Just Discovered the ‘Emotional Affairs’ Were Physical Affairs
She said they were emotional affairs but he discovered they were physical affairs. At least four of them. He’s reeling.
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Dear Chump Lady
My sad chumpy tale begins many years ago in the mid 2000s.
I got married after being with a girl for 6 years. We met in first year uni. She was my only girlfriend, I’m a bit of a nerd/gamer type.
On our honeymoon she confessed to having had second doubts about us prior to marriage and has some online involvement with another guy.
But she chose me in the end. I knew none of this and was blindsided. Then, I entered a depression for several years during which time she had two further emotional affairs, one of which got the stage of naming their future children. I saw evidence for both. Yet I was still hopelessly in love with this woman and did everything to try and save the marriage. I went on antidepressants. Then we had marriage counselling and stayed together.
We then had 3 kids and 12 years of shitty sex life and hard work. We enjoyed gaming together and raising the kids. I let down my guard.
I found a nude image from 3 years ago when she left her laptop open 3 months ago.
It was from a man I recognized she had been helping with some job applications a few years back. I decided to do some more investigating and started monitoring more closely.
Two months ago I noticed her getting messages on WhatsApp. I was able to see when these were arriving — always when I had left the room or taken the kids out. I confronted and asked to see the phone. They were texts from the 3rd emotional affair partner from 15 years ago (the one who had planned names for the kids). They weren’t dodgy texts, just friendly. I also brought up the other nude image of fourth emotional affair partner I’d found.
She said that they had a flirty exchange and that’s all.
One month ago I pulled apart her clothes cupboard and found a unique sex toy. It turns out that this “flirty exchange” with #4 guy also involved sending dick pics. I also found that he had cut off the relationship in April 2022.
I’ve signed up for individual therapy which has been great and non-judgmental. I’ve been waiting for marriage counseling which I also arranged. My wife hasn’t arranged anything. I’m able to see her phone when asked.
Two days ago I brought up that I wanted to let the affair partner’s wife know about the affair. She asked me to wait for marriage counseling so that everything could be out in the open.
I asked what else needed to be out and she admitted to meeting up with guy #4 for physical sex.
Since then I’ve been physically ill. I’m on sleeping tablets. My GP forced me to take the week off work and I almost crashed my car because of the crying. I slept in a different bed. I’m feeling completely out of love and just want to leave. On the third night after the reveal she angrily states that I needed to stay in bed with her so she didn’t feel abandoned and that not staying would have consequences. I replied that being threatened didn’t make me want to stay.
I ended up taking more sleeping pills and sleeping as far away as possible without touching or looking at her.
This morning I feel that there’s only one way this marriage is headed.
We have 3 kids, one with depression and one with anxiety.
I’m seeing the marriage counsellor tomorrow for an intake session.
I have messaged the other woman but she hasn’t replied to me yet.
Signed,
DazedChump
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Dear DazedChump,
Let me begin with a big cold bucket of validation: Yes, of course those “emotional affairs” were physical affairs. Adults fuck. You don’t name your future children with casual acquaintances.
You’re in shock because you wanted to believe her bullshit. And — this is important, so you stop beating yourself up — because she kept letting you invest in her. This goes back to the earliest days of her goading you into the pick me dance. She has “doubts” and an online competitor, but you “win.”
She has a long history of cake eating.
By which I mean, she’s directing her relationship energies elsewhere, but you serve as faithful spousal appliance. While you assume she’s invested, as you have three children together, you still feel the lack of her investment (shitty sex life). This kicks you into marriage policing, but the most she’ll admit to are “emotional affairs” (only because you haven’t caught the physical affairs).
All of this is bad enough. You can leave for an emotional affair! But Dazed, step back — she’s in the power seat. Why is her entitlement unquestioned?
You cannot work with that. This was never a relationship based on mutuality and respect. You never knew the truth of your marriage. Hell, you never had a marriage in any healthy sense of the word.
So your choices are — rebuild something with a total fuckwit, or start your life over.
I’m team Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life.
Please cancel the marriage counseling immediately. This isn’t a relationship dual accountability problem, this is a predator/victim problem. You didn’t MAKE her lie to you and front a fake relationship. SHE did that. Your job now is to protect yourself and keep yourself alive to be the sane parent, because God knows, she’s checked out of that job.
Let’s break this down.
She was my only girlfriend, I’m a bit of a nerd/gamer type.
So, you lack perspective on what a healthy relationship looks like. Trust me, there’s a wide world out there of women who would love a faithful, nerdy boyfriend. But you don’t have to have a lot of experience to know what’s unacceptable. Are four affair partners, (that you know of), acceptable to you?
People who love you do not goad you into humiliating contests with others.
But she chose me in the end. I knew none of this and was blindsided. Then I entered a depression for several years during which time she had two further emotional affairs, one of which got the stage of naming their future children.
Yeah, these were not emotional affairs, they were physical, as we discussed above. Naming her future children with another man is evidence that she very much did NOT “choose” you. It’s evidence that you’re in a pick me dance you cannot win.
Yet I was still hopelessly in love with this woman and did everything to try and save the marriage. I went on antidepressants. We had marriage counselling. And we stayed together.
Fuck the Reconciliation Industrial Complex. Why would you go back to that poisonous advice to stay with an abuser? Is this relationship worth your physical and mental health? YOU MATTER.
Trust but verify is no way to live.
It was from a man I recognized she had been helping with some job applications a few years back. I decided to do some more investigating and started monitoring more closely.
Job applications? To be her fuckbuddy? That’s clever. Please step away from the dysfunction and leave her to the fetid applicant pool.
They were texts from the 3rd emotional affair partner from 15 years ago (the one who had planned names for the kids). They weren’t dodgy texts, just friendly. I also brought up the other nude image of fourth emotional affair partner I’d found.
Dude, you had reconciliation counseling with quacks to get her to recommit to the marriage. Which she very clearly did not, because she’s still texting her former (current?) affair partner. Why do you think MORE RIC quackery is going to help you now? You tried marriage counseling.
This is how it worked out. She continued to cheat. Therapists do not have magic powers. There’s no sodium pentothal. Your cheating wife won’t be forced to come clean. You just have to accept the ugly truth that:
You have nothing to work with.
I ended up taking more sleeping pills
This woman is not worth your one precious life. Get REAL support — talk to your doctor about depression and self harm, and see a divorce lawyer. Do not tip your hand. Just do it.
We have 3 kids, one with depression and one with anxiety.
It could well be that the kids know that mom is cheating and they’re carrying her secrets and it’s affecting their mental health. That’s a very common story here. In any case, it sounds like there’s a lot of tension and unhappiness at home. You can change that by CHOOSING SANITY. For yourself. She’s going to continue to be a dumpster fire of dysfunction, and someone needs to be the sane parent here. I nominate you.
Dazed, this blog and my book are full of all the ways you leave a cheater and gain your life back. Join the online community for 24/7 support. We’re here for you.
Go into stealth mode. You can sort out your feelings later. Right now it’s time to be strategic. Gather all evidence of cheating, see the top five best divorce lawyers in town, and do not tell her you’re doing this. Gather all financial documents and get an STD test too.
On our honeymoon she confessed to having had second doubts about us prior to marriage …On. your. honeymoon. Dude, this woman is straight-up cruel.
Absolutely, she’s a real USER.
This is the best practical advice. There will be many temptations to confront the FW, call her, email her AP, sabotage her life, etc., but these fall under the category of “if it feels good, don’t do it.” Be disciplined. The best thing to do right now is to make a self-protection and extraction plan. Making and executing a plan is a good way to cope with trauma and depression – you can focus on little details, like “today at lunch I will research and call a lawyer. Tomorrow I will set up a bank account in my name,” etc. When you are in trauma, it can be so tempting to convince yourself that doing nothing is just easier.
Yes, and the whole “hold me in bed” threat is total DARVO. She’s playing the sad sausage.
That or a setup to accuse him of marital rape. 😮
I mention this because I’m mulling over a recent study proposing that female narcissists may be more likely to make false abuse and rape claims towards partners though I don’t like how generalized the authors are in making the association since it seems to suggest that false claims are common. https://www.psypost.org/female-narcissism-and-domestic-abuse-new-psychology-research-reveals-dangerous-tendencies/
On the one hand, false claims of rape can only be a fraction of what is often touted (2-8%) because the statistics have to be mitigated by the fact that a huge percentage (up to 90%) of actual rape cases go unreported. The same statistical murk exist regarding false claims of dv. But, on the other hand, I think it’s only fair to warn male chumps that, if any subset of people might be a likely candidates to make false claims, it would be she-FWs or mate poachers (or the all too common combo) who are, according to a few decades of research, statistically more prone to psychopathy than average women. It would make sense since sexual deviousness of one type could relate to sexual deviousness of another.
Women who make false accusations of rape or DV really boil my piss.
I’ve seen it happen three time in a work environment which was pretty trying for me as a lifelong feminist. As it happened, all three were serial sidechick/cheaters.
My FW XW started accusing me of mental abuse when she was in the middle to end of discarding me. I was so taken off guard i didn’t know how to respond.
Never, ever, EVER tried to abuse her mentally, physically, etc. PERIOD. I was frustrated w/her, and my life at that point, but not supporting the lifestyle she wanted to live because I left the high paying job to save my sanity? No, that’s not abuse.
