How Do I Stop Protecting Her Image?
In the face of evidence that she doesn’t care, he finds himself unable to stop protecting her image and believing she’s still a “good person”.
***
Dear Chump Lady,
I have been reading your work, especially Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life, and honestly, it has been one of the only things keeping me grounded.
I was in a relationship where I gave everything — my trust, my home, my future, my patience. Yet, I kept trying to understand, explain, defend, and forgive behavior that hurt me deeply. There was secrecy, comparison, emotional distance, and what felt like a complete discard.
Even after everything, I still find myself wanting to protect her image more than I protect myself.
The hardest part is that I went through almost all of it alone.
I do not have a father, and I did not want to burden my mother. I had no elder or family member to lean on. Only a few close friends knew what was happening. So while she seemed to move on and remain unaffected, I was left carrying all the confusion, grief, shame, and questions by myself.
Sometimes I feel angry. Sometimes I feel broken. And sometimes I still wonder if I somehow caused this, or if I am exaggerating because I cannot understand how someone could share my home, my life, and then become so cold.
Your words about not being the defense attorney for the person who hurt you hit me very hard. I think I have spent years trying to prove that she was secretly good, secretly sorry, secretly loyal — because accepting what happened feels unbearable.
I think what I want to ask is this:
How do you stop protecting the image of someone who never protected you?
And how do you begin to trust your own reality again when you had to survive it all alone? I feel like I am scared of my own kindness now..
Thank you for writing the truth so directly. Even when it hurts, it has made me feel less crazy and less alone.
Sincerely,
Tej
***
Dear Tej,
You have a classic Trust That They Suck problem.
Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, you don’t want to accept that she sucks.
I think I have spent years trying to prove that she was secretly good, secretly sorry, secretly loyal — because accepting what happened feels unbearable.
It’s bearable. A few bazillion of us here have borne it. You can too.
What feels unbearable is that you were in a lopsided relationship. Your love and investment weren’t reciprocated, and that feels like a mortifying waste. As if you weren’t reading the room.
Maybe you’re an idiot, Tej. (You’d be in good company. Many of us were idiots, myself included, which I why I use the pen name “Chump Lady” and not “Omnipotent Lady.”)
But what’s more likely is that you’re not an idiot. You’re a human who bonds and loved with his whole heart. And your investment in her was useful to her. So she rewarded your investment intermittently. (Which is addictive. There’s brain science about this.) Maybe she threw in some future faking and initial love bombing, and you kept trying to chase that high. And wound up bereft and befuddled when you were discarded.
Welcome to our very large club. The good news is your investment wasn’t a total waste if you learn from it.
I was in a relationship where I gave everything — my trust, my home, my future, my patience.
Healthy relationships are based on reciprocity.
You know who loves givers? Takers.
You just need to find another giver. And I don’t just mean in romantic partners, but in every aspect of life. A lot of people can fill superficial spaces, but for those exalted positions like spouse, friend, business partner, where you’re most invested and vulnerable — hold out for people who give back. Who respect and cherish you.
Intimacy is never without risk. But when things get dicey, you enforce your boundaries. Grown ups don’t get unconditional love. Healthy love comes with conditions like you can’t abuse me.
The hardest part is that I went through almost all of it alone.
You don’t have to go through this alone. We have a community here you can join.
I do not have a father, and I did not want to burden my mother. I had no elder or family member to lean on.
Going through loss can trigger grief for other losses. But listen, Tej, a lot of us don’t get parents or even close friends who understand chumpdom. It’s a particular kind of trauma. Find a trauma-informed therapist and some online peers to process all this crap. And maybe when you’re feeling less wobbly, lean on your mom. Absolutely let her know what’s going on in your life. No one requires perfection of you. You don’t have to balance this bucket of toxic slop on your head all day.
Your wise elder is out there.
Many, many — bazillions! — of people have navigated this heartache. There are many people who will support you through this suckfest. And some day when you’re healed up, you’ll be that chump friend to another guy going through this.
I’ve said this a lot over the years, but men aren’t open about being chumped the way women are. Back when Google gave me more granular information on my readership, I was shocked to discover that a third to half my readers are men, yet they account for less than 10 percent of the commentators. They lurk.
Yet, of COURSE men get chumped. Women cheat too, obviously. Chumpdom is a human problem and cheating is a universally abusive power dynamic. Now there’s a different discussion about gender, patriarchy and sexual entitlement — but getting your heart stomped on is an equal opportunity calamity.
How do you stop protecting the image of someone who never protected you?
Remember you matter.
