I Discovered My Boyfriend Was a Cheater After He Died
She discovered her boyfriend was a cheater after his funeral. The cell phone bills revealed multiple other women and a deep secret, sexual basement.
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Dear Chump Lady,
My story is a bit different than others I’ve seen on your site. I didn’t find out about my boyfriend’s cheating until after he died. I have been from rage to grief and back to rage in the blink of an eye.
The bare facts are that my boyfriend died in an accident about 4 weeks ago. I didn’t witness the accident, but was on the scene within minutes and I tried to surround him with love as he departed this existence. We knew each other for more than 20 years, first as friends and then lovers. We never lived together and in fact rarely lived in the same town. But he was my only sexual partner for the past 15 years.
The nightmare began four days after he died, while I was planning his funeral with his parents.
A woman called his phone and left a voicemail that she was waiting for him at a bar. Very seductive message. I thought WTH? What did you do? In the couple of weeks after the funeral, I dug into his cell phone records, then his journals, then photos.
I found that in addition to the woman waiting at the bar, he was in regular contact with at least two other women, intimately. As in hours-long phone calls, and photos of one of them sitting on an unmade bed (!) This went back a couple of years.
Many of the phone calls coincided with weekends we spent apart on one excuse or another or times I was out of town. I discovered photos of a secret camping trip with an ex-girlfriend, which took place 14 years ago. The journals were even more shocking. He was having sex with strangers he met on the internet, women he met at sandwich shops and coffee shops, and prostitutes. Two men were mentioned, but that isn’t the most shocking thing I found — the phone number for a pre-op transgender prostitute. I never knew this man. His entire life was built on a quest for risky sex, secrets, and lies.
I was the best thing that happened in his life, and he crapped all over me.
What I’m finding the hardest to deal with is that my anger is unresolvable.
I imagine the confrontation I would have if he were here. My yelling and calling him a liar, cheater, fraud, sleazebag. I imagine yelling at him, is this how he wants to be known by his friends? professional colleagues? parents? I imagine his face contorting in sorrow and pain.
At the same time, I am glad that he isn’t here causing any more harm, deceit, and pain to me nor to anyone else. And — at the same time, I am grieving this man that I thought was my partner, and missing the happy times we had. And, at the same time, realizing that the happy times were an illusion.
Perhaps I should count my blessings, that I have my own house, separate finances, independent life, etc. I made an appointment to be checked for STDs next week. Assuming I have a clean bill of health, I should be able to go forward without a backward glance, right?
Thanks in advance for your help,
Grieving
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Dear Grieving,
Well, unfortunately it takes more than an STD test to move on from this sort of crap. On the bright side, nothing makes “no contact” easier than death. You could’ve had that confrontation with him, and then you could have had months or years of false reconciliation and mindfuckery.
Look, the anger feels unresolvable with the living or the dead.
It’s not as if he could’ve explained himself. His misdeeds speak for themselves. He’s 77 flavors of fucked up. Normal people do not have elaborate double lives. His “explanations” would be self serving, blameshifting, gaslighting, or feigned apologies. He’s a sex addict (if you believe in those… horny personality disorder works too). He is a person who never committed to you in 20 years.
If you want to move on from this, ask yourself the hard questions about who you were in that relationship. Was it acceptable to you? Did you want to be his sometime, long-distance girlfriend for 15 years? You clearly gave a lot of yourself to this man, to the point you were there when he died and you helped sort out his effects. What did he do to earn that devotion? Be your part-time hiking buddy?
Yes, he did not deserve you.
So in the future, set the bar higher for those you love. Demand reciprocity in your relationships. Value yourself.
Maybe the whole long-distance lover thing worked for you, you preferred it. But those sorts of arrangements don’t lend themselves to deeper intimacies. It stays at a shallower level when you aren’t there to sort out who pays the mortgage, walks the dog, visits the elderly parents, rakes the leaves, nurses the other through the stomach flu. It’s perpetual dating.
Of course, you had every right to expect the exclusivity that I assumed he assured you of. I’m just saying, IMO it’s a red flag that he never took the intimacy with you further. The guy wanted his freedom for some reason — and apparently that was to leave his calendar open for prostitutes. In that sense, at least he was a somewhat honorable cheater — he didn’t marry you, have children with you, ruin you financially, and then make you his chump. Small comfort, I know.
Go be the “best thing” in YOUR life.
You won’t crap all over you. Go be awesome to yourself. Forget this guy. We all have lost investments here, Grieving. Every chump grieves who they thought their cheater was. You have the gift of irrefutable evidence as to who he was. And he’s not there to mindfuck you and convince you otherwise. He’s not there to hurt you anymore. If you learn from this experience, and value yourself more in your next relationship, those 15 years with him were not a waste. He’s dead. You get a new life.
Dear Grieving,
Wow, what a mindfuck.
You’re not just grieving the loss of a life, but a loss of a person, of happy memories that you now know are false, of even your own sanity.
You are smart–you see how you do have things listed in the plus column (no contact, separate finances, and so on).
But grief is not going away overnight despite them. You not only have the right, you have the need to work through all that anger, the broken trust and learn to see the red flags you missed to fix your picker for the future that you have waiting for you.
almost the same happened to me. I met a wonderful person who lived in the same country as me for a period, after we had known each other for about four months, he returned to his homeland. We kept in touch, he used to come to visit me for several months and I came to him. we let the final plan to move in together in his country. we had many dreams together, about how to earn money, move to a vineyard and get 1,000 children. I quit my job, said up the apartment, put the car up for sale, I planned this for almost 8 months. I had everything ready.
3 weeks before I was going to move to him, he died in a motorcycle accident (this is now two months ago). I had get to know his family (aunts, cousins, uncles, etc.), and I met many of his friends the times I had been with him and used to talk to them over the phone sometimes.
During the open coffin ceremony I came a little late, as the brother he had driven me there. I come into the room and see that it sits another girl crying and holding his hand as he lay dead. i asked his most honest friend if he was cheating on me, and he sad yes.
it is the biggest shock I’ve had in my life. we talked every day, I can not understand how he was willing to ask me to leave everything I had (a good payed job) to share our common dream together, so to keep me for a fool, and lie to me abouth what he was doing. Much of the hurt was that he had taken this girl with several places also to meet friends and his father and sister. and brother. no one had said anything to me, yet they knew I had resigned from the job to get to him. I went home the next day.
He was my great love, but I can not manage think of the good times, I’ve just an eerie feeling inside me, a lot of the day. much is difficult also because of that I have no one to talk to about this. our relationship was just bubble he and I shared, I feel. They say time heals all wounds, but I feel like my heart has been abused. I would also just be with him, hold him, smell him and not lose sleep until he.
i want to find out who this girl was but se don’t got facebook. i want to find out how mush i have been fooled, and for how long. the other girl probably dont know about me. but i feel the urge to contact her. i know i shouldn’t.
My boyfriend (soon to be fiancé) passed away in his sleep 2 months ago. He had just moved and I was moving there next summer. We had purchased a home together (my name was not on it yet). He flew me out twice a month. We talked n texted all day everyday for the
18 mo this we were together. We had the perfect relationship. It was filled with love affirmation everyday. I had never been so happy in my life. I am still devastated by his sudden death. A few weeks ago a friend of mine found recent pictures of him on line with another woman. I located her. They had been together for 2 years! She also lived in another city. I was the other woman and didn’t know it!!!!! I am so angry although I have forgiven him already. He had such a beautiful heart and told me I was the love of his life!! I can’t wrap my head around him being anythingess than good but he was a liar and my counselor said a sociopath! Now that I think about it , he was very proud and confident in himself. I am broken. I can’t eat, I cry constantly. I miss our relationship terribly. I am embarrassed so no one knows. It’s a double whammy. I’m stuck. I just want to be with him again. I don’t know how he would have ever resolved this! I wonder if there were more women?! How did he have time when we were in constant contact?! How did he NEVER call me the wrong name or confuse stories?! I devoted my life to him and gave completely of myself. It is so very sad,,,
reading this helped me out.My so called bf for 4 years has died this past week in a drowning accident.I was not included to the campfire- party.went to help clean his house and I found strange bra.A girl knocked on his door asking for him,found out he liked her and was sleeping with her.she didn’t know who I was.been hearing all kinds of things.Been left out of the planning of the funeral. I just decided I’m done.I won’t even participate in the memorial.I almost felt like dying like my whole life is a joke.I thought we were a item.Now I missed work cause I was so devastated, struggling with rent mourning for him when he didn’t care.Now I have to pick up the pieces.
