She Wants Friendship with Her Ex. He Wants Bootie Calls.
Dear Chump Lady,
He cheated — virtually online first. Connecting with women, saying he was divorced. I found out, he was not computer savvy and left the page open. We shared a computer. This was in 2010. I was devastated and confronted him, he got angry, and we went to couples counseling.
We stayed together and then I found out he cheated online again and again and then it moved to physical. Bound to happen. I wanted him to move out, he refused and said we were not putting the kids through a divorce. I stayed. He moved out of the bedroom and we coexisted in the same house.
Eventually he cooled off and through counseling himself stopped ‘not liking’ me and realized he can’t change who I am. He either accepts me for who I am or leaves. So he stopped hating me and started coming to me for intimacy… and I gave in. I wanted it to work. I forgave him and wanted us to work.
Then I find out in 2015 he is in a ‘friendship’ relationship with the OW. He insisted it was platonic and just a friend who needed support. I told him if it got physical he needed to tell me because then ‘we’ could no longer be physical. I thought I was controlling the situation … chump, chump, chump.
Thinking back now, it may or may not have been physical but either way, he was investing in this OW relationship and not ours. Anyway, in 2021, our two kids are now grown and out of the house. Time for me to get out. We sold our house, I bought a condo and felt free.
He then started reaching out to me, to be intimate. Story about how I am in his safe zone and he still loves me and his life is a mess and all stress. Apparently things with the OW was a friendship zone for whatever reason and he needed what he knew and felt comfortable with — me.
I ate shit and said ok, let’s do this. I need sex as much as anyone else and I seriously am afraid of meeting someone new … too many horror stories, newly divorced, 57-year-old, successful, naive women broke or missing altogether… maybe I watch too much Dateline.
Anyway, I tried to be ok with it. I enjoyed his friendship, his company. We talked with each other like we have never before. I felt like he changed. I know now I went forward with this path because I didn’t want to lose his companionship, his friendship. I told him, this time, if the relationship with the OW gets serious and she wants more, he needs to tell me. Again, I gave him the power. I believe he was open with me, but I realize only to a point.
He told me they are trying to make it work. So I said ok, no more intimacy. Well, we were like a seesaw on that — on and off, stand my ground, feel guilty, cave over and over. Well, I found out recently by accident through our mutual jeweler that he bought her a ring! A commitment, not an engagement ring.
OK, Now I have had enough!!! I told him no more. I am not going to be the other OW. Doing what we are doing makes me feel like I am disrespecting myself. The one thing I wanted most with him was his friendship and the thing we most fought about was sex — it was all he ever wanted from me.
We never did things together and now here I am. She gets what I want and I still am stuck with what I don’t want. I want to be friends, both be in our adult children’s lives, but only as FRIENDS.
He said he needs to distance himself from me — it’s hard for him to be around me as he is still very much attracted to me. I said, ok, he has to do what he has to do, but hopefully we can come to a point where we can be friends and around each other. So then he texts me and says: If this is the path you want then is it ok for us to bring whomever we want to whatever future family functions? I said yes.
I feel like that sucks. He expects me to make nice with the OW! I feel like I am being asked to suck it up and I would do it because I don’t hate him. Why don’t I hate him! Probably because it’s not all his fault. I know you talk about that in your book. But I do feel like it takes two. There are things we were doing to each other and not giving each other what we needed. Yes, he took the cheater’s way out. So his life as it stands is truly his fault.
However, I want us both to be friends for the sake of our kids and grandchildren. I can’t imagine never talking to him, but I realize our relationship will change. I think he wants us to be able to attend functions together so that she is comfortable with him being my friend. I don’t know. Am I prolonging my chump status? Is there a way to be friends with your ex and not be a chump?
Single Sea
***
Dear Single Sea,
So… you fundamentally disagree with my advice, but you want my advice?
It’s stop being a suck-up, ass-kissing collaborator in your own abuse.
How’s that pick me dance working out for you?
Did you win fantastic fuckwit prizes? Can’t answer because you’re still busy doing the masochism tango?
Why on earth do you value this man’s “friendship”? I make concessions for the bargaining stage of grief, but this shit has been going on for YEARS. Why do you want the validation of a man who has been devaluing you for ages? Why do you veto yourself? Why do you keep eating from the shit sandwich buffet expecting the menu options to change?
I wanted him to move out, he refused and said we were not putting the kids through a divorce. I stayed.
Divorce isn’t a consensus. He tried bludgeoning you with the Don’t Hurt The Children cudgel. Which, interestingly, never applies to wandering dicks, just uppity chumps who leave.
You don’t need his buy in. His feelings are irrelevant. He abused you. You set a boundary. Then you caved. Why? Do that work.
People who disregard your boundaries aren’t friendship material.
through counseling himself stopped ‘not liking’ me and realized he can’t change who I am.
So, he learns to blameshift his crappy behavior on to unlikable you. He’s being noble and learning to tolerate you? Wow. What a gem.
So he stopped hating me and started coming to me for intimacy… and I gave in. I wanted it to work. I forgave him and wanted us to work.
That’s the bar? Stop hating me?
Then I find out in 2015 he is in a ‘friendship’ relationship with the OW. He insisted it was platonic and just a friend who needed support.
Support that only he can give. Support that trumps respecting you, or salvaging your marriage, or keeping his children’s intact home that he so cherishes. (snort)
Also “just friends” is the oldest cheater cliche in the book.
I told him if it got physical he needed to tell me because then ‘we’ could no longer be physical. I thought I was controlling the situation
So you asked a lying liar who lies to tell you the truth. And his emotional affair is okay so long as he doesn’t get his dick wet? You will step aside if he does that. But then you don’t.
There’s no situation to control. We don’t control other people. Only ourselves. You can’t make him respect you. You can only pay attention to the obvious fact that he doesn’t respect you. Or love you, because this isn’t how we treat people we love. Goading them into humiliating contests with affair partners.
Anyway, in 2021, our two kids are now grown and out of the house. Time for me to get out. We sold our house, I bought a condo and felt free. He then started reaching out to me, to be intimate.
So what if he reaches out? YOU ARE DIVORCED now. His aching boners are his problem. This is such an insulting offer and yet you are not insulted by it. WHY?
Story about how I am in his safe zone and he still loves me and his life is a mess and all stress. Apparently things with the OW was a friendship zone for whatever reason and he needed what he knew and felt comfortable with — me.
Tell him to fuck a safety cone. On a busy expressway.
I ate shit and said ok, let’s do this. I need sex as much as anyone else
No. You really don’t. Get a vibrator. Go hook up with a rando who hasn’t cheated on you. Take up knitting. Really, do ANYTHING other than reward your cheating ex-husband with your naked pick-me dance.
too many horror stories, newly divorced, 57-year-old, successful, naive women broke or missing altogether…
Funny. Those Dateline horror story usually involve abusive men with double lives. You’re living that horror story while telling yourself some misogynistic lie that being a single woman is WORSE than the daily humiliation of infidelity.
Anyway, I tried to be ok with it. I enjoyed his friendship, his company.
For real? How desperate are you for company? Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
I’d rather sit through an eternity of time share pitches delivered by monotone robots than spend five minutes with that guy. You’re either trauma bonded, or shallow, or have deeply internalized his entitlement as normal. Maybe all three.
I told him, this time, if the relationship with the OW gets serious and she wants more, he needs to tell me. Again, I gave him the power. I believe he was open with me, but I realize only to a point.
Oh yeah, how’d that work? Did he give you daily wandering dick reports? With geolocating?
Well, I found out recently by accident through our mutual jeweler that he bought her a ring!
Gosh, it’s so nice of him to express his friendship that way.
OK, Now I have had enough!!!
Somehow, I don’t think you have.
The one thing I wanted most with him was his friendship and the thing we most fought about was sex — it was all he ever wanted from me.
He just sees you as an orifice and you want more. You want FRIENDSHIP from a man who disrespects and devalues you, constantly.
First off, I don’t think you know what friendship is. And I don’t think you really want a “friend.” Sounds noble. Sounds triumphant. Oh, we’ve overcome our troubles and remain Friends. But what you really want is to win the Pick Me Dance. You’re still competing for the attention of a FW, toking some patriarchal hopium pipe, calling it “friendship.”
She gets what I want and I still am stuck with what I don’t want. I want to be friends, both be in our adult children’s lives, but only as FRIENDS.
You want a friendship ring too? First off, she’s not in the friend zone. She’s his girlfriend and former mistress aka fuck buddy. She’s doing the same stupid pick me dance you are.
He said he needs to distance himself from me — it’s hard for him to be around me as he is still very much attracted to me.
Oh look. He tossed you a kibble. You make his dick hard. Grovel for it.
I said, ok, he has to do what he has to do, but hopefully we can come to a point where we can be friends and around each other.
Oh look. You toss him a kibble of fake friendship. But only if he leaves his girlfriend home. You know, like friends do.
So then he texts me and says: If this is the path you want then is it ok for us to bring whomever we want to whatever future family functions? I said yes.
I feel like that sucks. He expects me to make nice with the OW!
WHY ARE YOU SO INAUTHENTIC?!
