Kelly Clarkson’s Double Betrayal
It appears that Kelly Clarkson was a victim of a double betrayal. Her former production assistant Brittney Marie Jones was listed in Brandon Blackstock’s obituary as his “loving partner in life and business.”
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It’s hard enough to be chumped when you don’t know the affair partner(s). It’s doubly bad when you do. FWs tend to be lazy and cast about for the nearest willing accomplice in their immediate circle, thus the phenomenon of the nanny schtupper or coworker affair. But it’s extra awful when the affair partner was your best friend or blood relative. Or in Kelly Clarkson’s case, your personal assistant.
Why do cheaters choose double betrayals?
It’s a subversive power move. For the cheater, it’s an extra way to humiliate the chump. They’re weakening the chump’s most intimate bonds with others — the person you entrust your children with, your career, your family identity. Now the chump’s sense of personal safety is more thoroughly shattered. Everything is polluted. How deliciously central for the cheater.
Yes, the Schmoopie is nearby and that’s lazy. But it’s also extra traumatic, because that proximity means they’re an intimate.
In Kelly Clarkson’s case, the timeline is a bit fuzzy, but it sure looks like her dead ex was having a long-term affair with Clarkson’s assistant. And now that nitwit is covering herself in glory as the grieving “soulmate”. I’m just wondering, Brittney, if you were such a seminal influence on Brandon Blackstock, why weren’t YOU nursing him at the end, as Clarkson reportedly did?
It sounds like an end-of-life pick me dance to me. If there were a just God, Brandon Blackstock would’ve done hospice alone on a leper colony.
Why does anyone willingly become an affair partner when they know the chump?
Also a subversive power move. If you’re a lowly assistant contrasting yourself with a megastar, what better way to bring her down and elevate yourself than screw her husband? It’s a sick, secret triangle. But of course the chump doesn’t know they’re a hypotenuse.
Brandon Blackstock was in a relationship with his ex-wife Kelly Clarkson‘s former production assistant when he died on Aug. 7.
Brittney Marie Jones — who was identified in Blackstock’s obituary as his “partner in life and business” — worked as Clarkson’s production assistant in Nashville from 2016 to 2018, according to her LinkedIn.
In December 2018, she transitioned to an executive management assistant role for Blackstock — but still “assistant managed day to day artist schedule for Kelly Clarkson,” according to her profile.
Two years later, in June 2020, the same month Clarkson filed for divorce, Jones became an executive assistant for V Bar B Cattle Co., a Montana ranch owned by Blackstock.
Kelly Clarkson was double crossed.
Ugh. Anyone else doing the mental math on this affair? I’m guessing it started 2017 at the latest if he’s “promoting” her by 2018. And to think that Clarkson had to pay that FW — and that affair partner — $200K a month in support.
More from People:
The talent manager’s obituary describes Jones as his “beautiful and loving partner in life and business.”
It also said that the pair “started building a life, building companies, and working tirelessly to create Headwaters Livestock Auction and what will live on as his legacy, The Valley View Rodeo in Bozeman, Montana.”
A fuckwit rodeo seems like a pretty fitting legacy.
Check out the tribute from Schmoopie’s dad.
On Friday, Aug. 8, Jones’ father Larry paid tribute to Blackstock in a Facebook post, writing, “Yesterday we lost a good man Brandon Blackstock. He described Blackstock as “my daughter’s soulmate,” and said he “considered him my son.”
Good man?! Brandon Blackstock was an (alleged) serial cheater to Clarkson and his first wife and he was court ordered to pay Clarkson $2.3 million for defrauding her. Larry must have a dim opinion of his daughter’s soul.
Wow. Just wow. No, I don’t have a double betrayal story, but Ms. Clarkson has my sympathy. It just goes to show, FWs don’t change. Did it to his first wife, did it to his second wife, and would have done it to his “soulmate” if he’d lived long enough.
Chump Lady is so right; they don’t get character transplants.
No doubt he’d have done Brittany dirty if he lived long enough! That Brandon FW is just like his own FW father who managed Reba and cheated on her with her friend.
