My Mother Isn’t a Flying Monkey But She Says Hurtful Things
Her mother isn’t a flying monkey exactly, but she keeps indirectly blaming OP for her husband’s paid girlfriend habit.
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Dear Chump Lady,
I was wondering how other people in Chump Nation handle people who aren’t “flying monkeys” or Switzerland friends, who actually care for you and want to support you, but who have a knack for saying the exact wrong thing, leaving you feeling worse for having talked to them?
My mother is 88 years old. I realize she comes from a different generation. And I realize she loves me and is trying, but man.
Examples of things she has said:
When I first told her, her initial reaction was: “I should tell the family. Should I tell the family?Maybe I shouldn’t tell the family.” In other words, she was dying to tell the family. And I had no problem with that.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“No, no, I won’t,” she replied.
Whelp, I find out later she did tell the family (no problem), but then she swore them to secrecy, telling them, “This is so humiliating for Chumplet.”
Uh, no. Shocking, yes. Infuriating, absolutely. But I hadn’t even considered that I should feel humiliated.
Thanks, Mom.
Now, she wonders aloud why my adult children are so upset with their father and his years-long secret life of strippers.
“If they had more going on in their lives, they wouldn’t be thinking about it so much,” she said.
Uh, no, Mom.
As my daughter put it, “It’s a tough nut to swallow to find out that your father is a disgusting creep.”
But thanks for throwing in that criticism of my kids while we are all struggling.
Finally, yesterday, in a vulnerable moment I told her I felt stupid for not having seen what he was doing.
“You didn’t see it because you didn’t want to,” she pronounced.
Again, no. I didn’t see it because it never occurred to me that he would do something so outrageous, so stupid, and so hurtful. It didn’t occur to me because it would never occur to me to do what he did. So, again, thanks, Mom, for insinuating weakness on my part. Just what I needed to hear.
Oh, and of course, she says she always knew there was something wrong with him. Well, why didn’t you say so? And no, you didn’t. I didn’t and I was married to him for 34 years.
Ugh.
I’d like to still talk to my mother and she’s going to ask about the divorce (FW managed to ground it to a halt for months) and how we are all doing, but …
How do you handle it when people, with the best of intentions (at least I hope she has), say hurtful things?
And what advice would you have for people trying to be supportive of a chump, so that they don’t say the wrong things?
Thanks.
Chumplet
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Dear Chumplet,
I wish I could say yours was an uncommon problem, but I’ve answered versions of this letter over the years. Here’s one: My Mother Blames Me for My Divorce. When this “why isn’t my mother my ally?” issue comes up, I distinguish between crappy mothers (yours) and grizzly bear mothers — the moms who would chase anyone who hurt their child with a threaded pipe.
I wish you had the right sort of mother.
A mother whose first instinct is to protect her child and not absolve her abuser.
WHY ARE WE BLAMING THE MOTHERS, TRACY?!
Pipe down, inner feminist. I’m going to explain this mother. We can apportion blame later. (There’s a lot of that going around.)
Your mother is reflecting back to you the world she grew up in.
Hello misogyny my old friend.
- Being cheated on is shameful. Tell no one. Check.
- The problem isn’t what the Bad Man is doing, it’s that you’re questioning it. Check.
- He’s not deceptive. You lack discernment and really, at some level, consented. Check.
The only thing missing here is your baby weight gain drove him to it. (Or as my grandmother once told me when I was 6 months pregnant: “That maternity outfit is not very slimming.”)
The answer to this entire f*cktangle is that your mother is 88. And in year of our Lord 2026 we are STILL trying to undo this messaging. Hell, I have made an ENTIRE CAREER of it.
Let’s take these poisonous messages one by one.
Being cheated on is shameful. Tell no one.
I find out later she did tell the family (no problem), but then she swore them to secrecy, telling them, “This is so humiliating for Chumplet.”
Who is secrecy protecting? You or your husband’s stripper habit? Why should YOU feel ashamed about something HE did? Something YOU KNEW NOTHING ABOUT AND DID NOT CONSENT TO.
How could you ever feel something so totally illogical? Hello misogyny my old friend! It’s not shameful that men cheat. It’s shameful for you, the victim. And if they do cheat, we need to preserve their entitlement by never speaking of it. If no one knows, no one can hold them accountable.
You’re divorcing him. Ergo, people are going to wonder. So, best to resort to some cover up like “We grew apart.”
I’d challenge your mother (or present her this column if you’re brave enough.) “Why would you think I have something to be ashamed about?”
The problem isn’t what the Bad Man is doing, it’s that you’re questioning it.
“If they had more going on in their lives, they wouldn’t be thinking about it so much,” she said.
Okay, so the problem isn’t that their father has a paid girlfriend habit and a double life, the problem is that they’re thinking about it. In fact, the solution to disturbing truths is not to think about them.
Hello misogyny my old friend! Did you know that for the first 40 years of your mother’s life we believed that unwed mothers were congenitally unfit and should have their babies adopted away from them? And if a single woman got pregnant, she should go to a maternity prison home, at the expense of her family (room! board! concealing the shame!) and hand her baby over! And the remedy given to these women was to NOT THINK ABOUT IT. Because sex outside of marriage is shameful, and they were Bad Women who did a Bad Thing and were unfit to be parents. Google the Baby Scoop era. Look up the pioneering work of Ann Fessler who has collected the oral histories of these women. WHO DID NOT FORGET.
Consider for a moment the breathtaking cruelty of separating mothers and newborns. AS A MATTER OF POLICY. Consider that in 2026 we haven’t begun to wrap our minds around that misogyny before we undid Roe v. Wade. And that we NORMALIZED this.
So, sure, the problem isn’t a man’s sexual entitlement (to impregnate without consequence, to have a double life with strippers), the problem is thinking about it. Which could lead to judgment and accountability. (I could segue here to say, now we get to have our babies, but good luck enforcing child support!)
Ask your mother if that’s the world she wants to live in.
He’s not deceptive. You lack discernment and really, at some level, consented
“You didn’t see it because you didn’t want to,” she pronounced.
Oh, so you green-lit his stripper habit, huh?