You said yes, but you meant NO. Friends don’t have romantic feelings for each other and they don’t get hung up on who the other person is dating. SO YOU DO NOT FEEL FRIENDSHIP. You feel romantic rivalry. OWN IT.
I would do it because I don’t hate him. Why don’t I hate him! Probably because it’s not all his fault. I know you talk about that in your book. But I do feel like it takes two.
I’m not asking you to hate him. (Although he certainly warrants it.) I’m asking you to go no contact, and quit this performative bullshit.
There are things we were doing to each other and not giving each other what we needed. Yes, he took the cheater’s way out. So his life as it stands is truly his fault.
Yeah, that duel responsibility, unmet needs shit doesn’t fly here. We don’t drive people to abuse us with our faults, real or imagined. You might suck, you don’t deserve to be cheated on. I can’t stop you from wanting to be friends with a FW, for the grown children, or as your plus-one at Bingo Night. But I’m seriously wondering why you’re asking me when you don’t agree with my fundamental LACGAL perspective.
I can’t imagine never talking to him
Why, when there are a bazillion other people on the planet to talk to who haven’t shattered your heart?
I mean, fuck him.
Also, I doubt he’s that interesting. (Excuse me, while I ask those robots to explain timeshares.)
I think he wants us to be able to attend functions together so that she is comfortable with him being my friend.
He wants a hypotenuse. And so do you. Enjoy those FW cotillions together.
Am I prolonging my chump status? Is there a way to be friends with your ex and not be a chump?
You’re not a chump. You’re a volunteer. Chumps want the pain to stop. They recognize injustice. You want to keep dancing the patriarchal pick-me polka. (Fabulous turd prizes!) Until you see the futility of the dance and the “prize” — I cannot help you.
He isn’t your friend, he’s never going to be your friend.
He has no respect for you or your children.
Saying that he’s distancing himself because” it’s hard to be around your because he’s attracted to you” sounds better than saying despite your efforts, sorry, you lost the pick me dance. He doesn’t want to be around you because he has a girlfriend.
His disrespect is sending a clear message, he doesn’t care about you.
It’s worse than that: He hates her. Literally hates her.
But still happy to use her body, of course.
This letter was hard to read.
So agree. One of the hardest things about making that break with a cheater is realizing “[s]he doesn’t care about you,” but you have to do it. Surely this person who is supposed to love me actually cares about me, right? Nope!
Dear Single Sea,
Please, I am begging you to read what Chump Lady said… read it 50 times if you need to, until you understand and will follow her advice.
Your letter is exasperating. Because even though you have heard CL’s advice before, you’re REFUSING to follow it. You are refusing to believe any path that leads you to truly break free from that FW. You are deluding yourself that he is a “friend” to OW… and that he can be a “friend” to you. He is nobody’s friend.
All of us at Chump Nation have never met this FW, but we can all see it with great clarity. Here’s facts:
1. FW is a liar and a cheater
2. FW loves sex
3. FW has an OW. He tells you they aren’t intimate. But we know he’s a liar and that he loves sex. And he’s engaged to marry OW. So by that simple math, we know they are having sex. Just ask yourself — why would he be with a woman for “friendship”? You already know he’s a cheater. You know he’s a liar — but you believe him??
4. You are divorced from FW and continue being intimate with him because you want sex. Oh wait, no, initially you do it because that’s what HE wants: free unconditional sex from you. So you agree to let him use you (I’m sorry to say it that way — but that’s really what was happening. I’m so sorry).
5. Now you are indeed the OW in his actual relationship with the former OW. But you just keep deluding yourself. You also use the excuse of Dateline — which is a conundrum because cheaters are often the killers in the Dateline love triangle scenario (probably more than new dating partners).
CL nailed it. If you’re not going to listen to her advice (or CN’s) and keep lying to yourself, then you will never be free. Or happy. Or safe.
I’m going to repeat that: If you keep lying to yourself, then you will NEVER be free. Or happy. Or SAFE.
Have you been sharing all of this with a therapist? Or friends? Because if you are, they are likely very frustrated with you. They are likely feeling sorry for you that you aren’t listening or learning. Maybe some have given up on you.
But it’s not too late. You can stop all of it. Go no contact and focus only on you. Take care of only you. You don’t need anything from the FW. There has been and never will be a “friendship” with him. You can have a healthy relationship with your kids and grandkids without FW — minutes stress or sadness or dealing with his OW.
Let me tell you a quick story and hopefully this will help. A few years after my divorce, I was at work and a new guy joined our team. We were chatting about our lives at lunch and I said I was divorced. He said something like “Don’t worry, you can still get back together.” I was stricken — “ew no. Yuck. I don’t want him back.” He (age 38) said that his own parents divorced when he was a teen, that his parents were always fighting and his dad was cheating and they got divorced. They didn’t speak to each other for years. About 5 years ago, he came back home one day and they were dating again and then remarried. He said “see? It can work out.”
And I thought… there’s no way this was healthy. And there must be a lot missing from this story. (Trigger warning —- Trigger warning) And just 6 months after my coworker told me this… his father committed suicide. There was clearly a lot going on and getting back together was not healthy or good. And it turned out to be Dateline scary — there appeared to be abuse and other terrible things happening when his parents got back together.
Single Sea, your relationship (of any kind ) with FW is not healthy or good for you. He’s a liar and a cheater who only uses you for sex. Please take off your blinders and save yourself. Be completely free of him. He is not your friend.
MichelleShocked, that’s a painful and powerful story. I’ve been reflecting on the ‘getting back together’ scenario. The ex left me for his school ex-girlfriend after he and I had been together for 26 years, 18 married. I knew when I met him that he and this ex had had an emotionally turbulent on-off relationship (yes, red flag). They dated in their last 2 years of school, split when he went to uni. They reunited 4 years or so later, and split again after a couple of years of a long-distance relationship. She got engaged suspiciously quickly after that second split. She emigrated with her husband, I married the ex, years passed. I don’t know how they ‘found’ each other again. When I discovered the affair after he left me, no one who knew them as a couple previously could believe that they had reunited. As one friend said ‘but they rowed all the time!’ In spite of this, society romanticises these rekindled dysfunctional relationships. It’s the stuff of stupid movies that end with the fantasy and never follow through into real life. The friend referred to above and I met up yesterday evening. We never discuss the ex but she is in contact with him – ex and I are godparents to her son. Commenting on something else, she threw in that the ex’s relationship with exgfOW would probably end in ‘murder’ and was clearly anxious. She never says that kind of thing so it made me reflect. That bit of it is not my problem and my ‘no contact’ stands firm. As a child of very volatile parents I am grateful that, despite what I have been through, I am free of the drama and chaos. There seem to be people who are so damaged that they can only live in a relationship if the adrenaline levels are continually high. That comes with the need to keep revisiting past failed relationships. Interesting.
Wow. That story was heavy.
My ex had a suicide attempt days into our first separation, and “of course” I took him back because of all the promises which included medication, therapy, and a behavior contract that he brought home from the hospital. None of it stuck. The therapist strongly urged me to give up, and he went into an unbelievable spiral that resulted in a long-distance separation. And STILL, I was taking hopium. Thankfully, the distance broke the habit.
Gosh, what a nightmare for your coworker and his poor Chump mom. That’s a difficult story, but thank you for sharing. I hope Single Sea hears you.
Like you, Single Sea, I’ve been really into Dateline, something I wasn’t a fan of before I was cheated on. And CL’s right, if you bet on “the cheating spouse did it” every time, you’d come out way ahead.
I truly feel like my sudden and genuine interest in Dateline, Scott Peterson, Chris Watts, etc. was some part of my brain trying to protect me. Why don’t you let your fear protect you? We’ve traced the call, Single Sea. It’s coming from inside the house.
I have a really tiny social circle, yet I knew 2 women who were murdered by the romantic partner. One’s husband beat her to death, made it look like a car accident, was caught and served 12 of a 16 year sentence. Her murder became a Forensic Files show. The other was an AP and was shot by her boyfriend who was not only married but had another AP, and he got life in prison.A book was written about her murder..This awfulness is real. I would strongly encourage Single Sea to get out.
This is horrifying. I’m really sorry this happened to anyone let alone friends.
Just in my neighborhood – and there is never any crime here – last summer a woman shot her boyfriend. He was beating her and she grabbed a gun out of her purse and killed him.
People wanted her out of the neighborhood, but that could’ve been me.
I’ve been watching a lot of 48 Hours on YouTube and it’s ALWAYS the ex husband! I was thinking the same thing, she’d probably be safer with a stranger than her ex.
And I feel the same way, after never watching that type of stuff before, suddenly I watch 48 Hours in binges. I think it’s my way of protecting myself. Reminding me why I left him.
I’ve gotten into 48 Hours recently too! And yeah, I can almost always predict the killer as soon as they make even the tiniest reference to the state of the marriage. Women are far more likely to be harmed or killed by someone they know than by a stranger, especially if there’s an estranged husband or boyfriend in the picture.
At least eight times out of ten the killer turns out to be a cheater, too. I’ve watched enough true crime to track it. Cheating + dead current or former partner = the husband/boyfriend/ex did it.
