He Still Works with His Affair Partner

Denver, you’re roommates. He’s living as if he’s single. I’d suggest booting his ass and finding a new roommate to share expenses.

The whole idea that you can make any relationship a “good” one by trying really hard and being committed to it (while hanging cute love phrases on the wall like “love is not giving up on each other”) is terribly flawed.

If you have a great partner who does annoying things (my subsequent husband has bought 7 butter dishes in the 10 years we have been together…CLs husband loves pinecone elves) you can work through annoyances, but sometimes people mistake stuff which belongs in the “DEALBREAKER” category for something less.

You have NOTHING to work with here.

There are a bunch of CN in the Denver-metro area. I am to the south, but more than willing to meet you downtown. Feel free to reach out to me for in person support: kokichithepig@gmail.com

Don’t assume he will always come back with the “it’s over” and “you’re the one” assurances. He could turn on a dime and leave YOU. Then where would you be? — with no power whatsoever, that’s where. You cannot trust him not to leave YOU, Denver. If it suits him, he will.

You cannot trust a demonstrably untrustworthy person. Protect yourself.

Your struggling to leave has more to do with your relationship with yourself than with him. He’s disrespected you and lied to you and you are still there? Maybe check out an ACA group and work on building self love. That is not love, you are being treated like a doormat. Sorry, hugs, you can do this.

Re: “the theories on why chumps stay”
For some reason, this line from that post–“You have to bludgeon hope with a fencepost and start operating with total lucidity.”–cut through all my defenses and into my chumpy brain. It was a phrase I repeated to myself often as I struggled to kick the hopium and put down the spackle.

Ask yourself, is this okay to you? Is this how you want to live the rest of your life? If it isn’t this woman it will be someone else.
He’s a loser.

Dear Confused and Broken,

I’ll bet you haven’t focused on self care in years, that you have trouble sleeping and your anxiety is through the roof. If you want to know whether cheating is genuinely a form of domestic abuse with physical effects, go to the doctor and ask that your cortisol levels be checked, then read up on what happens to the body from sustained high levels. Then think back on the past fourteen years and write down every single negative thing your bf has done and said to you to get you to this place. The following list includes things I learned while working as an advocate for DV survivors, online polls, CN, lists published on Reddit, forums for survivors of coercive and control and, of course, personal observations (please, everyone add their own red flags or cues of abuse):