If she had said I was not helping out enough around the house? Ok, that would have at least make some sense. But it wasn’t on purpose. I was burnt out most of the time from work. Not saying that’s a great answer. But I tried to help by taking care of the kids to free her up to do what she wanted. A LOT.
But if she had simply said I was not supporting her in the chores around the house, and she was sick of it? Ok, I would have tried to work it out w/her, but she could have left me and I would be the asshole if I didn’t respect her decision.
Fucking me over by seducing/fucking her rich, married, older boss and exit-affairing me? No, that shit doesn’t fly. That showed how little respect she had for me.
Now the tables are turned. Hard grey rock from me. Bare civility for the kids’ sake. You reap what you sow. But she still acts like she’s surprised by how little respect I now have for her. She can’t understand it, I think. Too bad. I’m moving forward in life. I don’t need any more trash like her in it.
They all do, mine wanted friendship and for me to go along with everything she does.
Accounts like yours are only deepening my suspicion that the very same freaks who commit one type of sexual deception are more likely to commit other forms of it. If anyone ever got the funding to study such a thing, I have a feeling that cheaters and side pieces would turn out to be far more likely than average to falsely accuse others of some kind of sexually-tinged dominant emotional abuse if not more overt acts like battering and rape.
There’s already been research showing that enforcement of one-sided monogamy is a major theme in battering, that batterers and side pieces/mate poachers are higher in psychopathic personality traits, that serial abusers– like serial offenders of all stripes– tend to “project” their own crimes onto victims and that “side pieces/mate poachers” are more likely to engage in “negative relational strategies” (i.e., “coercive control”). Just by adding up the above, it’s pretty easy to guess the results of any well-done study correlating cheaters with false allegations.
I know mine said to me that she didn’t want me around because she felt “unsafe” even though I was never mentally, verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive, and never had a history of it. That really screwed with my head for a while after.
I’ve been told in not safe to be around because sometimes we can we intimate and the next day I can be cold and distant.
Ditto.🫤
Weird as it sounds, I relate and it was probably the most harrowing experience of my life. Except it wasn’t just implied that I was potentially “sexually unsafe” but that I was an actual sexual aggressor.
A rapist by any other name. Because– get this– I cried. Granted I’ve never been much of a crier because it gives me migraines and, if I do, something dead serious is probably brewing. So, er, maybe my tears have more impact than usual but come on. If crying is akin to violent sexual coercion, rapey funeral directors and child rapists would have the perfect alibi.
In retrospect it was obviously projection in both our situations because cheaters who continue to have sex with primary partners are all essentially committing flagrant rape by deception even if the law hasn’t quite caught up to that idea (though bills are sitting in many state and national legislatures regarding sabotage of or deceptive about birth control). But at the time it nearly drove me over the edge because, even though I knew the idea that I was “sexually unsafe” or aggressive was total bullshit and absurd (he was typically the initiator and also outweighs me by nearly 60 LBs), the threat that he would tell other people this was clear as a bell. Given how spellbindingly invested he seemed in the lie, I feared there was even a chance he’d be believed.
That’s what I think is the real purpose of some of these fake DARVO accusations: it’s so abusers can “demo” to their partners what lies they’re going to tell others and how “believable” these performances will be and thereby make coercive threats to commit character assassination but without admitting that they’re blackmailing.
The basis for FW’s ridiculous yet scary claim happened in early February a few months before D-day. As I learned later, the AP had threatened to break up with FW if he gave her only “sidechick’s Valentine’s day” that year and didn’t spend the official day and night with her. Consequently, he told me a week in advance that he had a critical deadline on the 15th and would have to spend the entire day and night before at the office. That’s when I uncharacteristically started crying on the phone which he knew meant I was probably close to throwing in the towel. So I think the reason he relented with me and cancelled with the AP was that, at that point he was more afraid I’d leave than that the AP would.
Unlike me, the AP reportedly threw crying jags every week and made repeat empty threats to bail if he didn’t sacrifice family holidays to her or if he forgot to take off his wedding ring or just because he wasn’t filing for divorce as she bragged to her friends that he would. I think that, as a result, he was pretty cocky and cavalier, figuring she’d cave like she always did and be the first to text or call after half a day of sulking silence. But this time she made the threat but didn’t cave immediately and, after a few days, he started doubting his godlike status! A catastrophe for a narcissist! By Valentine’s day he was losing his shit and naturally took it all out on me. He was so awful on the actual day that I refused to sleep in the same bed with him. Then out came the lovebombing which, compared to the previous veiled threats and building tension, felt like a reprieve even if I was conscious of how Pavlovian it was. Then we had sex and, the next morning, I woke up and directly asked if he was cheating. He reared on me and hiss-shouted that I’d sexually coerced him… because I’d cried that one time the week before.
I admit that, in that moment, I was so blindsided that my mind automatically ran down every instance in the past year or so that I might have initiated sex but it had become so infrequent that I even made overtures that I soon realized he was just threatening me which was even more gut wrenching. I had good reason to fear false accusations from him because I assumed this was just an escalation in his not-so-subtle terror campaign that, if I tried to leave him or asked too many questions or did anything he didn’t like, he could take custody of the children away based on this idea that I was “crazy” or “dangerous.”
I completely fell apart for two months after that, had recurring nightmares about him stealing the children and lost so much weight that I was turned away from donating blood. I even cried alone so much during that time that I burned a hole in my stomach taking ibuprofen. But in a sense he overplayed his hand because it also marks the moment my fear of staying finally exceeded my considerable fear of post separation abuse. It seemed like every second I spent with him was just another opportunity for him to fabricate quasi criminal charges. I finally reached out to a lawyer friend and followed her advice to go into stealth mode, sleuth and turn the tables to protect custody and financial stakes.
Hats off to us for springing the trap because I can attest that false criminal implications are among the worst forms of coercion going.
My XW did something similar. I don’t think it was in preparation for a false DV claim – I think it was practice for how she would present her leaving the marriage to the world at large. “I am courageously leaving a dangerous marriage” sells a lot better than “My affair partner and I are leaving our respective spouses and kids to set up a new life together”
I think some first rehearse that cover story with APs to play the “princess in the tower held hostage by an ogre” (male FWs included) because it adds to the kink by appealing to the AP’s main competitive motive for poaching which is typically expressed as a “rescuer” act and/or because the FW is still pursuing marital sex cake but pretends it’s involuntary.
I perceive that part of the fun of cheating for cheaters is the Harlequin bodice-ripper “everybody wants me, gasp, and I have to beat them off” pose and the fun for poachers is thinking they’ve gotten what everyone else wants. It falls rather flat when the victim removes themselves from the drama and refuses to play rival/ogre.
Double ditto!😡
Yes that little mindfuck was pure cruelty. You are not allowed to have your own emotional reactions (disgust, horror) at your discoveries? The last thing I would want at that point is to be touching the person who gave me such pain in bed. The image of you cringing all night at the edge of the mattress is heartbreaking (hey Chumps, how many of us have spent those nights?). Take this–“I’m feeling completely out of love and just want to leave”– as the precious gift it is and hold on to it. We’re rooting for you here.
It feels very much like DARVO from what I’ve read.
50/50 custody. Whatever a competent solicitor says is a fair financial settlement. Try co-parenting because of course your kids want that but be prepared to recognise that is a pipe dream.
I would rather suggest going for 100% custody considering what a psychopath he’s married to and the flaming evidence that the precarious emotional states of the children easily reflect that their mother is an empathy-impaired thug. But, family court being what it is and in case full custody isn’t possible, I would never recommend “co-parenting” but instead “parallel parenting” while remaining as NC as possible with the ex-freak.
I suspect the kids emotions are genetically from me rather than any marriage issues.
Most chumps want to blame themselves. Faulty thinking
I think I’m prone to anxiety and depression as is my mother, but it’s hard to know whether it’s from genetics or from seeing her go through it untreated.
I’m glad you’re getting help though and demonstrating to your kids that it’s ok to do so. I waited too long.
And even if the kids are genetically prone to suffer from anxiety or depression, don’t discount the situational impacts. They probably need more help and understanding than normal.
It was so hard to be there for my kids when I was going through a crisis myself and the FW was mostly absent. I just have to do the best I can for them, and trust that my best is enough.
Take care, Dazed.
In my area, getting 100% custody is indeed rare and typically requires going back to court repeatedly with more and more hard evidence. The stories I’ve heard are horrifying that way. Even with domestic violence and drug use, they will still insist on supervised visitation even if it’s very unlikely that will happen regularly.
I used to feel terrible about staying for so long, but in retrospect, it shielded my children. The youngest was 17 1/2 when my ex took off again, and he never pressed for temporary custody. I don’t think he cared much about anything but himself at that point anyway.
I don’t disagree but I see my suggestions as pragmatic. Who can disagree with 50/50 without looking unfair? The fact that FW is juggling a social life with OW means you get the kids more anyway.
You can’t co-parent with a selfish prat but if you are seen to try nobody can accuse you of actively being difficult. Then one day when the dust has settled you just don’t anymore.
My divorce was a walk in the park compared to many on here. FW went through 3 solicitors and came out no better off in terms of settlement than he would have done 5 years earlier. Meanwhile I lived in the marital home and he paid the mortgage.
Lol, yes, I’m totally on board with appearing to go through the motions of co-parenting if it gets the court on your side, just not actually investing any hope or expectation in it and ditching the charade as soon as possible.
As far as whether getting 100% custody is even possible, a seasoned lawyer will know how the court works in a particular district and can advise.