Same thing happened to me. I found my boyfriend dead of an apparent heart attack. Found out he was sleeping with someone who lived few minutes away plus he was on dating sites meeting other girls too. There were red flags and I chose to ignore them now I am kicking myself for not confronting him. I cry all the time. I found out where the girl lives bf she gave him her address so he was going over there to screw her. The day he died she kept calling his phone. Now I want to tell her he is dead and find out what there relationship was and what he was telling her. I need closure and it’s not her fault he lied to her too. I don’t know if it will make me feel worse but it’s haunting me. I drive by her house so I can see what he saw in her and not me.should I meet her it’s driving me crazy.
Jenny. Keep your head up girl! You did nothing wrong! What a horrible way to find out. More heartbreak over cheating, it never ends!
Try to take a little time for yourself. Maybe you will understand this later when I say I am glad he did not take more years from you.
He did not deserve you.
thank you Regina I appreciate you saying that.I feel shocked. Angry. you are right it could have kept going.
Double whammy, death & deception all in one. Makes me feel sick inside.
Know we have your back here!
In many ways I think it would have been better if x had died. As it is, I have had no closure, no explanation, no apology, no confrontation (well not the one he deserves) CL is right, you have instant no contact. You may not have gotten what you needed anyway.
I think of this from a similar stand point, death at least means everything is finished. One night a couple of months before my X left my heart rate went wonky, racing, slowing, kathumping etc and I had to go to the ER. I spent all night hooked up to machines while they tested me for everything. Had I died that night I would have gone to my maker thinking my marriage was solid and I was the luckiest of men, never knowing what was about to happen…I found out later she spent most of the night in the waiting room texting the OM…
Oh Mike, I’m so sorry that happened to you. How heartless.
There have been many times I think it would’ve been easier if my ex had died. The grief from betrayal and abandonment is like a never ending funeral where you keep having to view the body. Still, I feel really bad for Grieving, because she’s been hit with a double-whammy.
I don’t wish death on the ex because it would circumvent the karma train. BUT, it would have been better if he had found the courage to off himself like he threatened to. He could have left an intact legacy for the kids that way and their memories of him wouldn’t have tarnished.
Chumpalicious, Maybe in this case, that WAS the Karma train!!! 😉
Just sayin’…..
However, for you dear Grieving, there is indeed grieving to be done. Do not try to circumvent or shorten the grieving, but let it runs its course and then get on to the healing stage!! The only way is to go through it. So sad for what you are going through….Really….l am so very sad…..
But, as Winston Churchhill said: “When going through Hell, KEEP GOING!” Go through it to get to the other side……The other side is filled with joy!
Forge on……
Me, too. I do not honk it would have made a difference if my xws died. Neither has come clean, apologized or anything like that.
And,I was not about to give either the satisfaction of going off on either of them.
I think guys,in particular , have to be careful about confronting and expressing anger at a cheating wife or girlfriend. There are just too many people ( manginas, white knights and some women) that readily assume an angry betrayed make was abusive or was “emotionally unavailable “.
A with a still livi g cheater, one is often faced with combatting their smear campaign, designed to make you look like the cause.
Cheaters try to control the narrative no matter what their gender.
Oh wow. What a story.
“There’s no better NO contact than death”, I love you CL :))
Totally agree!
Grieving- Karma came and went and you didn’t have to soil yourself and feel guilty on some level for wishing it. I know it is a blessing and a curse. Just appreciate whatever it was you got out of the relationship that kept you there for 20 years. In the end, these cheaters never deserved us, or our loyalty and love, but you finished this relationship as the better person as you lovingly eased his way out of this life, and that is your legacy. He lost his chance for a do-over, but you still have glorious life.
This is so beautiful and true. Oftentimes, our kindest moments are clouded by what the cheater did. Grieving, don’t allow him to take that away from you.
I can’t add anything to SeeTheLight’s beautiful, wise and true words, other than kindest thoughts for you Grieving x
Grieving,
It would almost have been better if you had never found out. The gift of knowing is that you also know to check for future gifts (STD’s). You loved the person you thought he was. For me, feeling anger is easier than grief. You must also be in shock even though you are already able to count your blessings.
My fantasy was always that my x would get in his truck, drive really fast, hit a brick wall, and die. . . before the divorce was final. I would have played the part of the grieving widow and I would have been able to say, “Yes, he WAS a good man.” I always thought that I would feel more “closure” if he died.
Grieve what you did have. He lost much more than his life.
I suspect this is a normal fantasy. It would definitely be easier and cheaper if STBX died sometime during the divorce process. On the other hand, I’d feel guilty for having thought that this would be easier, so I guess I’ll just have to go through the shit storm and work my way to the state of “meh.”
Grieving–I do feel for you. What a terrible thing–to find out that you’ve lost the person you love, and then find out that you never had that person to begin with! What you’re feeling is the cocktail of anger, grief, and probably even a bit of guilt. But you did the right thing. You were there with him at the end, and you tried to ease his passing as best you could.
You were definitely more than he deserved.
All I can do is echo CL’s excellent advice: go be your best awesome. Also, go see a therapist. You need someone to help you through the mindfuck, someone who can help you with both the anger and the grief–someone who can help you fix your picker.
You had 20 years invested in this person. We all have sunk costs. I can’t believe that mine threw away 17 years of marriage and nearly 30 years of knowing each other, but others here have had cheaters that have pissed away over 30 years of marriage and children. All of us can go on to healthier relationships.
It doesn’t feel like that now, but there will be a day when you feel “meh.” It will be on a Tuesday. 🙂
Hugs to you.
Knowing what he did, even post-humously, allows you to do the work of seeing the red flags for what they were. Without that knowledge and power, you could end up in a sad cycle of a do-over.
And btw, in case someone tries this on you–don’t accept the shit of you having to keep his memory or reputation clean as respect to the dead. The dead dig their own holes.
I read the letter twice. It is horrible that you find out that the person you loved was not who they seem to be ( not even close) but you and he both chose a long distance love affair. Did he demand fidelity from you or did you just give it freely?
Hmmm
this was my thought. I mean, it is revolting to find out someone you loved and thought you knew and THOUGHT you were in a faithful loving relationship with has been behaving like this guy (yikes!), but over the many years they were involved, they never lived together, often lived in different towns and there was no evidence that the relationship was going anywhere in particular. Was mutual fidelity something that was clear, or was it something you wanted and chose and assumed to be the case?
Look. By keeping these things secret and lying about where he was, he denied you the dignity of knowing the full facts about your own life, but maybe he just figured you guys were in a ”don’t ask, don’t tell” semi-relationship.
I’m so sorry for your loss, I really hope the next person you love, treats you with huge respect, is your one and only and that there is no cheating going on!
My X got a horrible cancer when we were married and almost died from the treatment. One night he coded in the hospital and they told me he probably wouldn’t survive the night. It was a terrifying two years taking care of a gravely ill man. He had a miraculous recovery and afterwards he insisted we renew our wedding vows on our 10th anniversary. He called me his ‘Nurse Angel.’ Five months after we renewed our vows I caught him at the Econo Lodge fucking Skank Woman. Then he left me for her. I honestly wish he would have died when he had the chance. I would have much preferred to be a grieving widow then a chumped dumped middle aged humiliated woman.
Wow I think I know how that goes
My ex ended up dying then me finding out he stole my things and gave them to the other woman who won’t even return my jewelry . But my ex did die so if he was alive and stayed w her maybe I wouldn’t have found out he was the thief but I also do miss him and wish he was alive so I could understand and her closure for me
You would think they would be grateful after a near death experience, but NO! My stbx was at deaths door due to anaphylaxis. It took more that 20 minutes to bring this guy around before they could transport him. Haha he thanked me by cheating, drunkenness, and all sorts of loyal behaviors. They really do suck!
Gio, I wish your ex had died too, for your sake. What a sack of shit! You’re better off without him.
I agree…
The karmic blowback awaiting your ex is freakin’ awesome.
Both the ex and I had life threatening episodes — me before him. I came out of mine feeling eternally grateful for the extra days and determined to walk gently through life and appreciate the small things more. So I projected that on the ex and expected the same of him when he had his close call. Nope. He decided life was just too short not to grab every last bit of gusto and brass ring offered. No temptation was too small. It was just like night and day, the difference in responses.
An friend’s cousin died over the winter after a bout of cancer. As the end approached, his wife of 30 years faced an agonizing choice. As the cousin was close to death, his wife received a call that her mother in nursing home 50 miles away suffered a terminal stroke. Wife opted to stay with husband. Her mother died alone that afternoon and her husband died that evening with wife by his side.
She found out going through his stuff after the funeral about his OW of 15 years.
l can not wrap my head around that one, Marcie!!! But thank you for sharing…….