Every dismissive gesture, every tantrum while driving, every time he yawned while you were talking about yourself or your feelings or interests, every little verbal putdown, eye roll in your direction, times he didn’t defend you in front of others, times he gawked at other women in front of you, lied to your face, raised his voice, touched you with anything other than love, made threatening gestures, waved his hands around while angry, accused you of things you hadn’t said or done or even slightly mischaracterized these things, smirked at your pain, threatened to harm himself or “die” due to vague causes if you left, stared blankly with dead eyes as you cried, pretended you were screaming when you had only been emphatic, criticized you “for your own good,” suggested you’re a social misfit, acted like you were “lucky to be with him,” future faked things he never followed through on, kept repeating behaviors that you’d asked him to stop, didn’t pull his weight around the house or financially, reminder you he was the greater money earner, responded to your complaints with long rhapsodies of self pity, peppered his daily speech with self pity to induce fear/obligation/guilt in you, made you feel afraid to ask him for something, ignored your sexual requests, made you feel like an object, made you feel inferior, questioned your intelligence, questioned your honesty, made you doubt your attractiveness, compared you to other people, talked about other women’s sexual attributes, slunk off to use porn, left you out of social events, acted like he wasn’t really with you at social events or in public, gave you negative feedback in a way that made it seem like he was rehearsing what he would say to others behind your back, walked out on a discussion or disagreement, wasn’t loving enough, wasn’t kind, acted cold and distant, withdrew affection, acted tense and “white-knuckled” for no reason you could discern and made your heart rate shoot up as if he might explode, acted chronically disappointed in you, only tells you what you do wrong when you ask him to change his behavior instead of responsibly and kindly setting boundaries like normal people do, flirted or went “gaga” over random females in front of you, suggested you were paranoid, questioned your sanity or stability or competence, accused you of “suffocating” or controlling him, brought up painful issues from your childhood or past in anger or in a critical way, suggested that your feelings towards his behavior are actually based on traumas from your past, told you you were “too sensitive,” suggested you lose or gain weight, made you doubt your femininity, masked an attack as a joke, winced or smirked at something you wore, pointed out a physical flaw with disgust or mockery or coldness, punished you with coldness or anger if you took time for yourself or went to see friends or family without him, refused to attend social events that were important to you, kept his social life separate from you and your social life or else “cultivated” and took over your friendships, flirted with or overly charmed your friends or coworkers, lied about you to others, shared private personal information you don’t want shared, mocked or criticized you in front of others, reminded you of your age or otherwise made you feel “old,” ignored you when you were upset, told you how attractive or cool or smart or fit or “young looking” other people think he is, acted like your “victim” after victimizing you, threw sudden scary cursing fits over minor inconveniences, gave you the silent treatment, interrupted you repeatedly, talked over you, seemed embarrassed if you talked in front of others, treated you more or less affectionately in front of others than he does at home, goes passive and blank and acts like your teenage son in front of others, frequently seemed bored or distracted at home, used work to avoid dealing with you at home, complained a lot, pushed you away during his mysterious “depressions,” cried or emoted a lot but was cold if you do the same, encouraged you to get drunk or criticized you for drinking, frequently drank too much, acted differently when drinking, used “violent” words like “push” or “shove” or “force” or “stab” to describe your behavior when you’re merely being nonviolently assertive, patronized or spoke down to you, acted “exasperated” as if you chronically wear on his patience, chatted on about trivial things when you were clearly suffering, seemed like he was building a “case” against you and accuses you of things you did more than a decade ago when he’s angry, “decontextualized” accusations or criticisms (talking about the time you yelled at him and leaving out the fact that he yelled first, etc.), seemed dissociated and distant during sex as if he were miles away or locked in fantasy, avoided you or became angry when you had health issues or had suffered personal loss, embarrassed you with sudden mood swings or anger in front of others, frequently seemed “checked out” and not emotionally present, frequently talked about food and bodily needs when there were far more important things to discuss, avoided deep emotional discussions, put you in a time box around his schedule, looked at the time a lot when your talking, refused to stop on road trips when you wanted to, frequently got impatient if you wanted to stop at a store or something that interested you while walking anywhere, picked fights or went into terrible mood swings before important events or on special occasions (“spoiling” behavior) or otherwise sabotaged events that are important to you or meaningful occasions for the relationship, shrugged and acted like he didn’t care when you threatened to leave or went into a diatribe of accusations…

That list could go on and on and on. Add your own cues and behaviors and write it all down.

I think in a healthy, equitable, loving relationship, someone would never see any of the major transgressions like physically threatening behavior, threats of self harm or cruel comparisons or attacks on personality, appearance, competence. At most they might see a few of the lesser behaviors once or twice in twenty years and it would usually have mitigating factors like their dog or parent just died or they hadn’t slept in 72 hours or had a reaction to medication. Very importantly, the isolated events and the mitigating circumstances would stand out in memory forever because of the novelty. A healthy person would quickly feel deep remorse for uncharacteristic transgression and wouldn’t be ready with a series of polished counter-charges. But if there have been serious transgressions or so many “lesser” or “mid level” transgressions that you lose track of when they happened and the frequent response to being held accountable is counter-accusations rather than remorse, it’s chronic abuse. If you frequently felt nervous, afraid, had trouble sleeping, consumed, irritable, numb, “dead inside,” and found yourself more and more socially isolated and disinterested in things you formerly loved, if you stopped taking care of yourself or exercising or following interests or hobbies; or if, whenever you’re doing something for yourself, you find yourself feeling a sense of dread that you shouldn’t be doing it and you should instead be attending to your partner– those are the effects of abuse. If your partner has somehow become the only person who can balm you wounds and trauma after they hurt you, then they’ve arranged things so that they’re playing “fireman” to the fire they themselves set. Classic abuse “protection racket” dynamics.