As my attorney told me during the intake appointment, “You likely only know the tip of the iceberg.” Poor Kelly, it just goes on and on. What she knew was only the tip.
Yes, even among us ordinary chumps, that’s so very true. Their disorder goes so deep that it affects every relationship.
I’m years out now and only have an outline of what went on, but what I knew was bad-bad-bad. Even my ex’s own attorney called him “my morally reprehensible client” in an email to mine that, of course, my attorney forwarded to me. I knew some of why his attorney did that, but the sexual basement was deep.
Believe me, I thank God every day for a legal team that got me away from that wreck and those who came alongside and talked me through the whole thing.
I kind like this ending. She can raise the kids herself, she has the talent to do whatever she wants, no more child support and a scmoopie with a tarnished work history. Cheers to a great life Kelly!
I wonder is Kelly already knew this. I think it is possible she was just helping the ex because he is her kids father.
As far as the betrayal, yep the cheater loves the sneaking around, just like a teenager.
“I wonder if Kelly already knew this. I think it is possible she was just helping the ex because he is her kids father.”
I could be wrong, but I think she knew and the article isn’t meant to imply she didn’t? To me, the article is more saying “it sucks when Schmoops is a friend/relative/colleague” vs “Kelly got betrayed again when upon reading the obituary, she discovered he was having an affair with her former asst”. I am not sure though.
I am very curious why Kelly was his caretaker and not his soul mate” / Schmoop.
The only thing that I can think of is if he wanted to be around his kids as much as possible for his remaining days, it would be easier if he was at Clarkson’s home vs Schmoops. And I could see Kelly doig that for her kids. She is still a better person than I.
My ex was in his sixties when it all went down. I will never get his choice to blow up marriage and family after he retired and indeed, act like a teenager. I guess he wanted to feel young again and felt that reinventing himself was the key. Partway in, my attorney started calling him “the boy” instead of using his name. Why? Because he was acting so very immature.
I’m more of an own up, show up person, especially now. To me, that’s the road to peace and joy.
In double (triple) betrayal adjacent news, I read today that David Brooks, whom you all will no doubt remember left his wife, then married his assistant, embraced Christianity the same year his Jewish son joined the IDF. And his chumped first wife had converted to Judaism when she married Brooks!
And while this doesn’t qualify as “my spouse and my best friend cheated together,” it’s close enough:
The woman with whom my ex “experimented with his gender” (joined him in his secret sexual basement) may not have been my friend, but she was an ex-student whose senior honors committee I had served on when she was a student, and who had created a Facebook group of “admirers of” my also-a-professor ex.
Now he’s with a woman who was my student in two classes–she was an adult, divorcing her professor husband and needed a degree–and also our son’s violin teacher. My ex is the third professor from our small liberal arts college she’s partnered with.
So many reprehensible women eager to be the OW and abuse the wife it’s infuriating. At least the wh**res are getting paid.
yikes!
I wasn’t exactly double crossed like Kelly, but I knew the (final) affair partner. My FW wasn’t doing well in the professional world so I gave him a leg up and he ended up at the consulting firm I worked at. Long story short he was screwing a young woman who was on a project team with one of my clients. She was dumb, young and unprofessional and I actually complained to my client about her and asked if he had someone else who might be more experienced to put on the project. He said he wanted her to learn from me so he would like to keep her on the job 🙄 Meanwhile she started getting weirder so I just ignored her and tried to do the job. Fast forward 4 months or so and I discover she was banging my husband.
But she wasn’t special. My FW said he chose her because he was “sick of going to sex clubs and didn’t want to pay hookers anymore so I asked her if she would satisfy my kinks and she said yes”. Classy! He found someone dumb he could manipulate and get a break from the hooker payments. In hindsight it was awful getting her smarmy little looks at work. I had no idea what they were up to. Although I didn’t give a sh!t about her, it did feel like a sort of double betrayal just because she was right there glaring at me while I was suppose to be mentoring her on the job. 🤮
If “addiction” actually has anything to do with this kind of conduct, it would kind of make sense if the addiction is really to betrayal.