Please, oh, please, if you have contact with that woman, pass our collective hugs & love to her……That is so unbelievably painful to hear! That precious woman has all kinds of grief to bear……
Love to all………
Grieving,
I am sorry for your loss and for the added pain of discovering what a fraud he was. You were shot and then stabbed. You have my sympathy, support and hope for recovery. Please take comfort in your brave, last act of love for him. It will be a moment of grace that will sustain you through some tough days ahead.
Heaven help me, but I wish my X had checked out like that. His kids and I would have been spared incredible ignominy and pain of divorce.
My kids would remember their father as an honorable, good guy. Instead, they are disappointed and embarrassed by him, and wonder what they did so wrong that he would leave them high and dry for a complete stranger.
Good men (who were in our lives prior to dd) don’t feel they can cross a line and be a good role model to my kids simply because their father is still in it, albeit sporadically and at his pleasure. My sons still only have X as a male role model. He is a selfish, lying fucktard, telling them to eat the delicious ice cream when sadly, they know it’s shit.
There would be no bimbo trying to ingratiate herself into their lives, telling them she just wants to be their “friend” while their thought bubbles want to tell her to fuck off for helping to destroy the innocence of their childhood.
I wouldn’t have to decide between groceries or an S.A.T. prep course for my son because I had to pull another $1500 out of thin air to file a contempt order on their father for non support.
My kids wouldn’t be wearing hand me downs from the neighbors they’ve known all their lives, and have to suck it up when the former owner cracks “Hey, I remember that shirt!”
My son’s fifth grade teacher and I wouldn’t have bumped into each other at the court-ordered, five-hour class about the impact of divorce on children. His sixth grade science teacher would never have yelled at him in the front of his class that, “I know your parents are getting a divorce, but that’s no excuse for not doing your homework.” Personally, having to adjust to the shuffle of visitation those first few months is a very GOOD excuse, Mrs. Mahoney (you asshole)!
If he died, I wouldn’t have had to stand in my city’s PUBLIC court of law while intimate details about his affair were read to the judge like a laundry list. The man I work with who was also in court that day would never know my financial situation.
Whether or not people admit it, many people judge me, quietly believing it must have been something about me that made him cheat. Even the most well-meaning of happily-married friends unconsciously judge me. “Well, next time around, I’m going to make sure you date a good guy instead of the losers you seem to pick.” “You settled, and now you’re paying for that.” All well-meaning, supposed-to-be-funny jabs to make me laugh at my incredibly poor picking skills keep me awake sobbing.
But I think the worst difference between divorce and death of a spouse (no matter how nasty) is the short time a divorced person is socially allowed to grieve. Unlike grief over the death of a spouse, a chump’s hope is to get to “meh,” that feeling that you’re over him/her. Can you imagine getting to “meh” for a death?
I’m a divorced chump now. And while I’m damned proud of my still-standing, still-trying-to-move-forward, kickass self, I’d give anything to have been a widow instead.
Chutesandladders – that description of heartbreak abandonment and humiliation should be reproduced in a national newspaper. Send it to Huffpost.
It is beautiful and speaks for so many of us, thank you.
Chutesandladders – you sum up perfectly what I have felt for quite some time. I truly wish I was a widow. The man I thought was my husband IS dead – he died the day he walked out of mine and our children’s lives and into the arms of another woman. He died the day he sent a deputy sheriff to my home to serve me with divorce papers in front of our youngest son. He died the day I told him I was being tested for cervical cancer and he stated that he didn’t want to hear my “emotional slobber.” The man I loved and married IS dead for all intents and purposes…and yet he still walks the face of this earth and occasionally drops by to play Disney Dad to his boys. Oh, how I wish I could have the support and love that widows receive from family and friends. Oh, how I wish I did not feel pressured by everyone to “start dating” “forget about him” “move on with your life – he was an asshole.” No one would EVER say those things to a grieving widow, and yet we who were left as “widows” in every sense of the word hear them all the time. Sometimes it’s just too much to bear. Thank you for articulating what so many of us likely feel.
I once described the situation as having my husband brutally murdered, then having his killer walk around in his skin, trying to rob us, too.
Chutesandladders,
I cannot be with you and hug you tightly to absorb any of that pain, but I am sending you the longest and tightest (((HUGS, HUGS, HUGS))) I can send to you.
Well stated
My ‘friend’s’ husband died after a long cancer battle. I didn’t realise at the time how much I would come to envy her loss…. shortly after, my husband left me… for her.
Her and her children got to grieve a good honest man, my children and I got left with an arrogant wall of silence. Her grief has closure, ours never will.
Dearest Verity297,
I have no fancy words for you…..that is just so beyond sickening…….Sending love & hugs your way…..
As notyou reminded me, your dreams for getting through this to a place of joy will be realized beyond what you can possibly imagine at the moment.
However, when one remains a loyal, truthful authentic human, one who keeps their integrity, one who keeps their promises & honors their vows, well, personally I believe that in itself is a grand reward……that brings the best life one could ever live! And that is also the legacy YOU are giving your children……
Forge on, Verity, Forge On!!
Jedi Hugs Chutesandladders
I have a friend whose husband died in a tragic accident. After hearing of my crap-ass situation w STBX said, “it’s easier if they die”. While I don’t need the karma of wishing him dead, seriously, if he keeps on the track he’s on now, it won’t be long. Unfortunately, it will probably be after the divorce…
ChutesandLadders….You are Mighty!!!
Chutesandladders – what a beautifully written piece of absolute heartbreak. Thank you for sharing, in the most honest and intimate way, your journey. I will hold you in my heart.
ChutesandLadders, oh my…I am so sorry for what you have been through, my heart just went out to you and your children reading your story… I don’t know what to say to all of it…Big virtual hug from me to you…
I have heard a couple of these heartbreaking stories before….sometimes the wife finding out the OW has a home & car he bought for her & a life insurance policy in her name to make sure she is comfortable forever! Or OW shows up at the funeral & gets up & reads about their affair. UGH! I do believe what CL say though, if he had lived your confusion might have been even worse, it is so heartbreaking to hear all the lies, excuses, blame. It just serves to screw you up more I believe. So sorry for your pain & grief. I think a person who makes a commitment to be faithful, he/she has the obligation to inform the other about any changes, marriage or not. However, since they WANT you to be faithful, they don’t tell. Shear selfishness! YOU should be faithful! Them, not so much.
This happened to Charles Kuralt’s wife, too. What a slimy bastard he was.
Kuralt had a whole second family in Montana(?)/Wyoming(?) didn’t he?
Never heard of that but he was “On the Road”!
where is the “like” button?
Grieving – I am proud of your strength and clarity as you sift through the emotional ash. And, the gift of comfort you gave him at the end was the most tender gesture.
Please don’t feel like you were denied a meaningful confrontation. As many here will agree, the actual confrontation was a disappointing blend of arrogance and fury from the cheater. Once their cake is threatened they immediately morph into cruel strangers and the words that they spew are biting and ludicrous. Our chumplike expectation of declarations of remorse and promises of faithful undying love are never realized.
So continue to put one foot in front of the other as you grieve the loss of so much. But everyday remember to whisper to yourself that a joyful life awaits.
Grieving – I’m so very sorry for your loss and for your two-fold grief. That anger you’re feeling would be expected some time after a death, and you have a double dose of it now that you’ve discovered the cheating.
Even though you never got a chance to say those things to him here, go ahead and find a time and place to yell them at him now. Take a drive to the country and shout them to the wind. Get them off your chest. Scream and yell and shake your fist. And by all means – swear! It’s therapeutic!
For all the times I have wished my ex had died instead of me being a chumped griever for whom this society has no particular method of offering condolences or allowing a bereavement period, very few of us have had to face being both a widow (or bereaved girlfriend) and a chump. I can only imagine the multitude of emotions and questions that must be swirling around inside you.
No, no, no, no, no….
Everyone! Never say, “Consider yourself lucky.” Nor, “Oh, you think YOU have it bad? I wish my ex would have….”
(Full disclosure, I just had a beer, so….)
I read this letter and just felt overwhelming sympathy. You need a big hug, hon! You got seriously fucked over.
I think this is going to take a lot of time and reflection and introspection to heal. I am so sorry that the person you loved was such a horribly selfish asshole. And I’m sorry that you feel so betrayed and afraid and all alone. Not only are you dealing with the loss of a loved one, but also with the huge mind fuck that he wasn’t even who you thought he was. How do you even begin to wrap your head around it??
*sigh*
I think you’re going to just have to do a lot of thinking. You might get help from a counselor. I do like Tracy’s advice that you’re going to have to set the bar higher on your self worth–and as far as romance goes, that’s for later. But what about now? Are there other relationships you’re being chumped in? Maybe a counselor can help you with that.