This is such a common blameshift. Surely You Must’ve Known. But your mother goes one further — she knew! You didn’t want to know, couldn’t see it, but your mother, who is immune to terrifying vulnerability, she knew.
So if she knew, why didn’t she chase him with a threaded pipe? That’s what I want to know. Why didn’t she string his guts for garters? Why isn’t he at the bottom of a well?
Because she decided not to think about it? Because she believes that men are entitled to behave that way, and you’d best not step out of line or NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE YOU AGAIN AND YOU’LL DIE ALONE. (Same grandmother as above said that to me when I got divorced the first time.)
Hello misogyny my old friend! Your mother is 88. In her world, women could not attain higher eduction or have careers. She was nearly 40 by the time women could have credit cards. Keeping a man was a matter of economic life or death. So you better not get fat. You better win that pick me dance.
Zoom out. Is this a moral failing of your mother to not be supportive? YES. But it’s also a systemic failure. She didn’t invent these messages. We’re all pickled in them.
The good news is you aren’t, and your kids aren’t. Well done. Going forward: Don’t go to your mother with your vulnerability.
As for how to be supportive? Show up with a casserole. Making tangible gestures of support matters more than uttering banalities. It’s more about what you don’t say.
- Don’t blameshift.
- Don’t get a contact high off another person’s grief. “I’m so glad Brian would never cheat on me.” (Something actually said to me.)
- Don’t Monday morning quarterback about how you’d handle it differently and better.
Essentially, if you can’t lead with empathy, STFU.
When I was 29 years old, and my husband asked me if he could date (and remain married, presumably), I told him no and threw him out. The week after at a family gathering, my mother-in-law pulled me aside and said “you don’t know what I’ve had to put up with through the years.” Turns out father-in-law,, a judge, “befriended” young man in prison, and then connected with them physically when they got out. She discovered it by finding a letter she wasn’t meant to see. She told me “if I can put up with that, you can put up with this.” I told her I was sorry she didn’t have more options when she was young, but I did. I had just passed the bar a few years ago and had a job. I divorced him.
Ironically, his brother’s wife told my daughter (who remained in touch with the family) how grateful she was to me because I had “blown that family open and made her life so much easier.” And yes, mother-in-law did go onto divorced father-in-law after that and was very happy.
Very grateful that we as women have options women in generations before us didn’t: job rights, the ability to earn credit, and the ability to own property in our own names. Let’s think about what we can do to make the next generation of women and girls even more powerful.
OMG my husband of 37 years asked for the same and thought it was the perfect solution for all of us. I said NO and my father in law asked me why I felt my then husband shouldn’t have a date if I could not come to an event or he was out of town. Huh ? I said No over and over again and up to the day this was final EH kept telling me the divorce was “silly”and shortsighted.I was breaking up our family, not him. Ba Bye to him and my in-laws.
Yes, my FW wanted to stay married to me and keep the strippers. His father called it “a mistake.” Years of multiple lies per day? FW even tried to say how scary it was for him to keep all those secrets. Yeah … nope.
Chumplet,
I think that rule that I’d apply in your shoes is that people don’t get a free pass to act like d*cks towards you just because they happen to be family. If your mother cannot think before she speaks (so that she can be sure that she speaks with empathy) then she needs to go on the “Naughty Step” for a bit.
LFTT
Sometimes it’s best to put someone on an information diet.
I don’t talk with ANYONE who says hurtful things.
I learned to LIMIT talking about what’s going on to a VERY SMALL handful of people who are helpful and understand infidelity as we do here. There needs to be more than one person so no one person gets burned out. I realized that, for a very long time, being around me was like sitting too close to a giant bonfire. 😪
I am also very lucky to have a long time excellent therapist who was ringside on a regular frequent basis during much of the so-called marriage. (He was lying to her too). Find one if you don’t have one.
I’m sorry to hear it’s been painful talking to your mother. It would be wonderful to have a mom who was one of the safe and trustworthy people you could talk to. 😪
I did not have a safe and trustworthy mom either, but I have worked very hard to make sure my daughter can talk to me, and she does. ♥️
Yes, I am in the bonfire stage.
Chumplet, I think you were on to something when you wrote that your mother was dying to tell your family about this.
Her desire to tell them, and the fact that she told them not to tell you that they knew, suggests to me that she wanted to be central to a story.
At 88, there’s probably not much that’s new in her life, other than health problems, which people tire of hearing. Latching on to your situation, and claiming it’s a secret, gives her something to talk about and a reason for her to get all the sympathy and attention. She may be hoping that the calls, empathy and support your family might have given to you and your kids is going to her instead. She gets to keep sharing your news about the ongoing divorce struggles while keeping their attention focused on her, and possibly her pain over what’s happening. This may not be on an conscious level.
You can reach out to family directly and tell them your mom asked you if you were OK with her telling the family and you agreed, and that you have no idea why she said you wanted it kept secret. Let them know they can get accurate updates from you, and that you and your daughters would welcome their support.
I think you are onto something. I don’t think it was to protect me from other family members’ criticism. They have all been supportive. It could well be to remain central at a subconscious level.
Wise counsel. Mom has some narc tendencies for sure
Also, on another level, your mom may be thinking that she is protecting you from getting any criticism from family.
“Hello misogyny my old friend! Your mother is 88. In her world, women could not attain higher eduction or have careers. She was nearly 40 by the time women could have credit cards. Keeping a man was a matter of economic life or death. So you better not get fat. You better win that pick me dance.”
This. I wish my mother was alive so I could ask her forgiveness. I was so hard on her. She had so few choices. But how painful to hear all this blame shifting and shaming. What I love about this letter writer is she isn’t internalizing any of it! And her kids know what’s what! I internalized so much blame and my sons- I mean, IDK. We just don’t talk about him. Anyway, let’s all keep fighting. It’s not over. I love my kids more than anything, but the marriage rate keeps dropping and the child free women numbers keep growing. Because the world hates women, mothers in particular.
I was also angry with my mother for a long time for not leaving my father and getting us away from him. She also had limited options, and I finally came to understand that. And she finally did leave him after she finished her master’s degree and worked for a few years.
