I Should’ve Left When…
The Friday Challenge is to answer: “I should’ve left when...”
Hindsight is 20/20, but when you look back, do you have a moment before you knew about the cheating where you wish you’d exited then?
Sarah and I are going to explore our woulda-coulda-shouldas in an upcoming episode of the Tell Me How You’re Mighty podcast. We love your voice messages — so if you’d like to have your FW moment broadcast, leave it here at SpeakPipe. Or here at the blog or on social media.
This is an exercise in solidarity, not self-flagellation.
We all made rookie chump mistakes. The point is to recognize devaluation and demand better in our future relationships.
- I should’ve left when… he told me I close drawers wrong.
- I should’ve left when… he contributed zero dollars living with me.
- Or, I should’ve left when… he told me he could be “manipulative”. (But he’s aware! He had therapy! So it’s okay!)
Ad infinitum…
Save the newbies some pain.
We don’t make people abuse us. We are, however, responsible for what we stick around and tolerate. Of course, there are many compelling reasons why we soldier forward with a fuckwit — sunk costs, children, fear of being alone, financial vulnerability, and hopium, for starters.
But for any new chumps out there on the fence — take it from CN — devaluing doesn’t get better. It cycles — oh! a kibble! It withdraws — pick me dance! And it escalates — (googles “is this abuse?”)
Treating your partner like shit is a character problem. Exit ASAP. These people aren’t prizes.
I should have left the first time she gave me an ultimatum along the lines of “If I don’t get what I want then I will divorce you.” We were in our mid-twenties and had been married for about a year at the time and were having a discussion (that she initiated) on having children. I said “I’m not sure …. it’s no a “No,” but I’m not ready to say “Yes let’s do it” quite yet. Can I think about this?” She went ballistic and said “Either you agree now or I want a divorce.”
Let’s just say that I became very familiar with that approach to getting what she wanted in the years to come ….. right up to the point just after D-Day when she denied having an affair, but then gave me the choice between agreeing to an Open Relationship and Divorcing.
So I divorced her.
LFTT
LFTT,
Good Lord, what an awful person your ex was to you. I’m so happy that you’re out of that relationship w/her. Nobody deserves to be treated like that.
Your story made me think about my FW XW’s actions. She did have me go out to dinner w/her to give me a list of things that had to change in our relationship to make her happy. I was so deep in depression that I wrote them down, tried to work on them as best I could, but don’t think I got too far before D-day.
I think my story is a somewhat gentler version of what you got. My FW simply didn’t make it clear that if I failed to achieve these things by some (unknown to me) point, she was going to exit our relationship (aka the mirage). Pretty sure she had already set her sights on her rich, older, married boss at this point, looking back.
The main thing I remember from that dinner was to make her happy, I had to find a better paying job w/better hours. To do that, I decided I had to go back to college (I tried to get a certificate in computer programming, that would get me a better job, w/more normal hours).
Within a month (really, within a few weeks) after I started getting set up for classes at the local college, she and her boss were embarking on their affair fully. Who knows what went on before this.
So, if I were going to pick a moment to leave her, I guess it might have been when she gave me that list of things I needed to do over our dinner at the local restaurant. She didn’t care about me. It was all about making her happy. The fact that I was reeling from leaving pharmacy to keep my sanity was a distinct inconvenience to her.
However… I find myself really glad in retrospect, having things work out the way they did. She gave me a gift w/her shitty behavior, though she didn’t plan it that way.
Here’s the positives:
I’m really happy now that I found out what an uncaring, horrible partner she really was.
I grew a lot from discovering and dealing w/that betrayal. Reading CL and CN’s posts really helped me in that regard. And I’m very happy I didn’t go to my grave thinking she was a caring spouse. I’ll take the truth over that bullshit any day.
She forced me to divorce her w/her exit-affairing me. It would have been harder to do that otherwise, I think, because I would have been committed to working things out, short of her leaving me. She didn’t give me that option.
I benefited myself financially. She left me at my lowest earning point in my working life. She ended up having to pay me child support.
I had a moment of clarity in the divorce process, and though she asked for an additional $25,000 (after telling me she didn’t want to hurt me anymore 🙄), I made sure she didn’t get a dime of my Apple stock (she agreed to take any divorce payments to her out of my 401K and into hers).
It tripled in value within a year or two of the final divorce decree. It’s a major reason I’m hoping to have the option to retire at the earliest possible access to my 401K without penalty (in three years, roughly).
It’s taught me I can survive and somewhat thrive on my own. I think I’m doing more thriving as time goes on.
Anyway, I think you’re also surviving and thriving LFTT. And I hope you always will. And all the other chumps w/us. Best wishes to you and your family, and to all of CN and their families. Hope everybody had a good weekend.😊
So, my youngest son (who at the time, was only 22) was engaged to an unfortunate girl who cheated on HIM. He stayed with her for a year (despite everyone telling him not to go through with a wedding with a known cheater), but he ultimately backed out when she said something similar. It had something to do with the wedding plans and she wanted to make some huge change. He told her they couldn’t do that because it would cost a fortune and she said, “Well, okay. But I’m going to be upset.”
I guess he decided he didn’t need that kind of emotional blackmail for the rest of his life. I was soooooo relieved he made that call and ended the engagement right then and there.
RedKD,
Your son made the right call and early enough to avoid a whole load of extra trouble. Well done to him!
LFTT
I said “I’m not sure …. it’s no a “No,” but I’m not ready to say “Yes let’s do it” quite yet. Can I think about this?” She went ballistic and said “Either you agree now or I want a divorce.”
Talk about going for the nuclear option. She refsued to give you time to think? It’s been clear she’s unreasonable from prior posts, but this ultimatum is irrational and shows a person who would be impossible to deal with or live with, unless you simply agree and capitulate to whatever she wants.
GF,
Sadly she knew how my own parents’ divorce had affected me and that I would view us divorcing as a “failure” on my part, and she exploited the fact that I was determined to make our marriage work to the max. It was only much later that I realised that divorce provided the route to a much better future for the kids and I.
And yes, she was unreasonable and then some; dissent was not something that she took at all well ….. and still doesn’t by all accounts, but that’s no longer my problem.
LFTT
Although I think there were some definite advantages to me in staying until he left; if I put those aside yes I can think of a couple things.
I should have left when he threw a screaming fit at me when I ran out of salt. I mean long assed screaming fit of how stupid I am, and who runs out of salt etc. In 21 years I had never run out of salt, or really anything but I guess that was the camel/straw moment that showcased all my heinous flaws.
I should have left when he stopped me in the middle of the dining room and told me out of the blue he never understood the saying: “can’t have your cake and eat it too”. In my ignorance I explained it to him, and he shook his head and said it still doesn’t make sense.
There were many other example in the year of discard; most are hilarious to think back on now, but yeah it would have been a feel good moment to kick him out.
I’ll think of you always whenever I buy salt. Also, I can’t reach for bagged salad with the same innocence ever again! Freaks!
Sad part was he told me to go to Marsh (grocery) and buy 10 boxes of salt, and I did. I was scared, worried, confused.
After the D was final I left 9 boxes of salt in the cabinet over the stove. My mother in law moved in there; I wonder what she thought. I never told her of the crap he said and did. I wish I had.
Leaving salt has so many meanings…. You were worth your weight in salt. You were salting the earth. Maybe you were just fucking with his blood pressure. I’m sure if she asked him he’d be like 🤷
Ha, yep he would likely have replied; I told you she was crazy.
And quite frankly during that time, I was kind of crazy. Not outwardly but going nuts on the inside.
he literally referenced cake-eating!!
