Struggling to Accept My Ex Is a Predator
How can she accept that her ex is a predator? Doing the timeline, she realizes her middle-aged ex has been with the Other Woman since she was 16.
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Dear Chump Lady.
My D-days were over Christmas and New Year’s. I recently found out that he got the Other Woman pregnant. (She was our 20-year old ‘adopted daughter’). She’s due in August 2025 so likely pregnant mid November/early December 2024. A time at which my ex and I were very much together — doing long distance since September, and meant to see each other for the winter break.
I think it’s safe to assume that my ex and the 20 year old have been at it for much longer than a couple of months since they’ve decided to keep the pregnancy. He first met the OW when she was 16/17. His ex partner’s girls are only about 5-6 years younger than the OW and they all used to ride and muck out the horses at the local stables. That ex-partner was already quite concerned about the dynamic between him and the OW back then. (He acted shocked and offended at the suggestion.)
I got together with him at the end of 2022 and the OW came to live with us in 2023 under the guise of needing guidance from people who actually cared about her. (She’d been in the care system.) I welcomed her with open arms in our house, caring for her like an adopted daughter indeed for the last 2 years.
My ex and I had our own planned pregnancy that summer, which after being ‘over the moon’ (his words) he skillfully managed to coerce me into terminating. Cue all the heartbreak, tears on display from him which comforted me he was also sad. Cue all the promises of it just being terrible timing after all and promises of doing it again next year.
I’m struggling to accept the fact that my ex is at the very least a grooming predator.
At the very worst, someone with some serious pedophilic tendencies. He is now 42. I struggle to accept that this is an evil man. He is the most charming, charismatic, tall, stocky Irish lad with the gift of the gab and knows exactly what to say and do. Women gravitate to him like flies. Of varying ages. Although as far as we know, he hasn’t ever been with an ‘official/public’ partner of questionable age up until now.
I have been going through EMDR and CBT therapy. Thankfully I have the most amazing support network of family and friends to help me get through this shit show. But I am still struggling with feelings of anger/resentment/injustice, and worst of all jealousy and feeling like him and her have won (especially her).
I don’t understand how he could deem her more worthy of having his child than myself or any of his previous partners. (He cheated on them too. I tracked down three of them who also had abortions because of him). She is 20, she has no high school diploma, no driving license, she can barely spell, she has no ‘proper job’ (due to lack of academic qualifications) and zero wealth to her name. He has made it clear through the proliferous cheating and abortions that he doesn’t actually want to commit and start a family with all the responsibilities it entails. So WTF is he playing at now?
I’m dealing with the grief of losing a pregnancy separately from the rest as I am weirdly thankful that I didn’t end up ‘breeding with a FW.’ (Imagine the next 18 years.) And I’m not jealous of the OW herself. I’m 36, have gone back to university to study vet medicine, I have a car, a horse, a dog, am educated, well traveled, speak several languages and will have a great second career after I graduate. I don’t envy her in the slightest — her family background is rough as well, underage and teenage pregnancies galore, prison stints, etc. We’re absolutely not from the same world. Ex and I are, and so were his other previous partners. So once again, WTF.
Has he lost his marbles?
The silly girl publicly announced the pregnancy on social media, kindly spammed my TikTok with the video. I don’t even know how she found my TikTok as I deleted them all from social media right after D-Day. She then proceeded to comment that it must’ve been a shock for me to find out about her pregnancy, especially after my ‘forced’ abortion. She finished with a little laughing emoji. Charming. I reported and deleted the comment. That’s when she spammed my inbox with the pregnancy announcement video. I then blocked her profile so she’s unable to send me anything else.
I look forward to a hefty dose of arse kicking if you’re able!
Thanks in advance,
Chumped in Spain
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Dear Chumped in Spain,
The first way you can accept that your ex is a predator is to stop pick me dancing with the Other Woman. This is not a contest about who is prettier, more educated, or of the same social class. WHAT DOES HE SEE IN HER?! leaps off the page here.
He sees a victim.
Same as you. Same as his exes. You’re all interchangeable. Of use until you’re not. You mean nothing to him.
He is the most charming, charismatic, tall, stocky Irish lad with the gift of the gab and knows exactly what to say and do. Women gravitate to him like flies.
He’s not a prize. You were under the illusion that he was a prize. He carefully crafted his illusion of success and charisma. Because predators need a hook. He’s not going to lure you with recitations on the history of Methodism or tax preparation. No, you got the Irish Spring guy. An entire advertising empire was built on this guy.
You’re mourning losing the exalted position of Partner to the Irish Spring Guy. Chosen! Until you got bumped from the throne. Everyone wants him!
Not you. You don’t want him. Repeat that to yourself.
This is a man who preyed on an underage girl. Who likes them vulnerable. Who convinces you and three other women to terminate wanted pregnancies. I advise chumps not to untangle the skein of fuckupedness, because you can’t understand what makes monsters tick. But it’s worth noting that the only woman he wants to impregnate is the most vulnerable one. You, on the other hand, are an adult with a career. I imagine the other women were too. Much harder to control you.