Know your worth and get furious. Mad enough to advocate for yourself. Mad enough to notice that the Empress has no clothes. They’re wadded up behind a sofa somewhere while she’s having a furtive f*ck with a loser.
She FEELS powerful because she broke your heart. But don’t confuse that with actual worth. Real people show up meaningfully in your life. They don’t check out for affairs. Healthy adults break up ethically with the chumps they purported to have once loved. They clean up their messes. They don’t extract value from chump labor.
Am I pissing you off yet?
Consider that your values are in conflict.
Not everything is pathology.
I kept trying to understand, explain, defend, and forgive behavior that hurt me deeply.
That’s great. Good partners do this. You’ve got an internal moral compass that asks “Maybe I’m at fault here? Perhaps I should be more forgiving? Maybe I’m not looking at this situation fully?” And that’s terrific.
What’s not terrific is that all these good qualities can be weaponized against you. Dr. George Simon makes the point that you can only manipulate people who feel shame and self-reflect. FWs are impervious to shame, so manipulation (or pleas to be a Better Person) fail with them. But chumps? Oh, we’ll run in circles trying to improve ourselves to win back a FW. We will buy all those save your marriage courses. We torture ourselves with self-recriminations.
You’re not in a fair fight.
There was secrecy, comparison, emotional distance, and what felt like a complete discard.
You can’t box with a ghost.
Cheating is conducted in secret. It’s a series of UNILATERAL decisions about your relationship that you didn’t consent to. How are you supposed to negotiate with someone who UNILATERALLY changes the terms of agreements? How do you compete with an affair partner you didn’t know existed? Why would you WANT to after D-day?
Your heart is just trying to catch up with your head. Stay no contact and I promise the spell will break soon.
Not only won’t you be protecting her image, you’ll wonder what you ever saw in her. Trust that she sucks.
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Tej – You didn’t describe her as your “wife”, so perhaps this is the end of a cohabitation? If so, no contact is vital. I suspect the few people who are aware of the relationship ending are not preoccupied with the details.
Her image problem is in your head and it isn’t serving you well. Try having a mental phrase such as “dead end” to interrupt that thought loop.
Your healing is now your priority. Every investment in your physical, emotional, financial health will make the healing go faster.
In a follow up email he did clarify this was a divorce and she was his wife.
Trying to save that image of our exes is like the bargaining stage of grief. If I say it wasn’t that bad or we split on good terms then all that abuse didn’t really happen. You can’t move on and heal if you keep holding onto that delusion, and it gaslights children stuck in the divorce to think that the cheating behavior is OK.
Tej, I was the master of protecting my ex’s image. I think in the end because I had to lie to myself that he was the person I’d always believed him to be. But people saw, and knew, anyway. Our friends kicked him out while we were separated because he was creepy with their teenage daughter. Other friends stopped talking to him altogether. I did nothing to prompt this and never said a bad word about him. However, character almost always shows itself.
Stay strong for yourself. What she does, and who she is, is her problem now.
Tej, I was married for 25 years to a taker. And I was so busy giving that I didn’t even notice. We had 5 kids together. Of course, I got busy taking care of them and giving to them and telling them that their father was a good person. By the time I realized that he was NOT a good person I had a huge investment in that relationship. It took me a couple of years to realize that it would be okay to divorce him. Even after the divorce was final I kept second-guessing myself. I wasn’t sure that it was the right thing to do. Then he spent an entire year using the court system to further abuse me. He and his third lawyer filed new motions regarding custody every month for a year. It cost me thousands of dollars to get that jerk to go away and leave me alone. And then he stopped paying child support and I had to take HIM to court.
It took some time, but I eventually figured out how to say bad things about the ex without feeling like I was the jerk. Objectively, he cheated on me. So when someone asked what happened I started telling them that he cheated on me. He was objectively abusive to me. First, I had to figure out that verbal, emotional, and religious abuse IS abuse because he never hit me. Eventually I could say that he was abusive.
Tej, your ex was abusive. Your ex cheated.
It’s hard for a man to accept that he was abused, but it happens all the time.
It’s been 15 years since my divorce was final and about 10 years since he finished paying what he owed me. I have learned that some people are just bad people. Anybody who would lie to and cheat on the person they are supposed to love the most is a bad person. I do my very best to avoid people like that in all parts of my life. I’m a lot more cynical than I used to be. And that’s okay. But I haven’t stopped being a giver. I’m just a hell of a lot more careful about where and how I give.