Oh absolutely, “can’t have your cake…” is a really old saying. I remember once on the old Andy Griffith shows, Gomer Pyle and another guy sang a parody of it as “can’t have your Kate and Edith too, you rascal you…
But anyway it was very common, back in the day. I assume that is where CL got the reference.
He was I am sure most of the time he was cheating thinking he was the one that pulled it off. It was just so weird, I even remember where I was standing and he walked up to me and made that statement.
… they are so pleased with themselves for tricking us! I suppose that once we get wise, they have to find someone else to dupe.
I really wish that when he left; after being exposed via an ethics complaint, or right after he was busted in rank, I would have remembered that and said. “I guess now you understand that you can’t have your cake and eat it too”.
That would have been fun.
Honestly I agree, as CL says the duping is a big part of the thrill. I do think it is in play in almost every situation. Oh I think there are situations where they are cads from the get go. My best friends husband (also a police officer) was like that. He didn’t try to hide anything; I used to feel so bad for her, and of course my ex did too, criticizing her cheating husband was part of his schtick.
Their marriage was off and on for about 15 years before she pulled the plug. In retrospect, she was the lucky one. My viper slithered under the radar for 20 years before he started the year of discard. But my viper needed me in place to get his career goals met. Her viper didn’t give two craps about his standing in the community or a promotion.
But, I am glad I got out at 21 years vs 41 or 51 years.
Oh, Susie Lee–hugs and I’ve been there. Mine one time threw a six pack of beer on the ground (glass bottles that shattered everywhere) because I forgot to buy pickles at the grocery store (I wasn’t “thinking about him”).
Right? Salt and pickles, why those are the staff of life; that is the worst thing a wife appliance can do.
There are so many things you say that *I* could say. Mine would lose his mine when I came home and said they didn’t have xy or z at te grocery store. During the pandemic when all sorts of supplies were down.
Yes, the pandemic was brutal. Stuck at home with a sulky tantruming adult who, I realize now, was upset because he couldn’t sneak off to hotels while he was supposed to be working.
Wow. Running out of salt? That’s right up there with bagged salad!
I know, I wish I could have a picture of not his face but mine when I was standing there in the door way of the kitchen looking at him rant. I know my mouth had to be hanging open. Up until the year of discard, he had never been a screamer like that.
So (and this is heart breaking–please don’t judge me), my then-college-aged daughter video taped one of his rages and I provided it to my lawyer for discovery. He called me when we were at that point in the divorce and said how dare I share that video to “embarrass him” in court!!! He said “I like that guy in that video! That’s who I am! That’s cultural!”
I told him it’s not “cultural” to call your wife a C-word for the bird waking you up when you napped at noon on a Saturday. It’s abusive. And the fact that he couldn’t realize he was insane was a huge part of why I was leaving him.
Mine would nap on the couch in the afternoon and lose his mind if we made noise and woke him up. There was one of him, and 3 of us. And he was in the middle of the living room…the center of a small home. That is something I never even thought much of because he screamed for so many petty reasons. But, who DOES that? If you want to nap undisturbed..go upstairs. Don’t lay in the middle of where everyone is EXISTING ad be mad if we wake you accidentally.
YES!!!! Lol. Exactly the same thing here. We had five teenagers and he’d get mad because he would be napping in the middle of the day and they’d come home all unaware and shut a door or someone laughed. It’s so darkly funny now.
He would turn off the heat or ac when he left the house for the day. It was apparently OK for me and the cat to freeze in the winter or bake in the summer.
Yup, because the only thought was for himself.
I was the frog in boiling water. I left while he was still trickle-truthing (confirming only what I knew).
My gut had been screaming for years. I had come to accept that his daughter took precedence, and then his family of origin, and then his work, and then his band, and then his friends and then “her”.
I was such a good (second) wife, I accepted it for 30 years.
My gut screamed for years, too—several decades of it. It became so normal that I was nearly unaware of it. I really don’t know when I should have pulled the plug, only when I finally did. He periodically talked about divorcing me for most of our marriage and used that to squash me. I’d apologize my way out of it every time—well, almost every time.
Then he became a runaway husband. After a year of long-distance separation, during which he lived like a single man, I ended all relationship discussions. I had a much better understanding of both his long-term addiction and mental health issues (diagnosed) and how they were deal-breakers. For me, that was a huge step towards divorce, but I wasn’t quite there. I was committed to that stand and refused to back down. He begged and promised, but I knew nothing had changed. He set some horrible conditions for reconciliation that confirmed my stand.
Then he initiated the divorce, and I had to agree. In that conversation, my STBX had the gall to ask why I wouldn’t reconcile. I gave him my elevator speech about all the long-term agony he had put me through, and he said, “Yes, I botched up,” and changed the subject.
He gave me a nasty, long divorce and closeout after promising an easy one where he would give me more than the law allowed. My STBX’s mental health badly flared multiple times, and he was even worse after his attorney died and he went pro se. I determined NOT to ever initiate contact unless I had to on a legal matter, and I kept everything business-like. Then he finally let go.
I figured that he had finally paired up with someone who stuck around, and I was right. Several friends said, “He’ll pop up again,” but I recently mentioned that to a retired therapist friend of mine. This friend worked in mental hospitals for several decades, then became a pastor with a side therapy practice. He said, “Likely not.” Given my ex’s diagnoses and how my ex chose to be a runaway and reinvent himself, he’s more likely to look for another partner where he now lives if the current one takes off. According to my friend, my adult kids and I are probably his “buried old life” that my ex prefers to deny. I will keep it that way, believe me.
Yeah- mine’s the same.
Didn’t like reality so made up a new one with a new cast of characters.
He’s thrown almost everyone away from his former life except low character and completely oblivious people as well as his rotten family.
I knew something was wrong too- we always know even if we can’t name that thing or seemingly have no reason to feel that way.
It always seemed something was off with her during my whole marriage, but I could not pinpoint it, so I kept going.
Same here. I kept doubting myself.
As an example, my ex would seriously lose it over me talking to other men because he perpetually thought I was “shopping.” If I chatted with the mail carrier at the box for five minutes on a Saturday while my ex was working in the yard, it was a sign that I was having an affair. If I related something funny that a coworker said in an email, I was having an affair. It got to the point that I worked hard not to even mention other men, but of course, it slipped out in innocent ways because *DUH* half the population is male.
Projection, pure projection.
Weird how that works, huh? Mine would sob at times about fear of loss and losing me. And then did the ONE THING that made sure I would never speak to her again. “Rules for thee, not for me.”
Jeff I said literally the same thing. He was on the self pity channel and said he didn’t think it mattered if he cheated because I was going to divorce him anyway. I was like, no, I wasn’t, but you did the v ONE thing…
When he called to say that he wanted a divorce, he said he had been crying for weeks. REALLY! I had crying jags for years over our marriage. He had been talking divorce for over a decade, and I was just plain worn out with that and his addiction and mental health issues. Oh, and the issue of his “friends.”
The next day, I got up at the crack of dawn to go to work as always. It felt like just another day to me. He claimed to cry another week or so. Really, buddy? Now?
It’s amazing that the Fuckwit Playbook doesn’t have the chapter on “when it’s ok to stop lying.”
When D-Day came she said she wasn’t crying because “she had already done all of her crying months ago.” Which if she were at all honest would have been when she had “officially” betrayed me. I think she was too happy “rubbing her junk on randos”(thanks again to Hell of a Chump for the phrasing) to be shedding too many teras at the end of her meal ticket.
She was aghast when I told her that I had already been crying myself to sleep for months.
She must be a Lewis Carroll fan, yikes.
I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:
I deeply sympathize.’
