She Got to Tuesday and Gained a Life
She arrived at Tuesday and gained a life. Surviving his hoovering and fake remorse wasn’t easy, but this is what she learned.
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Dear Chump Lady,
Last year I sent UBT an email from my ex that was featured here: Cheater Hoovers to Say He’s Lost His Way.
Now that my divorce has been finalised, I wanted to share some reflections with the CN community.
To recap, my 20-year relationship with my ex followed the standard script.
One-sided, no reciprocity, me doing all the heavy lifting and adulting while he coasted along until he found his “soulmate” — out of God knows how many affair partners. Then came the fake remorse, the gaslighting, the wreckonciliation, the pick-me dance, D-day after D-day, and finally the brutal discard right before Christmas 2024.
Three weeks later came the hoovering: “the sadz,” the “sudden revelation,” the “I made a mistake, please give me another chance” trap.
Luckily, by then I had discovered the concept of covert narcissism and Chump Lady, which helped guide me out of the fog I had lived in for most of my life. I went through a true dark-night-of-the-soul process — recognising narcissism in my family, confronting my own codependent traits, and facing the most excruciating truth of all:
The marriage was a mirage.
I was never loved. Instead, I was useful and convenient — until I wasn’t.
I don’t want to glorify suffering, but I have experienced tremendous growth on my way out of that hell. I went no contact; I broke the trauma bond; I had therapies; I learned how to mow the lawn, how to travel solo, how to enjoy being single, how to assess character, how to set boundaries, and how to soothe and validate myself.
I’m currently training to become a yoga teacher, I write a blog, and I facilitate a peer support group for people recovering from infidelity. I filed for divorce as soon as I became eligible.
I gained a life.
P.S.
The divorce was finalised last month. While I was doing my final round of grieving, I received the signed acknowledgement from him — and the person who signed as witness on our divorce paperwork was his affair partner.
The man who was “so sorry” and “would do anything to save our marriage” in the entire 12-month separation period, decided to deliver one last blow after I rejected him.
But here’s the twist: his AP is a junior police officer, not a lawyer or a Justice of the Peace authorised to witness a divorce application here in Australia, as clearly stated in the instructions. So the court ruled it invalid.
Not only do they lack integrity—they don’t have much of a brain, either.
To all the chumps reading this:
There is nothing to look back at.
Your cheater (and their AP) absolutely suck beyond your imagination. Once you truly see that, forgiveness becomes easier — not because they deserve it, but because they simply don’t have the depth of character required to love anyone. It’s like forgiving a blind person for not appreciating Monet.
Warm regards,
Thriver
***
Dear Thriver,
Thanks for the Tuesday testimonial. We always love a success story here and an update on an answered letter.
Hilarious that his F you of having his affair partner sign his divorce petition was rejected by the court. Not a good career look as an officer of the law… breaking the law.
Thanks for providing inspiration for the newbies. How’s your Tuesday going CN?
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Congratulations OP!
Small things leading me towards myTuesday –
Cooking food I liked for the first time in decades because FW did not like x, y, z
Resetting the home electronic tech systems on my own and sometimes with the help friends, no longer at FW mercy.
Career improvement now that I don’t have a petulant man – baby putting me down while subtly sabotaging my work when we were married. I’m free to attend work and professional events yay!
Managing finances by myself now budgeting is possible without the chaotic thief stealing funds or money managers kissing up to FW.
Health improving significantly now that I am not living in a toxic relationship and free to go exercise instead of playing marriage police.
New memories and trips with my kids to replace our nightmare of wreckonciliation year!
I thank the universe daily that I found LACGAL and this site. 🙏
I was amazed by how much money I had once FW and I separated our bank accounts. Even with my income cut in half and my bills increasing, I somehow had more left after paying bills than we’d ever had as a couple. I tried very hard to make budgets for us, but he complained about how I allocated the money (while refusing to participate in the process so we could all be happy with the budget). FW was a spender. He felt he “deserved” nice things. And he was an alcoholic so he spent a LOT of money on booze. He also, I came to realize, did not understand how money worked. Basics like fluctuating bills (electric, etc.), tax withholdings, or the fact that just because there’s money in the bank doesn’t mean it’s available to spend (because it’s already allocated for bills). Explaining it to him was like trying to instruct a child. And he still didn’t get it.
He blamed me for all our financial struggles. But after we split, I paid off all my debts, saved up money, improved my credit score dramatically, and bought a house by myself. He spiraled deeper and deeper into debt (in spite of AP giving him tens of thousands of dollers) and was almost completely broke when he died. I don’t think I was the problem.