I’m not sure if I completely follow this story, but it appears to me that FW is proposing/demanding a relationship which is so sordid it cannot be honestly discussed with family or friends. I expect it would evaporate if LW enforced even one healthy boundary.
It is not a “victimless” arrangement. It includes humiliation, gaslighting and risky sex.
No contact – including holidays – until progress has been made in therapy and gaining a real life.
I sure hope this is not real because this is just another level of fucked up. Single Sea, you need some serious therapy because you obviously do not respect yourself. Why are you willing to waste decades engaged in pick me dancing for a FW??????
As far as being single, yes, it isn’t always easy but it is peaceful and you OWN your life. You are away from abuse and disrespect. I will take being single over being married to a FW any day and twice on Sunday. Sure, there is disease out there and there are men that you will not want to be with. That’s why you need to work on yourself, love yourself, fix that picker and then you MAY be able to meet someone. As for sex, well there are a ton of options out there. See that single guy at the office???? He is already a gazillion times better than your ex!!!!! That guy has not cheated on you yet.
Please get counseling, go no contact with the FW, learn to love yourself and put up some boundaries. Trust me, if you are trying to do this for as image management for both of you in front of the kids, it will not work. They will see through it and lose respect for you. Be authentic be real or you will spend the rest of your life engaged in dancing for a FW.
Unfortunately, this hits kind of close to home. My D-day was 4 months ago, and since then I’ve alternated between being strong and Pickme dancing like Rudolph Valentino. I really admire the hell out of those of you strong enough to just pack their shit and move on. I’m in a better place, and CN and CL have definitely helped, but its so hard. The hopium is definately strong for me concerning her.
OneLastTime,
No contact is for you. No contact. That mean low contact, gray-rock boring if you are still in the same house. It means no sleeping together. It means one of you moving as soon as the lawyer give you the green light and then limiting contact to stuff that involves children, using only email or parental scheduling software. It means not responding to unnecessary texts intended to get a response, e.g., “Have you seen my golf shoes?” or “Let’s have dinner to talk about my feelings….”
You’re dealing with a liar and a cheater. Give yourself 120 days to de-tox and start seeing her more clearly.
I think for many it takes some time. In this case at least the way I see it is this poster kind of wanted CL to massage her opinion to match what she wanted to do.
It took me a good six months for the actual hopium to abate. But when it hit, there was no turning back, the scales had fallen from my eyes. Luckily for me, he stayed hidden away, with his head up the mayors ass to try and save his job, and I was working a full time and part time job, so it lessoned the time I had to think about the ass wipe.
In fact it was about the time I picked up the paper one day and read where he and another police officer had been busted. Both were whore mongers, but my whoremonger chose the office slut (his employee). The other guy was just screwing a female Lt. but I assume they were both busted because it was written up as an “organizational change” and the mayor was caught between a rock and two or three lawsuits. Everyone knew why it happened.
The best advice from CN is still the same, walk away, do not let them use you. Until that happens you can not move on. That addiction has to be broken.
On another note, the other cheater crawled back to his wife when the Lt dumped his ass for greener pastors. A few years ago I saw his FB page, and he looked miserable, his wife didn’t have a page and she didn’t post on his. I can only imagine what that marriage has been like. I still feel sorry for her. I know I was the lucky one. Unless they divorced and just kept it off FB. We are all older so we don’t tend to put personal things on social media.
Wait — greener pastors? For real or a typo? 🤣
Ha, typo and I even looked at that. No actual pastors were hurt in this story.
I had a very hard time leaving as well. It took more than a couple d-days, and I still felt like a jerk doing it. I felt like I was breaking up the family, and he certainly egged on that feeling – he was happy to blame me and paint himself the victim to all of his friends who rallied around him while I had 100% custody and was paying all of his bills and finding him an apartment.
People don’t change, and I don’t recommend waiting until you are driven to your absolute breaking point. It’s a painful road. I am forced to live with all the years where I let myself be treated awfully. That’s on me.
Despite all evidence to the contrary and my gut, I actually asked my attorney during the intake appointment if people ever called it off. My ex had initiated it (I had to agree), but I was just feeling so unsteady right then and felt like I was betraying him by even talking to my retained attorney.
My attorney wisely told me to give it time because sometimes they show what they really think of you during the divorce. Besides, my STBX had chosen a pitbull who was going to try to run me over no matter how I felt.
He was right. I meant nothing to my ex by then, and I quickly got to meh because the divorce was so bad.
I was struck by the LW saying that FW calls her his “safe zone.” It doesn’t seem to occur to her to want her own safe zone!??! That’s the heart of it — do I feel safe with this person?
When exFW and I were in wreckoncilliation Hell, all of the sudden he started talking dirty during sex. He had never done that before. It made me feel disgusting and like I was just one of his prostitutes he could treat like trash. Afterward I asked him why he suddenly did that and he said that his SLAA buddies told him to treat me as his “safe space” to try out his fantasies on. I told him in absolutely no uncertain terms that was abusive and he should have thought about how it would make me feel. He looked shocked. It never occurred to him to consider MY feelings. I left him shortly afterwards for good.
Sex addiction twelve step groups are more or less perversion cults that serve as training grounds for filthy slobberers to learn to let their freak flags fly even more. They teach acceptance of abusive sexuality. People go there to get off on hearing stories from other abusers. Even my scumbag FW found those groups nasty. He told a story of something vile he did and they all laughed.
I wanted to confront all those people who laughed at my pain and punch every one of them in the guts, then lmao at them as they doubled over.
Sorry, I’m feeling a bit stabby today. Today’s letter…yikes! So triggery.
I. CANT. EXHAUSTING. I had to stop reading the letter.
Same. This one really hurt to read. How little Single Sea values herself! I feel so bad for those adult kids who were and are still being modeled crazy & normalized abuse for so long. 😔
I don’t mean to pile on but this makes me feel better about how much shit I took. I just… this is almost hard to believe it’s so bad. How is this worth it? This is so beyond humiliating and demeaning and for decades. And to still keep letting him humiliate you after the divorce. I can’t understand that. Why would you want to be friends with someone so awful that he needed counseling to stop hating you because HE cheated on YOU? Are you really such a horrifically awful person that you deserve this? Are you a rapist or pedophile or something? If not, and I’m hoping not, maybe consider that you don’t deserve this and move on with your life? Even if you “both made mistakes” why would that require you to be his free whore forever? You are divorced. You should not be servicing him. Not only is it not your duty but it’s unhealthy.
I’m going to stop because I’m pretty sure this is like talking to a wall. The more I think about it, the more I think nothing will get through anyways. Good luck with your drama. I mean, you are choosing it so you must enjoy it on some level.
Boy, this one is still pick me dancing hard. Divorced and still the relationship police.
Sounds exhausting.
“I ate shit and said ok, let’s do this. I need sex as much as anyone else and I seriously am afraid of meeting someone new … too many horror stories, newly divorced, 57-year-old, successful, naive women broke or missing altogether… maybe I watch too much Dateline.”
I don’t think you have watched enough Dateline. You are involved with a horror story, and a big one. No one needs sex to the point of going to an emotionally and psychologically dangerous person for an orgasm. God gave us two hands we can use on ourselves as a far superior alternative.
Please go somewhere and get some help with what the word “friend” means. There is no friendship here as I understand the meaning of the word.
Children learn by modeling and I feel sad and alarmed by what has been modeled to the children in this situation about relationships.
Please find a great therapist for you and your children, and please keep coming back here to read.
😢
And she’s only 57. There are lots of years to meet a really good person to share life with.
Tried to edit my comment….site said “this comment is no longer available to edit”…..below is my edited comment. Sorry for the double post!
This letter is the formula for how new generations of cheaters are created. I feel extremely sad reading this.
“I ate shit and said ok, let’s do this. I need sex as much as anyone else and I seriously am afraid of meeting someone new … too many horror stories, newly divorced, 57-year-old, successful, naive women broke or missing altogether… maybe I watch too much Dateline.”
I don’t think you have watched enough Dateline. You are involved with a horror story, and a big one. No one needs sex to the point of going to an emotionally and psychologically dangerous person for an orgasm. God gave us two hands we can use on ourselves as a far superior alternative.
Please go somewhere and get some help with what the word “friend” means. There is no friendship here as I understand the meaning of the word.
Children learn by modeling and I feel sad and alarmed by what has been modeled to thence adult children in this situation about relationships.
Please find a great therapist for you and be on call with your healing work with your children. They’ve sustained some very serious damage growing up with this insanity. The amends to them is to work on you, keep working on you, and become a role model they should copy.
And I hope you keep coming back here to read and learn.
I say this as someone who does the things I am suggesting to you.
And for heaven’s sake, YOU do not have the skills for a healthy relationship and have no business dating. If someone I was dating had written this letter, I would run like hell.
Do yourself and the dating pool a huge favor and please put your time and energy into getting some help and some skills.
My ex tried this too. I kept it strictly business to kid stuff & hung up or walked away when he told me “how attractive you are still to me”. Whoop-de-fucking-do!! He should’ve found me attractive enough when we were married. Trying to slot me in now as his OW?! I’m not pretzeling myself for that fucker anymore & you shouldn’t either. I think you need some outside help in either a counsellor or joining a group where there are single men that can give you attention., or just join a group and keep yourself busy & unavailable to this user of an ex!