But I sure wish she’d been able to do it sooner when my father first started drinking heavily.
My mother is a covert narcissist and I figured out there is something wrong with her when I was 17. I remember telling her when I filed for divorce and what happened, I was fully aware she was going to gossip every chance she had. I just didn’t care. I learned to shrug and ignore. She is 76 and yes, she was raised in the era of misogyny and victim blaming, but she also gets a high off the misery of others. Everyone has somehow caused their own pain except her. She is perpetually the victim of life.
I learned that I have to minimize talking to her in general but if she was like OP’s mother and generally OK, I would just gray rock what I tell her about the divorce. If she asked, I would just say it’s ongoing and there isn’t much to say. You can’t let her get a chance to say something hurtful. Give her the same “cool, bummer, wow” kind of response to any divorce or FW related comments.
I have been divorced well over a month and my mother has no idea. I am not sure when I will tell her. When I am obligated to call her, I do a speaker phone call with my son and we jointly say Merry Christmas or whatever. It keeps me from have a direct conversation with only the two of us where she will feel comfortable to pry.
Congrats on the divorce! 🎂
I’m in the same boat as Chumplet and have learned to not talk to my mother at all about anything related to my ex. No matter how many times I told her she was hurtful, wrong, or outright offensive she refused to change and kept blaming me. Been divorced since 2023 from my cheating ex and am now a single mom, yet my mother talks about me to her neighbors as if I’m still married to my ex. Mom is 75 and keeps saying how awkward “my situation” is for her.
That’s really unhealthy.
My ex’s family did that. They took it so personally and said that a divorce was going to “stain” them. One of the SILs confessed that she lied to her relatives about my husband and me. She said we were doing great and that he had retired. The reality was that we were living in different states and rarely communicated. In my opinion, divorce was inevitable, so the rosy picture of marital bliss she painted was just pure lies for her own purposes.
Glad I’m not the only one living through this! My mom also lies to people who know I’m divorced about how everything is going and why I divorced the ex. Instead of telling them “he cheated and she left” she does this long song and dance about my ex’s “poor mental health” and making me out to be some kind of Martyr single parent. Won’t just tell people the truth no matter how many times she’s told to be honest. She also gets upset at me for not praising her for how she handled the “hard conversation.” I know it’s all for her own ego as she feels judged by others about my divorce. It just sucks.
Yes, it’s just a toxic system too. You can’t begin to change it in the vast majority of cases.
No matter how much I discussed reality with my ex’s family, they wanted me to be at fault. Yes, me the outsider. To some extent, they all believed the lie he told them that he was mentally unstable and that he “had” to flee. And I found that everything I said to them was passed around among the rest, including my husband.
When I was lightly considering reconcilation, the thought of ever dealing with any of them turned my blood cold. Refusing reconcilation was 95% on my ex, but his family was a factor. I knew they’d never come around to a more balanced side of things, and I’d be perpetually scrutinized and blamed.
Nope, not ever.
Did you try going NC with her, letting her know that if she continued to say such things you would not have a relationship with her? It worked on my mom. It did take her awhile to accept that I wasn’t going to change my mind, but she finally did and gave in. You have to be firm and final about it. Do not give an inch of ground to anyone who treats you that way. The fact that she’s your mother does not give her the right to hurt you.
I am already low contact. She does not know that I grey rock most of the details of my life with her due to many issues I’ve had with her in the past. I do not engage when she starts conversations -asking me to reassure her and make her feel better- about how “awkward” she feels talking to others and “not knowing what to say” when they ask how me and the ex are doing. No contact is unfortunately not workable for me at the moment.
I’m 77 and I’m proud of you. Wish I’d had your good sense.
Thank you Scarysherry! You’ve no idea how much I needed to hear that today.
Wow. ((Celene))
IME that generation either bowed down to misogyny and became a Handmaiden or might actually be pissed off all this time about their lot in life as young women and learn a thing or two even in their 80’s.
Could be worth a try to explain to mom infidelity is abuse and point to Tracy’s blog.
Sadly, it is possible that Chumplet’s mom may not be willing to listen. However, even then, maybe she knows other women from her mom’s age bracket (relatives, acquaintances etc.) who may be more open to this message. When your own mom fails you, getting validation from other older women can feel very empowering, in my experience (possibly even for both parties).
My mother is 85 and this column could have been about her. I have come to rely on statements like, “What an extraordinary thing to say.” I never ask a question like, “Why would you say that?” because it just allows her to say another thing I won’t like, probably about how I am so sensitive.
“What an extraordinary thing to say,” is a brilliant response. You’re simply stating that what they said was surprising, unusual or unexpected. The implication is that it was outrageous, and inappropriate is unsaid. Some recipients will get it, and be chastised, but I imagine others are stopped in their tracks, trying to figure out if it was praise or criticism.
I’m going to use this. You mentioned you rely on statements like this. Can you suggest others, or similar gems you use in other situations?
Thank you!
I keep it simple. It’s been hard enough to learn to take a breath and not react with hurt or anger. The adjective might change (bizarre, awkward, weird), but it’s always a statement. It’s meant to shut any further conversation down, so I use it sparingly and not just with mothers!
Thanks very much for this – I’m going to give it a go. It might be simple enough for me to remember, when I am het up and pulled in by someone. I’ve really struggled to find something with which to calmly state disagreement without inviting argument, at which I suck.
It’s interesting. My mom is 89, and she never said any of that crap. The only reason she wasn’t out there with the threaded pipe is because Dad was suggesting violence was the proper response and we didn’t want him getting thrown in jail.
On the other hand I have aunts her same age who would have said the exact same stuff. Women who are in their 80s now, have seen tremendous change through the years. I forget sometimes what she has experienced.
Chumplet, I’m sorry you have a crappy mom. But it helps to remember that she is a product of her times. Also, I suspect that this is not the first time she has defaulted to “The man is always right.” My mom does it lot, too. At least her Mama Bear prevented her from feeling empathy toward the jerk I divorced.
