Kids Don’t Want to Meet His Affair Partner
Her kids don’t want to meet her ex-husband’s affair partner. Now he’s marrying her and wants to keep it a secret from one of the children.
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Dear Chump Lady,
My ex left a little or 4 years ago. My divorce was finalized last spring. The usual cheater story… had what I thought was a good marriage with a good guy two kids. One day I get the “I love you but I am not in love with you.” Turns out he was cheating with his associate who he was supposed to be mentoring. Both lawyers. She’s 14 years younger married with a baby. Claims he never cheated on me blah blah blah. Went from good guy to horrible guy, treated me like crap, dragged out the divorce for 3 years. Did all the typical narc FW stuff, blamed me for everything, abandoned the kids, played victim and ran off with the Other Woman on multiple trips a year. Trips that he promised me we would go on.
I was a heartbroken chump for a long time. My kids were heartbroken. Divorce is now over.
Finally getting my life back, taking care of myself and my kids and getting some normalcy in our lives. Cheater has tried to push his affair partner on my kids (they are teenagers high school /college age) but they want nothing to do with her.
Recently he told my oldest that he was getting married. He told him not to tell me or younger brother because he wants to tell us himself (we never talk), so I know that is a lie. He was crying and sad to my son and apologized to him, telling him he knows this is hard for him. Telling my son that he knows that me and my family are pushing him to choose a side (another lie) and that if he accepts everyone on ex’s side of the family that there would be wonderful fun opportunities to travel for him.
Gross. My son said he was so manipulative on the phone.
Always the sad sausage.
Despite all my therapy and self improvement and peace I have found, I still can’t get over that my ex has turned into such a disgusting selfish and mean person. At some level I still feel like affair partner has won. Can you give me a swift kick in the ass and tell me to trust that they suck?
Thanks.
SoCal
P.S.
I find your website and book so helpful. During the really bad days, I used to go to bed listening to the book on audio tell me that my cheater sucked. It was the only way I could wind down and go to sleep.
I have a wonderful therapist and she has helped me a lot. I am Catholic and I have had some priests help me as well and even got my 22 year marriage annulled in the Catholic Church which is no easy feat.
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Dear SoCal,
Your ex’s manipulations to get the kids to accept his old affair partner and soon-to-be-wife is his problem.
He’s responsible for his relationship with his kids.
You don’t have to weigh in on any of it. It’s totally shitty of him to try to press your son into a conspiracy of silence with you and your other child. (I’m sure your ex must miss his conspiracies.) So, I assume your son told you, and the way his father behaved during the encounter (aka “sad sausage.”)
As tempting as it would be to react to all of this with OMG HE IS SUCH A FUCKWIT, I’d cool-bummer-wow my way through that discussion. Don’t center yourself (OMG MY EX IS GETTING MARRIED!), center your kid instead. “You feeling okay? Would you like some pancakes?” Divert attention back to home, sanity, and model We Will Not let FWs Rock Our World.
Your ex imagines you care. Don’t care.
He wants to drop bombs in your life. Treat him and his nuptials like the non-event that it is. You have a life. Your children have lives. I’m sorry he canceled his subscription to adulting to go jet around with Schmoopie for several years, but you don’t pick children back up like discarded knitting projects. Everyone has moved on.
Your children are young adults. It’s their call if they want to attend the giant celebration of monogamy by two cheaters. You’re busy that day doing something improving. Really anything is more improving than thinking about your ex’s wedding to his affair partner. Floss your teeth, vacuum the refrigerator coils, clip your toenails. Your toenail clipping deserves more centrality than your ex.
He was crying and sad to my son and apologized to him, telling him he knows this is hard for him.
No, not really. But clearly it’s hard on you, Dad, as only one of us is in tears.
Telling my son that he knows that me and my family are pushing him to choose a side (another lie)
I think your behavior speaks for itself. But it’s nice of you to convey your apologies by shit-talking my family and conscripting me into your secrets.
and that if he accepts everyone on ex’s side of the family that there would be wonderful fun opportunities to travel for him.
What exactly does that acceptance look like? Is there a quiz? Three guesses at Uncle Martin’s profession and you win a trip to Muskegon?
Trust that he sucks.
Despite all my therapy and self improvement and peace I have found, I still can’t get over that my ex has turned into such a disgusting selfish and mean person.