Sometimes we just don’t really know the people we think we know. Even if they live under the same roof. Sometimes we’re to blame for ignoring the red flags–for spackling, if you will–and we need help from a professional–or lots and lots of time and thought–to figure out why. Sometimes it takes being bashed over the head with the truth before we are compelled to even admit or to see that there is/was a problem in the first place.
If you’d asked me 5 years ago if there was a problem in my relationship, or accused me of not having a good marriage, I’d have said you were crazy. It wasn’t until the cheating came out that I was forced to face the truth–I’d buried a lot. I’d grown immune to the taste of shit sandwiches–they were practically like comfort food for me. What flavors of shit sandwiches did you swallow?
Take this opportunity to admit that there was a problem, and then sit and examine the whole thing. That doesn’t mean you take blame for your ex’s perversions and deceitfulness–it just means you begin to look at what it was within you that didn’t want to see it, or that figured that the way you were treated was ok. It wasn’t ok–now you know.
I just want to say I am so sorry for you. This totally sucks. All you can do is grow from it–and if you do, that’s very good, indeed.
Big hugs.
You are absolutely right, Miss Sunshine! Brene Brown said (TED conference, speaking on vulnerability and empathy) “A truly empathetic response almost never begins with ‘at least.'”
But I do get it. I want to “At least…” all over this thing! I think it is human nature to want to make things better, or to at least make things seem better. Silver lining and all that.
But the truth is this: Some things just suck really hard, and words can’t fix it in any way. The only things that can help a situation like this are compassion, love (including love of self), empathy, support, connection, kindness, and time.
Grieving, I am so sorry for your many losses. Please know we are all virtually gathering you up in our arms, and actually gathering you up in our hearts.
Many hugs to you.
I am so sorry you have to deal with this. I have often said I wish my husband had died rather than finding out he was not the person I thought he was. It would be easier to bury him believing he was the man I loved. Your tale is cautionary to us all, even from the grave we would find out the truth. The spackle would fall off and the pain would still be there. My only advice is like everyone else; if you’d found out while he was alive, it is likely he would have spun out your pain far longer. I am so so sorry you are going through this, no matter what we say it is likely you will go through the “woulda, shoulda, coulda” and the anger of never being able to confront him that becomes something worse for a while. If it’s any comfort, it is true that if he were alive the difference would be that you were not lied to some more and didn’t have to struggle to reach No Contact.
Massive Jedi Hugs!
I’m so sorry Grieving, that is so messed up! When I found out what my husband was it felt like he died. Then came all of the anger and betrayal. I haven’t been in your shoes so maybe it’s not the same at all. But so many of us never get resolution of any kind. Even if we get to yell. I had to go through this period where it felt like things were unresolved because of that. In the end I think the only resolution that comes with a cheater is the one we make ourselves. Closure is simply when you’re no longer attached to the outcome. Or as CL calls it…MEH.
Hugs to you.
“In the end I think the only resolution that comes with a cheater is the one we make ourselves. Closure is simply when you’re no longer attached to the outcome.”
This is excellent Kat. You are so right. For many months I ACHED for some kind of resolution, I just couldn’t believe the person who’d been central to my life for 36 years could leave without explanations that made sense. I suppose the explanations he gave satisfied him, but they left me terribly wanting. It took another year and discovery of more information to explain what was really going on at the end of my marriage. Anyway, you are right that by the time I found I’d already made good headway on creating my own kind of closure…
Grieving, we have all been there. I can remember the day I discovered my husband of 20 years was someone I barely knew. Signs were there. A new cell phone so he could communicate with others privately, disparaging remarks, He happily ran off with his racquetball partner and left me and our three kids to a life without him (and about $92k/year! Lol). As hard as that was my entire marriage was spent supporting him, both personally and professionally. A tell tale sign though was that as the years progressed he traveled more, worked more, played more, spent more-all decisions he made-and started to blatantly treat me unkindly. He seemed to be compartmentalizing his life. His friends, his work, his life. He resisted spending time together. The journey you are on now requires you to be kind to yourself. Embrace your anger, it will fuel you towards a better future. Give yourself time to grieve because it allows you time with yourself. Surround yourself with kindred spirits. Know you will never know why some people behave the way they do. That maybe there is never going to be a “good” answer. Sometimes life doesn’t make sense. While I believe things happen for a reason, I never forget that sometimes shit just happens. So be kind to yourself. And know you have our support.
Grieving, just know that you aren’t alone. In my earlier post (jinxxy posted depending on the device) many of of us here have had near brushes with our spouses’ possible demise. I literally watched his lips turn blue and his body go limp. After that incident he cheated with gusto and as some one said pissed away a 30 year marriage, seven plus years of highschool/college romance, and 2 years as friends. About 40 years of my life! I will never know the full extent of his cheating, however my story doesn’t end there.
I’m healthier and have a clear mind and will soon be legally free of this fake toxic relationship. I can hold my head up high because it was stbx behaviors that he has to carry around in his brain and someday face his maker. Now that his wife/mommy/me is no longer there to take care of him he will have to find a good honest woman to wed, but guess what? years of picking disreputable women have also left him with a broken picker. Every woman is not wife material. So his biggest fear is finding someone like him…
So no, his death did not afford you the confrontation, but as others have said, I doubt very seriously you would have gotten the truth. After the anger has subsided, maybe you can take this jerk’s journal and use it as research for a book to warn others of this type of individual.
Put one foot in front of the other until you find yourself running. You will be happy and joyful again!
(((hugs))))
Thanks CL for this post, I had almost forgotten.
You know, I really don’t care about what he does with whom anymore. The only thing I want is for me to get whatever GOD has determined financially and freedom legally from him.
Grieving, I can’t imagine how awful it would be to discover these things after his death, I’m so sorry. While I have often wished that my husband would have some tragic accident since i discovered his other life, and wished that he would die of something, anything.. so I don’t have to divorce him ….I would never under any circumstances have wished that I could be in your shoes, to discover this and try to figure this out after they are already dead.
Grieving,
Big hug to you. Let me share a story with you from a solid friend of mine. She’s been of great support to me and her situation, sadly, is too similar to yours:
My friend married her high school sweetheart at a young age. They had a baby together. She thought she was married to the greatest guy ever. She had known him years before the marriage. She thought she had married her soulmate. Friends and family alike were happy, happy, happy for them and their life together.
About 10 yrs into their marriage, her husband was in a horrible car accident which left him paralyzed. My friend, being assertive and quite no-nonsense, was unhappy with the care he was receiving in the hospital. With a young child, she took it upon her self to obtain the necessary education, degrees and certifications to become his FT caregiver.
This is what you DO, you know, in a committed relationship: in sickness and in health, for better for poorer, etc.. She spent the next five years caring for her husband, raising her son and being happy. They were still a team.
Her husband eventually died of natural causes related to years of being paralyzed from the neck down. When he was dead and buried, the worms came out of the woodwork. During their time together where they were both fit and healthy, he had had multiple affairs! The friends and family who cheered them on as a good couple, well, LOTS of them knew about his cheating ass.
Not only was she clumped throughout her marriage by this asshole, she was cheated out of her right to kick his ass to the curb. Not only THAT, she was his caregiver during his whole period of paralysis! He KNEW she was dedicating her life to wipe his ass while his body no longer functioned to fuck around on her.
Yea. She was enraged and bitter about this huge part of her life. How she got to ” meh” is beyond me. But she DID. She went through a self-assessment process and weeded out the creeps from her inner circle who enabled her lying, cheating ass husband to fuck whatever walked. She chose to be happy. You can’t erase the years of being clumped. You MUST work on forgiving yourself and getting to “meh”. That’s what I am trying to do.
I know I at least have the opportunity to tell my asshat he is a fucking lowlife. But I also wish he were permantly GONE, DEAD, ROTTING IN HELL. I guess, in the end, the Karma Bus will truly make a stop for those who deserve to reap what they’ve sown.
Fuck auto correct! NOT clumped, but CHUMPED.
It sounds like his risk-taking killed him in the end.
It must be awful to find out after someone dies that they were a jerk. You’re torn between grief and rage and you can’t express the rage to anyone else because you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.
Perhaps you can write angry letters to him or yell at a pillow with a therapist.
It’s a terrible situation and no one should be in it.
Sometimes, you don’t even get to confront them when they are alive and well. That is, you don’t always get closure, so you find it the best way you know how. At least that is what I had to do.
Dear Grieving, I feel for you going through such a doubly difficult grieving process. Not only are you grieving the actual loss of youBF but the loss of who you thought he was. As I read your story it reminds me that we never really know who another person is, even those closest to us. I’m not sure that living with your BF would have made any difference. He hid who he was because he wanted to, and he would have done it whether he was married or not. There are plenty of people on this site who were married and discovered similar things about their exes.