She is 20, she has no high school diploma, no driving license, she can barely spell, she has no ‘proper job’ (due to lack of academic qualifications) and zero wealth to her name.
Much harder for her to escape. And it will be even harder with a baby. But you know what makes it less hard? Imagining he’s a prize. And she won him off of you.
She didn’t win.
But I am still struggling with feelings of anger/resentment/injustice, and worst of all jealousy and feeling like him and her have won (especially her).
She won a nightmare. Please do not conflate your understandable trauma — the anger at the injustice — with jealousy. Your ex is the puppet master. He manipulated you both (and many others). You got out of the game and she’s still in it. I’m not giving her a pass. She absolutely conspired in your abuse, enjoying your support and hospitality, while conducting an affair with your boyfriend. However, she’s also a damaged kid and utterly mindfucked.
I don’t understand how he could deem her more worthy of having his child than myself or any of his previous partners.
If you believe that your ex is a PREDATOR why do you care who he deems more worthy? It’s like caring which fava bean Hannibal Lecter is slobbering over today. Worthiness is entirely the wrong way to look at it. The OW is the most VULNERABLE of all his partners. The most easily manipulated. Voted most likely to be destroyed. And now we’re adding a baby to the mix? Another creature more vulnerable still? Pray for them both.
She thinks he’s a prize because the alternative narrative is too horrible to bear.
Chumps pick me dance because they believe they have something of value to protect. An investment. A loved one. And if only we could unite against the malign influence of the villain Interloper all will be well. That’s a much nicer cognitive space than realizing the investment is lost and you were never loved.
In fact, most people will tap dance harder to avoid that motherfucking wall of pain. People like affair partners and unicorns in reconciliation.
The silly girl publicly announced the pregnancy on social media, kindly spammed my TikTok with the video. I don’t even know how she found my TikTok as I deleted them all from social media right after D-Day. She then proceeded to comment that it must’ve been a shock for me to find out about her pregnancy, especially after my ‘forced’ abortion. She finished with a little laughing emoji.
TikTok her back resources to her local women’s shelter. She’s going to need them.
As for you, Spain. Radically accept that monsters exist. And they wear Charming Man suits. You could spend a lifetime researching personality disorders, building an entire library on narcissistic abuse, or watching true crime documentaries. Or you could invest in your monster-free life instead. I vote for the latter. It’s enough to know they’re out there. You survived. Don’t waste another moment of your precious time wondering what monsters think.
Monsters don’t think much. They just destroy.
Chumped in Spain,
While I would never be accused of being “relentlessly positive,” I really would encourage you to view your situation (which is horrific for all sorts of reasons) as a bullet dodged.
Getting out now, as you have done, will require you to deal with your sense of betrayal, the loss of your pregnancy through a coerced termination, and the loss of your vision of a future together …. but, and it’s a big but, the longer that you had stayed with him, the higher the chances that the bonds that tied you together (eg shared parenthood, house ownership etc) would have been more concrete.
Also, you observed that he attracted women like flies …. you know what else attracts flies don’t you?
LFTT
Hi LFTT! I’m finally taking the time to reply properly after a 2 day trip back to my hometown in CH. Thanks so much for your kind and supportive words, and objectively you’re absolutely right, it would have been 10 times worse finding any of this out had we been tied together by a child/house ownership etc. Luckily all we had was a rental and pets (which he sneakily escaped back to his home country with without telling me he was never coming back…selfish bastard). I laughed a LOT at your fly comment hahaha, thanks for the giggles!
Chumped in Spain,
I’m glad that you got a giggle out of my scribblings here. Sadly – as I think you’ve worked out – it is entirely possible to be “objectively right” and yet still feel a huge amount of hurt.
And the fact that your Cheater scarpered back to his home country tells you everything that you need to know about him. You deserve so much better.
LFTT
Hi LFTT, and happy Sunday here from CH!
Yes it’s quite the heavy hearted realisation that just being objectively correct doesn’t equate with not being gut-wrenchingly hurt. Thankfully it’s been about 6 months now and I’m over the worst of it (dreading mid August when the baby should be born), but thankfully they did indeed scamper back to another EU country like the sewer rats they are so I don’t have to worry about having to see them ever again, hurray! You’re totally right, that was such a cowardly move, which sums him up to a t!
Dear Chumped in Spain,
Please do pay attention to LFTT. He’s a man. Maybe you’re going through the “all men are pigs” stage. There are real men out there. As opposed to Mr. Personality with no real person inside. Of course he’s charming. He couldn’t pull the long con if he weren’t.
Hi Nemo! Thankfully I’m about 6 months out now and have worked through the ‘all men are pigs’ stage, hurray! I’m still very hopeful there are decent ones left, I just have to ‘fix my picker’ as CL puts it.
And I just realized that could come across as encouraging you to jump back into the dating pool. What I meant was, don’t feel bad for being fooled. These hollow types, with a sucking black hole for a soul, have been practicing their act since infancy.