Quit untangling the skein. Was he always awful, is he only awful to you, will he be awful in the future is pointless energy directed at a FW. The important point is that his behavior — cheating, subsequent abandonment of his children and litigation abuse — is a deal killer. You cannot have this person in your life. He isn’t safe and he doesn’t deserve your care. You have a new life that requires all your attention.
At some level I still feel like affair partner has won.
It’s a feeling. It will pass. I can tell you many years out that I couldn’t care less if my ex is on his 15th marriage or still madly in love with his dick. If Schmoopie is in the picture, or if she’s pining for some liquor store clerk in New Jersey. I turned off their soap opera long ago. Those people suck.
The memory of them is only useful in so far as it furthers the mission of this blog, which is to get you over FWs and into your new, improved life.
If your ex’s affair partner feels like she won. Okay. Have at it, Schmoops. That guy is NO GOOD FOR YOU. She thinks he’s good? Whatever. It shouldn’t rock your KNOWLEDGE and EXPERIENCE of exactly how bad he is.
Let her take crazy risks with her life. Let her eat the gas station sushi and enjoy the results. It’s going to be different this time!
Can you give me a swift kick in the ass and tell me to trust that they suck?
They suck.
Private Lies and Grow Up! are books by the late great psychotherapist Dr Frank Pittman. My therapist from 1985-2000 did workshops with him. Here are a couple of golden quotes for chumps:
“In lying, one is identifying the other as one’s opponent, even one’s enemy. In marriage intimacy is developed through confessions, explanations, and soul searchings. But of course intimacy involves equality, and people who are telling lies are not seeking any aspect of intimacy, especially equality. Liars are hoping for advantage, which will be produced by disorienting and distracting the other person. The liar is stepping outside the relationship. The lie may be a greater betrayal of the relationship than the misdeed being lied about. It takes very little misinformation to disorient and destroy a relationship. I often point out to people that if I gave them detailed instructions on how to go from Atlanta to New York City, and threw in only one left turn that was a lie, they would end up in Oklahoma.”
-Dr. Frank Pittman
Private Lies
(p. 59)
“Wonderful people don’t fool around with married people, and wonderful married people don’t fool around.”
To the cheater, from Grow Up!, he says, “the problem in your marriage is YOU.”
I highly recommend both of these books for your infidelity recovery library.
In my own world, today’s letter writer and I have a lot of similarities. DDay was in OCT 2017. Darling daughter was ten. Therapy has been a regular part of my life for forty years, and part of her life since she was in utero. I left figuring out what to do about Traitor Dad to her and her therapist. She wants nothing to do with him, which is a result of how he has treated her.
Last week, true to his poor character and complete lack of insight, as if nothing has happened, with zero attempts ever to make any kind of amends, he invited her via email for Thanksgiving with him and his parents and, I assume, the primary OW.
She emailed him back, “No thank you. I have plans.”
This is SoCal thank you very much for the book recommendations. I’m going to look into them.
I’m copying and pasting that excellent quote about lies!
I should add that she also wanted nothing to do with him because of how he had treated me, and is very clear that he and the side piece intentionally inflicted harm on not just me but both of us.
Even without the support of a competent therapist, children often have a good understanding of how loyalty works and have a tendency to dislike anyone who intentionally harms a parent they love, a fact lost on cheaters and side pieces who usually cram the new “relationship” down the involved children’s throats in a nauseating attempt to legitimize it.
It’s ludicrous to expect a relationship with anyone after you’ve essentially beaten the emotional, mental, spiritual, and psychological sh*t out of them, but that’s the disordered thinking of the cheater and the side piece.
Powerful words!
The Gottman’s work on trust was a major factor in my decision to refuse to reconcile. The abandonment and deception was just too hard for me to overcome. My ex, being “religious,” claimed that God can fix anything and that I wasn’t being spiritual. Yes, I was. I was calling what it was and refusing to be a part of that evil.
And I love that your daughter knew exactly what to do. They are responsible for their relationship with their children, period. And without any amends, our children can completely say “no.” That’s what healthy young people do, and it applies many times in adulthood.
My then-college kids joined me in no-contact during the divorce, and then remained so. It was very telling that my ex wanted me to force them to be in contact with him, even though they were over 18 and had their own phones and emails.
Feelings, like anesthesia, take time to wear off.