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
You have no idea of the irony there…
She teaches lit/loves Alice in Wonderland/is named Alice? I’m dying from the mystery, que paso? 😀
Just so weird. They are truly delusional.
One of my favorite emails from my ex’s attorney to mine effectively said, “My client is delusional. Tell Elsie that I’m truly doing all I can to get this done.”
LOL.
Now THAT’S a unicorn lawyer!😁
Yes, sadly he died of COVID late in 2020. I was upset with how much pushback was going on in the negotiations, but mine assured me that my STBX’s attorney would cave in time. Mine said, “At his core, he’s a decent guy, but he likes to put a big show of force for his clients.”
So that email was just after the judge signed off, when my ex was resisting most of the divisions like he could actually prevent that somehow. He didn’t.
I should have left when he returned to our hotel room reeking of alcohol, woman’s body odor and patchouli. We were in a hotel, with our teenage son in the adjacent room in our suite, and he had gone out for “business” reasons while son and I went to dinner and dessert elsewhere, within walking distance of hotel (he took car). Earlier in the day we had lunch with this “busness” associate and son and I were very uncomfortable with her aberrant behavior, touching husbnd, talking about sending anmal manure in the mail to people she disliked, etc. I figured she was on medictaion for mental health issues. Actually, I should have put son in car and left after that lunch and not even waited until dinner. Turns out that the “business” associate is a felon with a public online presence from successive asserts and convictions…the classic situation that with each subsequent arrest the criminal looks much worse and much sicker. I saw her most recent (at the time) mug shot a few months ago, and that tells me, yes, I should have taken action way back then. Would have saved me decades of illness and embarrassment, and he could have freely pursued all the other criminals, prostitues, etc that he chased without having to even come home (he wouldn’t have had this home).
I should have left…when she found a second “friend” to meet up and flirt with, or when she spent us into debt a second time. Or maybe when it was right at the beginning of the marriage when she would stay out after having our child and felt a loss of freedom. I put up with too much, that’s my fault, now I know that “NO” is a perfectly good answer.
I should have left when he was diagnosed with HIV. His excuse was that he must have gotten it before we were married, from a clinic he was briefly treated at in a third-world country on a semester at sea he took when he was in college.
Meaning, his excuse was that he’d contracted HIV before we even met. Before we married and before we conceived our daughter, who I breastfed for the first year of her life, as any loving mother would do.
I should have left when the doctor explained to me that given the timespan, that was a medical impossibility.
Poor dear FW was calling me in tears with veiled references to suicide night after night after night.
That was a mock execution I’ll never forget. Nor do I forgive.
OMG. So sorry. Are you and your daughter okay?
I should have left when I caught him going through my dad’s porn stash.
I wish I was joking.
Ick on so many levels.
I should have left when FW and I were dating and he laughed at me when I told him the bartender was hitting on me. He said I must be wrong; there is no way that would have happened. He implied I was not attractive enough to have been hit on by the bartender. And he acted as though I was lucky to have him paying me any attention at all.
I should have left before I said “yes.” All of my instincts told me not to go through with it. Cheaters cheat and they don’t change simply because they marry you. I listened to my fears, my hopeful heart, and I pushed down and ignored what I knew was the truth. 38 years later, I finally found my self worth and said enough is enough.
Two moments come to mind.
1) He did not stand up for me with his mother. He and I went on a winter camping trip to cut Christmas trees. We had been dating for three months. We had five tree permits to cut trees in a national forest. When we brought the trees back, his mother wanted my tree, the one I had found and cut for myself. He was angry at me for not wanting to give it to her.
2) The first lie I can recall was denying he was attracted to a woman in his class at junior college who he said was his study partner. He told me he was the only guy in the class so he had to be study partners with her. Not too long after that, someone from the class called to ask him if they could borrow his notes. It was a guy. I had been with him for three years and living with him for two. I didn’t have any proof he was screwing around with the woman and I didn’t want to exit because it was only attraction. But I minimized the LYING, which I now believe was because he WAS screwing around with her. Weirdly enough, I recall she resembled the woman he left with 24 years later.
Had I left I would not have my daughter, who is my life’s greatest gift and joy, and I would not wish that back for anything.
My new standard is LEAVE AT THE FIRST LIE.
Thus began a pattern of not standing up for me, with his family, with anyone. Throwing me under the bus.
I should also add the situation with the “study partner” was not the first lie. It was the first one involving a woman. He had early on established himself as someone not acquainted with the truth, lying either directly, by omission, fudging, word games, embellishing, exaggerating. Not keeping agreements. Future faking. But it was obfuscated by the Nice Guy persona, that he claimed to be sober and in recovery, and that he had agreed to go to counseling with me as with the motive of learning relationship skills and avoiding the shitshow marriages our parents had. I just did not see until I could see.
That Nice Guy/Gal stuff is powerful anesthesia. I have issues. I don’t have secrets. It’s important to me to work on myself. There is no such thing as an issue-free person or a problem-free relationship. The trick is to partner with someone honest, willing, and open-minded who works on themselves and is someone safe and trustworthy you can work through problems with.
CHEATERS AND SIDE PIECES ARE NEITHER.
Now divorced, for which I am deeply grateful, we still have a daughter and are each 50% owners of the business we started the year after we were married.
Whenever he complains about our situation, I get to remind him that we’re in this mess because of his dishonesty, that had he been honest with me I would not have continued to date him, I would not have married him, started a business with him or had a child with him.
I got our daughter her own therapist about a year after he left. She wanted us to go to co-parenting therapy and I said no. He nagged me for A YEAR AND A HALF to go. I finally caved and went. He lied and did not do one thing he was asked to do. I enjoyed the weekly validation for 300.00 an hour. I finally decided it was time to exit. At the last session, she said to him “your dishonesty is profound.”
My daughter and I received high praise from her for our emotional maturity and our capacity to behave with civility. She said to him, “a relationship between a straight shooter and someone dishonest doesn’t work.”
She said to him, “a relationship between a straight shooter and someone dishonest doesn’t work.”
Exactly this! What galls me is that my own ex thinks we are equally to blame for the breakdown of our mirage (thanks, VH). He points out that “we had a bad dynamic,” “it takes two,” and “I wasn’t so perfect either.”
I have MANY faults, but I have integrity, and he doesn’t. You can’t make a relationship work if the person you’re trying to have a relationship with doesn’t have integrity.
But as my ex sees it, the scales are even: his lies and cheating on one scale, my inability to buy coffee in the correct caf-decaf ratio on the other side. And don’t get him started on the time my daughter and I forgot to buy limes!!
My old attorney said something similar.
I’ve shared that he was SO intent on watching me during the early appointments that it truly scared me although I liked him and appreciated how passionate he was about family law.
So I noticed when he became relaxed with me. I told him how I felt like he was looking into my soul at first and how that unnerved me, but now I was OK.
He laughed and said, “I was indeed looking into your soul. I do that with all my clients, but I don’t see any guile or prevarication in you. You are good.”
Apparently, he was at a point in his career when he decided to drop any client who tried to hide things or lie to him. I get it.
Mine had two disappearing acts that were huge red flags and I should have left after both/either of those. They were both in regards to something that I had said to him, and to this day he never really did say exactly what it was, just that it had offended him/pissed him off.
The first time, he just disappeared in the middle of the night leaving me a check on the table with an amount he thought was fair (left me with the kids and took more money than he left me of course). I was taken aback and freaked out, trying to call him etc. and he had turned his phone off for days. Just really childish behavior and punishing me with that type of crap. If I had said things that hurt or upset him, he should have said so in the moment and had a conversation, not freaked out and ran to mommy and daddy (yes, you heard right, mom and dad he ran to). These are the same people he would later blame for cheating on me because they caused his NPD he was diagnosed with and they won’t speak to him now. Of course, I had 5 kids under the age of 10 and no job, so I was wigging out and did the “pick me dance” even though there was no affair going on (that I know of), just desperation to “fix” things and make him happy and he loved that. Oh the glorious kibbles he was getting, the ass kissing and apologies I was flinging at him.