All affairs start as EAffairs. Take it from me a two time cheater survivor. I like to say these people are sitting up high on a life guard chair, looking over the pool of applicants. They are shopping at first, looking, checking out loyalty, forgiveness, someone who doesn’t mind married status. Someone of use. Then they swoop down like an owl onto a mouse and find the one..try it out…they are shopping or 🎣 fishing or whatever you want to call it. Sooner or later it WILL BE PHYSICALand they have honed their skill to lie to you as you are hooked too. The men/ woman with hooker habits are interested in power over..but actually, all cheaters are power over you or anyone else. The joys of deception to get what they want. As long as you forgive wink at abuse, allow it, forgive it,stay loyal…you are of use. Get figity and they DARVO you but you believe it? Perfect, stay put. If you don’t leave now while you can, your mental health will implode.go before this happens. Please. It does not get better
I could never agree with use of the term “emotional affair” instead of “cheating dry run,” “fantasy cheating” or “preamble to sleaze” because qualifying what would-be cheaters and witting would-be affair partners “feel” as “emotions” sounds way too authentic and legitimizing. Is the driving impulse to be glazed like a ham with treacly fake flattery by some pick-me dancing poacher or mirroring cheater an actual “emotion”? Does giddy anticipation of being able to reenact one’s favorite Pornhub segments or trying to live out some cinematic delusion constitute “emotions”?
My FW had an affair for 6 years. It was long distance. He claims that they never had sex. If they did, it would be a woefully small number of times because she was across the country. I know of one time he saw her in person and that was maybe 5 years in. There is one other time I suspect he may have met up with her, but I have no proof and he’d deny it if confronted so I don’t bother. But to be fair, if they had sex, it realistically HAD to be less than a handful of times simply because opportunity with that distance was scarce. (If she was local and he claimed no sex, I’d defer to CL’s adage of “adults fuck”, but these adults had geography working against them)
But even if they never had sex as he claims, he was still ready to throw decades of marriage out the window for their relationship. If you come to your wife and tell her you’ve fallen in love with someone else and they are your soulmate, whether your penis was involved or not starts to really seem inconsequential.
I know he lies, so when he says they never had sex, I’m not inclined to believe him. It mostly doesn’t matter. What I know for sure, that he admits to is “not acceptable to me”. Period.
But I’m sometimes curious for the truth. He’s a very sexual person. I can’t imagine him blowing up his life for someone he didn’t even have sex with. So that part leaves me so very curious. If he actually is telling the truth, that’s WILD. Alas, i’ll never know.
Hell of a Chump! Well said and so true!! Not emotions, just fantasy and the thrill of the lie and the deceit, to tip toe into the shopping arena and start looking for entertainment on someone else’s trust. It is not emotional affairs then, it is honing the skills and cover for the next step. I content the progression of betrayal may take time. Also it keeps the trusting partner in the dark insecure and getting used to the gas lighting uptick in the future. Grooming for a life of lies. Wow
This: Does giddy anticipation of being able to reenact one’s favorite Pornhub segments or trying to live out some cinematic delusion constitute “emotions”?
Gosh, that brings back some bad memories. Thankfully, I can laugh about it now.
The advent of streaming porn was like the full moon for every fuckwitty werewolf with internet access, wasn’t it? 😮 I swear the impact of this will measurably affect the future of the entire species.
This is going to be a tsunami of the next generation. I am stricken with grief over the loss of true love
Yes, my ex decided to make porn one of his retirement pursuits and would sit in his recliner doing that for hours. It contributed to the end of our marriage as it whetted his appetite for “more.”
Studies report that porn makes users more abusive and aggressive in real life. It’s no surprise since the essence of the entire industry is abusive and I suspect users at first have to numb themselves to the cues of suffering emanating from performers until eventually that misery becomes part of the thrill. It’s like sadism training.
Yes, I did a lot of reading about that post-divorce, not really grasping what porn had done to my ex at the time. In my local work in domestic violence advocacy, I have come to know a gal who was trafficked as a teen and used in porn and another who was a “cam girl.” Both are thankfully doing reasonably well now, but their personal experiences have given more weight to all the reading I did, including the work of Dr. Minwalla.
The industry is deeply exploitative and corrupts those who believe that it’s just “entertainment.”
Progression of IMO a disease of the mind
DC,
You need to get help for yourself and get help for your children. I would not be at all surprised if your children know exactly what is going on and that this knowledge is taking its toll on them. You need to understand that the healthiest thing you can do is to protect yourself so that you are in a better position to protect your children and then navigate your way out of this sham of a marriage.
LFTT
PS – the only reason that you should engage with a marriage counsellor would be to assist you divorce your wife as painlessly as is possible.
Oldest knows I’m unhappy about something. She thinks I’m sick or the world is ending.
Other two are blissfully unaware I think.
Don’t lie to your kids. Tell them in a sanitized way. Mommy has a boyfriend.
Kids aren’t stupid. They can deal with a known versus the anxiety of an unknown.
You don’t need your wife’s permission. You don’t need her consent to inform the other man’s spouse or divorce either.
Telling her to inform the other man’s spouses is a weak move. Plus she won’t do it and all cheaters lie, a lot.
So right. Never lie to kids if they’re old enough to understand the words, especially because cheaters never waste time before they start trying to alienate children from chumps by casting their own victims as big bad wolves (which, for reasons related to Cluster B skill sets, FWs seem mysteriously adept at doing).
I had seen this happen to a chumped friend and she spent four hellish years trying to bring her daughter back from the evil brainwashing. Her ultimate success was based more on the fact that her daughter matured and started seeing dad for what he is than her tortured efforts not to add fuel to the fire. Seeing what she went through scared the crap out of me so I was age-appropriately honest with my kids.
DC,
Children have a habit of finding things out, so be careful about any assumptions that you make about what they know. My 3 (then 11, 15 and 18) had worked out that Ex-Mrs LFTT was cheating (as well as the name of her AP) before I was aware of anything at all. That weighed heavily upon them and, when combined with Ex-Mrs LFTT’s lies and manipulations after she was exposed, affected all 3 of them very deeply.
LFTT
They know-at least that something is wrong. I was one myself. If nothing else, fuckwits seem to have a need to show off their villainy and delight in the “but they will never know! Tee hee!)
My daughter smelled it before I told her a thing just a week after D-day. She ended up hacking dad’s devices with the express purpose of finding out what he was up to, then found an undeleted mess of creepy emails and flamed the crap out of dad by text.
I might have felt appeased and “represented” if some adult friend told FW that she wanted me to replace him with a “better husband and dad” as my daughter did. But she was only 14 and suffered so much in the following days that I ended up wishing I’d broken the news to her myself and confirmed her suspicions in a more age-appropriate way than seeing how her forty-six year old, once beloved dad was happily receiving pornographic texts, “peach and eggplant” emojis and overwrought thanks for expensive, family-assets-raiding shit he received from a coworker.
After getting angry texts from our daughter, of course FW immediately tried to accuse me of “parental alienation” but quickly backed down because our daughter is fully able to account for her own “process of discovery.” But it felt like a near miss of some horrible situation that might not play well in court. So I think it’s better to be the messenger and present the bad news before kids find out in other ways which they always seem to.
There is only one thing to do now, leave the see you next Tuesday and get your life back.
Even if this were the last woman on earth, you’d be better off alone. She feels abandoned?!!? Seriously, this person is bad news. Vicious. There are tons of better people out there — as friends, lovers, whatever.
We do have beautiful kids and she does seem genuinely upset about the possibility of separation.
She’s a damn cake eater. She doesn’t give a damn about anyone but herself. You need to wake up.
Of course she’s upset. Being with you is part of her mask of normalcy. If she loses you she has to start all over again and find another chump to help her manage her image, while fucking other guys the whole time, because she’s bent that way.
You can be pretty sure that the physical cheating she admitted to is not all of it. Not by a long shot. They never tell you everything they’ve done.
To my mind, the fact she is upset about the natural consequences of her affairs rather than the fact she’s been lying to her husband while picking baby names with affair partners is a terrible sign.
She’s mad about bad consequences, not her horrible choices.
If you stay with her (again), the bad consequences vanish – and she’s proven repeatedly that she’ll rekindle an old flame or find a new affair to pursue.
As a teacher, kids exposed to the idea that no negative consequences follow antisocial behaviors often have miserable school lives. Some are wantonly destructive towards relationships; others have no idea that they are allowed to end ‘friendships’ with people who are mean and unkind to them.
It’s your life, too. Do you like this relationship? Does this feel safe and loving?
Because from the outside, your marriage looks like your wife is unkind and unsafe.
And you are genuinely upset at being betrayed! She has lost her vote at “who’s feelings matter more.” Sounds like she had 13 years and three pregnancies to consider the consequences to her actions.
Of course she’s upset. You’re useful. You’re especially useful for her having fun affairs, because she gets to dump all the boring, daily stuff on you so it doesn’t intrude on her sleeping around.
That’s on her, she decided to send naked pictures and have sex with others. She hasn’t faced any consequences of her abuse, betrayal, and lying.
Only because it will be inconvenient for her to be outed as a cheater and destroyer of her marriage and family.
She’ll lose her slave and her carefully crafted image.
What’s in it for you?
Of course she is upset – it will cost her money OR it will strip away her PUBLIC social mask of wife, decent human being and possibly reveal WHY at least two of your kids are struggling emotionally. The third may be as well, but is hiding it better.