I’m so sorry this happened to you. Just remember that the problem was his, and has nothing to do with you. Please know that you’re not alone, we are here for you any time you need to vent.
Grieving,
that is the worst thing, that you never knew this man and that what you ‘had’ was an illusion.
Don’t imagine his face contorting with grief and pain. If he is like a lot of men here, you would get indifference disdain and defiance – a whole new mindfuck of it’s own. They hurt you – and they DON’T CARE.
I found out, suddenly and accidentally, that my husband had been cheating on me for several years and hiding/lying about it, and then, 10 months later, he suddenly and accidentally died.
There are so many clouds, and so many silver linings. Quick thoughts:
-dealing with the full impact of the betrayal. What a rug-pulled-out-from-underneath-you experience. It takes ~time~ to find some way to understand, accept, and learn from what happened.
-dealing with the full impact of the death. It takes ~time~ to absorb and grieve a death. Death shakes us to the core, exposes our mortality, makes us re-think our lives.
-I don’t have to deal with him anymore. I’m not tempted to try to find a way to reconcile (because I’d invested 18 years and we have two kids at home). I don’t have to co-parent with someone who I don’t trust and I’m always waiting for that next awful surprise.
-it’s hard for me to feel authentic. Outside of my closest friends and family, most people think I’m simply widowed and feel bad that I’ve lost my wonderful husband. They don’t know and wouldn’t understand the anger and mixed feelings, and I don’t particularly want to share “the whole story” with every person I’m acquainted with. I go to a grief support group and, with them, I am dissatisfied because they are all so sad about their losses and I am mad. With the people who do know about the betrayal, it’s hard to show the side of me that feels the grief of the loss because, like some of the comments here show, on the surface it seems like a pretty good outcome for a selfish jerk and the poor chump who loved him. They understand my anger, but don’t understand why I’m so broken up about the death of a guy who was willing to put me and the kids in such a terrible position. I tend to show the anger with the friends who know, and the grief with everyone else, and both seem incomplete and dishonest.
So, Grieving, give yourself time and permission to feel all the feelings <3 It sucks, but it's not the end for you; it is a transition into a new beginning.
I know Im responding to an 11 year old post here, but the above…yes 1000 times.
A central core part of me is authenticity / truth and the clusterfuck he left me to process left me choosing to hide things from people to avoid endless emotional vomiting on people but I am left endlessly feeling like Im creating a charade / fake facade and I hate it.
I just re-read your letter, and wanted to comment on this, “I suppose what I’m finding the hardest to deal with is that my anger is unresolvable. I imagine the confrontation I would have if he were here. I imagine my yelling and calling him a liar, cheater, fraud, sleazebag, and potentially diseased penis-man. I imagine yelling at him, is this how he wants to be known by his friends? professional colleagues? parents? I imagine his face contorting in sorrow and pain.”
The anger is resolvable, but it will take time. Have that confrontation. Yell at him. Call him names. Write him lots and lots of letters telling him everything you’re thinking and feeling. Write letters to yourself as if they were written by him, telling you all the things he is thinking and feeling. It’s been just weeks since he died, and you are probably still in shock. Take care of yourself. Sleep, eat, drink water, let yourself feel all the feelings, and eventually you will start to feel like you are closer to the end of it than still at the beginning or in the middle of it.
To Chump Lady and all commenters: Thank you for reading and responding to my situation. I feel your support, and it helps. In particular I realize that many of you are right that the anger is unresolvable in many cheater stories, and that even if I had the chance for a confrontation, he would likely respond with some hurtful b.s. To those who asked about the nature of our relationship, we told each other that we were monogamous and presented ourselves to the world that way. We were family and were in each others’ families. He lied.
“I thought it was a bird”: it is so true, your comments about not feeling authentic. I to to individual grief counseling because I don’t want to sit with a group who are sad about losing good people. I’ve told very few people about the secret sex life. To everyone else, he was a wonderful man who died way before his time. I can’t bear to raise a glass to toast him again.
A huge life lesson has been given to me: you really do reap what you sow.
Hi Grieving; I am so sorry for your double loss, and most of all for the confusion-I am grieving, but what am I grieving because now I am not sure what I had? I need to resolve anger but not only is the person I am angry with gone, but how do I come to terms with something I will never get the truth about or hear his side of the story about? And how do I make headway for the future with my own trust towards others? How do I make peace with the inappropriateness in “society’s” eyes of being livid with a dead person? Most of all, I think I would be totally pissed off that someone I loved and gave MY whole heart to left me in this no-win detestable scenario!! It is a lot more to deal with than anyone would care to wake up to. My heart goes out to you.
Selfishness and entitlement are the 2 qualities that Chumps pretty much universally did not see in their Cheaters, or did not realize they rose to these levels. I feel this way & CL & many Chumps would agree. Your husband was more important to himself than anyone. (As are all Cheaters)
I wanted to tell you Grieving, that I hung around with my Cheater for years hoping to get the “whole story” so I could decide if it was forgivable. This was my first & biggest mistake, as 4 years later I still do not have that story to my satisfaction & had to move on without it. I thought I deserved to know what I was up against (was already over, but would it happen again?) and to be put in the “inside” again instead of being the one on the outside. I had 25 years invested, and had a hard time with the realization that I had made a poor choice that ate up the major portion of my adult life. I think this is why they call it Cheating, because it cheats the Chump out of what was theirs in many ways. What I wanted to point out to you is chances are very good you would have never gotten the truth anyway, and probably would have gone through hell trying to “figure it out.” (See Skeins of Fuckupness in CL’s library) Because he is gone, I hope you can stop your mind from this exercise in futility. It is excruciatingly painful and horribly confusing. I have been through tons of crap in my life, but this takes the “cake: (no pun intended) by a long shot.
Cheaters when they tell the story to you usually downgrade the experience to meaning nothing or being less than it was to make it better for you (but truth is, better for them, because now they want forgiveness) just as they ran you & your relationship down to the OW/OM to get what they wanted out of that without looking like a perfect shit in the new person’s eyes. After all, your relationship is on the rocks, you haven’t had sex for years, you are married on paper only, staying for the kids, martyring that they are taking care of you financially, you are frigid, bitchy, mean, etc, etc. etc. So this is the kind of character flaw they have. Mine refused to admit that he gave the idea to the OW that she had a chance to “get him,” but by hearing other parts of the story, this is just not true. They lie to make the other experience as juicy as possible, and to keep the other person on the “hook.” Big character flaw!
Anyhow, above all, the character flaw was not yours, you did not deserve this in any way. No “real” relationship has the intoxication of an affair, and no person on earth could put on that charade for long in a real relationship. And who would want to? An affair just seems like a bucketload of bullshit to most of us.
No one can convince anyone else of their worth if they don’t believe it! Cheaters need the reinforcement of others to validate them. They are messed up, not you!!
Your husband left you in the position of wanting to deliver flowers to the grave and bring a dog to piss on it at the same time. (Maybe even plastic flowers so you don’t have to go back much?)
5 weeks ago my bf of 10 years died of a massive heart attack on his way home from a lovely weekend with me. We used to live in the same city bit I moved 3 years ago when I got a new job.
He told me he was divorced but due to his ex wife having cancer he had to stay close to her and his kids. We were in touch everyday. Calls, texts, messages. He has proposed to me three times and we had holidays together.
With the news of his death came the news that he was still married and she never had cancer.
I feel a fool. Angry and heartbroke. Wrestling with questions about what was truth and what was lies? Was it all lies? 10 years of lies?
I want to grieve but i also want to shout at him and ask why? What a mess.
These kind of stories make me sick but I do feel your pain I had a similar experience except my dead ex had stolen some
Of
My jewelry and given it to the girl
He was cheating with . Denied taking the items and blamed my bros friend . I didn’t think he was a thief but she contacted me herself after he died . She didn’t mention the jewelry I just found a pic of her wearing it but she said she returned everything weeks before and that they got in. A fight
Complete bs
Not sure why this happened to me
I mean he’s the dead one but I feel like shit and can’t confront him
Zero closure
So, high school sweetie for year and a half, always fighting cause I wasn’t giving everything, but he demanded sex like everything revolved around it. Broke up for a couple of months, comes back, we try it one more time but didn’t work. I get pregnant and give him the news but my parents do not allow him to visit me anymore but he says he will take care of the kid once I give birth. 5 months into pregnancy and he dies. I cried a lot, and sometimes I still do. But then, in the funeral I find out that there was someone else, he had someone else all this time. I thought he was cheating on me but it turned out I was the other one, I was a slip. 2 years later, and I’m still angry at him, still miss him some times. And now I have a new partner and I’m scared that I won’t be able to let my pain go away and ruin my relationship. Don’t know what to do…
also JJ…if you are in the US, children can receive federal funds (Social Security) if their parent dies. I dont know if that applies in your case, but if it does, I hope that you applied for the benefits.