Oh my!!! This was my hardest hurdle and at times I still have twinges of it. Married 30 years. Lost our daughter in middle school to cancer and my XH spent the next 10 years of martyrdom and I thought it was all tied to her death and I do think it still had a push it wasn’t the reason.
It’s very hard to come to terms after a long marriage or any major investment in someone that they aren’t who they portrayed themselves to be. It’s even harder if they are very good at coming off to everyone that they aren’t who the “nice guy or gal” and highly moral. My XH left with a discard of us all and remarried immediately and got fired from his high executive job. That was what started opening people’s eyes. He fled to another state and has no connection to his past.
These men and women don’t know themselves. No one can make them happy!!! So, they just keep trying to find outside validation. Outside sources and fixes. It’s been 5 years and my kids haven’t seen their father in 4 years and have no communication. He has a grandson who loved him who was six and now is 11 who is crushed. 2 grandchildren he has never met.
If you bet me a million dollars I would have taken the bet. I really thought he was an insecure but very sweet man. He spent 10 years cheating with subordinates emotionally and some physically. It’s disgusting. He is soooo beneath me I cringe. I was a victim of home invasion rape in my early 20’s. I feel like I was a victim of the same now for 30 years. It’s gross!!
Once you see them for who they are it’s sad, but it ia eye opening and you can’t close your eyes again
My #2CxH came to all my kids school programs- these were not his kids! He kept the house running, he was charming and spun the stories of his horrible childhood and how he was the golden boy who turned his life around.
All along, all along having emotional affairs and phone sex and all those things I thought were not relevant if he loved me. Butvhe did not and could not love. I was ONLY of use for his image.
It takes years to color in the numbers you missed on the picture of your life..but when you do,you will see how they absolutely suck. Tracy helped me with that in all her messages and writings. Trust your own gut, stay no contact and WAIT till your eyes open wider.
3 years post D day and 2 years post divorce, my Saint was anything but. He did not pay his 2 children’s child support and remained so self centered that all the trauma he caused was hurting him and never me. He was the victim 100% with friends jumping on board with him.
It was always and completely all about him. His coworker affairs and massage habits, porn habit,ED– my fault.
Believe that they are truly awful people with an undergrad degree in acting. That is all it is, an act. They cannot love, it is not possible, and you are the only one that feels. Believe me here.
Tej, I hate to tell you but you don’t know the half of it. It’ll come in drips. There will come a time when you hear about the next ghastly thing she did and you’ll just roll your eyes. Not your circus, not your monkey.
Really. I promise.
Tej,
Welcome, Brother.
I want you to know that I have been where you are. And it IS lonely-even when you have supports. You are allowed to feel those things. You are allowed to feel broken and angry They are very real and very valid emotions to experience going through all of this.
You were betrayed, you were abused. You are questioning your reality and your role in it. The first step to any problem is admitting there is a problem-you already did that.
Step 2 here? Accepting that you are not at fault-that while imperfect your actions were not transgressive. Step 3 is coming to terms with the fact that the person you gave your love to was not worthy of that love and was ALWAYS going to betray you, no matter what you did or did not do. You will see them for who they really were.
I hope you are angry. I am angry for you! Because I was there.
“I gave this person everything, why did they take love away from me?” “Am I really so worthless that she can do this?” “I should have done ________, maybe then she wouldn’t have went other places to get her needs met.” Any of those things feel familiar?
Those were just some of the things I lost sleep over when it happened to me. During my D-Day, I was told it was all my fault. We had friends in common-and I defended her. I just said “she left me”, because I believed at the time that it WAS my fault. I bought her narrative(with some very strong disbelief).
Around these parts, we call that “spackling”. We are used to defending our spouses/partners/whatnot because they do that for us…right?
It turns out “no, that wasn’t right. It is right in healthy, functioning relationships-ours turned out not to be those things.”
After a few months of cleaning up her messes, of getting a better therapist, of starting to put my life back in order, I was able to see her more objectively. My traitor was a very self centered, disordered individual that refused to get any real help for her issues. Everything was for me to do, my fault, and to clean up after when she didn’t want to do it.
The further I got from D-Day and was able to see those things, the easier it was not to take up a sword for her anymore. You will come to accept with time the disservice you do to yourself by continuing to defend her-and that moreover, she is not worth defending because what she did is unforgiveable. Try telling somebody what really happened-that she betrayed you after you already gave her everything and she still wanted more. It’s liberating! The truth often is.
My side of the story is out now. I have not gone out of my way to “ruin her reputation”-she has done that just fine on her own. It has been liberating when people initially take the BS version of “she must not have been satisfied/something must have been missing” to “wow…you really did love her and give her everything…” Seriously, try it!