If it’s abuse, then the love we think we feel towards an abuser is not actually love but “captor bonding” and a reaction to being entrapped. It’s like having a “tiger by the tail” who will unleash negative consequences (violence, self harm, character assassination or financial ruin– something bad) if we let go. The threats, whether stated overtly or indicated covertly, are usually “bespoke,” meaning the abuser will tailor their threatening cues and behavior to the particular fears of the survivor, play on their sensitivities, etc. Whether the abuse ever becomes violent or not, when we’re boiled like frogs through a sort of chronic gesture warfare by abusers, it’s pretty much a hardwired human reaction to start groveling for amnesty by displaying more loyalty to the source of the threat. Because abusers are almost telepathic in sensing when their victims are starting to rebel, the captor bonding only “works” to inspire temporary mercy if it’s felt on a cellular level– meaning we have to believe the ruse ourselves. This is helped by the fact that abusers typically commit “perspecticide” over timee, tearing away at the victim’s world view and perspective on life, themselves and other people and gradually replacing it with the abuser’s twisted, nihilistic and hopeless world view.

According to veteran experts in DV and coercive control, most survivors of battering describe this kind of emotional abuse as the worst and most paralyzing aspect of DV even beyond physical assault. Most abusers also cheat and it’s finally being recognized as a component of coercive control and can increase the unbearable sense of suspense or threat that victims experience because– aside from risking sometimes deadly STDs, suggesting character assassination (as the abuser “triangulates” against the victim with APs which carries a potent threat of “social ruin”) and almost guaranteeing more financial abuse (considered a form of violence in clinical DV arenas)– cheating cues that the abuser– who may have shown a little bit of mercy when they still had “sexual use” for the victim– may now withdraw that mercy and become more punishing, cruel or dangerous upon finding a “sexual replacement.” Personally I’ve come to see DV as nothing more than a coercive or violent campaign of enforcement of one-sided monogamy and sexual double standards whereby the abuser can do whatever they want sexually and the victim is prevented from doing the same or even protesting. In other words, cheating is not only abuse but is built into the primary motive to abuse intimate partners. I could go on and on about how cheating addresses abusers’ root pathology because it can act to “dillute” abusers’ sense of pathological, infantile dependency on partners but that’s more skein-untangling. The first step to getting free of this torment is to accept that we’re victims of abuse in the first place.

The good news is that, as much as “captor bonding” feels like actual love, it fades rather quickly along with the sense of grief and loss once a survivor starts feeling genuinely safe from abuse. Feeling sad about loss of time. energy or missed opportunities might linger for awhile but, years later, survivors may feel less than nothing towards the former abuser and wonder what they ever saw in them. It doesn’t mean the survivor isn’t a deeply loving person, simply that abusers are essentially unlovable. That’s one of the reasons that NC is so critical to recovery since the tendency to captor bond will only fade once a survivor is fully out of the abuser’s orbit and out of their reach.

I wish you strength, safety, peace and a bright future filled with love and kindness moving forward.

I would tell you how ridiculous it sounds to even ask if this is salvageable–but I did the same. I was with my bf for 6 years when I found out he had been cheating the entire time. I broke up with him briefly, got back together and married him. Trust me. You. do. not. want. that. to. happen. I think some chumps are genuinely in love with these partners—but in my case—I know now it was not love. It was living with someone who has made you so small you are practically erased. You have no sense of self because his self is taking up everything. You need to remove yourself from that environment. It’s like when someone is kidnapped and after 10 years, they are walking around freely, with the kidnapper, and nobody says anything, so they just go along with it. Everyone else is wondering why they don’t leave—thinking it must not be that bad. It is that bad.

I never ever get tired of CLs Analysis and interpretations of the ways of us chumps. It is so predictable, crying over a man or woman who is using us for bait, for sex, for cooking, for money, for a house…whatever it is we are of use. I get so irritated and yell at the daily stories…I say, can’t you see what he/ she is doing? It is so very clear to me …NOW! But when I was of use, I believed I was loved. It was an ILLUSION. I had to believe I was loved, but I was not. No one who has 2 or 3 or more fish on the line can love. I was enabling my XHs sex/ porn addiction, his spending addiction, all his illnesses and entitlement….I supported him thinking he needed and loved me. But HE. DID. NOT LOVE. ME. I was of use. I’d tell this writer she is in the middle of a life time pick me dance and the music never stops. I’d never go back. Ever. Thank you CL for never getting tired of us chumps. I needed your kick in the pants to get Divorced and free.

My Ex couldn’t decide between me and the OW, so I decided for him.