The second time, the same thing. Apparently I said something that pissed him off and he stewed on it over night, got up and acted fine the next morning, left for work and then refused to talk to me all day, except for one time, and he was just super rude and curt, basically hung up on me. Then called me after work to state he wasn’t coming home. This was just a few years after the first incident, mind you. So again, the same freak out from me, and the same turning his phone off, not telling me where he was going etc. Only this time, I called a suicide hotline and had to be talked down. This man was controlling and hurting me so badly, I wanted to die. He knew just how to do it too, push all the pain buttons. Again, he ran to mommy and daddy. This is a grown ass man of 30ish doing this! When he finally showed up a week later, he initiated “make up” sex and then proceeded to be all weird, dark glassy eyed and kept saying “don’t use your pussy on me, don’t use your pussy on me”. Who says such and ugly thing to his wife, that he “loves”?
I definitely should have left for sure after the second incident. But like Tracy talks about so much, and even this post – the sunk costs, fear of abandonment and being alone and most especially for me, financial hardship. Still had 5 kids under the age of 10 (3 were from my first marriage). One of our kids was just about a year old and had been very premature and had CP from a brain bleed, so I was overwhelmed with trying to take care of him and the other kids, so I figured it was better to stay for some reason. This was 2002 when this all happened.
Wish I wouldn’t have stayed now, of course, because fast forward to 2021 and he had cheated on me and attacked me, tried to strangle me to death over finding his affair on his phone!
I knew from these other cases (and just general bad treatment over the years) that I should have left, wanted to, but couldn’t. And actually, once I was resigned to never having anything I wanted to make me happy and just catering to him to keep the peace, it was all fairly livable for the next 19 years.
Then in 2021, he got fired from his dream job. His narcissism had gotten so bad he thought he could run his own store (or the world, he was so grandiose at this point) with a big Car sales company, and when that turned out not to be true and he kept making so many egregious mistakes they fired him (and mind you I supported him in this endeavor, even moving half way across the country to do this and leaving all my family and adult kids behind). He blamed ME for losing his job and decided to get revenge by cheating on me. Charming…
So do I wish that I had had the strength back in 2002 to leave him…yes I do. It would have saved me a lot of heartbreak and trauma (I have been diagnosed with PTSD, Panic disorder and Major Depression).
But the bright side (and it seems unbelievable that there is one) that I have been in therapy for the last 3 years and see him for who he really is now – which is NOT a good person.
I hope one day to find a good man that will love me for who I am and I will do the same for him and we can have a good (not perfect because no person is perfect and therefor no relationship is) and happy marriage/relationship. I haven’t given up on love. Just haven’t found my person yet, I guess. Thought I had 30 years ago, but I was wrong. Need to fix my picker! But man, did I learn this lesson the hard way.
Wish I would have left earlier, but would I have learned the lesson I needed? I don’t know.
I think sometimes we have to ease into the truth before we are ready to make a change.
I wasn’t at all ready to admit the truth until my ex was a complete “dumpster fire” (what my adult kids call him). It seemed too long, but once I closed that door, I never really looked back. The kids were also in college then, so no custody issues.
I ignored my gut one night while we were dating. I knew then he wasn’t that deep, but “the dream” of a relationship outweighed picking the right person. Then there will several times that I should have left him afterwards, but I learned patterns from my mom to keep chasing, pick me dancing, & persisting with a guy to make him like me more, and for him to magically change into a better man than he was! No, someone should already be that better person to begin with!!! Don’t wait around for anyone to change!
Before we got married, I dreamt that I was at the foot of a mountain near where I grew up, and my family was at the top of the mountain and I was trying to find them…. and my husband-to-be was at the *bottom* of the mountain. I was trying to get to my family and I didn’t know where they were. It doesn’t get much simpler, symbolically! It was clear to me that my dream was signifying something from my subconscious.
The fact that in the dream, he was at the foot of the mountain and my parents and brother were at the top made me uneasy, and I always remembered that dream. Turns out the symbolism was as clear as could be! It was a warning.
I’m going to throw some blame towards my dad & stepdad here too (I made the Freudian mistake of assigning all blame to mothers)…both of them act like entitled assholes that threw crumbs to my mom & she coped the best way she could to keep the family together. In fact, society taught her that it was HER exclusive job in keeping the family together. My mom now regrets that she didn’t leave both of them sooner. She is much happier now not being a wife-mom!
Before we were married:
I should have left when, after asking to describe me someone I had never met while he was on the phone with them, the 1st thing out of his mouth was, “She can be kinda stupid sometimes.” I was horrified! I was so upset. He later backtracked & said he was trying to be funny, he’s just so “intimidated” by me 🙄. I guess I was pretty stupid for not kicking me to the curb then, but his crocodile tears used to get me.
After we married:
Financial infidelity. He had slipped into a gambling addiction. Even after he stopped when he was fired for forgery (which makes me wonder if it was really an addiction, or him being a selfish idiot) he was still lying to me about the credit card password, why our bills were so high, for months on end. Eventually, I told him to give me the real password or I’d assume he was cheating & leave. At first look I didn’t catch it, but eventually found all the secret transactions & cash advances. He faked that he was sorry, but really, he had so much to lose at that point, he needed me as his meal ticket. I was pregnant and obviously super vulnerable. Afraid if I didn’t “stand by my man,” my daughter would grow up w/o a dad & it would be my fault. My cradle Catholic upbringing didn’t help, & I was afraid of disappointing my family (turned out they’ve been pretty supportive after all).
But, if it wasn’t him, it would have been another asshole. I had no concept of boundaries (thanks mom) and I was only going to learn those lessons the hard way.
Bleh! The typos! Guess I am stupid, lol! See corrections:
“Asking to describe me to someone…”
“Not kicking him to the curb….”
I should have left when…..he beat the living crap out of one our animals in front of me.
😱
This question stuns me with reality. How did I not leave?HOW!!! But it took extreme action on the part of my XHCheater to wake me up. I should have left when he cycled through rage, silent treatment and devaluing me, coercion and staying out every night ” shopping “. The abuse felt NORMAL When I told a new counselor what I was experiencing he said my husband was full of BS and IT WAS NOT NORMAL..So now I know!!!!!! I’m still alive so I am extremely grateful to be out! Sometimes you don’t know how bad it is until you leave!!!!!
If I had it in me to list all the red flags that I let go during my 15 year marriage or during the five years before we got married, I would have a whole book.
Probably when she demanded an open relationship the day after I was diagnosed with diabetes(she claims the timing was coincidental. Noticing that her boundaries blurred the most whenever I had increased emotional needs, I STRONGLY disagree, but then again, it turned out that she was already cheating.)
That was before Thanksgiving ’22. I thought I was going to get my walking papers in January, else come home to an empty apartment one day. When we had an actually kind of decent Valentine’s Day I thought we were going to make it. HA! I didn’t know about cake eating back then.
There were times toward the end where I thought about ending it because the abuse was getting really bad. Rose colored glasses and all-I thought things were going to get better once she got done with her degree. I was in the process of reinventing myself when D-Day finally came.
Of course she would have just gas lit the shit out of me if I was the one to put the bullet into the relationship like she wanted. I doubt sincerely that I would have gotten the confessions that I did had I done that. I was going to be the bad guy anyway. I stand on the right side of history.
Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!
We have lived the same life, sir.