I had the strangest Tuesday moment last night…I was going through my saved images from my FB acct and there are hundreds of me in my new life (which is really good) and I ran into one of me and Cheater (when he was alive – which he hasn’t been for over a decade) during our 5 year Wreckonsillyation before he died.
If you had asked me the evening the photo was taken, I would have told you we were doing great (and had healed our marriage) and it would have been a lie. He never fessed up or told the whole truth, he minimized and gaslit me to his last breath. After he died, I found proof that it was all worse and even a document where he wrote “I never loved my wife”. I was a convenient wife appliance.
But back to the photo. I looked straight at it for quite a while and I felt nothing. No pain, not deep regret, no grief, no longing, no nothing. So very Tuesday of me.
Also, long ago, I recognized that any changed to my earlier life would change my kids into not existing or being born totally different and I cant do that. I dont say this because they are Harvard educated neurosurgeons …they are flawed quirky people who often drive me nuts, but they are MY flawed quirky people and I will be their momma bear to my last breath. This helps me not regret huge chunks of my life which I think would be awful.
My Chump journey took a LONG time because I was really stubborn (and smoked hopium) and no one could have talked me out of it but I learned things along the way. VERY sadly, my daughter’s partner has fallen into serious mental illness that he refuses to seek treatment for. She has removed herself from the relationship but they are still working out the final awkward logistical details.
Ive reflected on CLs story of her first spouse/divorce being a person with untreated metal illness and both gained resolve and been thankful that the wedding we had started to plan didnt happen. Daughter and I probably did wait and hope a little too long but my experience here has taught me that it’s really time to help her be out and stay out of that relationship. Im not sure I would be as capable of helping her without this community and our shared stories (especially CLs).
Healing comes. Doing better & knowing better can be really helped by reading about our experiences.
Looking back, I had three giant milestones. I think he was somewhat surprised by these, but they marked the moments I finally entered reality when it came to my ex.
The divorce was a mess, but my attorney largely kept the upper hand and got it done. He retired the day after the judge signed off, and I hit meh. Closeout was messy, too, with my ex’s attorney dying shortly after they finished their part. My ex periodically went pro se and created yet more chaos, but at that point, I could just laugh it off with my younger attorney, who had been mentored by the older attorney.
No, I don’t miss my ex and all his chaos. I gained a life.
Tuesday is amazing! Seven years ago, my husband kicked me out of the house because I was too “controlling” and needed to learn to appreciate him (read: I found out about his side-chicks and demanded he stop seeing other women). I saw it as my chance to escape and fled to Maine. He demanded a divorce, then was voluntarily unemployed for a year, while his family gave him money because of his “trauma from his wife leaving him.” I was working two jobs and trying to support the kids, while he moved to Texas, claiming he was going to have a great life there, and got back together with his high school girlfriend, who was also conveniently divorcing her husband.
Fast forward to now: He lives in a trash-filled mobile home in Texas that is in financial trouble, and he is being sued for non-payment of debts. (I found this out when I googled his name and came up with some law suits recently filed against him.) None of his kids will even talk to him, and his family is tired of bailing him out. I don’t know what is going on with the girlfriend, but his Facebook page says he is “in a relationship” and hers says “it’s complicated”.
And me? I just closed on a beautiful old farmhouse fifteen minutes from the ocean. I have a good job, lots of friends, and I’m very close to all my kids, and my daughter and grandbaby are coming to visit this summer. My ex tried to hoover me last week, and I felt literally nothing about it. It was obvious to me that he had his epiphany only because he is broke and probably on the verge of homelessness and hoping to get more money from me.
But it’s Tuesday. Once I would have given anything for a kind word from him. Now I don’t care what he says–good or bad. I’m enjoying my life.
A few things indicated to me that I had reached Tuesday:
One when FW was still alive – he called me out of the blue on day (the divorce was still ongoing and our son was having some medical issues which may have been why I picked up). Unbeknownst to him, I had already figured out that AP had left him. He started crying about how he was all alone, my family didn’t like him, etc. etc. And I felt…NOTHING. Not satisfaction, not triumph, not sympathy, not anger. Nothing at all. He quickly realized I wasn’t going to offer him the kibbles he wanted from my “bummer” responses, and hung up.
After FW died (by his own hand), I was cleaning out his house (retrieving all the marital property he took without permission, as well as gathering my son’s things) and I came across a bag of letters from AP. I took them, but I didn’t read them for several months. Eventually curiosity got the better of me and I read through them all. I thought they would make me angry, but honestly I laughed my a$$ off. They were the most juvenile, junior-high school sounding nonsense I’d ever read (AP was in her mid 30s, married with two kids). Her naivety was pathetic. Half of them were her gushing over him, and the other half were her begging for his attention/forgiveness or trying to get him out of a depressive funk. He clearly put her through the same roller coaster of emotions that he had put me through.