From that vantage point, sex would just be one of many routes to betrayal. Other expressions could include any number of things like embezzling food banks, harming children or pets in their care, tagging Roman ruins, masturbating into omelettes, sticking friends’ toothbrushes up their arses… the list goes on.
I booked the hotel rooms for “Just a Friend’s” bachelorette party for her first marriage.
We were friendly, and shared a friend group. Obviously, FW ex & her were friendlier.
He was pretty awful to his first wife and Kelly was cool with that so I don’t have a lot of sympathy for her anymore honestly. I’m kind of over women who think they accomplished something by bagging a cheater. Even if Kelly wasn’t banging him during his first marriage, she married a guy who abused his first wife by repeatedly cheating on her. Did she think she was just so special? I don’t like that attitude. Women need to stop that sh*t.
Not that I support the production assistant either. She knew even more about how abusive this man was and screamed “SIGN ME UP FOR THAT! CAN I WATCH HIM ABUSE OTHER WOMEN?! I’LL SET UP A CHAIR IN THE CORNER TO MASTURBATE WHILE HE DOES IT!” She’s disgusting.
I’m tired of it. I’m glad I now have a really good group of women in my life who don’t play these games. It’s just disgusting. I can’t understand it. I know men will assist in cheating too but women just seem so gleeful about getting with a horrible man who abused his family and then showing off how she’s so much better than his abused family. It makes me sick to my stomach. Even rich celebrity women do this crap. You’d think they’d have better things to put their energy into than dirtbags.
None of us know the whole story about what Kelly knew of Brandons first marriage. She may have accepted a wild narrative about the first wife and not realized she had been played until later. Cheaters are savage with regard to what they tell people about us. After my Cheaters death, I wrote one of his OWs (who I really didnt realize was an OW until I connected all the dots after his death) and asked her what his narrative was. I filled her in that all the normal accusations (sexless, I was batshit crazy, our marriage had been over for a long time blah blah) were not true and she carried on a relationship with a very married person. I never heard back from her but I hope she felt like dog shit and learned a valuable lesson.
I also wonder if Schmoopie (having been an assistant) was quick to release her version of the Obit because she could (while Kelly was doing actual work with the death and all that comes after it). When my Cheater died, I invited his siblings to write the obit and was mortified when it was wrong on so many points. He had a sister who was a nut and she clearly drove the bus on that project. Anyone with any sense can see that Brandons obit is a mess and really an embarrassment to a man no longer there to defend himself. He deserves a mess of an obit though and his kids will read it some day and connect the dots that their dad was a cheater.
My first paragraph sounds like Im excusing Kelly if she believed whatever he said about his first spouse, but Im not. Im a bit “On the fence” where dating before full divorce is concerned. I am generally very against yet I live in a state where divorces with kids can take years.
When I was young, I might have believed anything but never got in that spot as I married at 21. When dating in midlife, I figured everyone was lying. I feel bad for the HeChumps because people always assume they were the bad guy. My now husband emailed me a copy of his Catholic annulment decree and you can only get that if you are divorced. That helped me trust him.
I’ve observed that women who knowingly get with cheaters, whether the OW or not, seem to typically be not good people when you scratch their nice veneer.
I’m not directing this at Kelly since I don’t think she was the OW just real life examples I know of.
This observation probably goes for men too.
I have a double betrayal story. My ex (of 12 years) and I are both physicians. We decided to open a private practice medical clinic together. I found out that he was cheating on me with my own nurse- from my own clinic- while I was pregnant. It was horrifically twisted. All 3 of us worked there. Her kids called me “Auntie” and she would tell her husband I was her best friend. Then at one point after d day- they tried to kick me out of my own clinic that I had worked so hard to build and open, so that they could run it themselves. The affair partner really thought she was just going to take over my clinic. I left him, closed the clinic down, and moved to a different state. I found a new job, my career is thriving. I’m slowly rebuilding and starting over. He has never even met our 19 month old baby though, and never even tried. He is still w his affair partner and he is helping her raise her two kids instead.
I gasped! He has never even met y’all’s child!??! Cheating and trying to steal the business — beyond awful — but never even trying to meet your own child? This person is a monster, sorry. How can anyone be so … uncaring!? And in the profession of caring for people too.