Once I realized that new partner was true blue. I made the bold decision to fully trust him and let the chips fall where they may. The only way to have a good relationship is to risk and trust. That doesnt mean I didnt do anything self protective…I protected my money and employment as we dated and married.
I figured that Cheater already took enough from me, I wasn’t going to let him ruin my subsequent relationship too. Ive been married to a good man for 10 years now and we have our own bumps to navigate but not ones caused by now-deceased Cheater.
In another post, I explained that my bold trust still came with some limits that I set to protect myself which I dont entirely regret but caused problems of their own. I dont think there are perfect solutions.
Dear Grieving! There is NOTHING NEW under the sun in the cheating news world headlines. My sweet girlfriend, married to her long loved husband..found out about his affair with the Pastors daughter AFTER he was killed by a falling telephone pole during a group motorcycle trip. AFTER ….as she was looking for memorial pictures she found these pictures in living color. Not to mention this gal had also been involved with other men in the congregation. Sometimes the wolves in sheep clothing are wolverinas…sad and heartbreaking. What exactly do you grieve then? Every word, every action, every lie..just like us regular horrified chumps with that twist of course. Cut short that life of living lies. It is a death of a thousand cuts after the fact. The same shock and awe we all get, but a horrible flavor that does not go away. Those brain scars. Pull up a chair Grieving and share the long colorful sheet we use as a giant handkerchief to soak up the gallons of tears. Live, learn and move on. We are all in this together.
2x. It’s strange how we are all different people, come from all walks of life, but we all end up the same and in the same boat, the minute we find out we’ve been betrayed.
I hope Grieving has found peace and a great life after eleven years.
What a massive mindfuck, basically the plot of The Descendants but without the mordant humor. But at least it’s not the plot of The Unbearable Lightness of Being where, after the intractable FW finally decides to be faithful, author Milan Kundera kills the character off in a car crash along with the chump character and the dog.
I’m not a huge fan of Kundera who’s death a few years ago was mourned by Reddit “adultery bros” because Kundera’s male protagonists were invariably FWs. In the past, the ending of Unbearable Lightness always struck me as something a serial cheater would concoct to avoid what a cheater would naturally project as the stultifying boredom of a faithful long term marriage. But then I realized it’s probably realistic that FWs tend to take everyone down with them due to high risk lifestyles and/or secret death wish.
Maybe Kundera knew this as a possible FW himself. I have no idea if his second wife and former secretary was his AP when he cheated on the first but FWittery has many expressions. The author was never fully cleared of the accusation of informing on a fellow student dissident to the Stalinist Czech police in the 1940s though, when the news came out decades later, he was defended by an international league of FWitty misogynist authors like Philip Roth, JM Coetze and Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the time.
Anyway, I think Grieving may have dodged a bigger bullet than she knew since cheaters, like dogs with two (or twenty) bones, tend to want to bury the first to prevent any other “dogs” getting to it or allowing the primary “bone” to move on to a happy life. In other words, in cheaters’ entirely fictional stories of their lives, they prefer chumps don’t outlive them.
Oh how right you are! Ex H FW was really looking forward to to the ginormous lifetime buffet of sympathy kibbles he’d receive when I met with a fatal accident to be arranged by him and main escort.
So chilling. 😮
Sort of smacks of that “masked dependency” thing I mentioned before. Google it + Erich Fromm + n*zis for the broad strokes. When applied to domestic abuse, apparently abusers who mask their pathological dependency on primary partners through displays of disinterest or contempt are potentially the most lethal when victims rebel, attempt to leave or form new romantic relationships.
HOC always has such good insight.
I think Cheater would have been fine with me dying except for the pesky needs of his kids which would have dumped responsibilities onto Cheater he did not want to fulfill.
And as you also noted …Cheaters often do have death wishes. I think the death wishes soothe them from the (possibly constant) threat/fear of their secrets being exposed. I gave my Cheater what he would have loved – a hero’s send off (big Catholic / Military funeral with all the bells and whistles (21 gun salute, flag foldings, weeping widow) because I didnt know that extent of his treachery when he died.
This sounds so strange I hate to even say it: my cheater talked of death every single day for about the last year of his life. Part of his verbal diarrhea on the subject was an ongoing “joke” that I was going to use his life insurance money to get a boob job and run down the street with wads of cash in between my “chubby fingers” (actually my fingers are not chubby). Leave it up to him to find a way to disrespect me and ruin perhaps the only helpful thing he did for us during that era of life. I guess if I acted like a hooker-gone-wild after his death, he could feel better about being so shitty to me. I wrecked that for him…I left my boobs as-is and found a man who likes them just how they are.
I suspect the death wish is really unconscious and is likely the reason FWs behave the way they do– why my mother called these types “walking suicides.” I thought actor/director Ed Harris’s “controversial” interpretation of Jackson Pollock’s fatal car accident– that it was suicidal (and murderous: his AP and her pal were in the car) because his wife had left him over his affair– was very apt.
There was even a study on “aggressive mating” behaviors among people who either suffered from some life-shortening condition (even when they weren’t conscious aware of it) or lived in violent and dangerous regions where life expectancy is statistically curtailed. It’s said to be related to “fast life strategy”: live fast, die young and leave a lot of spawn. I imagine it’s similar for those with self-destructive tendencies as well.
Calling your fingers chubby when they aren’t? It seems like everything abusers pick on are usually particularly admirable features and the putdowns are meant as a kind of psychic FGM/sexual self esteem-killer to prevent victims from serving their abusers in kind. So I don’t think he would have been satisfied if you’d gone all Jezebel like him and he was probably just trying to inoculate you against doing such a thing. But I think you fulfilled an even worse nightmare for him: finding actual love with someone decent. D’OH!
Yes. To me he was a walking suicide. He knew he had something wrong and refused to go to a doctor.
Back when I thought that I already knew the biggest secrets of his affair (dang, was I wrong!?!) I remember looking at him at his computer one day and this thought went through my mind “He looks like a man with a terrible secret”
He wouldn’t have looked like he had a secret and probably wouldn’t have had a death wish if he didn’t have some residual conscience. Not that this husk of conscience would do his victims any good but it seems to have been enough to prick at him and make him miserable.
That’s been my experience with most bullies: that, no matter how much self-satisfied bravado they show in public, in private they’re all basically tortured walking abortions prone to catastrophic fits of existential woe and depression which their evil deeds are meant to quell for some twisted reason. It’s also why I have doubts that storied “zero empathy” cyborg sociopaths really exist.
But suggesting abusers have shreds of conscience isn’t to minimize how dangerous they are. According to forensic research, it seems even the worst predators such as serial killers still have enough residual conscience that they have to intensely engage in all sorts of mental gymnastics and rationalizations (google “neutralization + Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer”) in order to manage it. Most serial killers also either engage in self destructive behavior or traipse as close as possible to getting caught which might belie some kind of death wish.
Really interesting, but I dont understand the sentence above – could you elaborate?
My now husband is so different from Cheater, it almost looks like I jumped on a pendulum and took a ride to the polar opposite of where I started. Leaping for a polar opposite, however can get people in trouble…Im fortunate that I didnt create an intense different set of problems.
As you know Im Catholic and that is my lens. New husband asked me if Cheater would have liked him. That answer to that is two-fold: The human that Earthly Cheater was would have hated new husband’s guts. New husband had every advantage in life Cheater didn’t and his resentment would have glowed red. The soul who was released from Cheaters body at death and is now in Purgatory likely loves and appreciates new husband for being kind to me and making my previously hard life much better.
FGM= female g*nital mutilation. It’s something that was coined among advocates to explain why batterers (virtually all of whom cheat) typically attack victims sexuality and appearance as well as targeting sexual parts of the body (which, according to DV researchers, includes the face). By psychic FGM I mean that abusers typically seek to destroy victims’ sexual self esteem so they lose all hope of ever being loved again or even wanting sex and thereby abusers are assured of permanent hostages who not only wouldn’t cheat the same way abusers do, probably would never form romantic ties with anyone else again.
You have a more positive view of Purgatory than what my father grew up with, which was mostly hellfire and brimstone meant to keep the Irish proles in line. Had he been raised with Christocentric/Liberation Theology, he probably would have remained Catholic. As it is I think his lifelong social justice bug and anti-materialism was probably drawn from what positive bits of scripture got through.