I now could not be more grateful that I am divorced from him, and I could not care less what he or they are doing. That took quite a while longer than I wanted. In the meantime, just tell the feelings, “Thank you for sharing.” Then hit the IGNORE button and go on with the business of rebuilding an incredible cheater-free life.
Give your head and heart lots of time to synchronize. They’ve been disconnected for a very long time.
❤️
Here’s an article about low quality men that I think the OP can share with the kids.
https://geediting.com/d-10-subtle-behaviors-low-quality-men-display-without-even-realizing-it/
It’s not an article about cheaters or narcissists so it’s neutral. It’s a quick easy read. Even without mention of cheating I recognize FW narcopath in nearly every point laid out in the article. Cheaters are LOW QUALITY men (and women). I married a serial cheater. Basically I invested decades in a low quality piece of plastic masquerading as a flawless D diamond. That’s a bitter pill to swallow for anyone.
Teaching our kids how to spot manipulation, gaslighting, blame shifting is really important for chumps. It’s a key skill that serves them well in all areas of their lives.
Schmoopie better watch out for the next young associate FW is “mentoring” 🤣
Kudos to the older son for already being so perceptive! I hope the younger one learns too.
Johnanna,
Hopefully there will come a day that you realise that, in choosing to step away from the table, divorce your FW, get your marriage annulled and build a better life for yourself and your kids, it was you that won. If your FW’s AP “won” anything, it’s a dried up, self-centred selfish POS who will, at some point, do to her what he did to you. But, with all that said, you should allow yourself a bit of “self-doubt” and the odd wobble once in a while, because that happens en route to your own personal “Tuesday.”
As regards your FW’s impending nuptials, remember that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference … so practise a bit of what I would call “aggressively assertive indifference.” Choose not to give a sh*t until not giving a sh*t becomes automatic/second nature.
Additionally, trust and support your kids. They know that their father lies, they know that he is manipulative and they have set a boundary in not wanting to meet the AP. I suspect that his recent performative waterworks were all about image management; he is concerned as to how is he going to explain to those that attend his wedding (including his AP’s family) why his own children chose not to attend. Ultimately though, you just need to reassure them (without leading the witness) that it is OK to tell their father “No, that is not what I want” or “That does not work for me” and leave it at that.
On a really serious note, I suspect that you need to give yourself a lot more credit for how well you are dealing with all of this, so go a bit easier on yourself!
LFFT
Thank you very much for those kind words.
I get the feeling that the ex and their “friend(s)” have won, but they really haven’t. If you take the long view and consider how disordered their relationships are, they are genuinely the losers here. My ex hid parts of what happened, but more came to light during the divorce and some afterwards. His life isn’t better, not at all. In contrast, my life and our grown children’s lives are way better since the marriage ended. Living what my attorney called an “own up, show up life” is sooo much better.
Deciding not to reconcile put my kids and me at risk of financial ruin. I rented a place so we could clean out the family house before he came to get the last of his stuff and sell it. I told the college kids that we might have to give that up and put almost everything in storage at some point to live with friends. And they might have to take out educational loans for school, but thankfully, it was a highly-rated state school, and both had completed enough credits that only a few years of that would need to be financed. My ex kicked off the divorce some months after the house sold, and he made it a wild mess. Thankfully, my legal team completely got it and freed me from the jerk.
I recovered financially, and both kids graduated from college and are lovely people and valued employees. We stayed in the rental until I was able to buy a place, and both graduated debt-free. They’re mostly off now doing their own thing, but we have a blast when our schedules allow time together. They have nothing to do with Dad.
Thanks for the response. I love hearing other Chump success stories.
I think it’s okay for chumps to occasionally go beyond cool-bummer-wow to convey their values. It’s okay to say “your dad’s relationship with OW began in an irresponsible and hurtful way. You get to decide whether to spend time with them.”
Yup. Acknowledge the truth, give them power, and drop it. That’s what my therapist recommended.
Naturally, those with custody agreements have to keep that in mind.
Dear SoCal,
Because of my advocacy training for abuse survivors, I tend to suspect that the illusion that an AP has “won” would only be possible because a survivor is suppressing memories of how weird and awful their ex has been all along. And I tend to think the reason survivors suppress memories of awfulness is because all hell would have broken loose if they hadn’t and, on some gut level, they knew it all along but denied it to keep the peace.