I’d glad that you (and all members of the CN Brotherhood) are past all that and came out good on the other side.
The impression management is strong with them, what can I say?
I dunno about you-I got stuck on some hybrid of sunk cost and “it will get better, always has, always will”, “I’ve had my moments as well”. Or I’d get fed table scraps and be happy with that. Just never did the mental math of what all of the red flags really added up to.
Glad those days are over.
Jury’s still out on “good”, but thank you all the same. The Road to Being Mighty is a bumpy one, isn’t it?
I spent a holiday weekend alone cleaning out our NYC apartment to sale because HE said he had to work, only to get a notification from our private jet service of a flight from home to fancy resort for FW and OW with wine, chocolate covered strawberries, the works. After 15 years of what I believed to be a wonderful marriage, I had NO clue and fell to the floor. I should have left when he called me from his fancy resort and told me he was home getting ready to take our grandsons out to lunch. It would have saved me from a million more lies and years of pain. When you discover who they are, believe them.
I should have left when I saw the one and only “Dickpic”. He gave me his older Ipad, (of course why would I deserve a new one? another issue) On it was a dickpic. I was so naive. I thought it was a joke, or just him messing around. I never realized this is a red flag indicator of serious internet porn communication with cam girls and prostitutes and girlfriends. It’s a common first step in the communication, prostitutes use it as a way to excite their clients and prolong the session. It also tends to weed out police entrapment.
I should’ve left when things didn’t add up. We were living on savings due to VA non payment, claims filed incorrectly by billing clerk, I found out he was in collections from American Express on office CC, he kept disappearing for emergency patients, he lied about opening another CC and went over limit in a couple of months. I suspected cheating, denied of course. One positive, I started moving money a couple of months before DDay. I thought if I’m wrong no harm done.
He was ‘subtle’ in the sense that he didn’t direct anger or disorderedness directly at me in those initial four years (just very skilled, sustained mirroring and intense love bombing) but here are some gems that I would take heed of now…
Even at the time, my gut, on some tiny level, knew that these things were ‘off’
(I now see that there were copious layers of spakle involved) but the alternate times really did feel full of joy and happiness…..(shared adventures humour and passion, kindness to animals and children, seeming devotion to family).
When you’re in it, it can be very subtle…and mixed in with the ‘good stuff’….
– searingly belittling to service staff. By no means always, but it happened two to three times.
– telling me he didn’t like that I wore make up, put as “you’re more beautiful without make up”
– telling me “you women are a crazy lot”
– telling me that when it came to choosing a romantic partner he was “very picky”
– a dodgy email came up on his phone when we were away on our first overseas trip, with him calling the recipient “my love”. He claimed that it was a misplaced draft email from way back when, to his former de facto. Uh huh
– referring to young women who had behaved rudely in the past as “b@&@hes”
– objectifying my looks and body far, far too much
– being too possessive, for example If I spoke happily with a male librarian or male restaurant owner as some examples. One time I was conducting research and speaking with enthusiasm to a museum curator. He came up behind me and encircled me from behind, as I was talking to this person. He wouldn’t let go. I had to nudge him off me.
– being entitled when it came to his mother doing things for him, laundry, printing etc
– a huge one, in retrospect, I paid the rent and perhaps 75/80 percent of utilities and living expenses. I paid the entirety of a modest home deposit. I rationalised it as being a situation where I was happy to share my good fortune with him – that in a sense I would have been making those outlays anyway.
I never stopped to question, what sort of adult partner feels comfortable with that asymmetry and doesn’t seek to redress the balance in some way?There weren’t other factors like home making or raising children. He continued a very relaxed part time work lifestyle.
– his social circle was quite limited, he relied excessively (I believe this was genuine, not healthy, but genuine) on being in my company – living through and for me
– he put me on a pedestal (there’s only one direction to go from there)
I read these back now and I can see, in combination that the picture these signs paint is dysfunctional, but I think I spackled each issue on its own. I didn’t step back and look at the whole picture (I don’t think I wanted too).
I also realise, looking back, that none of the signs related directly to more overt red flags like ogling women or triangulating female friends or staying out to all hours, unaccounted for.
I think my simplistic thinking (and first marriage experiences) trained me to look out for those extreme sort of signs, not the signs I was actually being presented with…
Hind sight is 20/20. Looking back I should have left so many times, but always thought of the kids. I ate so many shit sandwiches it infuriates me so much now. I could never do anything right, from folding his underwear wrong to where I shopped! All the while he would be out galavanting with god knows who and spending every penny I made. Oh and let’s not to forget the multiple affairs that came out at the end!! 23 years of my life wasted on a POS cheating man child. Shoulda never married the FW jerk…. lesson learned the hard way I suppose.
We’d been married for almost 10 years and were having problems. We went to marital counseling, although I had to drag him there by his ear. FW said he didn’t need any help, he wasn’t the problem and he was much smarter than any therapist so it would be a big waste of time. 🙄
The therapist spoke to each of us separately. He spoke to FW first, then called me in to his office. The therapist wasted no time in telling me my husband had a personality disorder called Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and the chances of him ever being “normal” were slim to none. He said my best chance of a happy life was to end the marriage. I was in shock. I had never heard of NPD. This was in the early days of the World Wide Web, and there wasn’t much information out there. I went to the library and researched all I could about the disorder. What I did find corroborated what the therapist told me. But I still loved my husband and didn’t want to believe what that therapist said and what I was reading.
I stayed for another 19 years of eggshell walking, during which he was more than likely cheating on me with prostitutes the entire time. I’ll never know the extent of his betrayal, and I don’t want to know. He discarded me in a most despicable manner, two months after I’d retired from my 30 year career and while I was across the country caring for my sick mother. I was completely blindsided.
I’m SO glad to be rid of him now and am pretty much at “meh”, but I really do wish I’d listened to that therapist 25 years ago.
… I also was abandoned with our children after he’d moved us away. I think it’s common on here.
Spineless bastards. I’m sorry that happened to you and your children. I am very fortunate I had no young children at the time. I always think how much harder it would have been to go through while having to be the sane parent for young children.
I envy you that therapist! I wish just ONE therapist had had the decency to do that for me!
Yes, I did not appreciate it at the time. I wanted help to save my marriage, so I was not prepared to hear there was no hope. Although I think he did try to give me some advice on how to live with a person with NPD, but I was in such shock, I didn’t really hear what he was saying.
Looking back, there were too many to count, and they literally started on Day 1 of our relationship. I look back on some of my oversights with shame, and I don’t know if I will ever truly forgive myself (or should). But, I am a better person with better values now that I have come out the other side.
I should have left when:
1) He dissed my brother and said he didn’t want him in the house.
2) When he said I had become fat. I was 5’9″ and 140lbs.
3) When I found he was watching porn.
4) 10 years later found porn of young girls (they looked like they were 14).
5) When he wouldn’t better himself either in the job or personally. He had a 4 year degree in finance but worked for Sam’s as a department lead.
6) When I realized he had no friends and he only seemed to get along with women.
I am also one of those who the things trickled in and it was 30 years when I finally saw him for the sociopath that he was. I was too busy being the major wage earner and of course, he would gaslight whenever I questioned things and never wanted to discuss issues. Glad to be finally free of that shitshow.
Oh, so many….but here are some that should’ve caused me to hit the eject button on our mirage (thanks, VH):
I should’ve left when, for no apparent reason, he ran ahead of me on what was supposed to be a fun, post-wedding weekend hike up a mountain. I did the climb by myself and hoped we’d meet in the parking lot because he had the car keys. On the way home, I contemplated jumping out of the moving car. I was only 23. I’d yet to write all the thank-you notes. I really should have left at this moment, but I was too embarrassed.