Karma is coming for her when she ages and the next young pretty nurse comes along.
I wouldn’t trust my health or my kids’ health to such empathy-impaired weirdos.
Yuck. He wants a subordinate, not a partner.
Appalling behavior on his part! You are a badass.
Shocking. Congratulations on your decisive action and move to a new state. Unbelievable story. You are resilient.
That’s twisted! But wow are you mighty!
I have one unfortunately.
TL;DR: Schmoopie 1 was a friend. FW gaslit me to thinking I ended our friendship. Then she got chumped by schmoopie 2. All while I was still married.
When my ex and I moved to a new city for his job, he set me up on a “friend date” with a woman who worked for him because he thought she was cool and we had stuff in common and I needed to make friends in the new city.
She left that company but we remained friends with her and her friend group, even went on a vacation with them and had her and her daughter over to watch fireworks on the 4th of July etc.
Like a year later she just stopped talking to us, cut us off completely and I had no idea why. Ex told me that I did something to offend her but neither of us knew what it was. I felt awful but life moved on.
Fast forward to dday and I discovered phone records and texts between them. So the real reason she stopped talking to me was made clear – they were of course having an affair.
But by that point he was also having an affair with another one too. (Thats the one he moved into our house a month after he kicked me out) So I get a text a few months later from the former friend, and I quote, “he was cheating on you with me and cheating on both of us with ——“
Guess that’s the day she found out about the other, other woman lol.
Happy to now be away from these toxic people.
What a daisy chain of creeps.
Love how she’s only willing to own up to her part when she thinks she can claim chump status and wants to commiserate about you both being cheated on! Talk about false equivalency!
I’ve talked about the specifics regarding being bitch slapped by betrayal after betrayal, like it was a merry go round of FW never-ending torture previously, and have since gotten off that god forsaken ride. I came from a dumpster fire of human beings, as they are a smorgasbord of differing flavors of FWs.
Of all the things that messed with me the most with the compounding betrayal trauma was that FW was just the tip of the iceberg, but how my own FOO does not care about me (or my children)and just pretends to when they want something.
FOO can take a hike. Likely better they aren’t around your children.
I’ve never done bumper stickers but I want one and it’s going to be this:
I ❤️ PAMELA AND LIAM
I am delighted for this newly minted couple who came together free and clean and clear, and I am vicariously basking in their obvious love for each other.
I also notice the love and admiration from the public coming their way, something that I have never seen cheater couples receive.
I am following this story because it is warming my heart, restoring my faith in humanity, and proving how badly cheaters suck.
If I can’t have a Pamela and Liam situation, I want to be alone.
Cheaters are icky and grimy and can have each other. And I thank them for identifying themselves so I can steer clear.
My ex’s affair partner was not my friend first, but my ex ensured we became friends by flying her – his right-hand person at work, under him – to stay in our home. Twice I fixed up the guest bedroom and cooked meals for her! We treated her to a meal out, too! She and I naturally clicked and I am sure my cheater was getting off on duper’s delight watching that. On Dday I definitely felt stung by her, too.
The person who my ex used to also betray me which cut far deeper was his own mother. I loved her dearly and we used to be close, independently of him, and did many things together that best friends would do.
During the abusive discard phase, he made sure there was no close relationship between me and my beloved MIL, as he became emotionally incestuously close with her, and poisoned her against me. I just learned the term for it yesterday from my therapist, “narcissistic mobbing”. He decided that I needed to be excluded and picked on and that’s what his sister and mom did – all his doing.
On Dday #2 when I read for myself the awful, inappropriate texts between him and my “friend” his underling, I also read his complaints of me to his mom and sis, and their sickening enab-ly replies to him “Your poor dear, having to put up with such a nasty wife” (things like asserting myself against the bullying – that was what he complained about and spun so that I seemed terrible). Puke!
So yes, I felt double betrayal by not only the AP who became a “friend”, but especially by my former MIL and SIL. My former MIL was the worst for me, since my own mom is toxic and abusive so my MIL felt like a finally close, healthy mother-type relationship which we had once really enjoyed, both of us.