I’ve since been on a few dates, nothing life-changing so far but it’s been enjoyable nonetheless. I think I’m probably still a little too cynical to let someone in fully just yet but baby steps…
Thanks for the comforting words, I did feel like the world’s biggest idiot for quite a while but connecting with a couple of his previous partners who also suffered horrible situations with him and were also lied to/cheated on/etc really helped to realise it’s not us, it’s 100% him.
I’m glad my clumsy words were comforting.
Most chumps go through “the opposite sex sucks” — a protective impulse, usually temporary. I don’t know how gays and bisexuals manage.
There are many different terms for those lacking any character: empty, hollow, nothing to ’em, an alien wearing a skin suit. It’s all image management, and there is no truth in them.
Hey Nemo! Oh don’t get me wrong, partnering up at the moment is bottom of my agenda haha, but I’m a firm believer there are good (great!) ones out there still! Yesss re the alien skin-suit: a previous partner of his and I describe him and his brother/mother as lizard ppl hahaha (I promise the description really fits!)
“Coerced termination” was not on my list of bad experiences with my cheater but I am guessing it was an incredibly dreadful experience and cant imagine what mindfuckery he pulled to manipulate her in that way. I just cant even.
Hey U! Yep it wasn’t on my bingo card for 2024 or ever…it’s been the most gut wrenching experience to date, and I truly hope I’m not faced with experiencing something similar again. We started trying for a baby in April 2024, I got pregnant in July, he played along until mid August and then out of the blue blurted out that he had to move to another country (on another continent) for work. I offered various options that would allow us to keep the pregnancy he supposedly wanted, he somehow made them all seem impossible, and expertly tricked me into thinking that I was too emotional to think rationally. This ‘man’ watched me in tears for 2 weeks before the termination day, on the day of, and for 4 months after. All the while talking about when we’d get back to trying in the next few months, asking me when I was ovulating during the Christmas holidays so we could plan accordingly etc…knowing OW was already 1/1.5 months pregnant. He deserves prison.
This ‘man’ watched me in tears for 2 weeks before the termination day, on the day of, and for 4 months after. All the while talking about when we’d get back to trying in the next few months, asking me when I was ovulating during the Christmas holidays so we could plan accordingly etc…knowing OW was already 1/1.5 months pregnant. He deserves prison.
Trying for a pregnancy, convincing you to terminate, then immediately talking about trying for another was incredibly cruel to you. It also tells me that this man sees children as disposable and interchangeable, much as he seems to see his other relationships. You are well rid of him.
Yes, this
My Cheater was a terrible husband for years, but I thought that he was MY terrible husband and that he would learn to love and I would benefit from the epiphany he would surely have once he understood that his cruelty hurt me.
At the time, I thought that the hardest part of learning that he had an OW was recognizing that he had the ability to love, but chose to give it to someone else. It was a long time before I realized that anything resembling love he might have was just selfishness, limerence and lust all mixed up together and not worth anything.
Interestingly, my reality turned out to be EXACTLY as CL describes above: A year or so after he died, I found something he had written to himself that included the phrase “I never loved my wife”. And there you have it.
Oh you’re bang on the money there. These ppl do NOT know the meaning of the word. They ‘fall in love’ like they buy a new shirt. If the waitress smiles at them and brings them a nice coffee they’ll fall in love! Funnily enough when NEX and I were just starting to date and ‘falling in love’ he once texted me these exact words: I love falling in love. I remember asking ‘what, as in, with me, or in general’. He of course responded with ‘with you’…but that should’ve been my first clue haha. Oh hindsight really is 20/20.
Exactly this.
Thank you, Unicornnomore, for this.
“It was a long time before I realized that anything resembling love he might have was just selfishness, limerence and lust all mixed up together and not worth anything.”
💯 This!!! So incredibly painful when you realize you were not loved.
I hear ya, Unicornnomore, and thank you for sharing this.
it is incredibly painful to realize you were not loved. it’s the worst of the whole situation, for me.
Hi, I really relate to you. I took in an abuse victim so she could escape her ex. She was 19. My ex was 30. We mutually agreed to take her in because we both wanted to help her get on her feet and provide resources. Years later and a long story short, she and my ex had been fucking behind my back for a long time. She claimed it all started because he touched her without her consent, but it eventually became consensual. I don’t know what to believe, because she has a tendency to lie. But it doesn’t matter who started it or why. My ex was a predator and it took me a long time to come to terms with that. He preyed on a deeply disturbed, abused, vulnerable, barely legal girl.
If he touched her without consent while she was vulnerable, that makes him both a predator and a rapist. But monsters are monsters, no matter how many claws and spikes they have. Some might be worse or more dangerous than others, but you still don’t want a monster in your life. Like CL said, they’re not really capable of true love. All they do is destroy.
Coming to terms that my ex is a monster, this is taking me years. I still have nightmares. But it gets better.
It actually helped me a lot to see his affair partner as a victim and not competition with me. To start feeling bad for her and internally wishing her well and hoping she’d escape him and find true peace and true love. I didn’t and don’t want to ever see either of them again, but when my heart softened for her, it hardened for him, and I could better conceptualize reality. The man I loved was a mask a monster wore. The man I loved didn’t exist. I’m free, and I hope she will be too.