I should’ve left when he threw ice cubes at my face.
I should’ve left when he locked me out of our hotel room.
I should’ve left when I found myself making excuses to the kids for his shitty moods: “He means well.” “He’s on call”
I should’ve left every time he insulted me, esp when he did it in front of the kids.
I should’ve left when he yelled at our daughter on the soccer field and later when he complained that she should’ve done better on her PSATs. She scored in the 95th percentile. I don’t know what the hell he was thinking.
I should’ve left when he yelled at our then 9-year-old son for not putting the wheelbarrow back in the shed properly. It was completely out of proportion to the “offense.”
I should’ve left when I found myself taking a separate car to our son’s ice hockey games so he could ride home with me and avoid getting berated by his dad.
I could go on….
Oof, I think Cl wanted snark but instead this went dark fast.
*
It’s interesting that it took the affair to blast me out of my marriage. But looking back, there were a million other reasons to leave.
Same here! That’s why I say his affair is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Without it I would still be stuck to that barnacle because the ex FW’s physical betrayal is the only thing that finally got me to truly wake up and scrape off that parasite.
I did that excuse for my kids too. Daddy isn’t mad because the babies aren’t quiet enough and he worked 3rd shift. I let him yell at me because I couldn’t keep toddlers quiet. I did my best and I tried. Mind you, I worked full time, woke up multiple times a night to nurse or tend to my children’s needs and lived on very few hours of sleep. Then went to work and managed multiple departments.
I took the brunt of having a chair slammed on the ground at a soccer game because I asked him not to yell at the girls during soccer. It was beyond embarrassing. They said they hated being yelled at when they were trying their best. Their coach was already directing them. I was trying to communicate for the kids but apparently, I was wrong to do so. It was another shit sandwich, but I’ll always stick up for my kids.
I should have left when I found out I was pregnant with my son. This was a totally planned pregnancy. When I let xhole know we were having a baby he said “Should we keep it?” Who says that?? I will never tell my son his father said that. My son is 20 now and has no idea that if his father had his way, he wouldn’t be here. It makes me sick to type that. My son is an amazing person.
A lot of us have the time travel conundrum in the film About Time where we can’t go back before the kids were born or we’ll end up with different kids. So in my time machine fantasy, I utilize hospital security to kick FW out of my hospital room at 4am the night my last child was born by c-section immediately after FW hiss-shouted at me for wanting to fetch the baby and nurse before the latter woke up in the nursery crying. It would give me the perfect one-liner to explain to all and sundry why I left because who would shout at a recovering new mother trying to nurse?
Then of course because this is a magical time travel fantasy and I’ve presumably seen the future, I make all sorts of stellar investments the second the ink is dry and end up a filthy rich philanthropists with several PhDs.Then I’d probably raise the kids exactly as I have but with more choices and opportunities and a lot less stress.
Oh, and I’d travel further in the future to find tech to solve climate change, warn Edward Snowden not to get stuck in Moscow, head off various global terror attacks, disasters and atrocities, bring down a gaggle of corporate villains and build retreats and shelters for abuse survivors and advance the work of Evan Stark.
This is an interesting post, and reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend decades ago. At the time she was going through her pre-divorce things and she said that thing about her kids, that she would not want to have different kids so her time with her FW was worth it. My point of view was more religious/spiritual/whatever, in that I believed I would have the same kids because although their DNA would be different (because different father) I would have gotten their same spirits in their different bodies, and that is the only thing that counted for me. For those with spiritual beliefs what do you think about this issue?
It’s all magical speculation since no such thing as a time machine would ever exist. Even if time travel tech were possible we’d all be squashed by the singularity. And even if I held a very firm spiritual point of view, I wouldn’t count on God or the universe sending me the same exact souls of my current children, especially if I dared tamper with the natural order by playing with time.
In any case, I can’t imagine life without my children as they are. That’s why, in my daydream, I can time travel to that exact moment and get out while the gettin’ was good. 😀
I agree. I love my kids so much, they are the light of my life, even the one with incel vibes. I suspect I’d never have been a mother if i had thought about things a bit more as a younger person. I was just livin in the moment.
And my 19 yo daughter that comes home rolling drunk from the pub yell crying “noboooddddy understaandds meee excepttt taylooorrrr swiiiffft” reminds me we are all allowed to act like fools and make mistakes when we are young.
If I remember correctly, being that young wasn’t all fun and games simply because of the lack of “epistemological” sureness about personal experience. At that age, you haven’t lived long enough to be really sure whether the advice anyone gives you hold water. Given the chance, I don’t think I’d trade my current solid understanding of the world for that rickety state of comprehension for more years on the planet.
Oh god no. It was dreadful. No perspective, thought everything was the end of the world and no one else ever did that dumb thing and oh the shame of it.
New and different problems as we get older, just more of a balance between self and other. I feel like having children helps with that, at least in my case it truly did help me to care for another human being.
I just wish my lower back and digestive system worked like my 20 year old self.
I wish I could sleep ten hours straight like I did when I was twenty and had no life and death responsibility and stabler hormones. For that I’d probably give a minor appendage, maybe a small toe lol.
I’m hearing you. But still got two arms, two legs, mostly sane, don’t need continence aids unless I jump up and down vigorously, so I avoid that
Early in our relationship, long before we moved in together, my ex went into a store to buy some things while I waited in the car.
When she came back out with her stuff, she told me about the conversation she had with the cashier. “I told her I was buying this stuff for my brother who just got out of the military,” she said.
She didn’t have a brother in the military and she was buying the stuff for herself. I wondered why she would make up a story like that.
“Oh,” she said, “Sometimes I like to tell little lies to people, just for fun. You know? Just to see if I can get away with it. Haven’t you ever done that?”
I said, “No, I can’t say I ever have.”
THAT was the moment, friends.
There were no other red flags at that point. I wrote off this lying thing as an adorkable little quirk, a harmless creative writing exercise that surely would never go beyond light conversations with strangers.
She turned out to be such a hideous liar that after 10 years of marriage I had to accept that I knew nothing about her, and she expertly turned every single one of our mutual friends against me after I threw her out of the house.
It was a hard lesson in placing high value on good character in the people you choose to let into your life.
College friends and I in NYC would pretend that we didn’t speak English when certain types of guys would hit on us. My Korean roommate used to shout at them like a cartoon Mandarin fishmonger. I don’t mean regular men approaching politely to meet and greet but blatantly creepy douches who obviously thought they were all that and a bag of chips were pulling out their slick moves (advertising any material wealth or owning a ski lodge in Bavaria– ew). We’d laugh ourselves sick about it. But I can’t even imagine conning some nice, normal person as a lark.
“I like to keep people guessing.” That should have been a HUGE red flag.
If I ever hear those words from anybody that either of my daughters gets serious about, I’m def going have a chat.
I keep reading about the honeymoon period where abuse victims think if they do everything right, their abuser will treat them like they did in the beginning during the honeymoon period of the relationship. We never had one of those. Cheater was abusive, mean, neglectful, and comparing me viciously to others from the get-go. I should have left before it even started. Maybe second to that, when cheater told me she couldn’t tell her exes about us because it would hurt their feelings. But really there were so many egregious moments throughout, it’s hard to narrow it down to the moment.
I should have ran the first time we met up again after 20 years when he told me he was an asshole.
We’d known each other since we were teenagers and I just couldn’t believe that could be true.
I should have left when he told me he’d cheated on his first wife.
When I discovered his considerable debt I had to pay off.
When he spent as much time as he could out of the house and away from me.
When I realised he wanted a mummy bang maid rather than a partnership and an adult wife.
When the lies started and never stopped.