Of course survivors’ consciousness that their former partners were terrible people is more clear if the former partner in question was physically violent because our culture is still in the dark ages regarding “victimology” and most people think “real abuse” is only that which involves fists, tire irons and death threats. But things are changing in that regard as researchers and lawmakers are beginning to recognize that “subviolent” forms of coercion and control are actually greater predictors of eventual domestic murder than even histories of violence within relationships. Consequently, the field of forensics is becoming more granular about what constitutes “abuse” and the legal definition of “domestic violence” in most regions has expanded to include patterns of coercive and controlling behavior such as gaslighting, verbal putdowns, financial abuse, etc.
And here’s the thing: as laws change to reflect this growing awareness (Scotland and the UK have criminalized coercive control which is now punishable by prison time; several US states will grant orders of protection and, in at least a few states, coercive control can impact custody), survivors are more often “allowing” themselves to recognize that their partners/former partners were committing categorical abuse. The concept and related terminology are even bleeding into the wider culture at this point (check out the fan covers of this song and concert footage with entire stadiums of people singing in unison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvU4xWsN7-A It makes sense that the singer/song writer is from Scotland where coercive control can get up to fourteen years in prison).
The reason I think it sometimes takes literal statutes that define certain behaviors as “real abuse” as well as seeing evidence that the general culture is catching up before victims might “allow” themselves to recognize certain behaviors as abusive and “allow” themselves to even remember those behaviors is because one of the deepest survival mechanisms humans have is the recognition that, especially when our chips are down and we’ve just been traumatized, we desperately need allies. But if the entire social context will disagree that what happened to us was abuse, this threatens our ability to seek and bond with allies. It risks dangerous isolation. Even thinking something (such as, “That time he road-raged while I was a passenger was terrifying abuse…”) may be risky in that sense because of the danger one might blurt it and then be rejected by social context or accused of catastrophizing or exaggerating. So a lot of survivors, especially in the dangerous period in the wake of abuse, will find themselves denying, minimizing or even erasing memories of former partners’ abusive behaviors simply to avoid thinking/saying things that are socially unacceptable. It’s really just a continuation of Stockholm syndrome except victims are instead captor bonding with the social context for survival.
In other words, when victims remain “stuck” in Stockholm syndrome even after escaping abuse, it’s no surprise because the culture is stuck in the dark ages and survivors perceive no safe social harbor in which to process trauma that does not “fit” cultural conceptions. And subviolent behaviors still don’t always fit those conceptions.
But even if he managed to conceal his awfulness under more “positive” forms of manipulation like “love-bombing” most of the time, it’s pretty clear your ex has been a horrible person all along because no one normal ends a marriage the way he did. No one normal suddenly becomes abusive like that. In any event, to rid yourself of the false sense of defeat– this idea that the AP has “won” something of value and you have “lost”– might take doing something called a “re-traumatizing” exercise where you write down every eerie, spooky, creepy, icky, crappy thing your ex ever did or said going back the beginning of the relationship.
Most people sit down to this task thinking they’ll write a few pages. But then two weeks and fifty typed pages later, they’re still retrieving more and more buried memories. But the actual first step to this would be reading up on coercive control in order to reprogram your brain regarding what is officially viewed as “bonafide abuse” these days. I recommend the works of Dr. Christine Cocchiola, Dr. Emma Katz and the late Dr. Evan Stark who wrote a book on coercive control and is one of the spearheads of the movement to criminalize it.
Also Dr. Ramani’s channel on Youtube gets very “granular” about abuse within the context of narcissism. She’s admired by a lot of professionals for making valid information “accessible” and therefore changing the cultural understanding of what abuse is. Though I believe what is now called “narcissistic abuse” should be labeled “plain old abuse,” I still think Ramini’s take on it is excellent.
Basically the idea is not just to “educate” yourself on the nitty gritty of abuse but to give yourself permission to call a spade a spade by recognizing that other people– even fancy people with alphabet certs after their names– recognize certain things as abusive and controlling. Once you have “permission,” the memories may start to surface. And then it will be clear as a fluorescent-lit tavern sign that you have “lost” nothing and also dodged a time bomb.
Another benefit to the memory exercise is that only in that context will you be able to recognize how incredibly brave you’ve been.
Thank you for the advice!
” I tend to suspect that the illusion that an AP has “won” would only be possible because a survivor is suppressing memories of how weird and awful their ex has been all along. And I tend to think the reason survivors suppress memories of awfulness is because all hell would have broken loose if they hadn’t and, on some gut level, they knew it all along but denied it to keep the peace.”