Get them into therapy and when the school year starts, make certain that YOU are the parent to be called FIRST if there are any problems. Someone needs to be the Sane Parent. It’s not her.
And definitely do NOT fall for the “open marriage” trap.
Go to a dentist (I bet you’re grinding and antidepressants often lead to dry mouth). Take all the joint returns you can lay your hands on. Go through the financial expenditures with a fine-toothed comb to figure out what it truly costs to care for the kids. Go interview as many divorce lawyers as you can find that offer a free one-hour consultation and pick the one who all the other divorce lawyers wouldn’t want THEIR spouse to hire if they were to seek a divorce.
A nice hardbound journal is a good thing too.
Absolutely no RIC/marriage counseling.
Seek a “parenting with an asshole” class that your state will want you to take anyway if seeking a divorce (that makes your attorney and eventually a judge look upon you more favorably). Demonstrate that YOU sought therapy for yourself AND family therapy for yourself and your children too.
Leave her out of it and far, far behind.
Consider having all of her affair partners subpoenaed for the divorce. FuckWits HATE that and it gives you a bargaining chip.
DC, since you are dazed and still focused on her feelings, I want to tell you something important.
The advice to gather all financial documents, all evidence of cheating, results of an STD test, lawyer consultations, etc. — you don’t have to DO anything with that information yet. You should still gather all of it. The act of gathering that information will inform and empower you. Again, you don’t have to pull the ripcord on d-i-v-o-r-c-e right now, since that seems like a scary concept to you. Take one step at a time. But it is important — for the sake of your kids and yourself — that you see those lawyers and have those documents lined up.
Trust us on this.
May I ask who is the primary breadwinner in the marriage? In other words, what is she afraid of losing? She’s “genuinely upset,” but she didn’t think about that while she was sexting, collecting dildos, naming her future children with someone else, etc etc etc??
What exactly did she think would happen?
We both make quite a lot of money. I make more. We’ve almost paid off the mortgage
The longer you stay the more you will have to give her. You can’t fix her. Save yourself or suffer more needlessly.
One of the truest cliches on this site is the husband/wife appliance. Fast forward 20 years and she will have the better career and have had the time to fulfil some pipedreams while you will have done the time consuming grunt work associated with kids and domestic life.
Yes, that’s the truth. I gave up my stellar career to look after him and our children, and then the beach called him. Then I had to pick up the pieces.
I always kept my trap shut about their father, but they knew.
DC,
She’s genuinely upset at the possibility of consequences.
And don’t be surprised if she hits you with the “I want an Open Marriage after the fact” gambit.
LFTT
I was thinking the same thing. Just as mentally normal people have great difficulty wrapping their heads around the motivations of the mentally ill, honest people have enormous difficulty fathoming the sheer depths of fakery of the criminally warped.
Average people simply can’t conceive of why anyone would take deception to that level because we all have a tendency to project our own characters and motivations onto others. But, for example, tearful despair in an innocent person and tearful displays from a criminally disordered person mean vastly different things even though either situation might strike unknowing bystanders (or recently shell shocked chumps) as similarly moving and authentic. In any case, this is exactly why even the FBI admits they only have about 50% accuracy in detecting liars and frauds.
Many liars are just that good. As for why they’re that good, social research has a few explanations, particularly in the study of serial killers who wouldn’t be “serial” if they weren’t stellar experts in deceit. The secret seems to be something about self-deception– that they basically compartmentalize so extremely that they’re able to spellbind themselves into believing their own bull and therefore avoid giving off the usual shifty and furtive signs of culpability. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shadow-boxing/202201/the-serial-killer-btk-and-the-concept-cubing
Ding Ding Ding.
Also, I know it’s not funny for the LW, but “not staying would have consequences”. Ooh, what would those consequences be – she’s going to fuck other men? (Already doing that.) She’s going to file for divorce? (Go for it!) She’s going to be mad at the LW? (Good. It will make it easier for him to get away from her cheating ass.)
Hey LW, I’m also a bit of a nerd/gamer type.
Being a nerd/gamer type doesn’t mean you’re doomed to die alone or that you ought to be grateful your FW chose you. There are plenty of good, loyal women who are nerd/gamer types out there.
Also – as a nerd/gamer type, I bet you’ve seen games with bad design that let the player (sometimes literally) get away with murder? You know, stuff like the NPC guards rushing in to find the PC standing in a room full of dead bodies, the PC chooses dialogue option that says “I don’t know how all these bodies got here!” and rolls a high Persuasion check, and the NPC guards just kind of shrug and wander off? Or the old Assassin’s Creed games where the player would be pursued by guards, jumps into a haystack, and after a few minutes the guards shrug and forget all about the fact that they were chasing a murder suspect?
And we all laugh about how unrealistic that is?
Don’t let your life be like that bad game design. Your FW is trying to be that unrealistic PC – the one who wants you to disregard the evidence of your own eyes. She wants you to look at the room full of dick pics and sexy chats and to say “oh, I guess you were persuasive enough” and to wander off. You’re better than that.
P.S.: you don’t need her permission or even awareness to inform her affair partners’ spouse of their affair. Her “let’s wait until counseling” is a stall tactic, so that she and her AP can get their stories straight and try to run the same con on that person’s spouse as they’re trying to run on you. Just tell the spouse.
I’ve attempted to let her know but more attempts seem a bit stalker like.
I tried calling her workplace but she’s on leave.
It might be the “shock and disbelief”. You did your part-you do not need confirmation(would be nice though!)
I agree with Apidae here-your (hopefully soon to be former) wife is running the clock and stalling. I don’t know what games are you cup of tea-but she is building resources to use against you. Time for an Alpha Strike.
That’s fine, but the takeaway here is that you should not be asking your FW permission to tell her affair partners’ spouse(s). It’s not up to her whether other people find out she’s been fucking around on you or fucking their husbands.
I get that you’re dazed and struggling but you need to throw off this idea that you need HER AGREEMENT to protect yourself and your kids. You do not need her to agree to a separation, you do not need to get her to go to counseling, you do not need to run everything by her (may I sleep elsehwere? may I tell your AP’s spouse?).
Trauma bonding can absolutely keep a chump stuck. PTSD as well. Chumps need distance and time away from the cheater to gain clarity. The process is a slow burning away of denial. I had to use my rational brain and put aside my emotional brain to GET AWAY. It will never FEEL good or right to leave if you are trauma bonded. Cheaters can feel like a drug we need to survive. ITS A LIE. We are in a toxic soup of dysfunction and cannot see the way forward. Trust that she is not what you need to help you heal. It will get better, one day at a time. Focus on YOURSELF and your children.
This. So very much this.
Send it to her workplace via registered mail, with all the evidence you do have. Copies, of course. Then wash your hands of it.
This is my next step if I get no response. I didn’t include any evidence in my email or messages.
Her other men will be on the lookout to intercept anything they can. Common practice.
Eh. I’d spend the energy on getting your ducks in a row and looking after your kids. You tried, now focus on sane parenting and self-care.
I had the wife with multiple affairs scenario, which is perfectly horrible, and I’m sorry you’re going through it.
I shuddered at the get in bed or there will be “consequences.” Even without affairs, that alone ought to be a gamechanger for you. I think back to my own experiences with exactly what this is: abuse. You don’t deserve to live like that.
You have reason after reason to do exactly what you said- get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. As the earlier poster said, go into stealth mode. It will pay off later. You have to, as much as possible, become a private detective who is ruthlessly gathering evidence- evidence that might make your hair stand on end, but evidence that will ensure that you get out of this with yourself and your kids in the best possible position. Document bank accounts, phone calls, texts, media, all of it. Encrypt it on a drive you keep with you.
You can do it. Use your nerd/gamer skills, and remember you’re gonna legally defeat the big boss, and get the reward of a better life.
So sorry you’re here. But there is a better life ahead.
My FW used WhatsApp, telegram, as well as the secret mode on several other apps. But even though they are encrypted, he was a master at deleting as soon as the message was read by his schmoopie. The schmoopies did the same. Then he would leave his phone lying around so if I checked, he looked innocent. BUT, although those apps are end to end encrypted, there are usually ways to have a copy of the app on your computer or second phone. If you know you know. Just sayin.
I’ve been able to see when she’s on WhatsApp. She turned it off yesterday. I asked to see her phone this morning. No communication but it was super suspicious. What does she think is going through my head??
All she wants is a rugsweep. You don’t need to know any more. Get strong and stay there. Keep your mouth shut. Do not tell her of your plans or what you’re doing, thinking. She will use it against you.
Dazed, stop playing marriage police. You’ll destroy your health. Please end that farce of a marriage so you can have peace of mind. I know it’s hard to break free. We all know. We all did it anyway and so can you.
I hate to echo a term used too often in the freaky Incel manosphere (and I recognize the danger that some male chumps could get so isolated and wounded that they might get drawn into that dysfunctional sewer) but I have a feeling that Dazed’s FW is a “hypergamist” who’s always been angling to “better deal” him from the get-go.