And I gained a life. Early in our separation when I was so depressed I could barely get out of bed, and so broken down from FW’s abuse that I didn’t know who I was anymore, I was trying very hard to find “me” again, and a reason to go on. I remembered three books I had repeatedly checked out from the library when I was in my late teens. I said to myself “I remember liking THOSE”. It was like a lifeline to my lost self. I went online and bought them (they were all out of print, so I bought used copies) with the little money I didn’t have. One of them was a book on English cottage gardens that had a cottage garden/mini farm plan that I had always loved. Well…fast forward to a few years later and I now live in a charming little cottage. I planted a big garden in the back. I have a berry patch. A mini orchard. A wildflower meadow. Chickens. Ducks. One day I looked around me and realized I had manifested that cottage garden dream I had had since I was a teenager. And it’s a life–quiet, simple, unremarkable, filled with little moments of beauty–that I could never have had with FW. He wanted a fast-paced life in the spotlight, fame and fortune and constant activity (to outrun his demons, I came to realize). He couldn’t be alone (and when he ended up alone, he checked out permanently). I love to be alone. My life is so peaceful, so joyful, so full of happiness. It’s beautiful. I’m not wealthy by a long shot. But I have stability, which I never had with FW (who was terrible with money and always needed the latest and greatest and to keep up with everyone else). I have true friends for the first time in my life, people who seem to really enjoy my company, who are honest and kind and real (FW isolated me very badly, and fed me constant lies like “nobody likes you” for so long I started to believe it; all our friends were his friends, and given how they accepted AP, I realized quickly that they were never MY friends at all). I have my wonderful kid (who is so much happier with a stable life and no angry, alcoholic father). I have four cats, too (I love cats but FW was “allergic”, thought I think he just disliked cats as most narcissists do so I wasn’t able to have one, let alone four). Sometimes I find myself smiling and even doing a little happy dance for no reason other than I can’t believe where I ended up. If anyone had told me even five years ago how wonderful my life would become, I wouldn’t have believed them. But it’s better than I ever could have dreamed.
Sorry for all the parentheticals. It’s just how my brain works. Haha.
Please don’t apologize for parentheses (I love how they allow my ideas to be expressed most clearly). In college I wrote a (short) paper about parentheses (and how helpful they are).
I love the mental image you drew of your lovely cottage with animals and plants and calm happiness. Ironically, I still live in the house that my Cheater chose 18 years ago, but I have made it mine in so many ways. Like you sometimes I do a happy dance that I have the blessings I have (like a wonderful forest in the rear of my yard) which sometimes leads me to yell “it’s my f’ing forest!!” (I told that story here once and another chump admitted to doing the same hahaha)
I’m glad you wer able to make your house your own. That’s so important.
I had originally wanted to keep our marital home (which I chose, and FW constantly said he hated). I eventually let it go because there were just too many bad memories there since he was extremely abusive (plus I couldn’t get financing to buy him out). I’m so glad in the end that I didn’t get that house. My new house is a similar era and feel, but unlike the marital home, the basement is dry and it has air conditioning, as well as a LOT more land and a better location with better schools, lower taxes, and only 10 minutes from my job (but it feels like I live out in the country).
Best of all, FW died before I bought it. He’s never seen it, never set foot in it, nothing. It’s MINE. And it’s safe. There never was an angry man here. Once in a while I (fleetingly) wish he was still alive to see what my life is like now. He told me I “couldn’t survive without him”. That I would jump into another man’s arms so that I could use him for his money (oh, the irony, as FW was always broke). And here I am, thriving and single with my very own home (the mortgage costs nearly three times what our marital home did – and I can afford it). So yeah, it’s MY f-ing home. And it’s your f-ing forest. And we should totally shout that out loud.
Mine is small but emblematic to me. My ex always told me he didn’t like it when I wore green and didn’t think I looked good in it, it made me look sickly and wasn’t flattering. I’m a blue eyed blonde, so I always liked green and thought it was a nice color on me, but I phased it out of my wardrobe. I figured there was so point in wearing something my husband didn’t like.
After he dumped me like a bag of rancid trash and moved into a college dorm to date a 19 year old, and my head had sufficiently stopped spinning, I bought several pieces in green and wore them regularly. I almost always got compliments. Hmm maybe I didn’t look terrible and sickly in green after all. Now I wear whatever I want when I want.