance to get away with. This is because the ancient risk management ganglia at the bases of all our skulls deal in the pure, cold logic of probability, don’t gamble with danger and simply factor that it’s very unwise to put anything past someone who can turn empathy on and off like an app.
Your ex is basically Aarfy Aardvark. Whether or not he has yet “manifested” his full potential as a psychopath remains to be seen but, in the back of your mind, you must consider the possibility that there are things he’s done that you cannot fathom simply because there seems to be nothing in his character to stop him. So the sooner you can get that blood-freezing freak fully out of your orbit and bar his return (because, when this affair crashes and burns, he will show up like a bad penny expecting cake), the sooner your understandably rattled and terrified intuition will start to thaw and turn off the screaming alarms and flashing red lights. With time and distance, your “gut” is going to understand this all clearly in hindsight and you’ll be relieved to have broken all association with such a walking disaster.
This is what my therapist warned me about. My Ex coming back, sucking me in and doing more harm. I did fawn also and was so afraid because he is armed. But there is no other way but out 100% No contact
I’ve never read Catch 22 but now it’s on my list. I have often thought “ugh the banality of evil” in association with FW for example when driving past one of the brothels he frequented and recalling the video of that short overweight balding creature sneaking there from work with his secret bottle of viagra excited by the low rent escorts flattery.
perhaps I should start calling FW narcopath Aardvark 🤔
The original film is so faithful to the book that you can pretty much either read or view and have a similar experience.
I think actor Charles Grodin may have even advanced and improved Heller’s vision of the Aardvark character. You get the feeling Grodin had first hand experience with characters like this and hated them so much he had to expose the type as a public service.
Because you could never trust an actual rapist to create such a realistically repulsive depiction of a rapist, I wasn’t that surprised to learn that, for the last twenty years of his life, Grodin dedicated himself to a social justice nonprofit called Hour Children which was dedicated to getting wrongly convicted women– particularly women of color convicted for killing their abusers– released from prison.
I have to re-read Catch 22 – I read it pre-FW, but the parallels you draw between these untruths and their untruths are eerie. [Insert some quote regarding love and war here]
Hi Overthinker:
I doubt there is a person here who did not overthink their partner and relationship after Dday. When someone we love does something unthinkable and cruel, something we could never in a million years imagine doing, it is natural to try to figure out why. But sometimes there is just no why. Why would someone put a living animal in a blender, turn it on, and post the video to Youtube? There is no why that a normal person could understand.
After my husband announced he wanted a divorce, I tried to talk to him about a settlement. I have a complicated medical history and need to maintain good insurance. He told me, his current wife, sitting on the marital sofa, in our marital home, that he was remarrying and the new Mrs. needed the insurance. He seemed genuinely surprised that I was not happy for him. Then he started chirping happily on the phone to everyone that he was getting remarried.
Your husband is not an earthling. He is from the planet Dicktopia, where it is always sunny, everything revolves around him, everyone adores him, and his world-famous manly parts have their own zip code and podcast and will be up for knighthood soon. Your lack of joy in his success is a capital crime in Dicktopia.
That makes as much sense as anything you are likely to hear. I am sorry you are going through this, my dear fellow earthling. We all know you are the sane one, and have responded in exactly the manner than a sane, loving earthling responds. Your ex is just not from around here.
He isn’t a runaway husband. He was never there in the first place.
Close to 100% of heterosexual marriages consist of women giving, men taking, and WOMEN PRETENDING THEY HAVE A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP.
I’m not a sociologist but I have been alive long enough (and on this website enough) to die on this hill.
100% what the radical feminists say on reddit, and true about 80% of the time IMHO
I just keep posting this song over and over because I think it’s a bit of evidence that what you say is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvU4xWsN7-A
It’s also hopeful because it looks like a lot of young women are determined not to join the generational parade of misery. If you look up shorts on concert footage, every live performance of the song involves entire theater audiences around the world singing every word in perfect unison. It got to the point where the singer/songwriter became a kind of choral conductor. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qMTkyCLTWK0
Wow. Thank you for that — I hadn’t heard of Paris Paloma. One to add to the playlist.
Years ago I read (can’t remember the context) an ancedote about a couple who went into therapy because at one night at dinner with the husband’s boss, the wife absent-mindedly reached over and started cutting up the meat on hubby’s plate, which was what she always did at home “because he works so hard”…
That story is hilarious. Betting the husband actually shamed his wife over it to boot.
Though this song is about three years old, I hadn’t heard of Paloma either (nor her pal and fellow anti-patriarchal alt rocker Sofia Isella) because– big surprise– commercial radio won’t touch them in the US and Youtube won’t SEO them unless you click on the same artists every single day. So it was my young adult kids who shared the songs.