I have (had?) a friend who does this. What I started doing was simply defending myself instead of letting the remarks go by. This was more for my sake than hers. I wasn’t trying to change her mind, but it helped me to counteract her messaging right out loud.
Her: “You knew on some level.”
Me: “No, I did not. I did not have my antenna up at all times, hunting out signs of betrayal. The whole point of trust is to be able to relax.”
I dunno. It seems to shut her up, and she doesn’t persist. I think it helps her to hear it, because all of her comments arise from her own deep self-condemnation and self-blame.
I’m from the “give Mom a little grace” school of thought, and tell her when she hurts you, as calmly as you can. Your Mom is a person whose “baby” has been hurt, which activates every protective instinct she has in a primal way and yet she can do nothing to change the situation. In short, a little madness is predictable. I believe she is trying to help you in the best way she knows, and it is up to you to tell her, kindly, when she misses the mark.
If the hurtful behavior persists over time, then you have a different issue.
Yes, I agree. My mom is trying and sometimes does do the right and even generous thing. She offered for me to live with her at least temporarily. (I’d rather run full speed into a brick wall.) No one’s perfect and she has her share of issues. Someone mentioned not wanting to face terrifying uncertainty, and that would be my mom. She can’t be wrong and she relishes being able to say “I knew it” or “I told you so.” I think it quells her anxieties and fears at least temporarily.
You’re generous and clear-eyed about your Mum. I’m (middle 50s) envious of your maturity 🙂
I have had to limit contact with and basically be grey rock with my 86 year old mom for my whole adult life.
TWICE after my divorce when talking about her anger towards my ex and how she couldn’t understand how he could have a double life like that, she tearily exclaimed “What did you DO to that man (to make him cheat)?!”
Oooh boy did I have a desperate need to talk to my golden big sis right afterwards so she could talk me down and remind me that it’s all our crappy, narcissistic mom.
Today I am understanding that it’s also the system she was raised in, so thank you Tracy!
Oh my. Where to start. First, with the event I suppose. At a company party, after every had many drinks, I turned around while dancing with a friend to spy my FW across the room, both hands gripping the rump of his partner who was also gripping his bottom. They were stroking and rubbing and hunched over (I am guessing around FW’s erection) completely oblivious to the fact that they stood in the middle of the room with everyone looking on. This was in the 70s. No twerking back then! I ended my dance, took FW by the sleeve, and made an embarrassed exit. At home, I confronted him and he said “I was afraid you saw that!” Not “I’m so sorry, I’ve humiliated you in front of everyone you know”. I was 26 years old. The following Monday, sly exchanges with co-workers left me absolutely crushed and I appealed to my mother for advice. That was my second mistake (my first mistake was to bring FW home with me. I should have left him at the party). My mother herself, unknown to me, had been a victim of infidelity by my career military father. She said, “Poor FW probably hasn’t had a drink in all the time you’ve been married. Just ignore the comments at work or else tell them you think schmoopie dances beautifully. Hold your head up high and walk away.” I tried, but I couldn’t bear the constant comments and after a week or so, I put him out of the house. Years later, after a stupid stupid reconciliation, I came down with an STD so terrible that I needed surgery immediately. Lying in my hospital bed, I remembered my own mother requiring the same care after my father spent a year in Vietnam. First rule of asking for help from family: don’t ask anyone who has reconciled with the shit sandwich. My mother told me what worked for her. Your mother has probably done the exact same thing. Most women of their generation have eaten that sandwich. I should have gone to my aunt, who put a boot in the ass of her cheater and raised her sons alone. Seek advice from winners and never, ever confide in losers. They want you to make the same mistakes in order for their personal affirmations. Sorry this happened to you, too. And frankly, the fewer the people you bring into the discussion, the less crap you have to hear.
(hugs) I felt that in my soul. Been there, done that, bought the shirt. I’ve lived it. See below-I’ll be Jeff about it-you get the professional precis and then my personal go-around (or “making it about me”).
First of all, and I am saying this as a mental health professional-if you are feeling unsafe or uncomfortable talking to or sharing with you mother, don’t do it. Nothing says you have to other than you. As our fearless leader pointed out-there seems to be a very particular flavor of Kool-Aid she wants you to drink on this. Maybe she served it to you when you were a kid, but just because she pours for you now does not mean that you have to drink.
Seriously, let’s unpack this.
You are clearly hurting. You are going to her for support. That is instinct, that is how we are socialized. Those were, strictly speaking, the first interactions you have had as a human. You were hurt. You were lied to. You were betrayed. It is completely reasonable that a person in your position would be feeling vulnerable and in need of support. Being cheated on is not a “stubbed your toe” emotionally sort of thing. Because it’s abuse.
Her response has been to completely invalidate your lived experience here. The tenderness you need right now has been replaced with “well yeah dummy, that’s what happens” in a situation where that is completely uncalled for. She should know better and do better.
What’s worse, outside looking in, is that clearly she saw it and failed to intervene in any meaningful way. It’s not that you tacitly permitted it; she did.
Family is supposed to prevent that sort of thing. And I am sorry that she failed you like that. All because your disquiet threatens her homeostasis.
At a minimum, this is not a safe topic with her. She cannot handle that responsibly. There will be no healing with her. No amount of your tears or visible anguish is going to trigger a transformation in her. Go elsewhere. And I am sorry for that. At a maximum? You may wish to re-evaluate your relationship with her.
The thing about Switzerland Friends/Flying Monkeys…they’re not too diametrically opposed to the Traitor mentality themselves in that regard. My D-Day had me asking very fundamental questions about the people that I thought were my friends. And I count fewer friends as a result. Whatever your personal feelings on a person…should you ever be OK with them being abused?
If your mother couldn’t “drop a dime” your Traitor when she figured something was up…what else has she been hiding in her back pocket?
I never had a good relationship with my mother. As I have rhapsodized on before, I watched her cheat on my father multiple times when I was growing up. She was never particularly safe to be vulnerable with and I learned to hide what I was carrying lest it get weaponized. She apparently harbored strong resentment for my now-Traitor but never let me know.