The people that did not want my side of the story I have cut out-if they would rather accept her version of events I do not have room for those people in my life anymore. “Better no company than bad company.”
What happened to you is not your fault. You may not have been a perfect partner (none of us were)-that did not justify the horrible things that she did to you. Whatever you may or may not have done in that relationship she sort of trumped by being abusive and transgressive. Did you make her question your reality?
Time is going to heal it if you let it.
So full disclosure, I had to look up the name Tej to make sure I got the gender right at a glance(hence, “Welcome Brother”). I also found out, thanks to the magic of generative AI, that your name means “Light” and “Strength.” Those things will come back to you with time and healing and accepting the truth.
And you are not alone.
You have us now.
And hey, if you @ me here or respond to an old post of mine, I am never far away (just very, very busy of late-but I make time for my people when summoned).
Have a Mighty Monday!
Hi Tej:
Many of us here have found that unless people have gone through this personally they don’t understand. I now have some aloha for these people (i.e.”civilians”) because I didn’t get it either, until it happened to me. I’m glad you found CN because we are all seasoned combat veterans from the FW Wars, and understand your experience. You are not alone.
It is hard to part with the false reality because it had some beauty to it. And then you have to try to make it through a vast desert of ugliness and drought. Once you do, the beauty and greeness start to come back, but what a $%#@*& journey it is.
I am going through the divorce part so right now it is all ugliness and dust…but up ahead I have heard there is water and some shade, so I keep on staggering forward. Which is to say, I am right there with you in the desolate landscape, and I wish us both godspeed.
You can do this, Tej!
Dear Tej,
While I see no point in protecting your ex’s image for her sake, I can understand how keeping mum in certain social environments might be an intuitive effort to protect yourself for a different and more valid reason than the motive to protect her.
For instance, protecting her image might be fueled by the chumpy hope that she might one day take you back and change her ways, at which point you wouldn’t want people in your life rejecting and disparaging her or thinking less of you because you took this jerk back.
What’s more, from the sound of it, you remain afraid to incur her wrath or resentment for both chumpy reasons and good reasons. The chumpy reason is, again, this vain fear that you’d be spoiling any magical possibility that she’d get a character transplant and come back.
But the valid possible reason to be cautious about enraging your ex, which is that she sounds like a creep with a technically criminal level of empathy impairment and zero character, i.e., what some call a “sociopath.”
I’ll use the term sociopath just to save time though what I really mean is “someone with potential criminal mentality/capacity.” Anyway, statistically speaking, female so-called sociopaths reportedly don’t tend to be as overtly violent as male sociopaths, you still couldn’t rule out that possibility. Some she-creeps, like my cousin’s greedy cheating second wife, might even try to delegate their vengeful violence to one of their f*ckbuddy henchman.
So there are some potential motivations– some valid or at least understandable and some self-defeating– for holding your tongue and not telling the whole world what she’s done. But another possible reason might be a reaction to the current psycho manosphere environment in which decent men are being disparaged as “simps” and “cucks” just for having normal human sensitivity and emotional intelligence.
What’s more, maybe you don’t want to be mistaken for some of the rabidly misogynist knuckle-dragging goons on the internet who pride themselves on trashing women. I don’t know if you’re in the US or elsewhere but– for better or worse– the web has made certain trends go global and the new fad for Andrew Tate style “toxic masculinity” is definitely “for worse” and also cult-like and downright dangerous. Even if I were a guy, I’d definitely want to stay off that psycho radar. There’s also the fact that men who follow that cult mostly end up alone and miserable and wondering why.
To sum it up, while staying mum out of hope your ex might change her ways and come back is likely wishful thinking fueled by emotional trauma and, though a normal stage of grief, is harmful to your welfare, some of the other possible MOs would simply be self protection, basic good taste or practical since, if you want to move on and eventually have a healthy relationship, you wouldn’t want to be associated with Incels and Red Pill dorks.
But, all the same, you do need somewhere to unload and call a “spade a spade” (call your ex a dirtbag and creep) and maybe your current close friends simply aren’t experienced or sophisticated enough to offer nuanced feedback and consensus which means you’ve come to the right place!
Like CL says, this forum is at least a good start for mining better support and partaking of a social environment in which to recover and also keep your resolve to remain no contact with your ex. Trauma informed therapy is another constructive avenue (with a therapist who recognizes that cheating is domestic abuse which– unfortunately– not all do). So I hope you stick around here and continue processing the nitty gritty of what you just went through so that you can reclaim your narrative. And, as you get better at telling the story of what happened to you in real life, you’ll notice how it draws in more like minds. You could even end up with a wider and more “ride or die” social circle as a result of this and a greater understanding of yourself and relationships.