Hey Aeolian! Wow this is eerily close to home. Minus the w/o consent part as far as I’m aware. But yes, NEX did exactly this. He explained that we were to help get her on feet, set her up for a good life, get her back in school, get her driving lessons, show her that a different way of life was possible. She was involved in drugs/alcohol/sex with men far too old for her at a very young age (sadly not legal) and we were to take her away from all that. Which we did. But NEX then went and did the exact thing he/we were supposedly protecting her from. My rational brain truly can’t comprehend it.
Thank you for your courage in sharing this with me. I’m so sorry you went through something similar. It’s such a uniquely horrible situation to be in, I think. We both mutually decided to take her in- we felt we were equipped to help her- and we did. We helped her get government housing- her own house! And we helped her with her income source and gave her resources for positive communities and relationships that would help her. And then he just… took advantage of her. The more I try to wrap my mind around it the more horrified I am. She came from abuse and such a vulnerable place, with drug-addicted parents, abusive relationships and so much pain and misery. The only thing she really knew was selling herself sexually to get by in life. I rally hope and pray that whatever influence I had with her in those brief years we were friends, that I at least left her a pathway to a positive and better life.
(its the 4th of July when I am replying to you, and I am a little tipsy, I apologize for any awkwardness in my reply or typos.)
Happy 4th Aeolian! I hope it was suitably merry and you aren’t nursing too bad of a hangover hehe. I really admire your way of not holding a grudge at the AP, how long did it take you to get to this much healthier place? I’m firmly in the ‘I hate her guts and I hope she has a shit life’ camp at the moment. Of course I hold NEX much more responsible, but I’m totally unable to absolve her of all blame. Sadly her first foster family also washed their hands off her as time went by as she just self-sabotaged anything they did to help: her first foster mother who I only met once and don’t know personally but is friends of friends was so sad and disappointed to hear of AP’s relationship with NEX and even more so when she was told of the pregnancy…as far as I’m aware AP and her are no longer in contact since, which is incredibly sad in itself.
“The only thing she really knew was selling herself sexually to get by in life”: this is 100% the case here too, which is something NEX and I were supposedly helping her get out of (drugs, inappropriate r/s with much older married/taken men, etc etc), and instead NEX took advantage of that?! It truly gives me the creeps. Just so gross.
dear chumped in spain,
i found the ruminating the worst part of grieving, the 3 a.m. swirl of thoughts and feelings. so i created a mantra that i repeated until the swirling slowed and stopped. this mantra is specific to my situation and slowly morphs over time, as i understand myself more. it’s a lot of work.
“he’s an active alcoholic
he refuses to get help for alcoholism
he is not emotionally capable
he was raised in a dysfunctional, alcoholic home with parents who fought all the time, and had no boundaries. the result is that he avoids conflict and uncomfortable feelings
it’s difficult to be in a relationship with someone who isn’t capable nor interested in learning how to become capable
i was primed for this relationship because i was raised by a narcissistic mom
this marriage was not sustainable, that it lasted as long as it did is kinda amazing
he is a narcissist and has little empathy
he is not capable of intimacy
he doesn’t care
he hates women, therefore me (this is a big one)
he is casually cruel, and enjoys it
I deserve so much more than this”
chumped in spain, it took me a whole year to create this mantra to a logical and healthy end, and i encourage you to create your own mantra. repeat it all the time and it will sink in. you’re worth so much more than this cruel, hateful man.
take lots of walks, too.
always remember that this kind of person wants to confuse you, and your job is to stay away from them and tell yourself that you’re worth much, much more.
keep going.
en solidaridad,
damnitfeelsbadtobeachumpster
Hey Damn! Thanks for your kind words and the helpful mantra tips – I’ll definitely give it a go and see if I can come up with anything useful/efficient. I’m about 6 months out now and thankfully I’m cautiously optimistic about being over the worse of it. I’ve taken SO many walks in the past months haha, my poor dog was wrenched from his sofa far too much for his liking. I totally agree the fresh air helps to lift the brain fog! Thankfully I’m in Spain and NEX/OW/his/her enabling families are all in another EU country so there is very little chance of bumping into them, phew!
I could have written every word of this except for the alcoholic part. At the end add this: I am and always was too good for him.
Reading here I see that over and over again, the chumps are often prizes (great partners) that FW never deserved in the first place.
Hey A! Absolutely – when you look at it objectively you’re truly dumbfounded that you thought THEY were the prize and YOU were lucky to have them. It’s a long and brutal fall down when you realise it’s the other way around!
Same! It’s a good mantra. And we DON’T deserve what they dish out!
Christ absolutely not. They deserve prison. We most definitely do not.
Know that OW is trash and currently useful to the monster but will soon be in a worse position than you. I’m also a successful multilingual high school adult but ex narc-sociopath OW were literal whores in low end spas. So I understand the outrage and the hurt. Tracy is right OW is the most vulnerable. Karma is not just going to run OW over, it’s going to put her through a meat grinder.