Cheaters take SOOOO much from us!!!
I’ve got the same story with the ex MIL. However it’s her loss, remind yourself she chooses to be part of the narcissistic mob. That’s on her. It shows she’s not as good of a person as you believed
I am sorry, Archer! And I think there’s truth to your last sentence, as painful as it is. Thanks for the reminder that it’s not me.
My second Xs first wife cheated on him, but I heard whiffs from his preteen daughter that he was “mean” and hit her mom once. Yes you do think you are special as #2 plus he did seem repentant, changed embracing faith, helpful actions and was gentle to me at first. I think I got 12 good years maybe, out of 30 until he went down the control and basement life hole never to emerge. It became all too real that abusers and later cheaters are dyed in the wool.
I do rest my case that cheaters do not suffer for lack of soul mates and every cheater I know has people at the end to nurse them. Kelly ran back to support her abuser and all the other ladies in waiting appeared too. ( I do ask,Who would include OW in an obituary anyway?*) Sigh* My contribution to this is I don’t think people get character transplants as Tracy says…they just go stealth. I can now act as a cautionary tale to all those who think their love is special and cures all maladies. I am sorry now. Working on forgiveness for damage done to my sweet family due to my blindness and staying too long.
I had a moderate double betrayal. My ex cheated with a coworker that we hung out with as a couple a fair amount. So not my friend per se, but I spent a lot of time with her over the few months when their exit affair was beginning.
This woman used to come over to my apartment and hang out, watch sports games, and have dinner with us! So I didn’t pay her bar tab, as Tracy famously did, but I sure did cook her dinner.
In retrospect, that is so nuts. I couldn’t come hang out with a couple in their home knowing I was actively breaking it up – but I’m not a cheater, so I guess I wouldn’t get it.
I have a double (triple?) betrayal story.
Ex-FW had an affair with his best friend’s wife which continued through the friend’s illness and death. As FW told our therapist, he technically knew her longer (35 years) than me (30 years). And, yes, the affair took place while I though he was “visiting a sick friend”.
She and I weren’t friends other than holiday parties, weddings, funerals, etc.
They even told family/friends that her husband was suffering from dementia when he accused her of being unfaithful.
I think they both now live in my former marital home, but I’m no contact.
His obituary is super-weird. It reads like an advertisement for Jones’ business. Sounds like someone knows her star will be falling now that she isn’t leeching off Clarkson by proxy.
How in the heck did Blackstock get $200K / month from Clarkson?? Even K-Fed only got $10K per month per kid from Spears (later upped to $20K per month per kid). Makes me wonder if Clarkson didn’t just give in on that ridiculous amount to be free of him.
I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone but grats on your freedom, Kelly.
Double betrayal is a bitch. My X had an affair with a good friend of mine. X and AP’s husband were friends too. Our kids were friends (still are). We carpooled, gave each other gifts, attended same church/schools, lived within walking distance of each other, spent holidays together.
However, I do consider myself triply betrayed. After X and AP pulled their dumb stunt (and are now officially “in a relationship”), my circle of mutual friends slowly dissolved. My faith community/support system – the christians who talk big about caring for neighbors – went crickets. It has been the most painful experience of my life, by a long shot.
I lost all my couple friends too. I have slowly been building up single friends but if they meet someone, I know it won’t be long before I’m ditched again.
My heart goes out to you Juniper. I lost most of my Christian network too. It’s awful!
Based on a life experience, I would say that the whore and her dad are setting up her claim that “…he promised to take care of me the rest of my life.” If the cheater did not provide for her in his estate (which he likely left to his four children) and they aren’t married she’s out of luck unless she can prove some promise and intention on his part to “take care of her.” Notice she’s already documenting her narrative that they were building businesses “together”. I saw this play out in a lawsuit where a “girlfriend” stood up at the funeral lamenting the loss of her “soul mate” then sued dead boyfriend’s estate (his two children) because he left her nothing. Case settled for $10M. A travesty.
That’s exactly what she — and her enabling dad — are doing. 🤮
Kelly isn’t done yet. She’ll have to fight that on behalf of her kids. 🤮
Well, there was my first husband who slept with my sister. (She also slept with my third husband, and the only reason I am not positive she slept with my second husband is that he preferred men, and admitted that he married me so he could stay more firmly closeted.)