To me, there are two things going on here. One is that this LW has so little self esteem and feels so undeserving of love and respect that she’s willing to have sex when given the slightest compliment.
The other is that this entitled cheater feels it is right and just that he holds all the power. It’s his opinion of her that counts. Her opinion doesn’t matter.
I have to admit that over the course of my 35-year marriage, I probably gave more weight to my ex’s opinion because he was moody AF and because my own self-esteem was in the toilet. It took me a while to unlearn that habit to internalize CL’s message that “You don’t need his buy in. His feelings are irrelevant. He abused you.”
I hope the LW gets therapy to figure out why she doesn’t feel she deserves better treatment.
“Is there a way to be friends with your [cheating] ex and not be a chump?”
No. Next question.
You can’t be friends with them because they don’t respect you as a person and they treat you with utter contempt. On this simple scale of basic humanity, the person who bags your groceries at the grocery store is a better friend to you.
My friends don’t lie to me or cheat on me.
Right. Wanting him to be a friend is futilely wanting something that he isn’t able to give. Instead, the best he ever will be able to give fits with the old saying: “with friends like that, you don’t need enemies.”
Accept that he’s not friend material.
The truth of this simple statement is awesome and mighty.
If you can get to that point – mentally accept that they are a crappy person with no values – it’s like a veil lifts away from your eyes and everything is clear. I have to deal with my exFW because we co-parent, otherwise I’d do no contact. However, now if she says something about what she did recently I will give a polite neutral smile, but in my mind I’ll be thinking “good grief, you suck as person. Why did I never see this before?” But before I got there, I had to go through devastation, crisis, humiliation, shame, confusion, anger, and bitterness. Right now, LW is in complete denial and bargaining.
Were y’all ever married, LW? I don’t see the words “husband” or “divorce” in this letter. Did he lie to you about that too? — didn’t want to get married because it’s a stupid piece of paper or whatever? Then turns around and proposes to the OW? Oh, and all that happens after the kids are grown, and he’s off the hook for child support.
PS — It is not a “commitment” ring; they’re engaged. Put down the hopium pipe. Also, he did not “leave the computer open.” He wanted you to find everything you found, because he’s that much of an asshole.
This reminds me of the point in the Dirty John podcast where the mom, after discovering that John is lying about everything and kicks him out, takes him back in and marries him. I remember screaming “NOOO!” at my steering wheel when that part came up.
That podcast did a lot to reveal the toxicity of forgiveness culture for me. In my opinion, there is no inherent virtue in forgiving an unrepentant narcissist or psychopath, and the culture of toxic forgiveness makes you blind to when people are really just scumbags who are using you.
Toxic positivity culture in general gives me the heebie jeebies. A large part of it is the forgiveness bullshit. “To err is human, to forgive divine.” is the stuff forgiveness trolls spout. How about to kick an abuser in the ass is simultaneously human and divine. Oh, how divine it is. 😉
I always thought the Dirty John story kind of proves that a lot of that “forgiveness” on the part of victims is really full blown Stockholm syndrome. Getting barraged with forgiveness nonsense from the culture is just another shove in that direction but I think the real impetus is trying to avoid danger. After all, the guy was actually capable of murder and there was a lot to be terrified of.
If you’ve ever been in the physical presence of a murderer or otherwise very dangerous person (I have– organized crime types who hang around the media industry as well as a public figure who ended up killing his wife several years later and getting away with it, not to mention several publicly recognizable batterers, rapists and child molesters), it does something to your lizard brain that’s indescribable. If the murderer happens to be in charm mode, it’s even more mind-freezing. If no one whispers the facts in your ear right before you meet this person, you may find your mind going blank and suddenly trying to please, please, please without understanding what the hell has overtaken you.
Anyway, I think that relates to the double bind of falling into the lair of a dangerous perpetrator. On some gut level, we always sense it but without confirmation, it seems like a very out there thing to suspect of someone. Once you’re in, it’s too late to get out unscathed and it becomes a matter of trying to delay the moment you’re going to lose a limb or trying to bargain over which limb you’ll lose. So victims end up emotionally collapsing from the stress (more danger = more stress) and going belly up to grovel for amnesty, usually based on the false directives the abuser gives about what will “inspire” that amnesty (“If you seamlessly love me, I shall spare thee. If you show no sign of rebellion, I shall spare thee. If you go boneless and show zero agency, I shall spare thee…”)
“Yeah, that duel responsibility, unmet needs shit doesn’t fly here. We don’t drive people to abuse us with our faults, real or imagined. You might suck, you don’t deserve to be cheated on.” Movies, books, and the general societal attitude about infidelity would have think otherwise.
CL, thank you from the bottom of my chumpy heart for repeating this message.
I had a friend locally whose story is similar. I had to ask her, “How is this making your life better than it would be if you just completely cut him off?”
In her eyes, it was better to remain in the whirlpool of uncertainty. I think that some of it was that she was so used to it that she had no idea what life would be like apart from that. She was stuck. We lost touch after she moved. Maybe she did that to make the break.
Me? I like my low-drama life…a lot. I haven’t seen or talked to my ex in years, and he lives in another state.
“I think that some of it was that she was so used to it that she had no idea what life would be like apart from that. She was stuck.”
Yes. She’s so accustomed to thinking of this as normal that she’s more afraid of being out of the suck than in it. She imagines all sorts of dire things, if she leaves, but the dire things are actually happening to her right now.
To Single Sea,
My god, end it already! I miss partner companionship and partner friendship (I miss what I thought I had). I miss sex and have no idea if I’ll ever have sex again (due to feeling unloveable and unwanted thanks to discovering eX’s infidelity.. and also fear— ie are there safe, non-abusive, respectful, trustworthy and loving men out there? How will I know a man is safe? How can I protect myself from this indescribable pain from happening again?). But what I do know is that I’m worth honesty, integrity, fidelity, gentleness, love and respect. So I’ll be alone until I ever in the future have that in my life. Because I respect myself and care for my safety and well being. I deserve so much more. I am worth it.
To S. S. , He is just treating you like a prostitute. You have only a transactional relationship with him….. you give him sex and he gives you fake friendship. He does NOT care about you.
“First off, I don’t think you know what friendship is. And I don’t think you really want a “friend.” Sounds noble. Sounds triumphant. Oh, we’ve overcome our troubles and remain Friends. But what you really want is to win the Pick Me Dance. You’re still competing for the attention of a FW, toking some patriarchal hopium pipe, calling it “friendship.”
So very true. I call horseshit on the goal is to be “friends”. I have no doubt her ex is an obnoxious asswipe of a cheater, but Single Sea has had a hand in creating this monster.
Single Sea,
Just be honest with yourself: you don’t want his friendship. You don’t want have a good relationship “for the kids.”
The truth: you’re still in love and deeply infatuated with this cheating scumbag and you always have been. You would rather eat his crumbs than walk away from the table. You would rather he wipe your feet on you like a doormat after playing in the mud than never walk through your door again.
The reason for this is that you haven’t even given yourself a chance to get over him. By continuing to talk with him, confide in him, and spend time with him, you keep your emotional connection with him alive. By having sex with him, you get those dopamine hits to your brain and keep those bonding hormones flowing to the point where Henry Cavill could wink at you in a bar and you won’t even notice him because you only have eyes for your fuckwit.
You need to go No Contact. Immediately and permanently. The fact that your kids are grown up means that there is really no reason you need to speak to each other about anything anymore, so don’t use them as an excuse. If you were still doing things with the kids as a family, that needs to stop— not just because you need to move on with your life but because you shouldn’t be modeling a toxic relationship and teaching them that lying to and cheating on a spouse is no big deal. Just imagine your son or daughter being treat this way or treating their spouse this way.
Lastly, if you watch enough Dateline, then you should know that most of the wife killers are serial cheaters like your ex-husband. And, sadly, many of these dead women thought they could change him and make their relationships work… and the bastards were happy to string them along until their wives’ existence became too inconvenient, usually when their mistresses started demanding marriage. That’s where you are right now.
Great point about who is most likely to do violence to her. It’s this fucking guy, not somebody she meets on Match.com or wherever.
It’s almost always the husband or boyfriend.
The lapses in logic she makes are symptomatic of being invested in staying in the suck.
I agree strongly with this – Single Sea….you’re still in “love” with him and still hoping to win him back by being agreeable to everything HE wants. You need to fix what you think “love” is because what he’s giving you…and been giving you…is toxic abuse. You’re not gonna win him back and you shouldn’t want this Ahole back anyway. He’s treating you like a whore. And he not only cheated on you, he’s cheating on HER now….do you think she’d approve of this if she knew? Why don’t you go tell her and see what she thinks? Nah, you know what she’d think. You’re not gonna win him back because he has you right where he wants you….a handy pouch for his unit whenever he wants it and you probably would give him Kleenex too. It’s the truth, girl. You probably had problems throughout your marriage but you don’t give yourself enough psychological distance to see it. GO NO CONTACT – you will be amazed after (not too long) awhile your feelings and thoughts about him will change. Maybe 180 – most of the people in Chump Nation come to realize their once beloved cheater was pretty much a piece of crap for much of the marriage….we just got used to the smell.