In any event, one day your ex will be a vague memory though it doesn’t seem like that while you’re in throes of traumatic discovery. Wishing you peace and strength as you get through the hard part.
This is such an important point. As a young woman, I encountered men who had been chumped (or wronged in other ways) by a female partner and who became increasingly misogynistic as a result. They seemed determined to establish control early on in future relationships and became quite judgemental of other womens’ appearance, their age etc. I don’t know how well that worked out for them in the end.
This is obviously very gendered, but I believe it’s also not uncommon for young female chumps (or young women who had other kinds of bad experiences with men) to be told to be more manipulative and transactional in future relationships, to pick men with more wealth and status, demand more financial signs of “love” early on etc. I don’t think this is good advice either. Personally, I find it repulsive.
I found it very hard to unleash my anger, and when I did, it was very difficult to sit with. It took a long time to examine all of the shitty things he did and accept that his actions were calculated and intentional, but now that I have, I feel at peace.
I, too, felt very isolated. I think that’s typical of these relationships, and if you have few family connections, you’re more vulnerable. FW made a shit show of the life we shared, and somehow, I felt that reflected on me. Eventually, I realized that it’s not my baggage to carry.
I agree that rotten, unilateral decisions made by others don’t require us to protect them. Not ever. Particularly, when they blow up a marriage.
Early on, I had some people who minimized my frustration and anger over the decisions that my ex made. I struggled with that, and then got that I didn’t have to talk about it with everyone.
And certainly, the minimizers can be cut off. I mean, who says to someone, “Well, sometimes marriages have troubles. The fact that he took off to another state doesn’t mean it’s over.” Yeah, but I also knew he wasn’t being faithful and that he fully intended to stay there. After all, an old girlfriend lived there, and he told me he was looking at rentals. It wasn’t just “troubles.” To me, he had blown up the marriage. So I’d answer something like, “Thank you for your thoughts. Excuse me.” Then I’d walk away.
With all the mess, I ended contact with his family and changed who my close friends are because I got sick of being questioned and grilled, even years after the divorce was final. Later, I changed churches because the one where my ex preached was supportive for some years afterward, but then they changed their stand. They took a “no divorce ever” stand, and I was out of there. So yes, a lot of emotional upheaval, figuring out who was truly on my side. I get it.
Now it’s rare for my ex to come up at all. Our adult kids have also moved on and rarely talk about dad. It’s been some years since we heard from him, and I stopped initiating contact when my part of closeout was done. Life is good!
Tej, you’re not alone now. You have CN to watch your back. I suggest you check out the support available on the private forums listed on the community page here. Perhaps there is a veteran chump or two in your general area who could mentor you through the process. Additionally, if you want the support of a chump pen pal, respond to this post and I will post my email. I’m retired and have time on my hands to give support to other chumps.
As for your problem of wanting to believe your FW is good, you are using denial as protection against the horrible reality that you spent many years of your life with worthless person who didn’t love you. However, if you are to heal, that horrible reality must be faced head on and accepted. It will hurt terribly, but that pain will be finite. If you stay in denial, pining away for somebody you tell yourself is good and blaming yourself for her behavior, the pain will be infinite. As CL says, you must trust that she sucks. Her actions are proof of that.
I remember my cheater ex trying to get me to believe he was really a good guy by pleading; “But…but…people aren’t their actions!” I asked him that if it’s not their actions, what is it that makes a person who they are. You could have heard a pin drop and his facial expression said it all. In that moment he knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on. So please know that your cheater’s character is defined by her actions. There isn’t hidden goodness underneath the cruelty and selfishness. If anything, there is only even greater cruelty and selfishness which she has to mask in order to be accepted by others.
You’re right in the suck now, but there is an end point to it which we refer to as meh. You will never be okay with what she did, but at some point you will be indifferent to her. Work on your healing through radical acceptance of who she is and where your life has to go now as well as self care and peer support. You’ll get there.
Tej,
It will take you time to get your head around the fact that the person that you thought you were married to and the person that you were actually married to were very different people at a horribly fundamental level.
It might also be helpful to remember that she was/is very different to you in the way that she relates to people that she cares about; thinking that your Cheater couldn’t do something because you wouldn’t do it is usually a mistake.
I’d also look to remember, if you ever find yourself wondering if she really was/is that awful, that she gave herself permission to do every last thing that she did that harmed you …. that usually does the trick!
LFTT