It’s not about the sex, your attractiveness, your accomplishments or even you. It’s only ever about the monster’s ego, power and control. Not breeding with a FW is like winning the lottery, a fantasy I imagine daily!
Hey A! I’d like to say I feel sorry/bad etc for the OW but that would be lying. Yes she’s had a shit upbringing, but she’s had many chances and opportunities to get herself out of that environment via previous excellent foster families and via NEX and I. She sabotaged them recurrently, and at some point you can’t keep finding excuses. I’m in no way saying I am a better person because I was lucky enough to receive a great education and do well for myself professionally and financially. My point (which maybe wasn’t made very clear in my writing) was that these are ‘qualities’ that NEX always said he valued highly. A partner who was financially independent, with a career, with professional and personal goals, with a driving license (yes he specified this lol), well traveled, from a good family/background, someone who wasn’t reliant on him etc etc. Everything OW isn’t. Hence being baffled.
Christ their ego really is something to wonder at. The sheer audacity is wow.
You’re totally right that not breeding with a FW was a blessing, I would NOT want to pass those genes on. But being tricked into terminating a planned pregnancy that was made out of love (or so I was made to believe) is something I won’t ever not feel sad about.
The OW is an accomplice flying monkey that’s what your FW likes about her. She’s simply useful for now to a monster.
Regarding the termination, I was tricked into the opposite, I hate that I didn’t listen to my intuition at the time.
.
you can feel sad it’s alright but one day you will feel primarily relief that you escaped this type of entrapment!
Hi A! Yes totally, she indulged his every whim, marvelled at his supposedly successful life (I’m sure she didn’t know we rarely paid bills on time and NEX didn’t have a salary for over a year lol). And in return he spoilt her and indulged almost all her wants/needs – the way a father would spoil his daughter – or so I thought…
Oh wow, I’m so sorry you also went through a form of reproductive abuse, it’s something I never even thought of until it happened to me. I’m not sure how you must feel re it all now, hopefully it’s been some time and it isn’t something that’s at the forefront of your mind 24/7 anymore? I’m so glad to read your final words re feeling primarily relief sometime in the future as it does weight very heavily on me every day, and while everything else is mostly just bad memories now, the coerced termination is the part I’m for some reason unable to move on from for now. Ugh.
My ex was/is a predator, too, something I only came to see recently in trauma therapy.
Very early on in our relationship he actually admitted it to me, how he used and abused girls when he was in high school. But he was 26 at the time he disclosed this, and had become a Christian since then so he convinced me (not hard to do because he was so charming and I was so naive) it was all in his past.
It wasn’t. His 2 affair partners were much younger, more vulnerable people. One was a refugee, the other was a divorced single mom, both of different nationalities with very low status compared to him (a Caucasian American man).
He is about to marry a younger Asian woman and I wish I could warn her. He just wants to continue using and abusing, and it’s her vulnerability and how she is easier to control that he is after, nothing else.
Christ OBND, I’m so sorry you’ve had to endure something so similar. I’m so creeped out on your behalf. Oh yes the amount of times NEX would recite the ‘yes it took me 40 years to calm down but now I know exactly what I want and it’s you and this and blah blah blah’…at least I know what to look out for now!
Thank you, Chumpedinspain! It’s a terribly difficult way to learn what to look out for, right?!
CiS, you may want to check out the documentary *Betrayal: The Perfect Husband.* It’s about a woman whose husband was grooming and then sleeping with former high school students (he was a teacher or coach at the school). The affairs with former students who had become adults were technically legal, but he eventually got into a relationship with at least one minor, which landed him in prison.
My feelings on men in their 40s+ who go for women in their teens / early 20s is that they want someone young and naive, who’s easier to control and more likely to not run from their bullshit.
I’m sorry this happened to you.
Rarity, I agree with you on the motive for seeking younger women. My 60+ ex pursued a supposedly under-30 woman who turned out to be a catfisher/romance scam. My ex said that she appealed to him in part because she seemed stupid, so she would look up to him without question.
The other thing he liked was her appearance. She sent him photos of a woman who resembled Lauren Sanchez. He emailed her that he couldn’t wait to walk around town with her on his arm, so everyone they passed would wonder what it was he had to hook such a hot babe.
I was arguing with my husband about the affair one day and I mentioned the OW wasn’t very bright. You can imagine my shock when he smirked and agreed with me. I hadn’t realized before then that her being a dim bulb was a feature for him, not a bug.
How I wish she could have heard him calling her dumb! If I had told her, he would have denied it and she wouldn’t have believed me. I don’t think he’s dated anyone with three digits to their IQ in the 11 years since me.
But yeah, whether they seek out the very young or the very dumb in their sidechicks, they seek out the easily manipulated for sure.
Hi R! Thanks for the info, is it a book/series/podcast? This guy sounds absolutely vile! I totally agree, I don’t believe anyone close to middle age with a maturity level to match would pair up with someone who’s frontal lobe hasn’t finished developing.
I think it’s a 3-episode documentary on Hulu.
Perfect – good weekend viewing!
Boy is THAT little girl in for a rude awakening one of these days.