You need to learn to let this go or it’s going to wreck what’s left of your life and you have a lot to live whether you can see it now or not. Stop wasting time on this cheating, lying, Ahole!!!
I think we think that these xhusband users are loving us, their former or current wife more than a girlfriend or sex worker. Actually if you look at a totem pole in Alaska, the letter writer and anyone else having sex with these abusers are at the BOTTOM of the totem pole. At the top are the shifting sex workers, in the middle are all the girlfriends who are being groomed, so wine’d and dined, still getting MORE than you…then…..at the bottom, the very bottom is worn out you…like an old dish towel. Still soft but never taken out for show. One must have zero self respect to even stay in any position on that pole. Boiled 🐸
The Pick Me Dance is a Pole Dance!
“Yeah, that duel responsibility, unmet needs shit doesn’t fly here. We don’t drive people to abuse us with our faults, real or imagined. You might suck, you don’t deserve to be cheated on” Movies, books, and the general societal attitude would have think otherwise.
CL, from the bottom of my chumpy heart, I want to thank you once again for repeating this message.
Sorry for the double post. Happy Monday, everyone!
Spot on Tracy. Every.word. I just can’t drum up any sympathy for this monumentally masochistic woman. And, like you, CL, I think how can someone who says they’ve read LACGAL even write something like this? She’s obviously hoping you’ll extend your validation/permission for her to continue her devil’s waltz. Some people actually *enjoy* pain and humiliation, though. Maybe Miss I just want to be friends with a fuckwit, and I’m colluding in his abuse, should join one of those BDSM groups.
I actually don’t believe unipolar masochism exists. I do think it exists as a kind of flipside in abusive personalities but I wasn’t getting that read from Single Sea. Instead I think she left a WHOLE LOT out of the story as captor bonded hostages tend to. Not necessarily violence but something super creepy nonetheless. My guess is this FW is dangerous on some level, even if that potential hasn’t been fully exhibited or tapped yet.
From working in advocacy I learned that, unless someone shows signs of being a bully and antisocial in their own rights, it shouldn’t be assumed survivors/victims were wallowing in/gluttons for suffering but instead somehow trying to avoid the frying-pan-to-fire effect of worse suffering. Since full blown captor bonding can happen to veteran intelligence agents when captured and subjected to certain stressors by skilled interogators, there’s no reason to assume any preexisting pathology. This shit happens to people, even strong people. The key is understanding what was *done* to them by the perpetrators to cause it.
I remember that, while many survivors had filmic recall of everything they endured to the point of being intrusive and debilitating, it could sometimes take months for some to start listing the incredible tortures they endured within abusive relationships. Some– especially if they were attending the wrong type of therapy– couldn’t even recall the incidents until someone else described exactly the same thing and it seemed to prime the pump of memory. And there was such a danger in those first moments of disclosure of survivors being “scared back into their holes” by negative bystander responses that there was a lot of tiptoeing around in trying to encourage them to let the floodgates of memory fully open within a safe environment.
My therapist told me to leave my then husband immediately. He had talked to him 4 days before and told me I was his next victim. You can’t stay in shock and not get out. You have to save yourself. Talking about Trauma bonding? If someone has the key and hands it to you and you don’t take it, what hope do you have. I was way Trauma bonded but I took the key. I was horribly intimately abused but didn’t know how to leave. But when I saw the key to my prison handed to me, I grabbed for it. Even us chumps have agency but we must help ourselves.
I got that, too. My spidey senses are picking up a history of sexual coercion by this poisonous toadstool of a man. It sounds like she placates him and tries to keep him from straying with sex. She says they fight about sex and he is extremely demanding about it. That’s a big, flapping red flag for being the victim of an abuseosexual.
I do want to add an addendum for male chumps. I’ve noticed that a lot of she-fuckwits seem to throw over good provider/woke guy/good dad types of chumps for knuckle-dragging assholes– either master of the universe sociopaths or trailer park losers. Throwing over “positive masculinity” models for “toxic” models smacks of internalized misogyny/patriarchy. And from my own perspective, women like that scare the crap out of me.
OHFFS:
I just had a sudden revelation reading your comment. Holy fuck– what if a certain percentage of FWs were *actual rapists* (whenever that happened before the chumps met them– in high school or college, etc.– or even in the course of the relationship) and chumps had no clue?? Imagine how that “vibe” of super creepy danger could over-trigger and possibly paralyze the Spidey senses? Violent rape is really outside of most normal people’s paygrade. We don’t know how to deal with it.
If you think about the truly terrifying statistics related to sexual abuse within teenage dating relationships, date and campus rape and the rest, I would imagine that FWs are probably top “culprit profile” candidates. Rates are highest among teens and college aged men so one can imagine that a certain percentage decide– as they mature– to curb their sexual violence to a degree out of pure self interest ( in order to avoid legal consequences). But in their souls they could arguably remain rapey apes. And I think normal human intuition can probably pick up on that scary potential.
In other words, how much female “pickme dancing” is incited by lizard brain terror based on the actual (if past) violent capacity of FWs?
Yeah, that does give one pause. I also don’t think the capacity for violence is ever gone. What we sense is their very real potential to harm us if they think they can get away with it. Not being able to get away with it is all that stops them. Going back to studies that show the majority of men admit they would rape if they could be assured of no consequences to themselves, it’s terrifying.
I suspect with FWs is probably close to 100%.
This is part of the reason I will never date again. Odds are high I will run into many men who would rape if they could. The thought of even having coffee with one of them is sickening.
I think so much as having coffee with one of those covert rapey apes would probably give me mysterious stress related health symptoms for a year. I have zero tolerance.
Is the “secret sexual basement” really just “capacity for rape” in many cases? Holy, holy fuck.
Yes, most shitheads are pragmatic about “not being able to get away with it.” That’s what might stop most would-be serial rapists. But, in their hearts, many would remain criminally inclied and I think, on a gut level, that’s a “vibe” these types continue to give off. I suspect that “vibe” can be felt by normal people, even if on a subconscious level.
Hi HOAC, this new format is amazing, your reply to my comment popped up in my email! 😄. Your reply is very interesting (as always) but I can’t agree, I find Tracy’s reply more pertinent. The LW doesn’t honestly strike me as a trauma bonded victim, more, as CK points out, a volunteer. My comment about BDSM was, however, more sarky tongue in cheek than a real suggestion as to what motivates her. I just hope for her own sake she realises what she’s doing to herself, re-reads LACGAL, and gets a grip. Thanks for your reply.
I understand what you’re saying. Believe me, the service I worked for saw a ton of people who’d half-heartedly reach out for assistance and then fold up and disappear back into a sort of thrall to their abusers. It could trigger compassion burnout. One of the safeguards against burnout was that all the lay advocates hired by the service and also most of the consulting psychologists were survivors of some form of violent trauma or other in their own rights. But even then it was hard to deal with the frustration of trying to help people and then see them drink the koolaid anyway. That’s why we were put through a kind of boot camp on that issue– trained to never presume that a victim not being “reached” was some sign of pathological incompetence on the part of the victim but, if we were to guess, probably a reflection of the level of abuse they were enduring or the level of risk they lived with which we, as idle bystanders to their situations, could not see or imagine. If lay advocates or other helping professionals failed to reach these victims, we were to view it as our own failure or the failure of prevailing theories. Not that we necessarily had to beat ourselves up about it. We might just be lacking information in a very nascent field or unable to imagine the risks the individual endured.
One thing that tells me that Single Sea is captor bonded is that she’s very sweet. Not that an abused chump who rails against an AP is at fault for the abuse their enduring but when you see someone who can’t even express anger at an affair partner, it smacks of full blown Stockholm syndrome.
Btw, I think one area of confusion in the discussion is that “trauma bonding” which was coined by sex addiction guru and CSAT founder Patrick Carnes, is sort of a hijacked and mutated rendition of founding psychotraumatologist Frank Ochberg’s original “captor bonding” coined when Ochberg was consulted on the 1970’s bank hostage situation in Stockholm (why the press dubbed captor bonding “Stockholm syndrome”). I don’t want to repeat my whole spiel on it here but, by removing all indicators of perpetrator/victim/crime (“captor” identifies a perpetrator in the situation, alludes to the crime of captivity and alludes to the existence of– and clinical sympathy for– a victim, the “captive”), Carnes managed to both whitewash the expression and also make it partly victim-blaming by default. The latter goes right back to the “split blame/two to tango” concept of domestic violence that prevailed before the shelter movement.
Because the term “trauma bonding”– if Googled– too often leads back to victim-blaming CSAT and RIC types of therapeutic resources, I wish people would revert to the trusty old “captor bonding” which leads to more than 50 years of worthy resources, anti-victim-blaming theories and concepts that can actually help survivors of all forms of abuse.
⏫️Good point, captor bonding. Yes that was me but now I’m free
The good news is that it only feels like love when you’re in their creepy orbit. Once out and once the spell is broken, you’re like “Wth was I doing with *that*?”