You are describing me to a t.
A long running thought process for me was “he is scary and mean when I am ON his team, if I left, think of how bad it would be”. So I convinced myself that I was simply accepting the better and the worse just like I signed up for, when in actuality I was in an abusive situation. Full of verbal and emotional abusive, and positively loaded with coercive control. Sometimes I was aware things were bad, and sometimes I think I even convinced myself that what we had was normal.
A very silly example of thinking the AP “won”? His new MO is taking women on vacations. He likes to throw money around. We went on exactly 2 vacations in 20 years. And now, post divorce, I can’t afford the types of vacations he takes these women on. And for a brief moment I was bothered by this. Why didn’t we do this? Why now is this his thing? But here is a funny fact, I did not enjoy those 2 vacations much because he is awful to travel with. Absolutely awful. So no, I probably shouldn’t be envying anyone he goes on vacations with. I would rather go to the crowded grocery store alone than Jamaica with him.
Urg, spoilerism coupled with hostage taking. When a victim can’t easily escape from the distant location they traveled to or jump off an airplane at 30k feet, those are the perfect times for abusers to abuse, just like when someone’s 8 months pregnant.
I also think we all sense that the social context will pretty much mirror abusers’ denial that their abuse was abusive so there’s really no point in automatically “unrepressing” memories of this abuse even after escape if all it gets us is more rejection at the absolute worst and most dangerous time to be socially isolated.
I learned this the hard way when prosecuting a stalker. I hadn’t been raised to deny or repress my perceptions of male aggression, consequently I was completely unprepared for when bystanders minimized and blameshifted and bailed. And, quite chillingly, the grounds for this blameshifting/victim blaming was all borrowed from classic criticism of battered women even though I was not involved with the perp.
If it wasn’t for a few stalwart allies, I would have ended up completely isolated. Because those allies traveled for work, there was a period over the next year where I was nearly friendless. But that’s ultimately what radicalized me. If I was getting the “second injury of DV” even without being a DV victim, I could imagine how bad it was for actual DV victims. I knew the world had to change and I stepped into the ring.
But the world is bloody hard to change and I think the above experience was a double edged sword. On the one hand, forewarned is forearmed. But, on the other, it gave me an extra chill when I found myself having to escape a FW because now that I really was an “abused woman,” I knew the bystander gloves would really come off. It made me hesitate to leave. I could even watch myself minimizing and repressing memories but couldn’t completely stop it because the process is autonomic and driven by some risk management ganglia at the bases of our skulls.
Anyway, we’ve talked about that before. How the denial/captor-bonding survival mechanism is like an outdated primordial app designed for a time when there was zero possibility of escaping your rapey ape troop. There’s also no way to uninstall it but it can be defused a bit by gathering social support and turning the tables against the abuse of power.
Do I need to tell you that his telling your kid is a way to get to you? Don’t stand for that.
As for feeling like the other woman has won? I get that feeling in fits and spurts myself as well. Here is how I resolve that question.
Ask yourself a basic question-looking at that pattern of behavior-somebody that actively tries to manipulate you through your children when the relationship is dead and buried…is that the kind of person you are interested in hanging on to? Is HE such a prize? No. No, he is not. He is a liar and a cheater and a traitor (and somebody should probably look into his business ethics as well.)
I find myself, this time of year especially, mourning the person I thought that I was with. The part of me that trusted her also trusted her when she told me everything that was wrong with me from D-Day and that it was in fact all my fault as she stated. Really though? No. No it wasn’t. I wasn’t a perfect partner. She put in zero effort and ran rather than own what she did or fix her problems. I deserve better than a traitor and you do, too.
But, and this is important, anybody that would betray you, lie to you, put your physical, mental, spiritual, and financial wellbeing at risk so they can get their jollies? Somebody that would rather run and start over than put the actual work in with what they have? Somebody that can’t for the life of them keep a promise? Not a prize worth hanging on to. It says nothing wrong about you that you loved them or gave them the chances that you wanted and deserve. Your value is not diminished because of that.
If she stole him from you, she stole a charlatan and a fraud of a human being. I know it’s hard-but try to remind yourself that nothing stops him from doing the same thing to her. The difference? She should see it coming.
Have a Mighty Monday!