One of the many gut punches that comes with D-Day is really meeting the person you were in love with. The shroud completely falls off, suspicions are proven true, and you find out how much you should have doubted rather than they should have benefitted.
And I am sorry. We all loved monsters here. You seem to have gotten yourself a rather nasty one.
Fortunately you’ve actually done all of the hard math for me on this one.
You are smart, capable, will be launching a second career, are multilingual, like animals, and are fully independent. Once you clear the fog, conquer the heartbreak, and own that that this is HIS impairment and not YOURS, your Tuesday will come. You will find that while we gave our lives to Fuckwits that they are also quite easily replaced (usually with hobbies…sounds like you have that covered already!)
Schmoopie? Schmoopie is “Easily”-impressed and controlled. When he pulls the same stuff with her(he victimized a child. It’s already happening), she does not have those safety nets away from him that you have. In fact, WHEN she falls (and she is nowhere near “bottom” with this idiot), she will be stuck with HIS child (who I feel immensely sorry for.) She will be in the same wake of destruction he has left you-just with fewer remedies to pull herself out. The only advantage she ever had over you was that she should have seen it coming.
I see why you are hurt. She wasn’t just complicit in your betrayal-she betrayed you, too. Too bad she also sucks. You invited her into your home and your love and violated both.
They’re both kind of predatory, aren’t they?
She can gloat. She even used an emoji. Having worked pretty extensively with her population (yay for a career in human services/psych), she may be biologically 20 but mentally she’s probably a lot closer to 12 with a warped upbringing that taught her a very different value system than the one you came up in.
Believe me, I comprehend the sheer injustice of it all. That being said-justice is coming to them. It always does. You may not be there to see it. It is going to catch up to them-every last drop and interest. You would do well to be as far from the blast as you can when it happens.
Again-I feel most sorry for their child.
Do yourself a favor and block both of them everywhere that you can. You owe neither of them anything and you will only find pain if you go to “check” on them. Believe me-you’re still early in the process (I’m not too much further along), you need to protect yourself from them. By your own admission-he has a lot of charisma-DO NOT BE TAKEN BY IT AGAIN. He hurt you before. He will hurt you again if you let him. You are better than this.
You got this!
P.S. You know, if you had evidence of his impropriety with her prior to her being of legal age…I don’t know what your local laws are like…but it would be a DAMNED SHAME if children’s services found out. Just a damned shame.
Stay Mighty!
Hi Jeff! Thanks for taking the time to write out such a detailed and informative response. I’ve indeed deleted/blocked etc them all for a quite a few months now and it’s been enjoyably calm hehe. Yes I do agree with them both being rather cunning/evil. I still think he’s much more culpable and quite frankly dangerous, but I don’t give her a free pass by any means. You’re 100% on the money with the bio/mental age and warped upbringing…CN said it very well: a damaged kid and utterly mindfucked. Unfortunately none of us have evidence of anything prior to legal age, I don’t think NEX had actually met her before that. But boy does he deserve prison.
Yes, the “easily controlled” is key. Whether they are older or younger, they want someone who isn’t going to ask a lot of questions.
I’ve only done coffee dates, but when I’ve encountered someone who is estranged from their adult children, claims that their ex was “crazy,” and rants about the “crooked” attorneys, I work towards excusing myself. That talk doesn’t belong on a first date, and even later, I look for a more balanced perspective that indicates healing. Thus far, I haven’t encountered it.
In contrast, my adult kids actually like me, and I very much appreciated everyone on my legal team. My ex? Well, at a later time, I might go into that.
Hey E! Oh the ‘crazy ex’ is now my biggest red flag! NEX described literally all of his ex’s as crazy to some degree and I’m not part of the club haha!
Hi all! Chumpedinspain herself over here. Thank you all SO VERY MUCH for taking the time and effort to comment very supportive and kind words from all over the world. I’m working my way through at the moment and will reply to as many as I can!
I honestly didn’t know this when I met my FW. I’d had a previous serious relationship that was messed up, but I can’t really categorize that person as a monster. The FW took it to a whole new level, and I had no idea — no idea — what I was dealing with. The confusion, the chaos, the utter lack of responsibility. I really was uninformed; I’d never encountered anyone like that when I was growing up.
I remain convinced that adolescents should be taught how people like this operate, so that they are prepared.
Hi FYI. You and I both. I’d obviously seen the Dirty John type docs/series on Netflix etc but never did I imagine my supposedly sweet loving kind generous blah blah blah partner was essentially living multiple lives. It sends shivers down my spine to this day.
Yes, I wish forensic psych was taught in middle school. But the problem is that institutional curriculum is very political and, when you think about how abusers often gravitate to positions of power and have an (actually clinically documented) extraordinary sensitivity to messages that put a bad light on their own behind-closed-doors behavior, it seems likely the most important bits of information would be watered down by the time children were learning them. So, even if there were psych programs in secondary education, I think it would still be left to sane parents to teach their children what’s what.