Be honest, you want him to pick you over anyone else. I get it – you were married, you have children, you have a history together and you loved him. The truth – he doesn’t love you, he doesn’t respect you, he lies to you, and he is using you to make himself feel happy, because he sure as hell isn’t doing anything to sincerely and genuinely make you happy, and he doesn’t care that he hurts you.
Stand up, raise up those fists, throw those shoulders back, raise that head up, open your eyes and yell!! You have worth!!!!! You are worth more than tiny drivels of his lying and manipulation. You are worth more than his pathetic attempts to have his cake and eat too. Do not give him the fork!!!!
When I first divorced, it took me a hot minute to remove the rose-colored glasses that kept romanticizing him and our marriage. When I finally threw the glasses off and put down that gigantic pail of spackle, I was able to start seeing the person he really is and has always been. You need to reach this point where you start seeing his actions through the lens of someone with no invested emotions. Would you really want to be his friend, knowing how he treats people and especially how he treats women as objects? Is that the type of man you would recommend to a friend? I sure hope the answer is no.
When you put you hand on a hot stove do you leave there? Because you keep putting your emotions and your BODY in danger and you don’t run away.
Here’s the thing, this lying liar who lies is more likely than not also having sex with other women besides you and his current significant other. Or maybe he’s also having sex with men. You’ll never know because he is a lying liar who lies.
He doesn’t care about you and your children and grandchildren. He never has and he never will. He doesn’t care about his girlfriend. He never has and he never will. He only cares about himself and his dick. This “man” is not friendship material.
Right now, take your phone and change the listing for him to “Asshole, do NOT answer”. Or maybe “Hot Stove, NO” And then stop taking his calls. Block him on email.
Tell the children that he has hurt you one time too many and that you need to take at least a year away from him and that you will not be seeing them when he is around. And then follow through. It will take months for him to stop trying to contact you, because you have taught him that if he puts on enough pressure you’ll cave. The only way to get an asshole to leave you alone is to ignore him every single time.
One more thing, when you have sex with someone your body produces hormones that make you feel attached to them. It will take months for YOU to stop feeling attached. That’s why you need to take a long time away from this jerk. When enough time has passed you will look back at what you’ve been doing and wonder what the hell was wrong with you.
Is this person for real? I can’t even……I’m impressed that you stuck with this writer to the end of her letter, CL. Her views and actions are absurd. There are two choices when we find out who our partners really are (Discovery Day): stay with a cheater and continue to be abused or leave/go no contact and save yourself from further abuse. She is in the first camp. Hopefully your advice will encourage her to leave the abuser for good. She hasn’t yet because she doesn’t want to. Some would rather stay than face a new life. As one who told FW to GTFO, went no contact/grey rock, divorced and spent the last 9 years building a great big new life, I think the second camp is by far the better option.
It certainly sounds like a person who has neither read the blog nor the book. Maybe she mistook CL for the Betrayed Wives Club.
Single Sea: Is this REALLY how your friends treat you or how you want a friend to treat you? This man is NOBODY’S FRIEND….he’s a user and abuser and he’s wasted over 11 years of your time and emotions. No, he hasn’t changed himself, he’s just changed tactics. He wants everything on HIS terms and doesn’t to accommodate you, it’s all about him and what you’ve been doing is giving him everything HE wants. You’re doing this out of fear of the future and I think you’re clinging to the past of what you want him to be….and he’s not that guy. He’s just really good at lying to you, and probably to the OW. The treatment you get in life will only be as good as how you demand people treat you. Personally I think you should go NO CONTACT with this creep aside from mutual kids’ events, and stop being his booty call. Let him pay for a hooker if he wants something other than OW so badly – that’s the level he’s putting you at. As for your fear….it’s better to be alone than to be abused and insulted repeatedly – but you’re still young enough to find a decent older man (or even a bit younger – my husband is a few years younger than me). You might consider a dating service for older people – sometimes it makes it easier if you can’t find anyone in your immediate circle. Don’t put off experiencing change – it comes whether we fear it or not and this man has already wasted over 11 years of your time when you could have been shaping a new life for yourself. STOP WASTING TIME ON HIM.
I also have to wonder what OW would think of this proposed arrangement her FIANCE (your ex) is making with you. Somehow I don’t think she’d like or approve of this……maybe someone should tell her what this guy is doing…….He’s REALLY sleazy.
I guess I search a lot of chump-related material on Youtube because Youtube put this in the feed column– kind a sensationalist expose of Justin Timberlake’s cheating on wife Jessica Biel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAT0WLE7bU8&t=612s
I never really followed the careers of Biel or Timberlake but I think it’s safe to say Timberlake– with his lipless, doughy, beady-eyed hillbilly face and dried out brillo hair– is punching above his weight a bit in terms of Biel’s general physical attractiveness. So why would she put up with this apparently miserable, humiliating, callous mistreatment for so long from this entitled, trashy manbaby? She could have replaced him in a heartbeat.
I wonder if it has to do with the “devil you know” logic that Single Sea briefly alluded to when talking about the dangers of dating and Dateline horror stories. Single Sea’s fear of her FWs anger gives a strong hint that she lives as if she’s got a tiger by the tail and fears letting go– either because the tiger will rear on her full force and/or because she felt the tiger was all that protected her from much worse.
I worked in the rapey-apey media industry in the pre-#MeToo era and, by the same token, can make an educated guess that Biel was Weinsteined up the yin-yang from the start of her career but, though she did tweet in support of TimesUp and #MeToo, was never quite feminist enough to get angry and go public about her own experiences (which, in all honesty, could bring on more punishment). I can see it in her eyes– this kind of underlying “uh oh” look and the tendency to be blandly nicey-nice in all public appearances which is a common behavior among women with unresolved trauma (it’s typical to think that, if we’re vegans, the bulls won’t gore us). It’s not really necessary to dig into the potential childhood FOO issues of women in that industry to guess what kind of traumatic events might have spurred any fearfulness. The whole industry is one big sexual victimization pallooza. Read Barbra Streisand’s autobiography for frank descriptions of all the horrifying ways she was mistreated throughout her career for an idea. I think the same is true for a lot of adult women in regular life, too. It’s not always necessary to dig for the source of terror in childhood since enough happens to adults.
Anyway, I’m going to make a wild guess that Biel chose Timberlake– who had more career clout at some point– as a sort of body guard and beard but, like the ancient Roman poet put it, “Who will protect us from our protectors?” Now she looks like a hostage, as if she’s stuck throwing good money after bad to keep her continuing humiliation from exploding. In any event, it smells of a typical protection racket trap where someone chooses a partner out of fear and, d’oh, ironically ends up being all the more terrorized and less and less confident of their ability to survive on their own. And you can bet abusers foster this feeling in a million subtle ways. I wouldn’t even call it “low self esteem”; more like “low esteem for the world” and lack of confidence that anyone will help us when we’re in deep shit.
In my own chump situation, I tried to remember how baffling this kind of abuse always looks from the outside. In my view, abusers are never “all that” compared to their victims. You can start to see the pragmatic reasons why abusers abuse to begin with: because they’re invariably second rate yet somehow– through tireless campaigns of fear, obligation, guilt, incremental social isolation and general Skinner box intermittent reward/punishment– manage to diabolically mesmerize their captor-bonded partners into believing that they– the abusers– are superior and victims are “nothing” without them or, in the case of a lot of women, literally endangered without their “protectors.” It’s all an illusion instilled by frog-boiling abuse.
I know that men can be held hostage to the frog-boiling emotional manipulations of she-FWs but, like a lot of young feminists say these days, asshole men have a particular advantage in holding women hostage because of the specter of worse “out there.” In that way, subviolent assholes sort of ride the coattails of rapists and criminally violent men and should probably write the latter thank you notes. Timberlake should compose some crappy white rap ode in thanks to Weinstein and perform it for the latter in prison.
It also seems like the sub-violent types of abusers who never quite cross the line into criminal assault/death threats in their domestic terror campaigns are even more effective in hog-tying their prey because subviolent abuse isn’t prosecutable. At least with violent abusers there may be bruises and physical evidence marking the behavior as abuse and a chance (slim as it is) the abuser will be discredited and deactivated with criminal prosecution. The social context would sort of have to concede that the victim was being held against their will. But, all the same, most battering victims cite “coercive control” (subviolent psychological and emotional abuse) as the most damaging and paralyzing aspects of DV beyond violent assault. Hopefully the current push to criminalize coercive control will start to spread awareness of this and there might eventually be more social support for victims. But, for now, victims who leave subviolent coercive controllers like Single Sea’s not-quite-ex may not get sufficient social support for making their brave escapes.
What I read in Single Sea’s behavior is someone who’s fully in the grips of Stockholm syndrome/captor bonding. At this point she’s likely not even remembering the worst, weirdest and scariest things her exFW did over the course of the marriage and aftermath. Did he ever, say, even *hint* at suicide for instance or just float the threat of dying from stress (along with the hint that the chump caused this stress)? Did he rage-drive while Single Sea or kids were passengers? Did he ever explode into rage and curses when encountering the most minor inconvenience? Were his silent punishments ever accompanied with a feeling of dread and the eerie aura of violent potential, maybe in the form of clenched fists or veins popping on neck, etc.?