On the other hand, there’s also the chance that the issue relates to Dazed’s FW’s messed up sexuality. There are many stories on this forum of she-FWs marrying stable good providers in the hopes that this might “cure” these women of their kinky and dangerous lifelong sexual preference for abusive knuckle dragging apes and thugs. I think many male FWs do something similar although usually following a converse gender trope. In either case, after spending years getting burned and bruised in dysfunctional relationships with partners who closely resemble abusive childhood role models of these FWs, they may “try on for size” a partner with integrity for a change. Some might even hope to be magically “inspired” by a decent partner to be better people themselves so they try to “fake it till they make it” and at least attempt to invest in the early stages of the relationship and heavily mirror back the morals and values of decent partners like they’re throwing themselves into a new religion. But eventually wearing the disguise of integrity can get suffocating to a piece of shit and these types will tend to revert to “sexual factory setting. When their old “reenactment compulsions” start to resurface and they find themselves again drawn to creepy dopelgangers of childhood role models, this breed of FW will typically start to blame and hate primary partners for “failing” to magically make them better people and for being such “goody two-shoes” who make them feel bad for being pieces of shit. Consequently, part of the reason they long to return to enmeshment with fellow sleazy pieces of shit is so they can let their sleazy freak flags fly high and “be themselves” again. Until they get burned again and then some will swing back to trawling for STD-free good boys or girls who are better husband/wife material.
But, because Dazed’s FW appears to have never really invested in the relationship and has been cheating all along, I kind of suspect that one of the motives was economic and that, even in college, Dazed appeared to be a promising economic ladder rung. In the latter ladder theory, it really wouldn’t have mattered how attractive and appealing Dazed is in reality because, like livestock workers who know they’re going to eventually have to kill those adorable baby animals for veal and lamb, Dazed’s FW couldn’t let herself be attracted to him, get attached or invest emotionally since she always knew he was a merely pit stop on her way to someone richer.
The axiom about social strata climbers is that they have to keep climbing or they perish like sharks because only while hyperfocusing on their ascents can they chase back uncomfortable thoughts of the heinous things they’ve done to get where they are. Though things are never quite that simple. Someone could be a flaming materialist but still raised with too much empathy and long term moral sense to use people like rungs on a ladder so Dazed is obviously dealing with some type of sexually incontinent Cluster B sociopath who may also be a flaming materialist. Whether the affair partners in question were richer than Dazed and represented his FW’s hopes of ascending the economic ladder or were just stray peasants she bonked to pass the time while waiting for the more dominating ape or Daddy Warbucks of her dreams to arrive, this is a person who likely uses everyone, including her own children which could easily explain why one child is anxious and the other depressed– because their mom is a heartless, disordered thug.
Whatever is this FW’s psychological MO, I agree with others here who are recommending Dazed head quickly to the nearest exit. I think Dazed is in serious emotional danger if not worse. Word to the wise: don’t eat anything she cooks; don’t go on lonely hikes or canoe trips with her; check brake lines; be wary of the sudden approach of men she might be fucking, etc. Also be wary of her fabricating fake domestic violence charges and avoid being alone in any room with her again unless hidden cameras are recording everything (check regional recording laws). I also agree with others here that Dazed should go into stealth mode to protect finances and custody rights, which is why I think it’s probably more cautious to assume this particular FW is greed-driven aside from having no functioning conscience.
I always enjoy your posts. Dazed’s FW is sooo very similar to mine, that it freaks me out a bit, and while I try to avoid untangling the skein, it’s always interesting to see what your take is. I would have to say your latter explanation is probably closer to the truth: that it is more likely that FW trying to mirror a decent person and failing (and then blaming the person), than trying to keep an eye out for that bigger, better deal. After years post-divorce, I think of my exFW as akin to a shark – she just consumes whatever it is that she wants in the moment without much thought. In the aftermath, knowing on an intellectual level that what she did was “wrong,” she would trickle truth, manage her image, blame me for her actions, etc. etc. But, I never got the impression that she was trying to do anything like find a better husband. When she saw something she wanted, she had blinders on. She just … consumed. Just a shocking lack of empathy.
Thank you for your insights. What you say of your ex reminds me again of the Schindler’s List scene where the evil Goeth sort of cosplays at being “merciful” for awhile to see what it feels like. He does a few Manus Dei gestures in the bathroom mirror but suddenly looks annoyed (like “where’s the kibble in this shit?”), picks up his rifle and shoots the stable boy dead. I thought it was among the most brilliant scenes in cinema because it perfectly captures the tendency of sadistic or callous people to capriciously “try on integrity for size.” They may even deeply invest it in for long periods but it often ends about the same.
I guess you could say Spielberg was untangling a bit but not in a way that so much humanizes Goeth but instead shows the audience how dangerously misleading these glimpses of “humanity” (Goeth’s vulnerably gummy admiration of Schindler, his seeming “willingness to change”) can be in chronically abusive personalities. Spielberg makes the same statement with the Disney-loving Nazi sniper in Private Ryan. So, by the same token, I figure that, as long as I’m untangling, I hope to untangle skeins in the direction of “Get out while you’re still breathing.” At least I think that’s the message since a lot of the research I run into and borrow from relates to serial criminality, mostly because that’s the deeper well from which all legit studies of any kind of repeat abusive conduct by people who are not otherwise mentally delusional always draw from, sort of like how all studies of bystanderism ultimately lead back to Holocaust research.
I think these are the natural “points of gravity” in those subjects and anyone trying to plumb the depths for very long will eventually fall down that hole. But the danger is that, while untangling (which every chump does at first) most people get sidetracked by RIC and CSAT bs which only leads to the self-esteem-wrecking dead end of victim blaming.
Anyway, there’s not a lot of evidence of self-redeeming serial killers, mass murderers and batterers so that ball of yarn is pretty hopium-free, right? 😀
My husband had knit those glimpses of humanity into a rock-solid mask. Seeing behind the mask (i.e. shooting the stable boy) remains the scariest moment of my life. The FW left and I curled up like a shrimp and didn’t move, eat, drink or think coherently for three days. The people who say you can only last for three days without water are wrong. You can if you’ve just had a shock lobotomy. I couldn’t drive for about three months because I couldn’t focus enough to be safe. I tried and on the first drive, almost slammed into two different cars, so I stopped.
Dazed, I hope you give yourself some grace for feeling dazed. Any normal person experiencing this kind of betrayal exists in two worlds at the same time: the world with the nonstop emotional torture and the old world. Civilians (the non-betrayed) don’t understand this but everyone here has lived through something like this.
That women who looks like your wife, speaks with her voice, has her mannerisms….who kisses your children goodnight…is no one that you know. It’s a huge mindfuck but that is the truth. You are dealing with a predatory and dangerous stranger. She has no qualms about hurting you. Please protect yourself and your children accordingly.
I don’t know about you but I felt like I had almost no preparation for how hard-wired my monogamous tendencies and expectations were and how much it blew me apart to be betrayed.
If a spouse or a child or parent is dying of cancer, people tend to cluster around you even if you’d rather be left alone. Plus we all understand these are shattering experiences and hear frequent advice to the bereaved to care for themselves as they go through certain things. But there’s no real code for intimate betrayal.
I don’t think I’d ever once been callous or dismissive towards people I knew who’d been cheated on before I experienced it. It sounded really terrible and I was supportive. But because I didn’t grow up with cheating and, in retrospect, it seems like I’d spent my life being culturally stuffed like a turkey with the “normalization” of cheating and minimization of its impact, I didn’t know enough to reach for a tourniquet when I suddenly found myself bleeding out.
Not kidding. Like you, I could have ended up in situations where I may have died from lack of foresight and understanding because we’re misled to believe monogamy is just a random choice.
Hi Hell of a Chump:
Everything you say resonates with me. I too didn’t realize I was bleeding out and needed to reach for a tourniquet. I reached out to the professionals, who told me I needed a tourniquet…for my husband.
To me it wasn’t the expectation of monogamy that destroyed me…it was that profound betrayal destroys your identity and you have to rebuild it piece by piece with a traumatized heart, brain and body. My idea of who I was…a smart, savvy woman who made wise decisions…was blown to smithereens. I wasn’t. How many other things had I been so wrong about? How many other people I loved were using me? What was real and what wasn’t real? I didn’t know. For me, it took years to sort out. I was too busy trying to help the FW heal and adjusting his tourniquet.
Civilians (the non-betrayed) have no idea what this is about. I didn’t until it happened to me. Ditto for the legal system. This is slowly changing, and I am thankful the young women (and men) who face this in the future will have far better options.
Exactly that. I guess what I mostly mean by expectation of monogamy is “expectations of not being stabbed in the back by the person closest to you for the sake of a sleazy rando bonk.”
But I’ve actually become very interested in the debate about whether humans are naturally monogamous or whether, conversely, this is some artificial value system that’s foisted by cultural and puritanical mores. For one, it brings up the question of whether we’re currently being subjected to a heavy brainwashing campaign by the media and culture to literally go against our own hardwired natures to accept and normalize sexual betrayal.
Considering our rapey, warring, cannibalistic, infanticidal ape ancestors and how this is obviously reflected in our violent history, it’s not always a bad thing to deoptimize certain human “hardwired” traits through law enforcement, social organization, economic strategies, political measures, cultural messages and child rearing practices, etc. Those strategies can have dramatic effects on crime rates but I still don’t think everything in our basic nature can or even needs to be altered. Like, why would our species be better if everyone indiscriminately fucked everyone else?
Some actually think that polyamory would save the world from violence and mayhem on the belief that humans could somehow be programmed away from jealousy and territoriality. Personally I find that thinking idiotic because whether or not we’re naturally monogamist, there’s no question about whether humans are naturally jealous and territorial.
Anyway, clearly I’m not alone in thinking the evolutionary concept of monogamy matters given how poly proponents and cheating apologists like Perel keep barking up the evolutionary theory tree to suggest that humans are not, in fact, naturally monogamous.
