He Cheated for ‘Validation’?

Hi Meghan,

I’m not a veteran on this forum but I’ve been here awhile and most regular posters can probably guess what I’m going to say. Which is… You know who else has clinical “abandonment issues”? Domestic batterers and serial killers. They also all have “attachment disorders,” poor dears.

Search as you may through the annals of forensic science and you’ll find not a single historical case of serial killer rehabilitation and almost no cases of batterer rehab. In fact the latter have about a 98.5% recidivism rate even with anger management therapy coupled with stiff prison sentences. Without the latter two interventions together, recidivism is about 100%.

I honestly don’t relish the idea of scaring people but some things– like crossing the street without looking or tangling with any level abuser– are statistically dangerous. Sure a lot of people might survive in spite of risks but then again many don’t. And when gambling with your life and future, it’s important to consider degree of risks– look before you cross that street. One risk is that abusers statistically don’t “get better” but worse over time so anything on that “spectrum” is already a bad bet even if it’s not on the level of Chris Watts (yet).

I’m kind of a skein untangler and have read a lot about abuser psychology, methods, MOs, backgrounds, etc. But because of my history working as an advocate for domestic violence survivors, I tend to untangle in the “run screaming” direction, not the usual pop psych coddling direction that’s over-represented on the web through “reconciliation” schemes and “sex addiction cure” hubs that CL often warns about and supposedly sex-pozzy minimizations of what are categorically sexually abusive behaviors (like cheating).

Even some of the pop-psych discussions about “narcissistic abuse” can be minimizing by default simply because there’s a turf war going on in which various pop psych gurus and mental health professionals are turning the newish and rather uncharted diagnostic label of “narcissism” into a cottage industry and trying to make their marks. But unfortunately by putting a sort of “brand label” on narcissistic abuse, there’s an implication it’s some kind of “special” or particular type of abuse that is somehow separate from plain old criminal abuse. Because of this, those promoting narcissism as a cause for abuse can fail to warn about the age-old trajectory of abuse. I think that’s partly because some of the same folks warning of narcissistic abuse are also subscribing to the idea that there are “cures” for it or, at the very least, simply don’t want to contradict and piss off their colleagues who try to market those supposed cures.

But “abandonment issues” that come with abuse, just like “attachment disorder” that comes with abuse, are very scary clinical red flags. On their own and separate from abuse they’re reportedly hard to address in therapy though there might be cause for sympathy. But once someone starts amassing a trail of victims, stick a fork in them, they’re cooked. That’s because once someone does real harm, they tend to remain hooked on their own self-exculpatory rationalization systems, something called “neutralization” in forensic psych (search “Denying the Darkness: Exploring the Discourses of Neutralization of Bundy, Gacy and Damner + MDPI” for a very clear take on what it is). In short, guilt is ugly and the worse the offenses that someone commits, the more unlikely it is for them to let go of excuses for it. And those excuses will invariably at victims’ expense, generating even more excuses to abuse and commit worse abuse on and on.

That’s all obviously by way of arguing that cheating is abuse– full stop. It’s a form of abuse in itself and requires officially recognized forms of abuse to facilitate, at the very least forms of coercive control (many of the behaviors you’ve been subjected to qualify) though also often official types of domestic violence such as assault, physical endangerment and financial abuse. And considering that coercive control (subviolent emotional abuse and control) is now officially recognized as the chief statistical predictor of eventual domestic murder even beyond a history of violent assault, it’s not a hyperbole to suggest that cheating can be followed by worse to come.

Once someone’s been identified as an abuser, the rest is kind of a game of roulette to figure out how much worse it can get because these individuals have baked in character issues. The one, limited exception to this might be the slightly increased rate of “monkey branching” by battered women who, if they were not in dire danger, might never have cheated on a partner. This likely happens because the justice system and social safety nets fail, thus victims facing this level of threat sometimes fall into the trap of relying on a bodyguard/new partner in order to make their harrowing escapes. It’s not even recommended in that situation since women who do this face a 50-fold increased risk of landing with another abuser (abusers not only like to play victim but love to play rescuer too). But all other cheating is abuse.

Like every abuser, yours came up with a demented blameshifting excuse to commit abuse against you and play victim-to-his-victim and, as usual, the excuse he drew also doubles nicely as a way of smearing your character, grossly violating your privacy and also threatening you with worse to come if he starts telling everyone you’re a “baby killer.”

What he did was to issue a fatwa against you– a preemptive warning of future post-separation abuse, ergo a message that you’d better not try to escape “or else.” This qualifies as standard coercive control and preemptive entrapment because, as you well know, we’re in an era where women branded as such face very real threats not only from social judgment or legal repercussions but also potential vigilante violence. He’s basically pointing a proverbial gun at your head and telling you he might let someone else pull the trigger — or like a Roman emperor poised to give the thumbs up or down as you run around the Colosseum dodging gladiators and alligators.

You’ve basically been put in a Roman circus which makes it hard to think straight. But I think you know from the timeline what the truth of his MO really is– that the reason he chose this moment to cheat/abuse was because you were pregnant, not because you decided to terminate. Pregnancy is the most statistically risky time for women because it’s when many abusers begin abusing or else dangerously escalate their abuse as the pregnancy progresses. This is why most fetal injury and death are due to domestic violence and pregnant women are at the highest risk of domestic murder.

Like most abusers, your hopefully soon-to-be-ex chose a moment when you were “over a barrel”– at your most vulnerable and potentially dependent on him and (very, very importantly) less likely to be able to react to abuse by leaving him and finding a better partner— to take his mask off and lower the boom. There’s a case to be made that most abusers are ferociously monogamous but just hypocritically so. According to growing research, domestic battering itself may largely be about enforcing one-sided monogamy– meaning, as CL puts it, “freedom for me but not for thee,” the operating credo of every batterer and coercive controller.

Speaking of which, please listen to Chump Lady’s most recent Tell Me How You’re Mighty podcast interview with Dr. Emma Katz, one of the current leading experts on coercive control who’s continuing the campaign to criminalize it begun by the late researcher and advocate Evan Stark who coined the term and the original clinical definition. The interview dives pretty deep into the “freedom for me but not thee” issue.

I think it’s wonderful that you’re a reader and I would recommend reading books by all the above authors (I’d also recommend The Batterer by researchers Donald Dutton and Susan Golant but with the caveat that Prof. Dutton turned out to be a creep and Golant is the real mind behind it but probably just needed a male beard to get published) and arming yourself with knowledge about what you’ve endured and why it’s critical to get support and safely break free of it. Reaching out here is a good step in that direction and I hope you stick around and keep gathering resolve, support and resources.

I know it doesn’t seem like it now and it sounds really weird to put it this way but this is actually kind of an exciting journey. Not thanks to an abuser but in spite of them and due to your own strength and smarts. When the worst of the trauma has passed and you are safe again, I can promise you will have learned things that are intrinsic not only to survival but also to basic life and happiness and can become incredible bonding points with other worthwhile people including a worthy future partner.