If so, then the cheating would represent further amplification of those eerie hints of violent potential. When I did advocacy for battering survivors, I never met one who wasn’t also cheated on and the cheating always increased the terror by several notches. This was because many victims felt they were only being kept alive as long as they had “value” to abusers as sexual objects. So any signal that they might be “replaceable” as sexual objects carried a potent threat that the gloves would come off the abuse they were already enduring.
Depending on the vulnerability of victims, just the hint of violent potential can be enough to systematically instill vague terror. Because of this, I would recommend the memory dredging exercise suggested to DV survivors: sitting down at a keyboard, going back to the beginning of the relationship and trying to remember every spooky, creepy, scary, unsettling thing FW ever did or said and also trying to recall the feelings this stirred up over the years. For most survivors, these essays will reach about fifty pages or more even if, upon first sitting down to write them, they thought for sure the list would be only a paragraph long.
Fuzzy recall of abusive events is part of the clinically captor-bonded “playing possum” or groveling for amnesty from abusers because the act of fully dredging up and facing those traumatic memories is viewed as “punishable disloyalty” by abusers who seem to have a telepathic ability to sniff out any wisp of rebelliousness in victims. Consequently, remaining safe from abusers’ wrath involves remaining in a kind of fugue state of denial and can create a vicious circle of entrapment. I’m afraid that, as long as Single Sea is still in the orbit of this abuser, any memories of coercively controlling behaviors by her ex will remain too foggy to really fuel effective escape. Going NC and really getting out of that creep’s range of “fire” (whatever that “fire” entails whether psychological torture or fears of violence) would have to be the first step.
Thank you HOC. I have trouble, still, remembering/understanding the elements of coercive control that my ex used, even though he never used direct physical violence. He threw things one time, but mostly he used indirect threats of suicide (which paralyzed me for months), gaslighting, interrupting my sleep, lying, misdirection, and devaluation. Sometimes I remember weird instances of straight up devaluation and I don’t understand why I was so unable to respond. For example, I am an avid gardener, love my roses, spent a lot of time taking care of them, etc. I turned around one day to find him peeing on them. He tried to justify by saying he couldn’t get to the bathroom in time… but… what? I finally reached my breaking point nearly 3 years ago now, and got out, but I’m still unraveling the impact of his behavior.
He PEED on your roses? Damn that’s symbolic. He’s the definition of “desecrationist.” From that bizarre gesture and the suicide threats (violence turned inward can often so easily turn outward) I would guess he also nurtured wormy murder fantasies. Even if people like that are too self-interested to ever act on these things, I think it taints the air around them with the stench of potentiality– who they’d be and what they’d be capable of if they thought they could get away with it. It has to do a number on the souls of people in their proximity.
All very good advice (and the one piece of advice that is so simple to follow–though it takes lots of willpower!–is going No Contact.)
Wow, this is a very frustrating one and a really hard read!
I’m imagining CL pulling fistfuls of her beautiful curls out trying not to lose her mind responding to this letter.
From my view, this person is 100% playing you and you are allowing him to do so, Single Sea.
He holds ALL the power and you have handed it to him on a silver platter, like the good little exwife appliance you have always been for him through the years.
You’re his “ safe zone” he tells you, and he is your “nuclear waste zone” and you are refusing to even see that!
My suggestion for you would be to find a quiet peaceful spot for your thoughts to be able to flow unobstructed. I know your mind is in a terrible state of fog and confusion, but you do know things you don’t want to look at.
Title your page, “All the ways he has hurt me through the years”, then just let it flow out of you onto the page. Just release all your hurts out onto those pages. Don’t lie to yourself, write it all down.
My list was 60 pages front and back on a long legal yellow pad and I added 5 more pages just recently 5 years post divorce. Because the horizon is unobstructed when you don’t allow them to snowball you any longer. You can clearly see the abuse!! Reread it again and again when you stumble and doubt your interpretation.
You know what he is on some subconscious level right this minute, but the ongoing trauma, the hopium, the fear of the unknown, is not allowing you to take it all on.
You wouldn’t be writing to an advice column if you were totally unaware of a very significant problem.
You have somehow managed to convince yourself you contributed to your own abuse. You haven’t.
You could not have done anything whatsoever to be treated as poorly as he is treating you. It is not on you.
Make sure it’s a really thick pad that you grab to write on, because I can guarantee you, he has been abusing you and disrespecting you for a really long time!
You only are able to see those stale microscopic bread crumbs he occasionally flings in your direction now and again. They have been your life line to surviving this. You craved those crumbs.
The crumbs aren’t the life sustaining food you want to believe they are though. They are instead crumbs of poison that is slowly killing you.
You need to wake up now and protect yourself.
What would your advice be to someone you loved if they were dealing with your situation? You wouldn’t tell them to pick me dance till their toes are bleeding to get him back. You would tell them to get out.
You would hurt for them, because you would be able to see they are beyond any doubt being abused.
That it’s not love being served up. It’s self serving abuse.
Don’t listen to the words he says that you feel so desperate to cling to as a rope he threw over the cliff for the appearance of saving you.
He is not interested in saving you. He cares only about himself and his own wandering dick.That’s as deep as the man goes.
His actions are the only remnants of truth you should be paying attention to. He is playing you.
Listen also to your gut, which you’ve been ignoring for a very long time now. I did the same, many of us chumps did. Hopium is a most potent drug.
Your gut can’t lie to you though, it knows he is not a good man and he actually means you great harm as he tunnels himself into his self made hell.
It’s a whole lot to absorb, but nothing could be more real.
He is planning on taking you into his hell too, as the willing volunteer you have always been to his disordered life. Don’t go with him.
He is also not friend material in any way, shape or form to your life and never will be. I know how much that hurts to hear. We all could envision our families in one piece.
This is a dangerous person to your life and you need to wake up now and see it, you don’t have time to believe otherwise.
You have been willingly deluding yourself into buying his false narrative and giving him all the power and all the control from your fear. Just as he has expected you to do.
Believe what you see to be true.
Take your life back, don’t let him destroy who you are or dig anymore holes into your soul.
Why do you imagine you have done anything to deserve this level of disrespect? That’s a question you’ll need to work on once you flee the burning building and are safely away. No one deserves that level of devaluation and disrespect. Neither have you.
You are deep in the mind fuck cloud right now. ( been there, done that, glad I’m out!) It is essential for your very life that you disconnect and get free from this. I’m not exaggerating the critical nature of this situation.
Put CL’s post on a continual loop in your head until you let the truth of what she says sink into your conscious mind.
Then get this narcissist abuser the hell out of your life!
Hang with us here in chump nation, that’s been a tremendously healing element to my own hike out of hell.
This level of abuse is difficult for the general population to understand, even though they care about you. It would be a lonely journey out with support of ppl who really understand and know first hand the agony it causes.
Tell him he is not your friend and you want him out of your life completely.
Don’t try to tiptoe around it all, staying friendly with him on some surface soul destroying level. Trying to ‘get along’ with her in a friendly plastic smiley way, not wanting to make waves or shake the wobbly unsteady boat that has become your life.
Trying to keep the peace and have some sense of family and safety in your world. Just keep everyone as one big happy family. The false facade of which will destroy you and all you hold dear in the end. Don’t allow the lies to gain a foothold.
Call out the bs that’s going down!! Go ahead and make a tsunami sized wave at the injustices being served up for you to swallow. Do not eat the shit sandwiches any longer! You don’t need to accept this and adjust your life to his new and improved narrative for you. Nope, you don’t.
Call out the cheater and his abuse. That’s your reality. Take your power back.
The ship of that life you once lived in has sailed on. You are now caught in very rough stormy seas in the middle of the deepest darkest ocean, without a life vest and no one is coming along to save you! Very very scary!! That’s what it felt like for me!
But,miraculously, you have what it takes to save yourself! You will find that out when you take back your truth and bring it into the light of day.
And you will get to another side that is shark free, sunny, safe and sooo much healthier than the ship you were forced to jump from.
That will happen for you too. You don’t have to be sucked under with the currents of abuse that overwhelm you right now.
Don’t absorb his warped narrative of who you are, YOU get to define who you are, only you get to do that. You know who you are, you will meet her again when you get away from this and it will be a happy reunion.
He is nothing to you, just take your power back and get free of him.
You didn’t cause him to become an abusive cheater. No one has that level of super powers. He freely chose to be that. It’s who he is.
You get to do some choosing of your own now, Single Sea.
We here at CN are very worried for your current circumstance and we are very much hoping for your sake that you don’t choose this abusive man.
Sure hope you choose to dump his ass out on the curb of your mind for trash pickup, as you drive your car 1000 miles away from there and never look back.
That’s your ticket to a real life worth hanging around to see. It’s gets better, the pain does gets better. Be good to you.
Let him go.