It’s made me very interested in what these poly evolution theories are based on. What I ultimately found was a lot of bs and junk science. Meanwhile, more legitimate social scientists argue that, unlike our chimp cousins, we likely did evolve as monogamous in a sense but, for some, this manifests as one-sided expectations that partners be monogamous. Hey, it turns out no one likes contracting STDs from a randy spouse, having critical family resources squandered or not being sure of their kids’ paternity.
I also think the question is important because it relates to a growing theory that a primary motive for domestic violence could be the violent enforcement of one-sided monogamy. It could suggest that (duh) cheating might relate to domestic abuse and that abusive personalities are more likely to commit it.
I think part of what blindsides many chumps is how cruel and abusive FWs are in the course of committing betrayal. But it makes a certain sense to me because of something I learned years ago as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, which is that virtually all batterers cheat. But it was only after I lost my civilian status (love that) that I started to really ponder whether, if a central motive for domestic batterers is ensuring that their victims don’t do them in kind, wouldn’t it make sense that many cheaters tend to be abusive? Is the abuse an attempt to enforce a one-sided rule that victims don’t have enough blood or self esteem left to ever move on to future relationships?
Imagine if domestic violence were eventually understood to be mostly or even all about “sexual freedom for me but not for thee”– all about enforcement of one-sided monogamy. I think that understanding would probably bleed over into cultural concepts that cheating relates to domestic abuse which would probably radically change how people think about it.
Anyway, deep thoughts on a Wednesday. 😀
The Schindler’s List example is good. I’m also thinking of The Talented Mr. Ripley: “what if I took this man’s clothes and shoes and wallet and walked around with his identity? Could I live his life?” But ultimately, no amount of expensive clothing can cover up the void where his soul should be, and the true nature finds its way to the surface.
My ex could also cry about something, and then immediately stop when the conversation turned to something else, which freaked me out and should have been a red flag. It always made me think of Buffalo Bill in The Silence of Lambs when he was trying to copy and mimic the crying of his victim.
You hear about people who spend time around sociopaths and they report that cold, alienating feeling they get from them. I share custody with my ex, so I have to be in her presence with some regularity, and when I do, it just gives me the creeps, and I can’t explain why. It’s like I know her nature so well that I know that everything that comes out her mouth has an inauthentic purpose that is divorced from what she is actually saying.
That cold, alienating feeling, as well as revulsion for no reason that you can pinpoint…is a real thing. Documented in the scientific literature and all. It is an instinctive response to being in the presence of a psychopath. Ask me how I know.
I’m afraid to ask, lol.
I understand it to be the total and permanent lack of empathy. Like nada, zilch, absolutely nothing there. Yeah, ice fucking cold.
Fakers can never quite hit the right note in their fakery but some come so close that it’s incredibly confusing.
I’ve watched Ripley at least once a year since it came out and think it’s another great film.
Speaking of the deceptively gummy, almost cringe-inducing vulnerability of some creeps, Damon really nails the “vulnerable narcissist” thing. I’m not sure what I think of all these categories of narcissism or even about how viral the concept has become but it’s what makes the film work because it’s believable that people see Ripley as innocuous and lower their guards or feel sorry for him. It also makes it clear why his victims weren’t intentionally playing with fire or seeking their own doom (non victim-blaming message).
The same dynamic is partly borrowed in Saltburn, though Keoghan’s character is later revealed to be– or transforms into– a cold-blooded psychopath like the arc of The Player. That brings up the question of whether ending up as a cold-blooded psychopath– free at last from the bothersome inconvenience of doubts and insecurities!– isn’t the fondest wish of every “vulnerable narcissist” but that’s another digression.
I relate to what you say about sensing something “off” about some people but not always being able to put my finger on it (though I try and have a growing list of micro red flags). Even when you fully know their MOs, being around sociopaths will be endlessly stressful because they tend to “bio-mimic” being fully human so damned well. Some– Jodi Arias for example– may even be especially good at it since, when you’re a soulless cipher having to mimic human behavior, why would you model your behavior on a drab, uninspiring example when you could model your fakery on the most moving, authentic-seeming examples of humanity and studiously ape gestures, tones of voice, etc., that drive right into people’s lizard brain conceptions of what “authentic” looks and sounds like? Why not cry more convincingly and prettily than regular plebes? Arias apparently studied film performances and borrowed from plots to appear more “sympathetic.” She’s shown in one video standing on her head in a cell before a police interview which I assume was to look more rosy, innocent and appealing.
But even with the most skilled deceivers, I think there’s always a blip in their acts that’s intangibly unsettling like the subliminal dick shots in Fight Club (since we’re doing cinema reference). I’ve even thought that this unsettling feeling might explain why some abuse victims become captor bonded even prior to overt coercion or abuse– because they’re already becoming unconsciously afraid of what these fuckers are truly capable of and starting to go into the boxer’s clinch or “Stockholm syndrome” as a survival response.
Dear Dazed,
This post gave me flashbacks and I’m so GD angry right now because of it (not at you, obvs). All of this happened to me – the sleeplessness, the depression, the driving while rage-crying, WhatsApp, the angry pleas to think of her feelings and console her (my therapist said it was like being asked to “hug a cactus”), the GD trickle-truthing. You are in crisis mode. Looking back on my separation, the stage you are in right now is the single most traumatic period of my life. It lasted about three months.
It’s always amazing when new Chumps come in at this very stage, because all of Chump Nation feels like a team of doctors in an Emergency Room Trauma Center that are dealing with a bullet wound victim, and trying to help you recover. A marriage counselor or Switzerland friend will basically tell you to ignore the bleeding, go out and find the person who mugged you, tell them you are sorry for your part in the mugging, and then move in with them.
What happened to you is not ok. It’s not even close to ok. Take it from a person who reconciled and spent 7 more years with their exFW: they don’t change, it won’t stop, and you will never feel the same way about them again. You cannot choke down and smother those feelings of betrayal, nor should you be expected to. Your spouse is a fundamentally rotten person who does not have your interests at heart, and literally never has. You can work on forgiving yourself later for being duped – we all do. Right now your life is a sand castle that you are trying to build, and she is the bully on the beach who keeps kicking it down. You need to get out and fix the things you can fix, for yourself and your kids.
Every new Chump comes in here leading with their perceived weakness: “oh, I’m terrible at communicating,” or “I know I’ve never been a perfect spouse; I know I have my faults,” or “I’m just a shy quiet gamer,” or “I know I can be a bit boring.” I can sit here and tell exactly what buttons of insecurity your FW has been pushing to make you feel like you are an inadequate failure because you have internalized their abuse. That is not ok – you did not deserve this, you cannot control them, you cannot fix them.
If you really want to spook her, have your attorney bring up DNA testing the children. NOT because you would abandon them to her even if you could, if it was shown that you are not their biological father – but to gauge her reaction.
Even if it’s shown one or more aren’t yours biologically, you are still their DAD and they need you very, very much.
It’s eternally shocking to realize male chumps face that particular bit of hell– wondering if the kids are really their kids. But I think it might be a dicey thing to pronounce especially in case the children are undergoing emotional trauma and the FW uses the threat of testing to tell the kids dad is trying to disown them. If there’s any legal way to test without getting the permission of the other parent, I’d probably go that route if I were a male chump. Then, if it turned out one or more of the children was not biologically mine, I’d first shore up legal options and explain the situation gently to the children (only if they can emotionally handle it) and reassure them before considering making it an issue in divorce.
Greetings Dazed,
If THIS doesn’t sound hauntingly familiar!(No kids-but fellow male nerd/gamer chump-similar set-up otherwise.)
I agree with our fearless and esteemed leader here-cancel the marriage counseling unless you feel like paying somebody else for having your traitor getting to yell at you and blame you for her lack of boundaries.
What I keep seeing over and over again here is that she is simply not putting in the effort with you(and by extension your kids-you cannot misallocate resources like that and them not be affected.) And she is not going to. If she planned to change she would do it. It should not take getting caught to participate in the marriage. She has made it pretty plain and clear that she is going to do whatever she wants to do and keep it a secret. She is morally and ethically compromised and can’t be trusted.
And I am so, so, sorry, brother. I fell in love with a fuckwit too and kept the relationship on life support. And it sucks.
“Lies, deceit, greed and mistrust are (her) ways now.”
I was just recounting with my support system how I do not rightly recall the three months immediately following D-Day with the complete loss of normalcy that followed. Had a spike in my own depression and anxiety(the paranoia died down-which was kind of nice if I am being honest.) The revelation that my mental health was “inconvenient” when I would do anything for her was its own heartbreak.
She didn’t pick “Other Man” 1-4(again-that you know of-after mine moved out I started finding phone bills for another service we don’t use in the mail for her-so “I get to check her phone” is a cute gesture but ultimately meaningless to villains that think harder about how to abuse other people than how to keep their promises.) She picked herself.
So now it’s time for you to pick YOURSELF.
Focus on you and your healing. And your kids. Trust me, I came up around infidelity-the open disrespect she is giving you is doing your children no favors(and frankly-when my mother betrayed my father she had precious little time for her own depressed and anxious children-most fuckwits are startlingly similar.)
In my version of your situation, I hated when I realized that mine didn’t care about my wellbeing-particularly if I wasn’t going to be convenient or was being a sub-optimal spousal appliance. And that “my love” was being given away.