Then when I was actually betrayed…there’s a lot of evidence that they had more contact than I had them. Birds of a feather, I suppose. I would not at all put it past my mother to have supported or even had foreknowledge of what was going to happen (as when I broke it to her she was not at all surprised and offered zero emotional support or even the faux shock others gave). She was never going to be safe to talk to about that kind of thing…and her behaviors since then have validated my stance.
I recently found out second hand that she finally blocked my ex on social media-more than two years later. She never brought any of it up to me directly, but I heard about it indirectly (and yes, annoyingly, got updates on my traitor that I never needed nor wanted-no contact, much like the future, rules.) Apparently she just liked the schadenfreude of watching that idiot fail at life(which she would have had plenty of had she paid attention during the actual relationship, but I digress.)
It took her two years to do the right thing. I am no longer in a position emotionally where I am giving partial credit to people that should and do know better. I learned that I have to keep myself safe because no help is coming because of her. I love her, that’s my mother, I only get one…but I deserve better to live in fear of having the worst moments of my life thrown in my face because I get vulnerable and weak sometimes.
And then she wonders why I never pick up when she calls.
Stay Mighty!
“No amount of your tears or visible anguish is going to trigger a transformation in her. Go elsewhere. And I am sorry for that. At a maximum? You may wish to re-evaluate your relationship with her.”
Exactly. All chumps need to stop looking for support from people who have shown us they are not on our side, whether they are parents, siblings, or friends. You can’t talk them into it. So I say don’t defend yourself, don’t explain the reality that they don’t want to face, just back away from them and let them know that if they want you in their lives, they have to be loyal, kind and keep their opinions about your experience to themselves.
Point One:
As Madame Pelicot says, “Shame must change sides.”
Point Two:
In that shameful past we discounted the humanity of women and the bond between mothers and their babies by shaming them as “unwed mothers,” shunting unmarried pregnant girls and women off to secret homes, and taking their babies away from them, often directly after birth.
In the present we discount the humanity of women and the bond between mothers and their babies by urging them to believe they can rent out their wombs with no physical, emotional, or psychological consequence, call them “surrogates” (we don’t even say “surrogate mother” anymore) or “gestational carriers,” and deny them access to the children they birth as per “the contract.”
Sometimes what these kinds of well-intentioned people need is a clear set of instructions on how to HELP (without getting into the weeds of what “not” to do). In other words, Mom asks a question about your situation, and before you respond tell her “What I really need here is support and empathy going forward, because I can’t change the past but the future is still a work-in-progress. So I really need to avoid negative thoughts, even if those thoughts have a grain of truth to them.” That way, Mom understands what she needs to do to HELP, versus the things she’s used to saying that only HURT.
The mother might benefit from direct feedback about her hurtful comments. More important is the establishment of boundaries regarding contact with or about FW. After 34 years, she is probably at a loss.
I have experience with this. I had to go NC with my mother to get her to stop blaming me and urging me to forgive FW. My daughter had to stop visiting her. Every time she did she would be manipulated with; “Your dad really is a good guy you know. He just made a mistake.” So after being NC for awhile, my mom gave in and stopped doing it to our faces, but apparently continued to say that kind of crap to other family members behind our backs. I suspected she would, but was willing to overlook it given her advanced age. I wanted to be able to have a relationship with her in the time she had left.
So Chumplet, my advice would be to let your mom know that if she doesn’t stop talking that way you won’t be seeing or talking to her. It won’t change her mind but it would give you some relief from the bullsh*t. If you stick to your guns she’ll have to give in, assuming she wants a relationship with you. However, don’t expect your relationship with her to ever be the same. You can’t unsee the reality that she was disloyal to you at a time when you badly needed her support. It sucks. I never felt the same way about my mom after that, but I did get some peaceful time with her before she passed. She died years ago and it still hurts to this day that she betrayed me like that, but I accept that pain as part and parcel of the mindf*ck of infidelity. It affects your life in ways you could have never anticipated. Good luck to you, Chumplet. I hope your mom at least learns to tone her judgy comments down.
My mom is some type of narcissist but moderately so compared to FW narcopath so have plenty of experience with low contact strategy.
However, old dogs can learn new tricks. After the initial lots of men cheat BS (my father wasn’t a cheater she was regurgitating the misogyny of her time?), I never backed down on placing the blame on FW narcopath.
When we talk on occasion I speak in plain English about narcissistic personality disorder and pathological lying. We both wish he’d drop dead actually. She’s never blamed me again other than wishing I hadn’t married him but I can’t argue with that LOL.
People take their cues from you. If you hold your head high, refute the blameshifting, highlight the abusive nature of infidelity including $$$ theft, IMHO I find people respond better and more supportively almost subconsciously. It’s hard to blame a Chump who’s a successful professional, looking great while living a fun peaceful post-divorce life. Is it fair to chumps? No but it’s what I’ve observed of human nature.
I’m one of those Chumps who did very well in the long run. I bought a house again, enjoy my work (semi-retired), and have a very active schedule of friends and volunteering. My adult kids actually like me and have chosen not to be in contact with their dad.
And STILL there are certain old friends who try to knock me down, years later. Needless to say, I keep them on the outskirts, if not totally out of my life.
I don’t think that way, but I’m very much a “you do you” type of person.
It’s harder when it’s a close relative. You could certainly set a hard boundary where your situation is not a topic of conversation, but I get that your mother might not respect that. It can be rough for older people whose discernment is limited and who weren’t raised in a situation where certain personal topics were off-limits.
My side of the family was either supportive or neglectful of me during the crises, but I also have a small family. My ex’s family could not hold back from saying hurtful things, and I ultimately chose to remove them all from my life. The back-and-forth gossip and speculation were out of control, and I didn’t want to untangle it.
I have a person now in my life who is a very close friend, but her view of marriage/divorce doesn’t align with mine. And we’ve agreed to disagree. She respects me for that, and we’re fine otherwise.
Yes, it’s a lot, but don’t let people get to you. I’ve been known to cut off conversations with, “I’m not really wanting to discuss this right now. Hey, how are your grandchildren?” In some cases, I have bowed out of conversations entirely, even leaving the building. I did that several times at my old church, where people were tormenting me even years after my divorce and wouldn’t let it go. To me, it was fine to say, “I have someplace to be, have a good afternoon.” I’d get my purse and head home. Now I go to a different church where people don’t do that.