My first husband also slept with Sister Margaret, the nun who led the pre-Cana classes. (He said he was just helping her see if she had a “true vocation.”). This is a woman who not only knew me from the pre-marriage classes, but chatted with me every Sunday in church. But if we’re talking about double betrayals of the Jesus cheater persuasion, My second husband slept with Father Steve, the parish priest.
Still, I’m a private citizen and Kelly Clarkson is a celebrity. People Magazine doesn’t know me (or any of my three ex-husbands) from Adam and isn’t reporting on any betrayals I might have endured. I have real sympathy for Clarkson, because that’s not just a double betrayal, that is humiliation on a world-wide scale.
Ruby,
I know I have read your story here before, but it still gob smacks me that you were chumped in such ways. Being betrayed by a spouse is bad enough but throw in your sister and your Church (!?!?) and its a quadruple, smackdown infliction of betrayal. I hope you have built a nice, peaceful life for yourself
My ex-friend confessed that she slept with my then boyfriend one night while I was asleep after a night of drinking. While I was shocked, a mutual friend asked why I was so surprised, “She clearly was jealous of you & didn’t like you very much, did you not see that?” Clearly I was a chump long before I ever met Fuckwit & didn’t learn that that painful lesson could include spouses. I had wanted to be liked so much & included in the girl group that I overlooked the poisonous ones in there.
My father used to take me on dates with him when I was really young. He worked 4 days on and had 4 days off, he would bring a blonde young thing fishing and picnics with us.
He was to get me off to school on the mornings he was off. I was to take him his coffee in bed at a certain time and wake him up. One morning the blonde sexy neighbor lady walked through the door, told me she would take daddy his coffee and I didn’t have to. After what seemed like a very long time, I just went to school. God knows what i looked like because my waist length curly hair hasn’t been brushed and I dressed myself.
In later years I caught him collecting mail from a PO box. When I asked why he needed a PO box, he just said my mother read his mail. Why would he get mail she couldn’t read?
The years went by. I got married, had a baby, and my husband had a very bad motorcycle accident when our son was 6 weeks old. The neighbor lady and her husband took care of my son so I could be by my husband’s side. My husband clung to life for months, almost a year. During that time the neighbors split up.
My mom would wake up in the middle of the night and my dad wouldn’t be in bed. She would look for him in the house and yard and when she couldn’t find him, she’d go back to bed. When questioned my dad said he was “counseling” the neighbor concerning her marriage breaking up.
Then the neighbor invited the whole family for dinner one night after I had visited my husband. My son was asleep in the master bedroom in his play pen. When I went to check on him, I looked in the kitchen as I walked back to the living room and saw my dad and the neighbor locked in a passionate kiss.
I immediately packed up my son and left. Everyone was standing at the door, obviously confused why I had to leave so abruptly. I had my little brother help me pack the stuff to the car. At the door was my mother, then my dad and the neighbor in from of him with her hands behind her back playing with his balls.
I said to my brother, “Don’t you see what’s happening?!” He told me he came home from work early one night and when the headlights of his truck hit the family room window, he saw a woman’s head pop up. As he walked through the door our dad was doing up his pants and the neighbor was in a real hurry to leave.
My dad got my 16 yr old brother drunk and swore him to secrecy.
Eventually, my dad was the one to end it. My mother was shattered.
When my mother fought for her fair share of the house and half his pension, him and his new woman (a friend of me and my husband) marched with signs in front of where she worked. When both us kids were witnesses for my mother he decided to sign the divorce agreement.
Is it any wonder my brother has screwed around on every woman he has been with and I have never had a man be faithful or treat me with respect?
I am 67 now and been single for 15 years and will happily stay that way the rest of my life.