You’re married, you both made a commitment, you shouldn’t have to compete for her love or sex. If she was unhappy there was an ethical way to go about it that she winked and nodded at as she snuck past.
Do not be ok with that.
We are here for you.
Well, honey, your marriage is based on a severe lack of self esteem. Don’t worry, I had this a long time ago too. It’s pretty common but you can get through it and build yourself up. Your wife is a shitty, psychotic, lying sack of shit, abusive, uncaring, doesn’t care about you, the kids, nothing but her own needs and ego. For some reason, you probably though this was the best you could do – maybe she’s really pretty and fun on the surface, mine was, and maybe you feel bad about yourself in some way….you can grow past this and you will. Confidence comes with age, and experience and learning how to stick up for yourself.
I think the bottom line for you here is to lawyer up and escape as quickly as possible. You will never “love” this woman again. You can’t, you know too much. You can’t maintain the illusion anymore, which both of you created – her as a decent woman/wife, and you considering her worthy of love. Those are both delusions/illusions. When you have physically escaped from this woman, you will start to feel better. ALSO STOP SLEEPING WITH HER NOW. You have to sleep in a safe space for yourself even if it’s the couch. Don’t let this piece of crap dictate to you, she has no right, all she wants is what she wants for herself. DO WHAT FEELS BEST FOR YOU. It is very important that you get the guidance that you need right now from a good divorce attorney – especially as a man with your child custody rights. If you can document what has happened, I would LOVE for you to get primary custody because she sounds like a shitty mother too. At any rate, be guided by what your lawyer says and don’t accept ANY OF THIS AS YOUR FAULT and don’t listen to any friends or relatives who try to tell you it’s partly your fault or you have to stay with this bitch. YOU DON’T. I would not necessarily recommend you up and leave physically right now though because she might use that against you in a divorce, be guided by what a good divorce lawyer tells you. People here will advise you very well, this is a great group and I’m so glad you came here.
Look, we all make mistakes, we all sometimes pick bad people, you’re a good person, and you WILL get past this, but it’s something you have to unravel with help. Be patient with yourself. Try to engage with her AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE and yes/no answers are probably best. Don’t argue with her, don’t debate with her – a liar will always have more lies. It’s what they produce – chickens lay eggs and liars lay lies. The best way to handle a liar is not to engage and document, document, document. Record your transactions as well in case she tries to lie about you. As for the kids, just be honest with them if they ask – mom has boyfriends which are not allowed in marriage and it’s hurt your feelings and you are trying to work out the best arrangement for everyone. You don’t have to go into details but stick to the minimalist truth and try to reassure them of your love, and ongoing committment.
But first of all – SEE THAT DIVORCE LAWYER, GET THIS STARTED, STOP SLEEPING WITH THIS BITCH, DON’T ENGAGE WITH HER OR JUST AS MINIMALLY AS POSSIBLE, DON’T ARGUE OR TRY TO COUNTER HER LIES OR PROVE ANYTHING OR DEFEND YOURSELF, RECORD YOUR TRANSACTIONS, DON’T WORRY ABOUT THE OTHER CHUMPS OR APS, TRY TO GET AS MUCH SLEEP, WATER, GOOD FOOD AS YOU CAN, AND HAVE FUN WITH YOUR KIDS AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. DON’T INCLUDE HER – THIS IS NOT AN INTACT FAMILY ANY MORE BECAUSE IT NEVER WAS BECAUSE OF HER. TRY TO LET THE DIVORCE LAWYER HELP WITH THE HEAVY LIFTING.
ALSO – STOP THE MARRIAGE COUNSELING. It is pointless and won’t help you and may make you feel worse. Some of these counselors are awful and try to blame the Chumps. Go to individual counseling to help get through this if you feel you need it. But marriage counseling is almost always a waste of time and money and can make you feel worse. This woman is as she is and she is NEVER GOING TO CHANGE. NEVER. This is the way she is. It’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything, she’s just a bitch.
Collect evidence of the affair(s) as it may help you with settlement and custody even in a no fault state. Other than that, she’s gonna be some part of your life until the kids are grown, but it needs to become as minimal as possible – that’s the goal. She’s a bad person. . YES SHE IS. But we all run into them, we just have to figure out how to extricate ourselves and end up ultimately in a better position. Start praying too – a spiritual practice will help you get through this. GOOD LUCK!!!!
P.S. Don’t try to understand her. It’s pointless. It’s like trying to understand how a spider or a scorpion thinks. Probably an unfair comparison to those creatures as they serve some benefit and your wife doesn’t. But you can no more understand this bitch than you can understand another species. It will only drive you crazy trying to understand and she will beat you down with it. ENGAGE MINIMALLY and try to separate in house as much as you can until it’s safe for you to leave per a lawyer. Don’t make rash decisions, do what you do with guidance and come back here for advice. The folks here have seen EVERYTHING.
Emotional affairs are enough of a reason to divorce, even if she had not admitted to a physical affair. Your wife formed a bond with another man, and she nourished that bond at the expense of your bond. Grounds for divorce — at least as long as we continue to have no fault divorce in the US. My biggest problem with my ex-husband’s “emotional affair” was that although I *wanted* to divorce him over that because I could no longer trust him, I wasn’t sure that I had a “good reason” for a divorce because it supposedly was not physical. He swore up and down it wasn’t physical, that he hadn’t seen her in over 40 years (HS girlfriend) and had no plans to ever meet.
And then I found evidence that they DID meet and spend a week together at “our” friends’ home in Florida while I was working a 60 hour week and getting ready for major surgery. I filed for divorce. In retrospect, however, the emotional affair, even if it was never physical, was reason enough to divorce him. He lied to me over and over, he spent his time and energy on texting/emailing/phoning/messaging/facebooking with her while I was scared to death about my health, preparing for, having and recovering from major surgery and putting energy into my marriage. I don’t need that kind of crazy in my life.
I’ve been divorced for five years now, and my biggest regret is that I even considered staying and working on the marriage that he was neglecting, devaluing and discarding.
Oh, for fucks sake.
You are in no shape to police or negotiate with your wife. That ship has sailed. The good news is that the most helpful remedy for resolving all of this is little or no contact with her. You’ll be plenty busy without having to try to manage her distractions.
You’ll need your own support team – lawyer, mental health professional, trustworthy friends/family – and a quiet plan to legally separate and parent your children.
Three, six, nine months from now will feel different when you put energy into healing yourself for your children.
I’m going to reply to myself to soften my previous comment. The ship which has sailed is your wife leaving your marriage, You’ve been left to tread water and/or be dashed against rocks when you actually can choose to swim to shore. It’s scary because it’s a different direction than the one she took. But it is an easier and healthier choice. Each decision is now measured by its ability to bring you and your children to a healthier future,
This is so true, and once he starts to separate from her, especially not sleeping with her and keeping discussions to bare minimums, he will start feeling better mentally and physically – physical and mental are joined, healthy mind in healthy body.
Also, you describe yourself as a gamer, kind of a nerdy guy, which is fine – I’m a nerd too – not a gamer, but an anime enthusiast with all the T shirts to prove it. A political and science groupie – there are a lot of women out there like this, you’d be surprised. Many of us are introverts but don’t underestimate how many of us exist. Many women would love you and your interests just as you are and we tend to be faithful, LOL. It’s so hard sometimes to find people who share our interests, but they’re out there!
Oh the “Learning the EAs were Physical” circle of Hell, yea, been there and it SUCKED.
I ignored things early on that pointed to his relationships being physical, but them he started denying and stonewalled firmly and denied sex literally to his dying breath
It was a few weeks before my wedding to a good man when I learned that he cheated (fully) for our entire marriage.
What a suckfest … but CL &CN have given you great advice and I hope you take it.
Ive been married to Colonel Greatguy for 9 years and TRUST ME: men who are true to their relationships are like GOLD out there. You can be a nerd gamer all day (my husband uses the belt clip that came with his phone that everyone threw away when they realized how dorky it was) and there are women who will swoon over you (if you want to have a relationship – you dont have to have one).
“On the third night after the reveal she angrily states that I needed to stay in bed with her so she didn’t feel abandoned and that not staying would have consequences.”
Ooh, I can feel the remorse from here. 🙄
Make sure it does have consequences- for her, meaning that you dump her bitch ass and get a fabulous FW free life.
No wonder your children have mental health problems, with that horror show for a mother!
They need a stable parent. It’s not her and trust us when we tell you that it won’t be you if you stay with her.
OHFFS, you are so right.
It reminds me of the time I was pushing some consequences in Cheaters direction and his reaction was “DONT TEMPT ME, UNI!” (which in that context meant “stop trying to hold me accountable or I will do the easy thing which is leaving you for Susan”). Per my conditioning, I stopped (which was a huge mistake). I lost 7 more years of my life to that abusive situation.
I get it, but there’s a point where we may need to stop digging around in the marriage, looking for problems, and just close down the marriage. Yes, it’s horrific to go through a divorce and upend the kids, but there are better days ahead. The kids may actually benefit from being with a sane parent who doesn’t have manipulation as their primary way of functioning.
I shared what I knew with my attorney (of course), and he observed that usually what clients told him was only the tip of the iceberg. Yes, more came to light, and I was glad that I trusted my gut and didn’t reconcile.
Trust that they suck.