I have to second CL’s verdict that Chumplet’s mom isn’t exactly the best sort of mother. She may have her better qualities but it’s hardly a new concept (Book of Job anyone?) that victim blaming isn’t a “nice” trait.
I think it’s a mistake to assume that victim-blaming stems simply from “innocence” and “inexperience” and a mistake to assume that oldsters or people from certain demographics or cultures absorbed bigoted views through some passive, innocent process because those were simply the values and beliefs they were exposed to in formative years.
Instead of any of this being an “innocent” process, I’ve always found that the people who stubbornly subscribe to old timey or “old world” prejudices were invariably “inculcated” into bullying and policing others from a young age to some degree, a bit like how mafia soldiers are compelled to make “hits” as part of initiation in order to guarantee their loyalty and silence. But, just like mafia soldiers, part of what compels people to do unconscionable things is the raw fear of what they would see happening to nonconformists– the “heads on pikes” principle.
That’s another thing I think it’s a mistake to buy into– belief that it was some kind of passive process by which older individuals “absorbed” prejudiced views in the past. Instead I think these unfair views are first ground in through terror and trauma.
In other words, the “bad old days” weren’t bad merely because people held retrograde, bigoted views. The bad old days were bad because those views could be violently enforced, mostly without consequences to the enforcers.
I believe this partly explains why some family elders can appear to love us yet can’t seem to stop saying hurtful, blaming things about the worst things that ever happened to us. If you think about it, they couldn’t have gotten to ripe old ages by being totally blind to social cues so they know what they’re saying is hurtful but they do it anyway. That wasn’t any more acceptable in days of yore than it is today but some still feel knee-jerkedly compelled to do this. I call it the “Manchurian candidate” effect where some were basically conditioned since birth to reflexively side with or at least shield bullies and blame (hurt, punish, bitch-slap) victims as the only way to stay safe in their f*cked up communities or families of origin.
Understanding this isn’t just about untangling skeins as some idle psychobabble exercise. The “hurt people hurt people” view isn’t even necessarily about inspiring forgiveness or amnesty but about formulating effective strategies to defend ourselves. Whether done with love or used like a hatchet, getting to the truth of why people do the sh*tty things they do is the first step towards blocking or stopping the negative behavior or, at the very least, teaching the young to consider the source instead of succumbing to the “vampire bite” and reenacting the behavior as adults.
The idea that people who unfairly shame/blame were always once victims was something I first learned from my streetwise, combat veteran dad (whose single teenage mother was forced to dump him in an orphanage at birth). Though my dad wasn’t telling me this to urge “forgiveness” but to “consider the source” as a defense tactic.
Basically, if you want to understand the mysteries of human f*ckedupedness and how to protect yourself from it, ask someone who experienced “compounded marginalization” (in his case, my dad was a poor Irish bastard born in the eugenic NINA era who was used as front lines cannon fodder in war) and lived to tell of it because the view from rock bottom is always the clearest. So from growing up in gangland, he knew the secret tragic histories of all the most dangerous bullies in the hood which taught him that, when people try to shame you, you can safely assume it’s displacement/projection and shut them down by going after the hidden source of shame that compels them to shame others.
The takeaway my dad shared is that, the closer you get to the jugular in that sense, the more paralyzing the tactic can be. I know this sounds pretty Machiavellian but my dad hated bullies, didn’t believe in “shooting fish in a barrel” (attacking harmless targets) and always reserved hardcore defenses for higher stakes. This neutralizing devise can be done “with love” to shift the focus and redirect another person or it can be used like a taser to vanquish a threat. For instance, when I was being bullied and physically assaulted by a classmate at the age of ten, my dad first raised hell with the school but also gave me a few tips on how to handle things myself. He told me to tell the kid, “Don’t pick on me just because your old man beats you up.”
I parroted my dad’s line and it literally worked like a magic incantation because the bully– who stood about a head taller and outweighed me by twenty pounds– suddenly turned sheet white, backed into the nearest hedge to hide and then never said a word to me again.
I’ve also done it as an adult in situations where bystanders were enabling workplace harassment or abuse and, true to form, whenever I pried into the histories of “flying monkeys” or blamey bystanders, there was always a tragic backstory. Again, whether I dealt with this sympathetically or used it as a weapon depended on the stakes involved but it’s always been effective. If you want to know how to solve a problem, it pays to understand the origins of it.
Your father’s advice is a bit eerie because my worst bully from my school years (she tortured me almost daily for nearly a decade) did pretty much the same to me. She had an almost uncanny ability to guess whatever my own abusive parents had been doing to me. She then ridiculed me for this and used is as grounds for bullying me (and inciting my schoolmates to do the same). So, sadly, this tactic can be used both for good and bad purposes, I guess.
Yeah, unfortunately anything in the world that can be used as justifiable defense can also be weaponized. Maybe the only thing this isn’t quite true of is top notch parody since anti-democratic thugs tend to be pretty ham-fisted in using humor and mockery against opponents while the humanist can often be incredibly deft to the extent that good humor requires actual truth. But everything else can be misused.
If my dad had observed this, I imagine he would have explained the bully was projecting her own home circumstances onto you and was either only accidentally right or that her “uncanny” ability to suss out victims of abuse came from her own first hand experience.
That uncanny ability to divine others’ experiences or mental states is something else that can be “good” in the right hands and “bad” in the wrong hands. Chalk it up to the difference between cognitive empathy and affective empathy and the fact that empathy alone doesn’t make someone humane and ethical. For example, it seems the best torturers require empathy in order to sense the best approaches to break individual victims. I imagine this applies to the best batterers and predators of every stripe which makes sense according to theories that empathy first evolved in our species as a predatory instinct giving our ape ancestors the ability to gauge what prey or opponents would do before they even knew that they’d do it.