This letter today MAKES ME FEEL SO GOOD! It shows me how mighty I am for going NO CONTACT and not allowing my husband (s)to use my body like a construction cone on a highway( oh my goodness Tracy!) OH my goodness chumps!!! My 2 XHs wanted what your man wanted. His harem and me!!!! My 2xhusbands wanted sex plus freedom. A buffet! Right after DDay Mine wanted to separate in the house and told me to do the Christian thing and hurry up to forgive him and then I could take care of his needs like a proper wife. A sex worker would get paid right? So I’d be less than that! Less than a sexworker. A girl friend does much better with all the benefits, rings, dinners..wheres your ring and fun?? Yes she is getting MORE than you!!!!A girlfriend gets pretend respect, presents 🎁, family gatherings with you Harem lady in attendance, groveling by the lunch bowl over there. You, former wife appliance, but now a BETTER APPLIANCE THAN EVER, YOU stay there till I need you! You are drinking out of the punch bowl in the corner swallowing whole turds and you think it’s Andy’s vanilla custard ( or more like chocolate)
You are of use and you LOVE HIM? HE DOES .NOT. LOVE. YOU. NOT one crumb of love because he is unable to love and YOU CANT CURE HIM. So maybe you are using each other? Then don’t waste your time torturing yourself with us at Chump Nation. Go to Open relationships dot com. There are million of free and open sex places and hook ups. You could have your X and find more just like he did. Run your choices by your xhusband, maybe he can find a safe man for You!! BTW Are you using protection? Are you on a first name basis with your GYN? Are you taking precautions? X husbands kill their woman you know (speaking of Dateline. ) No one is safe.You are a sitting duck. Please get serious and get real help. A therapist that does not let victims sit in the chair and twist a hanky. Because you are not a victim, you are signing up for abuse. Listen to us when you are ready. It takes courage to break the spell !!! You can do this!! Zero contact broke my spell and it works. But is is for always.
“told me to do the Christian thing and hurry up to forgive him and then I could take care of his needs like a proper wife.”
Yeesh. These losers sure are ironically challenged. They couldn’t even spot irony under a thousand led bulbs, burning unto eternity.
“A girl friend does much better with all the benefits, rings, dinners..wheres your ring and fun?? ”
Yes I agree, the gf is a paid whore, but she gets faux respect, the wife gets the drudge work.
No contact during the divorce process gave me so much healing and power that I actually decided with my closeout attorney to handle certain things with my ex via email. My attorney tutored me on Bill Eddy’s BIFF method and helped critique a few of my emails until I got it.
It was SO FUN. I was unassailable despite all of my ex’s vomit and blame. He eventually gave up.
Everything CL said. I’m embarrassed to admit it but this is the type of crappy relationship I had when I was in dating in my 20s. Get help. And there is nowhere for you to go except for more misery. Get yourself free.
Single Sea, step back for a moment. Detach long enough to ask yourself this: If FW we’re someone you just met, maybe you went out once or twice and then you found out all these things — would you want to keep going out with him?
And why?
Because he’s the kind of guy who would start to expect you to pay half by the third date, then reduce it to meeting for coffee and sex, and finally you realize you’re just his stand-by when he doesn’t have a better option. Are you actually getting value out of that? Or, as Chump Lady suggested perfectly…are you just into the rivalry? Like maybe you can eventually “win” this loser from the other women? Yuck.
These online cheaters are a dime a dozen. I’ve started referring to them as “Keyboard Wankers,” In real life they usually have no real talent in the bedroom, and their willingness to cheat on their spouses because… ya know… it’s just “pretend”.., means they suck as human beings. It’s also a big red flag that this person has the emotional maturity of a thirteen year old.
Is that honestly what you want for yourself? An emotionally stunted fraud who didn’t mind gutting you…and gutting you..and gutting you again? He seems to be enjoying this relationship, but I suspect you are not.
Go back to the most basic advice we would all give you: Block Him.
Then build yourself a life that’s a lot better than this.
You hit upon a very important point here: that most chumps get in too deep because they lack basic biographical information about FWs to the degree that FWs lie through their teeth about who they are. Often for decades.
If only most FWs would blurt out the truth of themselves from the get-go, the world would be a better place.
I think this is so true for many people and such an important point – we frequently know little or nothing about the people we date EXCEPT what they tell us. This is pretty new in human history where we used to live in villages, sometimes for generations so we knew all the eligible people and their families and the good and bad stuff. Now we take a lot on trust. I’ve often thought that if people start to get serious about a potential partner/spouse, that it might be worthwhile to get them checked out by a PI. It might save a lot of trouble in the long run.
Good point. We do background checks for employees even though the risks of hiring a bad apple generally pale in comparison to the risks of marrying one.
There’s not much I can say that ChumpLady and other chumps here haven’t already said. I strongly suggest getting some therapy (pick your therapist carefully–don’t be afraid to switch if they think you should be a doormat) to work on your self-esteem. AND go no contact in every possible way you can. You might not be able to avoid him at some family gatherings (e.g., weddings, funerals, emergencies with your kids), but those should be extremely limited exceptions where you are present and civil but no more than that. Do not chat him up if you have to show up at such an occasion.
If going no contact forever seems too high a mountain, tell your yourself (and your ex) that you need a solid year of no contact. And during that year, sit with some righteous anger for how awful he’s treated you! There’s nothing like anger as a good motivator to cut him off. I did that with my ex-husband after DD #2 and divorce and when he started dating the woman who because his second wife (not an AP). I told him it was too painful for me to see him and I needed him to step away for a year. Fortunately, he complied and that time and space really helped me get over missing him.
After that, I had a rebound relationship (stupid) who was psychologically abusive. I made the mistake of trying to be just friends after breaking up with him. He pretended he was okay with that, and then when I treated him to dinner for his birthday at a really lovely restaurant (a big splurge in my budget), he broke up with me after we ordered (knowing I had to pay for it and also knowing I wouldn’t want to make a scene). That calculated cruelty let me know I was NEVER going to be friends with that SOB. So it was easy to stand my ground when he tried to reinitiate contact. The very thought of being back in that terrible relationship made me want to puke.
If you do the work on yourself, you’ll do fine. When you get lonely, DO NOT resume contact. Instead, do something social with friends or take a fun class. I would also recommend not dating for that first year, either–you need to figure out to recognize when you’re being poorly treated and reject those who would hurt you.
It gets easier and easier to maintain no contact with an ex–and to reject lousy treatment from others–as you give yourself the gift of time to get smarter and stronger.
I think your advice for chumps to demand time to sit with their righteous anger over how they’ve been mistreated is really apt and even beautiful. It takes time for the depth of injustice to sink in. Personally I wouldn’t think it’s advisable to ask for “permission” from a FW to take that time because most– lacking basic human empathy– would say “nooo.” But I think your program is solid.
I didn’t mean to imply that she should ask for “permission.” She should TELL him she needs him to step away and she won’t be answering calls/emails/texts/carrier pigeon messages. If/when he oversteps (as he likely will), ignore him.
Lol, I’m just a big fan of ghosting and sudden disappearances whenever legally viable.
This guy is friends with nobody. All he ever will be is a user, to the bottom of his rotten, empty elevator shaft of a soul. OW is being used, too. With “friends” like him, your enemies will get jealous of his technique in hurting you. The same applies to rapists being jealous of his technique in getting laid by abusive means.
This is a severe trust that he sucks problem. Face reality, read and re-read the book and the stories on this blog, until it sinks in. He is worthless scum.
Accepting that you partnered with worthless scum (and that you have to let go of the fantasy of who he is) is difficult and painful, but the alternative is many times more painful, as this story proves.
“Friend to nobody” is the real takeaway here, thank you. These are not individuals who love in any recognizable sense.
Once I knew about the affair with exgfOW, I would not let the ex close to me. I shook hands once! When he tried to hug me, I said ‘no thank you, I know where you’ve been’. I wasn’t particularly strong; just couldn’t bear the thought of her sloppy seconds!
Dear Single Sea,
I see that some of the comments have taken a harsh tone, out of sheer frustration I guess. (I’m sorry about this! I guess it’s just that it’s painful to see a fellow chump submitting to harmful treatment.) But many of the other comments contain some really good advice. My own view is like that of Hell of a Chump, namely, that you have been locked inside an abusive relationship for a long time, and that it’s distorted your thinking. Many of us here, myself included, have been in abusive relationships without knowing it. It feels SO GOOD to get some clarity about the abuse, go No Contact, and gradually build a new life.
Please do find a good therapist, one who has a depth of understanding about psychological abuse and its effects. Even your writing CL was a step in the right direction, toward getting you out of a relationship that keeps hurting you. The next step is to start to take good care of yourself by finding a therapist to talk to, who can help you, bit by bit, to find a path to a much better life. Take care!
So I wonder if ChumpLady is also a Dr. Demento fan? masochism tango?
https://youtu.be/WbcUcZfkkcE?feature=shared
It’s Tom Lehrer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE
Dr. Demento was a show that used to feature Tom Lehrer, I think.
I read this letter and thought: This is what it looks like when someone assumes that their abuser is the center of the universe and deserves to stay that way.
And she read the book and didn’t understand no contact…arrghh.
I remember after FW moved out I was at work in a deserted hallway and my coworker was freaking out because she was scared of what might be down that hallway. I had ZERO fear and walked down and showed her it was fine. This was because I knew that the MOST threatening thing in my life was FW and once he moved out there were WAY fewer things to be afraid of. My life expectancy probably increased by 10 years the day FW moved out.