Dazed,
I remember that dazed feeling – it’s your body going into “freeze,” as in “fight/flight/freeze.” Please get support, but don’t expect any support in couples “therapy” – she’s just going to weaponize that to further abuse and gaslight you. I left my stbx 10 months ago after finding out about an emotional affair almost two years earlier. I never found hard evidence of a physical affair – though there was a lot of circumstantial evidence over the years, such as asking me for an open marriage, not coming home all night twice and giving me a a ridiculous story, finding condoms years after his vasectomy, etc. For a long time I wanted actual hard evidence or an admission – he wouldn’t even admit to the emotional affair, though I saw plenty of text messages and they both acted smitten with each other for months. What eventually got me packing my bags and calling a divorce attorney was the hard evidence of verbal abuse, emotional abuse, gaslighting, circular conversations, triangulation, boundary stomping, outright lying, hiding things (info, relationships, and actual things – yes my phone, toothbrush, ear plugs, clothing, etc), lack of empathy, blame-shifting/DARVO – all the disordered behavior chumps see when we open our eyes and look. My favorite quote of CL’s is “Is this relationship acceptable to you?” Educate yourself on the tactics of cheating narcissistic abusers, take a hard look at the reality you’re living, and I’m guessing you’ll find your answer is NO.
“giving me a a ridiculous story”
Oh the ridiculous stories I took as gospel truth…it embarrasses to this day. I won one of CLs challenges for “most ridiculous excuse” one time. Thank God for this place where we can all figure out our reality.
I’d like to have a nickel for every time I hear it was an emotional affair. It’s part of the betrayed spouse syndrome. Along with it’s my fault. I made her cheat. That way I can fix this. I love her! So I know she loves me too. Let’s jump into marriage counseling so they can fix this.
She doesn’t love you. You didn’t cause her to cheat multiple times. You can’t fix a serial cheater and neither can she. Most marriage counselors are quacks and all you’ll do is contribute to their kids college funds.
Better DNA test the kids. Good chance they aren’t yours.
I’d get STD testing too. You don’t know where her other men have been.
Sorry man but you need to wake up. All cheaters lie a lot. You can’t believe anything she says.
Start carrying a voice activated recorder. False domestic violence charges are not uncommon.
She’d never do that to me! I bet you never thought she’d cheat on you multiple times either.
Bud, it’s not your damn job to help hide her affairs.
Interview 3 good divorce attorneys in your area and pick one. Don’t be surprised if she’s already looking.
Hint, if she love bombs you with sex it’s for manipulation. Nothing else.
Dazed, I see you’re on here – WELCOME!!! I wish it were under better circumstances but we’ve all been there in one way or another and you will get plenty of help, support and advice from this great bunch of people. Writing to Tracy is maybe they best thing you’ve done and your life will turn around. 🙂
I read a few of your comments below and just wanted to kind of emphasize….I think you’re a reasonable guy and if you’re a gamer nerd, you’re an intelligent man who wants things to make sense. It’s part of the Nerd psychology to want to understand things and be able to predict them and make things orderly….in my opinion anyway. That’s not going to work with your wife. She’s not like you. She married you to have a safe harbor to stage her life from. Her real life is with these other guys, not you….maybe not even the kids. You’re all the stage, the window dressing, the structure, that enables her to go out and live the kind of life she really wants to live as some kind of dramatic heroine who only seeks love. Over and over and over again. With different guys. And YES, she is having sex with all of them. Or most of them. Or some you don’t know about. This IS who she is, whether she was with you or some guy named Joe or Bob, or Amir, or Francois, or Chan, or whatever….it wouldn’t matter. She’s the kind of person who will NEVER BE HAPPY no matter what because a lot of her life revolves around creating drama and being the star of it. That just never works out in real life, it gets old fast and then she needs to create new dramas with some other co-star. You’re the stage manager. Don’t be the stage manager. This is probably as close to understanding her as you can ever get…..you can’t understand this, you can’t change this, this is WHO SHE IS AND HOW SHE REALLY DOES WANT TO LIVE. If you divorced and she picked up another victim, she’ll do the same thing to him. THIS IS WHO SHE IS, IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU ACCEPT IT.
My point is that counseling with her is useless, talking to her is useless, she can’t explain her , basically psychotic behavior, what’s she’s doing is not happy, healthy, productive, a solid base for a life, good for her children….none of that. It’s her ego and her drive for drama and how much she enjoys that. Like you enjoy gaming, she enjoys playing with other guys, fucking them, pretending she’s in love, blah blah, and then when she gets tired of it, she comes home and demands you cuddle with her, BWAAAHHHHAAAAHAAAAAA. What the fuck! Only you can stop the madness for yourself and your kids. DON’T GO TO COUNSELING WITH HER AND DON’T DISCUSS THIS WITH HER. DON’T LISTEN TO HER CRYING OR SOBBING OR ANGER OR ANY EMOTION. I emphasize this because I think you’re still vulnerable to this – you’ve been CONDITIONED TO IT FOR YEARS.
It’s all drama, some of it is real, yes, no one wants to have their stage dismantled – you provide stability for her – but she doesn’t really respect that, it’s more like being the garage for the garage band. If she threatens you, or threatens to hurt herself – because people like this can be THAT manipulative, call the police or emergency responders and tell them she did this. She won’t do it again. BUT DO RECORD AND DOCUMENT BOTH YOUR TRANSACTIONS AND WHATEVER YOU FIND ON HER INFIDEL:ITIES OR TREATMENT OF YOU AND THE KIDS.
Other than that, try to engage as little as possible and recognize that almost everything she says to beyond “pass the salt” is manipulation and lies. And when they run out of lies, they turn to EXCUSES. Go to a lawyer and start making your path forward. If you need to talk, talk to a good friend or relative who supports you and come here or a place like this, or see an individual therapist. Don’t talk to a lot of people at this point, try to keep your plans to yourself as much as possible. Don’t discuss things with her, you’ll give away what you’re doing and she will use it against you. She’s never been on your side, Dazed, and now she’s an open enemy now that you won’t take her shit anymore. This is the way it is and the way forward is to protect yourself and your kids. You can do this, but don’t talk to her, don’t ask questions, don’t listen to her lies and excuses, don’t give away your plans, don’t talk to the other chumps or APs, don’t engage – just try to keep it civil and as much as possible, yes, no or maybe. And don’t let her goad you into any fights – if she can’t get the result she wants through her usual bullshit she may try to pick fights. DISENGAGE. No one was ever hurt by the words they never said or the tweet they never sent.
Good luck, we’re rooting for you!!!
P.S. I know I’m writing a lot, please excuse me, as a nerd, I like to be thorough, LOL. You can do all of these things and more, and yet you don’t have to hate her. You can be as angry as oh I don’t know, Satan at a church revival, but you don’t have to hate her (although you might and that’s okay too! Anger is a normal response to how badly you have been treated.). You might continue to feel some level of love or affection or kindness or responsibility or whatever towards her. It’s common to have mixed feelings, but you can’t let yourself be manipulated, and you have to do what is best for you and the kids, which is not this toxic relationship. Accept that your feelings might be confused at times and you’ll feel sad and anxious, and of course you will, and that’s okay and normal. But your HEAD has to plan for the future and rescue you and your kids. This is not the kind of relationship you want to continue. As you move forward to free yourself and make new plans for you and the kids, I think you may start feeling….a sense of freedom and liberation and possibilities you haven’t felt for a LOOOONG time, if ever. You’ll wonder how you could have put up with this. You just got used to the cage – once that door opens, it feels pretty good!
You know what the proof of this is, Dazed? If she were really unhappy with you and just looking for another guy to love and settle down with…..she would have found him by now and done that by now. She’s been through this many guys and maybe guys you don’t know about , it’s not really about finding real love, and it’s nothing that you’ve done – THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT IN ANYWAY. It’s the way she’s built, the way she thinks. She has issues you cannot help with and that probably will never change. She may slow down as she gets older but she’s not gonna change for you or anyone else. If she were capable of this, she would have done it with someone else by now – she would have settled down with one of the APs. That’s called monkey branching and it’s common. It’s not what she’s done. What she’s done is cheating as a way of life. You can’t live like this and it should not be inflicted on your kids.
Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your precious life. I’ve been there and I wasted too much time. Don’t waste your time. She is a disordered liar and has proven you cannot trust her. Don’t waste your time. I know it’s hard and you are a different human than she is, which is why you have attached and she has not. Don’t waste your time.
Dazed–Please listen to the advice given here, and take the wisdom from the many who have gone through this. I have 3 children with the FW—one my kids has disabilities. I didn’t think I could manage co-parenting given my child’s complex needs. It was one of many things holding me back from committing to ending the marriage, and he used this as a weapon to keep me on as an appliance. It took me 3 years after D-day to get out of this awful relationship. Today, I’m parenting just fine–probably better because I’m not walking on eggshells anymore.
You’re relationship is not fixable. She has proven herself to be untrustworthy and her behavior is emotionally abusive. Ask yourself if one of your kids was in a relationship like this would you find it acceptable? You deserve better. Go gray rock. Cancel marriage counseling. The money you would spend on the reconciliation industrial complex would be better spent on attorney’s fees.
Good luck and God speed. You can do it. We’ve got you.
You don’t need to know anything more. Other than. DNA testing on your kids. I doubt they are yours. Your wife is a serial cheater. Theres nothing to salvage.
Marriage Counselors are rugsweep quacks. Waste of time.
You stay you’ll just get more.
The reason your wife doesn’t want you telling the other spouses is because it will affect her. Wait on the MC? 🤣😂🤣😂she knows the MC will tell you to keep quiet because it might affect your shitty marriage 😂🤣