Psychic FGM….yes. He insulted my post-birth anatomy and seemed to have a kink for nulliparous women. Ive told this here a few times, but in what looked like a calm wreckonsillyation, I entered the kitchen to find him alone with a very pensive look on his face. I said nothing but looked at him and he said “when you get your first grey pubic hair, I am leaving you”. I said nothing and he repeated “I WILL LEAVE YOU”. I was saving money for the big split.
It is a shame to me that human beings have ruined the Catholic Church so thoroughly…at it’s heart, its loving and pure. I think Purgatory is likely harder for people who were selfish and awful but still claimed to be good Christians. I will have my own crap to be held accountable for. I think Cheaters time there has likely been hard. Im glad your dad got something good from it. My mom ranted on it at every turn. I was at her deathbed and prayed her out.
I bet you’ve always been a hot ticket. When I worked with an advocacy service, we could almost guess how physically attractive online clients were by the intensity of their abusers’ attacks on attractiveness and sexuality. The more vicious and crass the putdowns, the more attractive the victims tended to be. Because, if you think about it, why bother shoving someone into the dirt who’s already lying face down on the ground?
You might really enjoy journalist Chris Hedges’ book “When Atheism Becomes Religion” which is about what a secular cult non-belief has become. Because the book is a followup to “American Fascists” about the violent radical evangelical right wing in the US, Hedges is clearly not uncritical of organized religion when it goes wrong. But I think it’s really brilliant how he blames “cult-like thinking” in both extremes rather than laying the blame on belief or non-belief themselves.
Though he’s not Catholic, I think that, as a democratic socialist pastor, Hedges tends to lean towards the social justice aspect of Liberation Theology stemming from Vatican II which is basically Christocentric– following the word of Christ above all scripture. Jesus was, after all, a social justice warrior, never expressed misogyny and hinted that the suffering of the poor on earth could reduce time in Purgatory, etc.
I understand thinking you can never have closure if your FW dies but even if they live, there really isn’t closure. Mine didn’t feel bad about what he did. He wasn’t shamed at all really. He openly laughed at me. I had to move on knowing that no one (except 2 people) cared about my wasted 20 years and there were people I loved who even thought it was funny or that I deserved it. The only closure was building a new life.
It was extremely validating when my ex FW was arrested and I did have a few good laughs thinking about how horrified some people must have felt for choosing a p3do’s side. But that was three years later and I had already closed all those doors on my own. I think the closure where they feel bad and realize they did wrong only happens in the movies. It’s not real.
It’s certainly rare. 19th century novelist Thomas Hardy cheated on his long suffering wife with his secretary. When his wife died after a long period of withdrawal from society, he found a diary she kept titled “Why I hate my husband.” He read it, destroyed it and married the secretary but then spent the rest of his life idealizing his first wife and insisted he be buried with her to the great chagrin of Owife.
But fat lot of good all that morbid moping did his first wife, right? Frankly I think it might have been the parting shot of her diary that got under his skin. The contradictory thing is that, like Roman Polanski, Hardy often wrote from the perspectives of sexually exploited or marginalized women and created some of the best rebel heroines in literature.
Know that we here care about you and cheer you on. I agree the unrealistic portrayal of remorseful cheaters in movies is very unhelpful for us Chumps because it feeds into the RIC BS of “but he says he’s sorry right? ‘
“I understand thinking you can never have closure if your FW dies but even if they live, there really isn’t closure. Mine didn’t feel bad about what he did. He wasn’t shamed at all really.”
This is what I came here to say. I absolutely undestand why the OP feels that lack of closure so deeply. But after living through my experience and reading this site for quite a long time, I have to say many of us who have our FW’s alive and right in front of us still don’t get a satisfactory confrontation. My circus dragged on a long time. And in that time, I got to sling a few REAL DOOZIES at him. And he never gave me whatever satisfation I was hoping for. They don’t feel bad. Mine actually even apologized eventually and even then, it was BS.
So while I absolutely can understand the unique suckiness of OPs situation and how that would be super hard to deal with. I think most of us can say that the closure all comes from US. The FW doesn’t ever give us a reaction that feels validating.
This is a great point: he likely would have just looked at her with those scary, dead, shark eyes they tend to do.
YES! It is infuriating, but that is the most common scenario.
Katie, I am with you on the there is never true closure. Even if you move on and build a new life, there is always that underlying humiliation, trust issues, grief, etc. I think it definitely fades and becomes less “raw” and on the surface on a daily basis, but there are moments that trigger and it is just always lurking in the background to some degree. Like watching movies now. For me, I can’t stand that there is always infidelity in them and it’s just kind of a norm nowadays. The abusive behavior of cheating should never be normalized. Hate that it is.
Chumpygirlkc..I can hardly watch romance movies…I can spot the beginning of abuse( women can’t say NO, its turned into a yes ) other movies they put their hands on and hold woman down. Grab kisses or hugs, persist and persist until they win. I know I’m jaded but my naivete is over..so.with the topic today of finding out you had a cheater but now he’s dead. My cheater was so horrible buy I think if they live, you can keep the hope going that they would have given you closure, they would have said sorry, they would have wanted to go the RIC route with you. I think death just saves you so much, but hope never dies and with death you can always believe the ending would have been different.
My ex-therapist told me once she had another women who’d been chumped and she did exposure therapy to herself by watching nothing but movies with cheating in it and after a few months she was “cured”, those movies no longer bothered her. Right…and I have Bill Gates’s checking account balance! I really don’t believe that. They bother the shit out of me, and especially back when I was in the pick me phase and still with FW, we’d watch movies with that in it and you could hear a pin drop in that room. So uncomfortable!
I do agree that death does give a different sort of closure, and I think it also depends on if they die before the chump finds out or after. If before, then it does remove some of the sever BS they dump on the chumps, which just adds to the trauma. And it is a sudden new life in front of you, don’t have to scratch and claw your way out of it so badly.
But being chumped just sucks. Period.
I found out about my husband’s cheating three months after his death. It felt like a second death. A number of friends sympathised that I never got to confront him. Now I see that there is nothing that he could have said to have explained his behaviour; there is simply nothing he could have done to make the situation “better”. It was, and remains, a pile of shit. However, processing this second death has cauterised the grief of the first. I now see it as a gain rather than a loss. I call it my Carlsberg divorce. I got full custody, the house and all the assets … and he’s back with his parents.
Carlsberg, like the beer?
Yes exactly. Carlsberg don’t do divorces, but if they did…
I envy you truly. Even post divorce FW lies to our kids (and me of course) while lavishing money on himself and low end escorts. Neglecting them of course. Hope he drops dead mid orgy
I wanted to comment on the idea that not moving in together/advancing the relationship (i.e. who pays the mortgage, walks the dog, etc.) means a lack of commitment and presents something more open to this kind of behavior. I have been through a “committed” marriage that was absolutely a lie and am now in an exclusive friendship with benefits situation with my eyes open. Am I in more peril than if I followed the usual path of commitments? I know that for me, this feels safe, following being married to someone who took my life for a joyride. I can’t be sure that in general either option is a guarantee against having it happen again, but what I have now is reciprocal and we both are retaining our own space and lives (both of us went through a divorce with young kids, it’s been less fraught for the kids and more comfortable for us to be friends/dating). The situation might leave more opening for egregious behavior, but I want to believe it’s more about the person than the lifestyle choice.
A former classmate has been with her boyfriend/partner for several years now. They keep their own homes.
She was married for twenty plus years and had two sons with her ex, now both in their twenties. Ex cheated with a much younger woman and is now married to her and they have two young kids. Thank God he moved from Colorado to Pennsylvania so my former classmate doesn’t have to run into him. His second wife (self-professed Christian) is studying to be a therapist. (I really wish we could post the names of these disordered people so any chumps could avoid them as counselors when they’re reeling from the betrayal;I have a list !). Can’t make this stuff up, can we ?
Former classmate jumped into a relationship with a much younger man, that lasted seven years and then imploded. He screwed other women in their bed. Lovely.
So now she is with this other man. Her father died and left her money, she incorporated herself and is keeping her finances and home to herself. Sounds like a good idea given her situation and I hope her relationship lasts.
For some Godforsaken reason, Cheater told me on some random day in wreckonsillyation that OW was getting married that day. Sounds like a red flag that he even knew that data (but it was a huge wedding likely planned for a year +).
Anyhoo…we had left the baby/toddler stages and had pleasant reasonable humans to raise. I got down on my knees and asked God to give OW healthy, robust, active and curious triplets. I didnt get what I asked for but you cant blame me for asking
I think your situation isn’t automatically a red flag.
For starters, it sounds like you both want it like this.
I am just divorced after a 5 year nightmare from D-Day to finalized divorce. I am not currently dating,I do not know if I ever WILL date. Maybe? Maybe not? But I think I would probably be more inclined to enter a relationship like yours. I have my reasons. For starters, I have kids. And I know one in particular would not love it if she had to adjust to a live-in bf or stepfather. In a few years both my kids will be 18 and as I am not even up for dating yet, this isn’t muchof a sacrifice for me.