By a similar token, according to recent research, it’s a myth that psychopaths lack the capacity for empathy or are unemotional:
There are no psychopaths : Virtually everything you think you know about psychopathy has been thoroughly debunked. Why does this zombie idea live on? https://aeon.co/essays/psychopathy-is-a-zombie-idea-why-does-it-cling-on
The author of the above doesn’t seem to offer any alternative theories for sadistic behavior in the article itself. Maybe he does in his book? Personally I think the difference is that some people learn how to turn empathy on and off and that neutralization theory explains this pretty well. Then, like I was rambling on about before, even if it doesn’t really exist in pure form, “zero empathy” might be aspirational in cases where empathy obstructs sadistic compulsions.
The rest of my little armchair theory is that the sadistic compulsions themselves might in turn be akin to superstitious rites sort of like how “lucky number gestures” or tapping rituals temporarily sooth chronic anxiety in people with OCD.
In other words, the reason this classmate might have scapegoated you was because, in her family dynamics, victim/offender roles could sometimes shift, consequently she learned that any time she wasn’t perpetrating (or actively enabling the central abuser), she was at risk of being victimized herself. So possibly the only thing that assuaged her chronic sense of unease and disregulation was being gratuitously abusive to someone else.
Probably every single component of what she was doing to you was reenactment in some way, including the gratuitousness (need for a harmless target as opposed to formidable opponent). She might simply have been playing the odds and went around trying it on everyone until she got a “ping” that it was causing suffering since causing suffering itself is an essential part of the self-regulating rite.
She loved saying things like: “Amelia, your mom forced you to wear those hideous clothes. Admit it!” Me (sweating): “No, I swear, I want to wear them myself. My mom has nothing to do with it!” My bully then answered (triumphantly): “Everybody look how dumb Amelia is! Let’s attack her!”
Truth told, my bully was absolutely right. My mom kept forcing me to wear weird clothes. However, she also forced me to report absolutely every conversation back to her. If she had found out I had “scapegoated” her (by telling others the truth about those clothes!), she would have gone absolutely berserk. So I had to lie to my bully (and then get bullied for that) in order so save myself from my mother’s (potentially) uncontrollable wrath. Also, I felt really bad because my parents kept telling me I would go to hell just for lying. But at the same time, they forced me to lie to my schoolmates. Therefore I constantly tried to brainwash myself into believing my own lies, so that God wouldn’t see them. I was very scared of hell (and God) at the time.
All of this sounds somewhat ridiculous now, but it was very traumatic and confusing for a young child.
What I never understood was how bullying weaker people would help with any of this, though. I understood that power mattered, but only in the sense that powerful people were able to harm me, and I wanted to avoid that. Harming others wouldn’t have fixed this problem in my view.
Goodness me, I feel for small you – I don’t think that’s ridiculous at all, and I can imagine our family (as it was, when I was small) in a similar mode. Conflation of God (I still cling to a level of belief) and ropey parental scripts has been one of those gifts that keep on giving, for me. Having my own kids helped, and (very oddly) my Dad’s slide into dementia is, for now, helping too. All the best to you.
It’s possible that harming others didn’t seem like a solution to you because you were what I’ve heard called a “bulletproof child” who, despite having almost no positive role models in early life, ends up emulating the very few, brief positive examples they encountered.
My dad was like that even though he had every excuse to end up a battering, alcoholic criminal given the first twenty years of his life. He chalked it up to one German attendant at the orphanage who used to do things to make him laugh, one non-creepy uncle by marriage who was actually kind to children and, weirdly, one patient nun at his Catholic school who thought he had potential. That was it for positive role models and none were in his life long but, for some reason, it affected him deeply.
It might also have helped that victim/perp roles in my dad’s extended family (who eventually fished him out of the orphanage) were more or less fixed and he never learned to throw someone else under the bus to save himself because he never had a chance.
Maybe you were in the same boat and therefore were never conditioned to pass the buck. But given how acute your adult sense of ethics is, I’m guessing you’re mostly “bulletproof.”
FWIW, due to complications related to my birth, I spent weeks in neonatal intensive care, and apparently, the hospital staff moved heaven and earth to save my life. All of this probably added to my trauma. However, as crazy as it sounds, I sometimes wonder if those people were the crucial positive role models I had early on (even if I don’t remember any of them, of course).
Great point. Because people don’t usually remember being born it’s easy to assume newborns aren’t intensely perceiving and processing everything. I completely believe that those first impressions can be powerful and lasting so it’s possible there were a few real heroes on neonatal staff who made a permanent imprint on you.
Thanks for expanding a bit – I wondered about your Dad when you described him so positively upthread. I am friends with 3 or 4 sets of adoptive parents who all struggle with kids like those I think Bowlby described originally as ‘affectionless thieves’. They’re all good people trying very hard, struggling with kids who are messed up in what appears to be very similar ways. It’s good to hear that sometimes someone comes out of it intact. There doesn’t seem to be much turning things around for the less ‘bulletproof’, in my friends’ experience, and really deep-rooted damage seems to take place very, very early in a child’s development.
It’s tragic to see people fatally broken. Even my dad had scars. For instance, he didn’t want to have children until his fifties for fear of what kind of world he’d be bringing kids into (my mother won that debate). He was haunted at times but the way he managed it was reading to understand and also spending his life trying to keep others from enduring the same.
Even if he got out by the skin of his teeth he wouldn’t wish his experiences on anyone else. He scoffed at the view that trauma teaches wisdom. He thought that’s what books were for. He didn’t think he was special, just lucky to have a few good influences at key moments in his life.
“I call it the “Manchurian candidate” effect where some were basically conditioned since birth to reflexively side with or at least shield bullies and blame (hurt, punish, bitch-slap) victims as the only way to stay safe in their f*cked up communities or families of origin.”
Exactly, and even when they are no longer at risk of any punishment, they still continue the behavior. I think people like that can change if they want to, but perhaps not if they are at an advanced age.
I’ve seen some old timers radically change prejudiced views but I think the difference was that these individuals had a smaller trail of bodies in their wakes, i.e., hadn’t really done a lot of harm or any harm to others in the name of those prejudices.
In other words, what seems to basically “cement” people’s biases is the amount of blood on their hands.