There’s also the problem that education about psychology helps predators learn to hide better and manipulate people better. They’d be learning all that too, along with their intended victims. They would just adapt. My ex’s mother was a licensed counselor. She was a real piece of work too and they would both use psychology that they had learned against people. I still often shudder when I hear people using terms like “codependent” or “inner child” because my mind thinks an attack is coming based on my experiences with those two.
The mental health profession seems to attract too many sadists and psychopaths, imho.
I always think an attack is coming when someone offers to do my horoscope too lol. And it would be about as accurate as some shrink at a cocktail party making an illicit diagnosis.
I agree that organized psychology as a whole has a lot of problems and every genuinely humane, competent and insightful practitioner I’ve met is deeply critical of their own field.
I married in my 30’s and was super naive. My adult kids are not and are both still single. Both have ended relationships and know what to look for.
Absolutely! Instead of teaching us advanced algebra…real life awareness would be more apt I feel!
How many times have I thought this!!!
My spidey sense tells me that Mr. Guinness there is gonna come skulking back to CiS. He doesn’t have the stones to deal with a baby, or a needy 20-year-old. So … watch out, CiS. He’ll have an entirely new spin on this whole debacle. Remember to run from monsters.
Opening your home to a vulnerable person was a very kind thing to do. I can squint and see where she is a victim too, but — wow, that betrayal from someone you tried to help is a real kick in the gut. You have my utmost sympathies. 🙌🏽 Congrats on your escape.
Hi FYI! I’m finally taking the time to reply properly after a 2 day trip back to my hometown in CH. Oh man I bloody hope he doesn’t! Yes I’m trying very hard not to spill all my hate on both of them equally, but it’s touch and go at times haha. I truly can’t related as I wasn’t programmed to function in any remotely close to this. Thank you xoxo
Hi FYI! Thanks for your kind words and the giggles at Mr Guinness – that’s cheered me right up! 😂
Dear Chumped in Spain,
The bullet you dodged might have been bigger than you consciously know but perhaps somewhere in your subconsciousness you have a sense of the potential danger you were in. If this is so, the resulting gap between conscious perception (that this guy is safe and wonderful) and ancient lizard-brain risk assessment (that he’s dangerous af) can cause shattering uncertainty and despair. If this is so, the first step to recovery is reconciling that gap.
Regular commenters here know that, if there’s a FW skein to be untangled, I only untangle it in the “run screaming” direction. This is because, as a former advocate for domestic abuse survivors, I discovered that it’s chillingly easy to find clinical overlaps between the psychology, tactics and MOs of most cheaters and other types of serial offenders like child molesters, domestic batterers and serial killers. And apparently I’m not alone since Lundy Bancroft found the same thing in his practice– these things are often on the same “spectrum” (he discusses incest which of course often involves child sexual grooming and abuse): https://lundybancroft.com/articles/the-connection-between-batterers-and-child-sexual-abuse-perpetrators/
The overlap between domestic violence and incest is not altogether surprising to people who work with batterers and incest perpetrators, because of the similarities between the profiles and tactics used by members of the two groups. Clinicians specializing in sexual abuser treatment have often approached me after my presentations on batterers to comment on how similar my clients sound to their sex offender clients.
Public misconceptions are similar between the two forms of abuse. Batterers and child molesters are perceived as mentally ill individuals from particularly disturbing childhoods; the public is always shocked when a man with a highly positive public image is exposed as a batterer or child molester. The nature of the abuse itself is similarly misunderstood; a batterer’s violence and an incest perpetrators sexual violations are just one aspect of their behavior problem. The overtly abusive behaviors are invariably accompanied by patterns of psychological abuse and manipulation that are often as damaging, or more so, than the overt physical or sexual abuse. Attempts to teach a batterer to stop hitting, or to teach proper boundaries to a child sexual abuser, miss the roots of both problems in a way that can leave victims vulnerable to continued psychological abuse and cruelty.
And here are two particularly relevant bits from the article:
Grooming or SeasoningBoth groups [child sexual abusers and domestic batterers] work to build trust and closeness during the early part of a relationship. Batterers are known for being charming, kind, and attentive during the first months or even years that a couple is together. An incest perpetrators may lay the groundwork for years as well; he works to build a special relationship with the intended victim, and strives to gradually break down her or his boundaries with slowly escalating invasiveness. The victim is often his “favorite,” to whom he gives particular kindness and attention, but often also particular harshness and control. Batterers are known for often being unusually appealing superficially, and sexual abusers are similarly often people who are identified as especially “good with children.” In both cases, the victim is often quite attached to the abuser, because of the manipulation and the many positive-seeming periods in the abuser’s behavior.
Positive Public ImageMembers of both groups are typically well thought of in their communities. They may be professionally successful or socially popular, and may be involved in charitable or civic activities that make them appear outstandingly kind and responsible. Victims of both kinds of abuse face disbelief because “he’s just not the type.”
Another related fact that I learned in advocacy is that most abusers operate on a “beat-by-need” basis, typically first resorting to less athletic and less legally risky methods of controlling their prey such as deception, charm and love-bombing and then eventually progressing to coercion, paralyzing attacks on self esteem and, if those things don’t produce the desired control, finally violence. Consequently it may take several years for victims to discover that their partners are bonafide domestic abusers.