Some of my reasoning is maybe not the most healthy/healed, in that I think it will take a lot for me to ever feel safe co-mingling my life with someone else again. Putting in time and effort? That I could do. But moving into one house? Mixing finances. Legally attaching myself to someone? I don’t know. Maybe if the right guy came along and things went slowly I might surprise myself.
I get why CL brought this type of situation up as a red flag. But I am sure that there are exceptions. Two people that both went through rough divorces with young kids? Yeah, I can see why they might not be in a rush to put themselves at risk for that again.
But I think it is a good thing to think about. If someone seems a bit noncommittal, what is that? In your case there are reasons that make sense. Sometimes though, it could just be that one of the people needs space to do stuff the other isn’t aware of.
11 years ago when this was first posted, I was out living my life with my cute boyfriend, so no comments from me. 10 years ago, I was preparing for our wedding so I had a meeting with a minister who was doing our remarriage prep but he was also the person who had counseled my deceased husband who had died 13 years ago. During our talk, I told the minister that I knew there was an affair in my first marriage. He accidentally let slip the fact that the affair I learned of was not the first or only – not by a long shot…I had likely been betrayed all along – more than 26 years of it.
The room spun and my mouth went dry – I was so shocked. I would have sworn on the lives of my children than he had not cheated before. I was, you see always watching for changes in his behavior to indicate he was doing something new, but there really weren’t any because it was never new.
So, yea, I was abandoned, betrayed, and widowed by the same man. Overall, I really encourage people to not spend too much time going down the “it would have been better if he died” rabbit hole, even if it’s true – except to reassure yourself that you deserve to grieve this experience mightily because whether they live or die, it is really horrible.
I think that posting our stories is helpful (again whether they live or die) because it shows that this happens to people all the time, it happening to us dissent mean we are gullible or stupid or unworthy or whatever…we were kind and trusting and loving and hopeful and I dont want to be otherwise. I have chosen to trust again and with my partner, my trust has been well placed (I did a wee bit of online dating before going exclusive with now husband and I encountered catfishes, icky men and those who clearly destroyed their first families – it is rough out there but we need to be kind to ourselves and fix our pickers.
Now being many years out from his cruelty and betrayal, I was really surprised when my kid was having a huge milestone day and I WISHED that Cheater was there – even if he was cuddling Susan and acting like a butt, I wished he was here for our kids even (if he was bad at it).
Let your heart heal and be kind to yourselves
I really have a hard time with the fix your picker phrase. I married my second husband after being married to my first cheater…my second husband had been chumped too so he was supposedly heartbroken and never ever a cheater. Fast forward 15 years when porn use was exposed..then phone sex– then inappropriate behavior–ongoing emotional affairs with pick me dances built into his normal every minute flirting. So my now- X evolved into a huge cheater over years and years until 30 years had gone by. I had gotten used to all these behaviors as they slowly came into the light. So fixing your picker does little for the progressive disease of porn and cheating after years of marriage. There is absolutely no guarantee. .sorry to say this. You can do all you can but these people are Shakespearean actors..just take care of yourself no matter what happens and be ready to jump ship when the pot gets past warm.
My second FW was, literally, a Shakespearian actor!….and consummate bull sh@tter.
A FW and AP’s oily skills collide with a Chump’s loving nature and loving assumptions about the goodness out there.
It’s really dawned on me recently how their lives (the FW and APs) are pretty empty and such a waste of energy that could be put elsewhere.
How exhausting (and dull) to spend time subversively texting/emailing/trawling and f&$king in cheap hotels.
It’s true that we’re mourning an illusion of a person – a person who felt very real to us. It is a grief process and it’s not linear or quick. It’s calming on the other side though.
Mourning an illusion, like the mirage of water in the desert 🏜 that was never there..no well, no palm trees🌴🥥or coconuts..just more baked sand. Don’t stay too long in mourning…your love to them was ropes of sand..nothing left to mourn. I know a woman who took 8 years to get over her Cheater…please , I don’t want that!- That only saps today of any precious energy and tomorrow’s loves. Let’s let them go and search out a true oasis especially if its our beautifully restored hearts, minds and bodies. Thank you Learning!
Here’s to that x2chump! 🌸
“I really have a hard time with the fix your picker phrase.”
Ditto. I understand the meaning is to be aware etc; but it can easily turn into blame shifting.
I got married the first time at 18, (yes my parents would have preferred I wait), but I didn’t. Also, younger marriages were common back then. And to be fair most of the folks I knew in my youth who got married young, are still married, and seem to be doing well. Or at least stayed married until the end.
Yes, I learned some things from my first marriage. I have been married 30 years to H. We dated for almost 5 years. It has been so far a blessed union. Still, it would have been easy for me to have missed something and got in a mess again. Most con artists are pretty savvy in their trade. Or, for him to go bat crap crazy at some point. The only person we can know for sure about integrity is ourselves. My H has won his “wings” by now.
But, of course to all, be careful; but putting your heart in another’s hands is risky, it will always be a risk. Prenups be dammed, where there is a will to con someone there is a way.
Amen amen!!! I did have a prenuptial with #2 and IT DID HELP, but it was 30 years old…
Right! A prenup can’t stop them from slithering all the money from the marriage to a whore(s), or gambling or drinking. Or running up massive debt.
Nope, it is all marital funds, the love union…siphoned for forbidden pleasures…sad but true
I’ve been checking back since this morning when I first saw this post and I hope you would weigh in Uni. These are lovely thoughts from a kind soul and an inspirational reflection of the healing you have done. I imagine you will be giving hope to many with this perspective.
What a kind thing to say…glad my words help.
Referencing that “fix your picker” can feel Victim Blaming: yea, I get it…similar to “we teach people how to treat us” which I bemoaned recently. How can we protect ourselves from consummate liars ? Such a hard topic. CL tells us that healthy relationships include reciprocity – yet how can we tell the difference between reciprocity and low-level love bombing? I can now see red flags of abuse that I ignored, but looking back, the bread crumbs indicating cheating were rare and well hidden.
I dont think there is a perfect way to do this and we need to be careful not to be too hard on ourselves for it. Example: I was so very committed to not allowing even a chance that a partner could steal/ funnel / manipulate my finances (which consisted mainly of proceeds from deceased husband’s life insurance but secondarily my retirement) that I insisted new husband would not have access to any of it so we ended up with very separate funds yet now I am the one who feels like our separate money is an impediment to a sense of unity in our marriage. I got what I asked for and now dont like it. Admittedly though…it’s low level annoying. If some dude stole everything and ran off with it, I would be deeply steeped in self loathing…so Im still on the winning side of this, but it’s all hard.
My girlfriend married a man she met on the ballroom dance circuit in our area. About 2 years after marriage, she called to ask me to come to the hospital — he was dying following a major heart attack.
At the funeral, his daughter and his son showed up — the daughter was a bit older than my friend. She had no idea he had children, let alone adult children her age. He had chopped 20 years off his own age and married her letting her think they were about the same age.
His will left everything to my friend, but it was instantly contested by his children. She settled with them because she did not really want to fight with them or add to their own grief.
I can’t recall how his children found out about his death in time to show up for the funeral.
That is crazy..but I have to say, relatived come out of the walls at funerals..some even sit in the front row crying loudly..then wait a bit and start asking about the Will. Chutzpah
How in the world does something like this happen ?! How was the marriage license application completed without seeing his birthdate, his actual age ? Which country did this occur in ?
I like the idea of the truth in dating movement. Before any sexual contact with a prospective whatever ask to see their driver’s license or passport.
I recently discovered a woman on YouTube who posts monologues about dating, patriarchy, etc. Plus she told a couple of stories about disastrous, almost dangerous relationships she was in. Apparently, some people don’t have a driver’s license because they have children and owe tons of money for child support. A way to avoid the government coming after them.
This sh*tty behavior just boggles the mind.
I’m sorry if this came across as victim blaming. Not my intention at all.
I think we have to be wise and learn from mistakes and keep alert. But if you totally trust you will learn horrible things the hardest way. Still you are not a victim if you ACT to save yourself however late in the game. I waited almost too long..more trusting and more afraid. Fear kept me a victim and a slave to my 30 year marriage with no D days,but red flags hanging from the windows. The very late D day was horrific as he’d gotten away with so much for so long!!Sigh*…it feels like victimhood until you run for the hills. Then you are super mighty!!
Gee, what evidence did you even have that he was your “boyfriend.” I don’t know what he told you, but it sure sounds like he never considered you two exclusive.