I Feel Abandonment Shame

Dear Katg,

I agree with CL’s suggestion that it’s hardly insulting to be rejected by a creep. It means he didn’t see himself in you. Yay!

But that’s the issue, right? You haven’t yet squarely identified this guy as a creep. And an abuser. But I think that’s one of the most important and healing perspective shifts for survivors of this kind of traumatic betrayal– to understand that cheating is nothing more than domestic abuse and abusers are a species of bully. As CL mentioned, we all know this runs counter to a lot of the current media spin which seems desperate to frame cheating as some kind of “rebellion” against the shackles of monogamy or “unsatisfying relationships” blah blah. But from a purely rational perspective, this is complete idiocy. Cheaters rob their partners of consent, often literally raping them by deception (a legal perspective that’s gaining traction), often endangering health and embezzling joint assets. All of this is categorical abuse according to official definitions and completely unnecessary as CL points out because cheaters had every other option to leave in a respectful and non-abusive manner. So, in short, cheaters are abusers, bullies and creeps. Full stop.

Another important and healing realization is that, even though it sucks that, by being abused, you were tricked and drafted into a standoff between decency vs. creepiness that you never willingly signed up for and didn’t deserve, you have now joined the legions on the better side of the war. Once you understand that, you will also be on the winning side of the war.

Bear with me while I try to grind this idea down to a really, really fine point. As a kid, I was brutally bullied for several years after my parents escaped the big city for the supposedly safer burbs. Classic story– I was different, didn’t fit in and eventually proved that was a good thing. All the same, it did suck for awhile when I was a kid though now I consider the experience very lucky because it was an early object lesson of how people fabricate an illusory sense of superiority by being the “deciders” and “rejectors” and how time eventually exposes this as a total sham.

Even before the end of high school, it was already apparent that not one of these bullies were going to distinguish themselves in any meaningful way and that the high point of their depressing little lives was that brief time of “glory” in primary school when they felt above it all and powerful by excluding, harming and putting others down.

It’s actually kind of sad if you think about it. In retrospect, it seems axiomatic that bullying, callousness and cruelty are probably responses to a deep sense of worthlessness but it’s the bullying and cruelty that really fulfill the prophesy and make that worthlessness actual.

Even when people like that grow up to achieve some kind of material success or rise to power, if you could see their lives up close (as I have many times in my travels), you would realize that they exist in a kind of hell-scape where their artificially inflated senses of self keep perpetually leaking and sagging and causing crises of rage and despair which they take out on others around them. They interminably have to puff themselves back up through more exploitation, domination or aggression until their personal lives become wastelands populated only by users and hostages. Then they can never loosen their iron grip of intimidation and deception over others for fear their lackeys and hostages will turn on them like crazed jackels and tear them apart.

This is another reason why I thank my lucky stars not to be accepted by people like this: because the price of inclusion and to avoid victimization by that type is that you will ultimately be required to participate in their cruelty, thus losing even the consolation of being decent, kind and ethical– i.e., the only thing that makes human beings actually human and valuable.

So as CL implied there’s nothing more flattering than being excluded and targeted by a bully because, maybe before you even realized what they were, they saw your lack of capacity to be like them. To quote FDR, “Judge me by the enemies I have made.”

Because it seems you were in the dark about your ex’s cheating for a long time, I think you may have missed the above object lesson– that he was nothing more than a creep and a bully who inflated his own pathetic sense of self worth by abusing, conning, deceiving, exploiting and ganging up on someone else. The problem now is that you actually fell for the school yard ruse and illusion and believe it says something bad about you that you were rejected by a creep.

I’m sure that, like most creeps, your ex pretended to be someone else for a long time though I’m also sure that mask started to drop in stages leading up to his cheating and abandonment. Because FWs are all the same, he probably became cold, critical and undermining if not overtly abusive in the year or so before he bailed. Furthermore, contrary to the idea that he abandoned you for “twu wuv,” if you had more information about his secret existence, you’d likely discover he’d either cheated before with other randos or had been trawling around hunting for willing participants for a long time. You might also discover that many of his targets weren’t game and think he’s a scary, icky freak. Plus the porn. There’s usually really disgusting, abusive porn involved in the buildup to cheating.

But, prior to that, your ex might have worn his fake “decency” mask quite convincingly. The thing about adult creeps is that they know that being a creep has bad optics so they often try to align themselves with decent people or woo decent partners (this doesn’t count for witting side pieces who, by definition, aren’t decent) in an attempt to give themselves that ethical aura. Some may even delude themselves that the decency might “rub off” because, deep down, every bully and two-faced creep is a miserable walking abortion and at times might genuinely hope to find a better way of existing. But, at some point, the masks and disguises they wear become suffocating and they long to “let their hair down” and be their true creepy selves so they seek out fellow creeps, form little bully gangs of two and start to trash that “decent” model they could never hope to achieve.

Personally I think the same creepiness vs. decency principle applies in every other arena of life, including business. Taking CL’s comment about climate change a step further, my uncle– for example– founded a green engineering firm that not only created sustainable energy and didn’t pollute inside or out but had a flat management structure where everyone was treated as an equal. It made employees very happy and loyal to the company which inspired off the charts creative innovation and the company produced more new patents than all competitors combined. The latter was exactly my uncle’s pragmatic aim in doing things the way he did: because, when working for other companies, he’d seen that top-down corporate structures, betrayal of employees and lack of general ethics tend to destroy innovation. Consequently, the company really had no competition and led the market for decades but, as my uncle explained, it wasn’t the superior products that enraged would-be competitors so much as the company’s business model and ethics because this created an embarrassing contrast to companies that polluted, dumped and treated workers like crap. Less ethical competitors desperately wanted to prove that the better model couldn’t possibly work in order to exonerate themselves for their lousy practices. Consequently, my uncle and partners had to create clever and sometimes humorous strategies to block the constant stupid corporate sabotage the company was subjected to.

My point is that the war between decency and indecency is an age old ideological standoff. Those without integrity desperately need to see those with integrity fail and be crushed and regret their own decency in order for the bullies to rationalize to themselves that being unethical and creepy is the only possible way to survive. They need to see the entire principle of decency fail. Likewise, sexually creepy people with damaged and empty souls desperately need to see those with sexual ethics and actual capacities for love and humanity fail, be crushed and regret their own decency.

I think that’s the crux you’re presently in. It’s actually an ideological issue and you’re certainly not alone in grappling with it. But try to bear in mind that, currently, you’re still limping around half blind and traumatized in the fog of war. You’re under the impression you were defeated which can make it harder to remember what you really believe in and value yourself for it. But, when the smoke clears, you might realize why the enemy undermined and sabotaged you to begin with, you’ll be glad not to be aligned with that icky “side,” you’ll take even greater pride in the ways you are incompatible with ickiness and, furthermore, you’ll see that you’re now in much better company.

That’s when you’ll realize you won.