It was wild and has gotten a lot wilder since I dared to defy him by having a mind of my own.
I should have left when…… one night, six years into the marriage with two babies and a brand new mortgage, he shared his history of sexual partners including; his best friend’s long term girlfriend once after they’d had a fight and an unknown young woman him and said best friend bought liquor for and drove around with her in the backseat until she was drunk enough the only decision left was between her rapists about first and second.
I cannot believe I am even able to type that now. I was scared, young and without any family support or financial resources of my own.
35 years later, he abruptly discarded me and waltzed off with his latest schmoopie. That’s when my rose colored glasses were violently ripped off and I saw he was always that person. I nearly didn’t survive it.
What a sadistic prick he was to “test your character” by leveling and leaking out bits of truth only when you were a literal “baby hostage.”
Like others, I spackled over so very many moments that indicated I should get out. And like others of you have commented, one of them was the bazillion times he made it clear that I just couldn’t get anything right. Comically, one of the things that was oh so important to him was cutting cornbread in just the right way. He quickly took over that job because the way I cut it was idiotic in his mind, lol.
Here are some of heavier things that made me wish I had just gotten out right then:
I would’ve stayed through the abuse although I was slowly dying on the inside. It took the last affair to get me to leave. So painful as it was/is, I’m glad my eyes were opened eventually. I have definitely gained a life!
I should have cut him off at the first lie, way back when we were dating.
We had a date, and he called me up to say he was going out with friends. It wasn’t; “Sorry about breaking the date, but is it okay with you that I go out with friends instead?” That would have been fine. He didn’t even acknowledge there had been a date, just said he was going out. Then the next day he claimed not to remember we had a date, said he was sorry for forgetting. I couldn’t prove he was lying, but I shouldn’t have given him any benefit of the doubt.
After Dday I would wonder what all the many the things he had undoubtedly lied to me about over all the years were. Not knowing all that I had been conned about drove me nuts.
Ah yes. Get in with that gaslighting at the earliest opportunity, so that little lady who’s boss.
“Show” not so
Actually my kids and I discuss gaslighting quite a bit. It is all over tiktok and socials these days. I’ve told them all it is a terrible thing to do to someone, perhaps the worst thing you can do. I encourage them to keep in touch with their shame and take responsibility for bad behaviour. I don’t know if it works but I’ve said my piece at least.
I should have left the first time he knocked me down. But we were on our boat, anchored out in the back of beyond, five miles from civilization. And there were alligators swimming past. (I did — briefly — consider swimming for it.)
The day after our wedding, he announced, “Now that we’re married, I don’t have to be on my best behavior anymore.” I should have left then.
My husband told me something weird not long after we were married and living together, that I thought weird at the time; but I was innocent so it didn’t hit me until after he left how big of a red flag it was.
It is weird how things hit you years later, and you think omg, I should have…
I should have left him after the first time he shouted, “You’re too fat, you’re too ugly and I deserve something better so I’m leaving. Goodbye.” (First cheater.) Nothing that happened after that was worth staying for. We were both 25; I thought he was having an early midlife crisis.
I should have left him after he admitted to having had sex with a patient before we met. (Second cheater.) Or when he swung a canoe paddle at me. (I almost did leave, but my father talked me into staying. Tells you something about my father, no?) I should have left him when he didn’t want to buy me an engagement ring because it was a waste of money. Especially given that I’d paid for things for *HIM* that I thought were a waste of money.
The first lie, his dad is dead (then he showed me pics of his dad who lives in VA), 32+ years ago……yeah that was kind of a big one but I chumpily assumed it was meant emotionally dead after he allowed me to console him on the passing of his dad, crickets.
Incident after incident after incident…. The most glaring one being, after about 32 years of marriage, asking why he never came home from work at a reasonable time and being told “I don’t come home because I have nothing worth coming home to.”
I do hope he comes home to an empty house now.
As far as I know he and Mrs. Bendover are still together, 24 hours/day because she is his humployee and they live in the house I helped design and build. If they have a happy and loving relationship that’s fine by me because everyone deserves that in life. If he is an abusive, narcissistic partner to her manipulative psychopathic self then that is also fine by me, because they both deserve that kind of life as well.
My story is a little different. No physical affairs (that I know of). Some sexting. But that is nothing compared to the real issue: a collection of CSAM, and membership (and eventually becoming an admin!! barf barf barf) of a website devoted to “erotic” “art” and stories about children.
DDay for me, a year ago, was a dozen or more LEO raiding our house at 6am, taking each of us (including my college age kids) outside at gunpoint, handcuffing us in the front yard for the neighbors to gawk at, and ransacking the house. Afterwards I asked him a few questions to confirm and then asked him to leave. Divorce was final less than four months later.
A minor detail in the scheme of things, but still a source of distress for me, is that due to the nature of my job I had to disclose all this to my employer, which, if he had thought about it for two seconds, he would have known. So I couldn’t even get away from it at work; I was worried I might be let go. As I remarked to him, if he had set out to fuck up my life in the most comprehensive way possible, he could hardly have done a better job.
In retrospect, I *should* have left when:
-He was in a bad mood and yelled at me because younger daughter and I were dancing around & laughing in the kitchen while doing the dishes and it was annoying him. The idea that I have to tiptoe around someone else’s shitty bad temper, something that was a big feature of my childhood, REALLY pisses me off. Home should be a place of joy, and his attitude that our joy was bugging him…christ I get enraged thinking about it.
-Any of the times when he would accidentally bump into me or whatever and simply COULD NOT bring himself to say “excuse me” or “I’m sorry” like any normal person. He would bark “I didn’t hurt you” or “it wasn’t that bad” or whatever. It got to be a huge thing between us, even came up in family therapy.
-The time we were going to a friend’s themed party, costumes encouraged but optional, and he berated me because I was supposedly refusing to tell him what a good costume for him would be. Planning a costume is not in my skillset and I kept telling him I had no idea and it didn’t matter anyway because most of the adults wouldn’t bother. He followed me around the house as I tried to get away from him, claiming that I was deliberately withholding some vital information.
-The time–this was shortly before DDay–that he said women should be “careful” about accusing men of sexual misconduct. For context, he’s very liberal (as am I) and he self-presents as this big feminist, proud father of daughters, etc. In light of what he did (and was doing at the time), well, if I ever need to summon rage, I can just think of this.
-The time when we were in the car with then-teen daughter and her best friend at the time, who is Black, and he used the n-word while discussing rap lyrics, I told him not to and he did the whole “what, it’s ok for the rapper to use it but not me?” dumbass routine. Later we got in one of the biggest arguments we’d ever had.
Phew. I was having a rough day just now, grieving, and this was a really bracing exercise to help me realize I’m better off now.
He is a terrible person
My ex was married to his first wife for19 years. She dropped out of the work force to raise their son and they split right as he graduated high school. He faked a future, waiting until he didn’t have to pay child support. He didn’t have to pay alimony in the divorce because she was half owner in their small business. Soon after the divorce he “lost” the contracts of his biggest clients and “sadly” closed the business down. He got an office job and kept his entire salary; his ex was financially devastated. It bothered me when I heard it, but he was super charming and I spackled like crazy. I wish I had held him accountable,
Two years into the marriage I found out he was still dating. I was good enough to pay the bills and wash his clothes, but he was still looking out for himself.
Mine is more classic, but I should have left him when I was 23 and he screamed at me for the first time for all the hot water being gone in our apartment complex (even though we shared the hot water with other people, so it wasn’t like I personally used it up and he KNEW this, but even if I had used up all the hot water, he shouldn’t have yelled at me).