I don’t have time to weed through cultural trends myself because it feels like digging through horseshit to find a pony. I love music but the canned, idiotic commercial crap out there seems worse than ever and sometimes makes me despair of humanity.
As always, #notallmen, but I would be remiss if I didn’t admit to seeing so much of this everywhere I look. For the givers, it almost seems safer to not tie yourself to anyone in marriage. There is a gender bias though because of legacy issues – we are used to seeing this dynamic play out generationally, and therefore it is just considered within the realm of normalcy. We have certainly codified and/or glorified it on the whole – see: sitcoms with the juvenile husband and long-suffering wife (although how this isn’t more of a gut punch to women, and even men being portrayed so immature and boorishly is beyond me). Even on a basic biological level, with us as still part of the larger animal kingdom, there is a certain level of acceptance that it’s just the way it is. We all serve as examples for our children, and maybe that is just something we need to see more of – how to be equal partners and not putting up with lopsided bullshit in our relationships.
Yep my FW is this sort of weirdo. This time last year my daughter were on holiday and my neighbour messaged to say “your ex is standing in your front yard with a whipper snipper”. Just doing a bit of a tidy up 4 years post separation/no contact (except grey rock text about our child) whilst our son sat in his car half the day. Absolute weirdos the lot of them.
I’d be looking into security cameras if not a restraining order if I were in your shoes. It’s beyond just weird and probably hoovering or image management.
This sounds very much like my ex. He had Bern having an emotional affair and attempting to date other women. After 29 years together.
Although he blamed me for all these years of being unhappy and claimed I forced him to marry me, during serration and divorce he acted like nothing happened.
He was Mr friendly and playing the nice guy. I was falling apart.
Wow. No, this isn’t normal. This is big time gaslighting and impression management.
I hope Confused goes no contact with him, or as low contact as possible, and gets an excellent settlement.
Dear Confused Sceptic and Exhausted Overthinker… I learned the word “mindf*ckery” here… no surprise really and your ex is gifting you a complete mindf*ck. It so messes with your head, ah? One thing that helped me alot was this quote I found here from eight years ago. Jodi Lynch posted it.
“You can spend minutes, days, hours, weeks, or even months over-analyzing a situation, trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened … or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and move the fuck on.”
~ Tupac Shakur ~
Nothing like a well-placed f-word to make a sentence kick ass.
And help us to kick ass.
X
Needed to read this tonight. received an email from FW claiming his regret for his immaturity and ended it so considerately with ‘i don’t need your acknowledgement’. i’ve not replied because i learned no contact from the blog! but i’m shaken to see the proof in writing of his entitlement, arrogance and non-accountability. wow. just wow. i actually tried to read between the lines but this blog helps me remember there is nothing there for me. he’s a cowardly goblin who created an effing mess. somebody he wants to impress must have noticed his mess or why would he be trying to check a box by sending his regrets to me? it’s been 2 years since he left and divorce was a nightmare but it’s final.
It’s so ‘nice’ of him not to need my acknowledgment though right?
If he doesn’t “need your acknowledgment”, why did he email you? Never mind, I’m trying to untangle the skein. And there’s no point in that.
You were so right not to reply.
As difficult as this was to read, all of the cards are on the table so to speak. There is nothing hidden from the betrayed. Her agency is owned and she has all of the information needed to make appropriate choices for her own well being. That being said it’s still a process to disengage in most cases. I consider myself as expert as my process took ten years.
I had no idea that Cheaty McLiarface was actively mouring the loss of contact with the OW when she married and moved out of state. I believed that they were “just friends”. I experienced his grief as a whiplash of conflicting emotions and behaviors. One day treated with disdain and contempt. The next being given a gift or taken on a romantic trip. His theft of my agency remains the greatest injury he ever inflicted.
I am the Author of this post. Thank you for the comments! They are very helpful. When I read what CL and CN write, so many things resonate.
I felt like something broke in me when he told me he was moving out. I think it might have been the moment people talk about when they say “the mask dropped”. It was like my last remaining hope that he would be the husband that I always wanted ended suddenly in that moment.
I quickly obtained a lawyer. I filed for divorce 4 months after he left. He was deep in his “love bubble” with his AP. Because he was so excited about his new life, he was agreeable during the settlement process. His password for his brand spanking new internet service at his brand sparkling new apartment was literally #mynewlife. Dickhead. Anyways, I got a decent settlement, thank God. Signed, No longer married to a Selfish Coward Goblin.