My belief that the process of inculcation by which people were first compelled to harm others usually begins with fear is partly based on watching how babies respond to any kind of aggression. Even farm kids who eventually become totally inured to animal slaughter will, as small infants, cry their brains out the first time they see a chicken beheaded. Over time people can go numb to almost any kind of violence or aggression. Part of it is repeat exposure, part may be role modeling and finally inculcation but I think, at root, that built in to every act of aggression is the fear that the same act can be done to any of us.
The coercion is implicit and seems to be necessary to suppress humans’ natural empathy. Unfortunately, this is pretty easy to do in our species and very hard to undo.
So hard to quit coming back to this site. Week after week, sexist tripe from the chump lady… Like mothers don’t abandon their kids, wives don’t run off. The true feelings of chumplady shoot out, like a feminist diatribe.
Calling you out chumplady. Then blocking you on my router.
Women are FW’s just as often. Own it and accept it and fix your language.
Wow. To try out a line I learned here today in the comments, ‘what an extraordinary thing to say!’.
Au revoir, Felicia.
I wish I hadn’t felt humiliated but I did. It took my WW2 era dad to talk some sense into me. He said you have nothing to be humiliated about, he is the one who did wrong, not you. You walk with your head held high. My dad knew I treated him well, and he knew the kind of person I was.
I was fortunate not to really be exposed to any flying monkeys to speak of. There may have been some, but I took myself out of my community, so I never encountered any. His mother who I was close to, said a couple things, but I ignored it and dropped her from my daily life too.
It was fairly easy to isolate myself from them because I worked in a closed office, and I was working full and part time and going to school. I had no energy or interest in anyone pretty much. I did stay in my church, my ex and mother in law left it. The church was supportive.
Narcissistic mothers require NC like other flying monkeys. Mine had hurtful “advice” and I realized I could not trust her either any information. She failed in her primary mission as did yours – protect your children at all costs. Instead be like Olga of Kyiv. Google her. 1000 years ago when women were property and had no power or rights, Olga protected her son, expanded her kingdom till he could assume the throne, she bested all her enemies through ruthless military tactics and brilliant diplomacy. She is called the patron saint of vengeance but that’s what men say when a woman exhibits what they would consider exemplary for a man. What Olga achieved was independence, a viable kingdom, and security – by never marrying and falling under the control of men who would strip her of her kingdom, murder her son, and end her life if she didn’t produce a new heir. All girls should learn from Olga what protecting your children really looks like. She was a medieval bada$$.
Since my 2 XH cheated, I then believed I was placed on this earth to educate EVERYONE on the blueprint of these creeps. I speak out loud my truth, my experience, I say out loud exactly how my then- husband’s cheated and I talk about it to anyone who cares to listen if the subject comes up. Just like this 88 year old momma,many many 2026 woman say the same things to me. I’m not kidding. Since I talk they talk back. How did you not know after being married for 30 years!! You must have seen something. Or they actually tell me they I stayed with their cheater and still have a big house and my “kids are happy’. Or ” we’ve been married ‘_____number of years and Wow nothing like that ever happened to me. So old folks and especially in that 1920 post WW1 era and WW2 kept house and would be put out to soup line without a man. I’d say your mom ,Chumplet has been very mild considering what else she could really say. What I learned is, many people DO NOT WANT THE TRUTH. Spilling Toxic slop will get push back. And I need to RECUSE MYSELF and like Tracy said, shut up about my feelings and what happened with people you know, after talking to them, that they are NOT your therapist and they are useless to you. Several people were living with cheaters or were chumps and staying that way so their response is about themselves. Your mother ls likely afraid for you and just says whatever pops into her noggin. At 88 you can say whatever you want and you my friend need to change the topic and do not engage in hurt or anger or shock. Don’t go to the grocery store looking to buy a car, you will never fund what you are looking for. By divorcing your husband and thriving you SHOW the world you are mighty, that’s all the6 need to know.
Yeah, I think you are right.
I only want to push back on the “she’s old, she can’t help it” narrative. My mother is 82, and while she doesn’t live the life I chose to live, she isn’t a woman without agency or choices. She went to college in the 1960s. She worked outside the home. More importantly for this discussion, she was a tireless activist, originally against the Vietnam war. My earliest memories are being taking to protests. She spent the 1970s working to fight red lining in our community and helped set policies that created a stable, racially integrated community when everywhere around us was resegregating. She worked for women’s choice, she spent decades in the League of Women Voters, and is currently on the board of a organization that manages low income and senior housing. There’s way more in there I am probably forgetting. All this, while raising kids, doing every scrap of housework, cooking, shopping, everything. (This is where we differ.) A woman of 88 who hasn’t taken time to examine the choices available to her as society evolved has made her own choice. I would consider that before I internalized her opinions of me or mine.
Hi everybody. Chumplet here. Thanks for your responses. A lot of insight here. Yes, I think my mom may be subconsciously positioning herself to be the conduit for all information and speculation. Tracy’s “terrifying vulnerability” is also at work. My mom is so anxious about everything.
Just to be clear: She does not side with the FW. She thinks he’s a “glass bowl” of the highest order. And she’s not blaming me exactly, but the anxiety in her is always looking to assign blame when something bad happens to someone, to try to convince herself that it would never happen to her. My mom has never done this, but it’s like the people who, upon hearing that someone was diagnosed with cancer, react with “Oh, it’s because he smokes” or “Oh, it’s because she didn’t go to her annual mammograms,” sometimes right in front of the newly diagnosed person.
She does try. As I mentioned, she did say I could stay with her (not going to, but still) and if I did, I would be about the 5th or 6th bedraggled person or group she’s taken in over the years.
I do like people’s suggestions to let her know what response I am looking for or when her response makes things worse (like when she speculated that everybody he works with probably knew; I have no evidence of this), or to respond back why her thinking isn’t right or helpful (she will adjust somewhat sometimes and it does help my own thinking), but really, unfortunately, she’s just not a good person to think aloud to or be vulnerable with. You know, I knew this, but in the shock of discovery, I forgot. 🙁