I had just moved to a strange city a thousand miles away and we had been living together fairly blissfully (it seemed) until one morning, as we were both getting ready for work, he got in the shower and it was getting cold. He started sounding angry about it (even though I warned him, “Hey, the water is running out, you’d better hop in!”). I finally said, “You know that’s not my fault, right?” and he ripped back the curtain and looked like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and screamed, “I AM NOT MAD AT YOU!!!!!” No one had ever yelled at me like that, ever. Of course, seconds later, he jumped out of the shower and apologized profusely and I made excuses for him, thinking he was tired or stressed or what have you. But I want to go back in time and say, “RUN!!!” But at 23, away from my family and everything I knew? Leaving sounded hard. I had no idea how easy it would be then compared to five kids and 27 years later.
Also, around the same time…my colleagues at my new job asked me to go out and have drinks after work one day. I was happy to meet new friends and I had one drink with them after. When I got home, he was weird and icy to me, accusing me of “partying.” I said, “I just had a beer with everyone…” Again….RUN.
So many times, I want to tell my young self to run.
This sounds like a familiar story for many of us. Just those little glimpses of rage or insanity. And the decades of gaslighting and cognitive dissonance that follows. I bet he was a “nice guy” outside of the home, except when he wasn’t.
Yes, exactly. He rarely let the mask slip in public.
By the time I knew he was cheating, I spackled like crazy because of the five kids, the double mortgage, and years of being isolated.
We were married (3years) and FW was doing a residency in medicine on the east coast. I was on the west coast (with our 2yr. old child) working on my PhD. It was not an ideal situation. After 6 months being apart, FW calls me crying and saying it’s not going to work out with us because we are apart. Little did I know he was sleeping with multiple women at that time. We were a family and so I made the decision to leave my program (even though I was almost finished) to move out to the east coast. I wish I would have known he was cheating. I would have never left my PhD program and would have divorced. Instead I wasted 22 years with a serial cheater.
I should have left when I noticed that his rage would explode for no reason. I realise now it’s because he has the emotional maturity of a pre-teen. But since the rage wasn’t directed at me I overlooked it. And by the time he did direct it at me he had me so well controlled that I didn’t even see it as a red flag.
I should have left when he told me
* I chewed too loud at breakfast
* my job wasn’t like a real job. ( I was a librarian)
*I didn’t close the drawers and cabinets
That ‘librarian’ crack really pisses me off!
Oh, I have so many incidents! I’m a very slow learner. I should have left when he came home from a “work meeting” at 2 am, clothes all rumpled, reeking of alcohol, and proceeded to vomit all over me as I lay in bed.
And then, when history somewhat repeated itself during his second year of law school, and he suddenly got involved with “study groups” that apparently consisted of just him and a female classmate and took place in the evenings over dinner and one or more bottles of wine.
And yet again when I was working late and stopped off to pick up some takeout for myself and called to ask if he wanted anything; he said no because he’d already eaten (I suspect during another “study session”) and then proceeded to eat my dinner while I was in the shower. Show of dominance, I suppose.
And when he pulled off the distributor cap from my car to keep me from going to work (not sure why he did that, probably as another show of dominance).
And the final, horrifying event, when Classmate got super bold and started calling the house and I had reached my last nerve and grabbed the phone and gave her both barrels. My mother was visiting at the time and she helped FW tear up some towels to try to tie me up and have me committed. (WTF, mom?) I escaped to a friend’s house, but was so beaten down at that point that I couldn’t work up the energy to leave, even then.
The last straw for me was when he threatened to kill my cats because I wasn’t sufficiently appreciative of his wonderfulness to accept whatever crumbs he was throwing me when he wasn’t busy with Classmate (I think it was because she was allergic and he didn’t want to be bringing cat hair into her apartment). I did leave at that point because, you know, my cats.
This all happened with FW #1; FW #2 is a story for another day.
Well he truly does suck. And your mom sheesh.
Oh my lord yes right back to before we were even a couple. The man was not right, but what on earth was I doing. Red flags (some amusing)
1. When we got together one night and he later saw me at a library and said his stomach felt funny but then he realised it was just hunger resolved by eating a sandwich (ok this one was funny, but also a sign something I was amiss).
2. As friends, he paid for a couple of takeaways and a few weeks or months later said I owed him “one thousand dollars for all those meals” he bought.
3. Trolling me in a chat room when we were both in an internet Cafe one day in the 90s, before trolling was even a thing (I thought I was talking to a stranger online, and it turned out it was him, sitting near me but pretending to do something else).
4. Meeting up with my parents interstate when we weren’t even going out, and turning up at their house looking for me. They thought he was such a lovely bloke taking them out for a meal (a lot of the reason I married him was because of my parents holding him in high regard).
Ok they were all weird early signs before we formally started going out.
After that, once we did start a serious relationship, unexplained meltdowns followed by the disappearing act, and couldn’t give a flying fuck when I had near pneumonia in the middle of UK winter. Went out on a drug bender.
So many signs something was amiss which I interpreted as someone being a ham. I was a bit of an eccentric too but fair dinkum what was I thinking. I must have known, but it is the switching the alarm bells thing off we are conditioned to do.
P.s. one thing he consistently albeit intermittently said throughout the relationship was “i am a fraud”, which i thought meant imposter syndrome from low self esteem but nooooo. I shudder to think now what is going on inside his head – my kids say not much but that was the trick I fell for. Hard to interpret someone’s words correctly with no real context.
Oh goodness, you’ve just reminded me that my ex confided in me several times that he didn’t even know who he was. I misread that and thought he was still learning and growing as a human.
I can now see he was actually telling me there’s nothing inside him. He just mirrors people to try and pass as a normal human.
Actually one weird thing that still continues is that it feels like he didn’t only mirror me, but wanted to be me or have my life as he thought it would attract sympathy. He did the switcheroo thing many times where he said my values were his, his were mine (eg accusing me of being a greedy conservative when nothing could be further from the truth, probably around the time he was setting up secret bank accounts and squirreling money away for no good reason since I shopped at the thrift shop and never took a dime off anyone in my life yardy ya). He is still on my relatives’ socials, and they are true working class people with humble lives whereas he was privileged and never knew poverty but pretends he has nothing and hides his wealth. He likes and comments on their posts about “dont judge people by the home they live in, it is the love inside that counts” etc. As if he is them. Also a bit of amateur hour gaslighting. Of course my relatives think he is a lovely down to earth fellow.
Ah well, live and let live.
Yep. They walk amongst us. Scary
I should’ve left the first time he called me a bitch.
The first time someone disrespects you should be the last time. It never gets better, only worse.
I should have left when she had the affairs. The first affair was under the radar and I didn’t figure it out until the second one, when she moved out so she could meet men. I was ready to call in the lawyers and get the divorce going then, but when I confronted her, we started communicating better and I decided to reconcile. However, I was definitely a chump and the talk was about what I needed to do to fix things.
And things were definitely better for a few years after that. Good communication, we were getting along better than ever. However, true character always wins out and eventually her true character returned, communication worsened (I think her basic idea of communication was that I needed to be a mind reader, always knowing what she wanted without her talking to me about it), and her lack of commitment to me returned. She may have been thinking of getting involved with someone or not. I didn’t know for sure, but she definitely pulled the plug and we divorced.
I wish I had found this site during the affairs I knew about. I wouldn’t have reconciled, or would have put more conditions on her. Likely the outcome would have been divorce then. Instead, I wasted seven more years to get to the same point.
I should have left when, after a major surgery, he parked two blocks away from the apartment and then walked half a block ahead of me all the way back.
The same day, he snapped at me to close the car door in the parking lot when I was feeling nauseous and opened the door to, well, I’ll spare you the gory details.