“I know it’s hard-but try to remind yourself that nothing stops him from doing the same thing to her. “
I used to take it a step further when I was dealing with these feelings. I would tell myself “well, it is very likely that he will do the same thing to her. Or at the least, she will worry he may. BUT even if he doesn’t? Say he is 100% loyal to her until the day one of them dies, so what? That wouldn’t change MY choice. Because the sad fact is, if a chump takes back the FW, they will likely spend the rest of their time together waiting for the next affair/playing marriage police. And if they never do cheat again? You still wasted all that time with someone you couldn’t fully trust, living on edge, worrying. That is a really shitty way to live. And if you take them back and 10 years later you discover a new affair? Now you are devastated that it happened again and so angry at yourself for not leaving the first time. And maybe this time it has worse practical consequences to your life. You may have made choices re: your career, children, retirement plans based on the assumption you would stay married. There is also that pesky truth that CL reminds of us frequently, you can stay after D-Day but that doesn’t guarantee that THEY won’t up and leave unexpectedly.
These FWs don’t change. I know because mine has continued to be awful to me post-divorce AND he has been bad to every relatiobship he’s had since. Affair ended as soon as our marriage did. Then his next serious relationship ended in a restraining order. His latest is half his age.
But if he could magicaly go on to become a great, loyal guy? It’s really none of MY business because he was not great or loyal to me. And I couldn’t take the chance of hoping he would change “someday”.
And the thing is, they’re very likely going to downgrade and pick someone that’s more easily “managed” than you. And that person might actually use them in return.
In other words, they’ve proven themselves to be incapable, and that will carry over.
This is good insight as to what they are telling kids etc about “why mum/other kids/random strangers must never know”. 5 years post sep my ex is still hiding his AP from the kids but everyone else in his family, friendship circle etc must know (he synced his device to my son’s iPad i assume accidentally so I could see all the parties, events they were attending having a grand old time yawn). Anyway since years have now passed i have no idea why he is still hiding her – eg he will duck out of the country for a few weeks with her (again all their holiday snaps ended up on my son’s iPad- in one photo AP took he was groping a lady in Thailand separate issue there but I digress) but not mention to our son, who lives with him half time, what he is doing. It is weird for sure. (Yes I have deleted all images on ipad)
FW narcopath does the same thing and we’re nearly two years out now. I suspect he’s juggling multiple escorts and gold diggers. It’s certainly odd but maybe somewhat “better” than the FW described here who flaunt the OW? As in, more manageable for the kids to not meet a carousel of wh*res?
I am pretty sure mine doesnt have a carousel as, due to his looks and personality, the pickings would be rather slim. I ended up telling my youngest last year dad was in Bali with “a female work colleague” as son was nagging me to go to dad’s to pick up some device in the holidays. I mean it had literally been years at that point and no one had thought to mention dad’s entire other life with this chick (my ex lives on a farm with all the uncles aunties etc living in separate houses and no one had mentioned it). I eventually told son, who is autistic, that lady is dad’s girlfriend, and after a few questions son said “mum do you think you might have a problem with oversharing”. Lol what can you do. Obviously some people’s brains work a bit differently.
This FW described in the post is utilizing the old but unfortunately effective Divide and Conquer playbook which I hope OP will thwart immediately.
Knowing several IRL examples of children exposed to FW manipulations post separation, I see terrible consequences.
One is an increasingly unmanageable spoiled child whose school problems are now threatening the chump’s job and has already torpedoed chump’s new relationship.
Another set of kids are a mix of copying FW self centered and lying behaviors, confused immature young adults, plus emotional and financially incestuous relationship with FW because FW can’t keep a job and their AP didn’t run off with the FW as planned so now extracting from kids.
Last one colluded with FW in the litigation abuse of the chump years after divorce and caused a six-figure financial hole.
Allowing your children to be gaslighted and manipulated by FW is not the high road some think it is (ex MIL to FW narcopath own FW father).
Thank you everyone for your heartfelt advice and sharing your stories. This is really a wonderful group of people who would take time to respond to this story and offer support to a complete stranger. I really appreciate it.
What if someone handed you a beautiful Christmas package and when you opened it, it was full of cow manure, a warm brown mound. That is the gift every AP has sitting on their laps. It seems like a gift – yout wonderful Ex…but you know or will understand in time, what it really was. It was worth letting go of or having it stolen. Let it go, trust it is sour manure and let someone else spackle . Take care of yourself! You lost nothing of value and you were not cherished at all.