My FW’s affair was a run-of-the-mill workplace situation – except that I ALSO worked there, so AP was my coworker as well as FW’s. Not only that, she pretended to be my friend. Our kids had playdates together. She came to my house multiple times, where I made dinner for everyone and helped with her kids. She lied to my face, pretending to be nice while all the while f*cking my husband behind my back. When I was falling apart trying to figure out WTF was going on, she said “nothing is going on”. They had been having an affair for over 3 years at that point. She “apologized” after FW’s death, but took zero accountability for her part in it (“if I hurt you, I apologize”, “I was operating under false pretenses”, etc.). I could maybe excuse her believing FW’s lies about me if I were a stranger, but she knew me. I was never anything but kind to her. She saw FW and me being affectionate with each other. As I said, she came to my home. I made her a birthday dinner because she was feeling down. I had her over for Christmas because she was getting divorced and it was her first Christmas without her kids. I felt SORRY for her. I went out of my way to be nice to her. She had the audacity one day to sit at MY dining table and sing “Jolene”. She also tried to get me fired (sitting in my cubicle by myself in a different building trying to get through the day without crying was apparently me “creating a hostile work environment” or something). Fortunately my management and the HR department didn’t buy that at all (and hilariously called HER out in the meeting as well – I have never seen someone book it out of a meeting so fast; meanwhile, I stayed and chatted with everyone. One of the HR ladies told me that in a few years I would laugh about the whole situation [she was right]).
I think AP suffered from very low self esteem (in spite of her inflated ego). “Winning” my husband away made her feel special, and he was very good at being exactly what she wanted. Of course it was all faked. His mask came off later, and she left him. She still paints herself as a victim, and never mentions that they were both married when they got involved. After FW died, she tried very hard to stay relevant, making nice to me and to FW’s sister (whom she had never met), but neither of us bought it or wanted anything to do with her. I had the satisfaction of writing her a scathing text telling her exactly what I thought of her (including telling her that if she showed up to the funeral, I would have her escorted out by the police), and then blocking her on everything. I didn’t care so much about the funeral for my own sake, but more for my son and for FW’s family (who he was not speaking to, but who I like very much). I didn’t want any drama for their sakes. I’m sure she had a lot to say to her friends about what a B- I am, but I don’t care.
So yeah, I think it is worse when it’s a friend/coworker/some you know. And the fact that all my “friends” accepted her with open arms and shunned me was yet another level of betrayal. They were FW’s friends, and I learned that they had never been my friends. They only acted like it because they wanted to be on FW’s good side (he was a filmmaker, and nearly all of them were actors/writers/musicians/etc. who wanted work). But they weren’t really his friends either (including OW), just opportunists, because when he needed someone, they were nowhere to be found. He took his own life and died all alone. In spite of having told at least two people that he was feeling suic*dal, no one helped him or checked up on him, and no one told me (the mother of his child – I think that’s kind of important for me to know when I was sending the kid over to his house; on at least two occasions, he was hallucinating because he had made an attempt to OD on medication the day before and I had no idea that that was why. I’m just glad that my child was with me when it happened, and that FW didn’t end up being one of those people who k*lls the kid to get back at the other parent, which is a real possibility).
My story is different, but I can relate so much to yours. Having “friends” embrace the OW adds to another level of betrayal. It felt like a slap in the face. And when my FW got sick, so many “friends” and of course, the OW, were nowhere to be found.
Although the relationship with OW is what ended our marriage, I had many suspicions and many arguments with him over the years about certain female “friends”. When he died, none of them attended his memorial service. None of them were banned. In the end, they just didn’t care. Not even the woman he was seeing shortly before he passed (well after our divorce) bothered to show up. I was the only one still there, helping my step kids. Even his siblings, who never liked me, made a point to come up to me and thank me.
You have been through so much, I hope you and your child are doing well.
I was double double betrayed! I have been married twice and cheated on in both marriages.
My first husband left me for a friend who had attended our wedding.
My second cheated with a neighbor. Of course, when he got sick and became disabled, she didn’t want to take care of him. So I am not surprised what Clarkson did for her ex.
I continued to help him long after the divorce, until he died a few years ago. It may be chumpy, but I have no regrets. I treated another human being with compassion and my stepchildren still appreciate how I treated their father, even if he didn’t deserve it.
Now I’m happily in a long term relationship with a fellow chump who treats me very well.