Some abusers may even seamlessly appear to be “hail fellows well met” right up to the point they suddenly aren’t (because of extreme compartmentalization– a psychological quirk found in a range of serial offenders). So it’s neither here nor there if your ex had not yet acted in directly threatening and abusive ways towards you. In a statistical sense, it seems very likely he eventually would have.
And that brings up the issue of why he might have chosen what appears to be an underage, possibly clinically intellectually impaired target from a disastrous background and no meaningful family or community support: lower risk of legal consequences once he decides to let his hair down in some way: either take his fists out of his pockets and/or start actively preying on small children on her watch or even employing her as an accessory.
That’s something else to consider: that you and the other actually adult, competent women this creep partnered with may have been a series of “beards” this creep was using to create the facade of normalcy he needed to begin grooming children. Or it’s possible his prior flip-flopping on having children may have come with the realization that you and past partners are– quite inconveniently to him– the types of women who would stop him from molesting children or even his own children.
In short, you appear to be Mia Farrow to his Woody Allen. Farrow also got in the way of Allen’s alleged abuse of his own daughter and the grooming of a clinically brain-damaged step-daughter who is now possibly being used as a “beard” for continuing child predation (Allen palled around with Jeffrey Eptein).
Then the fact this OW seems to have some kind of developmental issue could be important in understanding her salt-in-the-wound cruelty: she might merely be acting at your ex’s behest, meaning the sadism she’s exhibiting is actually his.
Sadism would be the last piece of the skein confirming your ex is potentially very dangerous. He means you harm and gets a thrill from it. As a malleable cipher who acts as an agent for an abuser, she may as well. It would be advisable to stay far away from both of them and invest in security measures.
Back to filling in the chasm between perception and truth being the first step towards recovery, the caveat is that, in the short run, the shock of the revelation is going to make you feel like you came a hair’s breadth from walking into an empty elevator shaft on the 27th floor.
That shattering “near miss” sensation might mess you up for awhile. You might even succumb to blaming yourself for not seeing the danger or feel somehow defective or even “complicit” in his abuse of you and others because it took time to stop pining for the individual he initially pretended to be. But it might help to understand that intuitive fear is often what creates the gap between perception and truth. If you sensed even on a subconscious gut level that this individual was dangerous (which, again, child sexual abusers statistically are), it would have been a typical survival strategy to remain in inert denial about it in order to avoid what could potentially have been a terrifying confrontation because no one on earth is more dangerous than a sexual predator who’s been exposed.
In other words, had you figured out his game while his current target was still officially a child and he was at risk of legal repercussions, he might have attempted to harm you in worse ways than you’ve been harmed now. At the end of the day, if you’re still alive to tell about it, it suggests you’re not actually a glutton for punishment and not actually “complicit” in the abuse of children even if it’s taking time to shake off the shock.
Hi Hell! So I actually took a couple of days to read through your comment and the link you sent and then did a bit more digging. Wow. Just wow. I was left pretty damn terrified. I honestly don’t know how far the depravity went/goes, but as everyone says, it’s almost always worse than you think/know. I do know he would always make jokes about ‘how would I feel if he left me for a much younger model’ and I’d laugh it off as he knew very well what my personal opinion was on much older men with girls/women barely out of their teens…I just thought he was being a goofy idiot, but maybe he was actually assessing how I responded to gauge how to move forward…so gross.
He absolutely does have violent tendencies, the rage he would get in if the dogs misbehaved/got into fights etc. I’ve had to physically pry him off them at times. When you think about it, someone capable of behaving like this with their pets could very well behaved similarly with their partner.
Thankfully we’re in different EU countries now and there’s no reason our paths should cross anytime soon.
Oh my. Look what came up on my Youtube feed after this exchange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJcV_6YEATc
As long as social media stalks our every online move and communication, at least they seem to understand the relevant themes. 😮
Thank God for geographical distance.
Ugh, the “jokes” which are actually very serious “shit testing” by abusers to see if you would put up with his criminal predilections. Alas, it seems you didn’t pass the test.
But here’s the thing: even if you cured cancer or swam the English Channel in January without a wet suit, your greatest accomplishment in life might still be the fact you didn’t pass that test. Congratulations! You have been deemed an inconvenient obstacle to pedophilia!
Failing that shit test has to be one of the greatest honors known to humankind next to, say, people who throw themselves on grenades to save their comrades.
Hi Hell! Yes thank goodness indeed, I don’t have to share either of my home cities in CH or Spain with these two questionable humans which makes me very happy indeed.
Hahaha, that’s made me giggle a lot, thanks Hell! I would very much like to cure cancer (alas I’ll be a vet not a human MD) although I can’t say swimming the channel is on my to do list 😉 …but I get what you’re saying about this being my biggest blessing in the long run.
When you look at it like that, it’s actually quite the compliment to not have been deemed worthy of sharing the same (lack of) morals/ethics/values as a middle-aged grooming predator, hurray!
To quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”
I like to think I share the honor of being marked as an obstacle by pedophiles. I worked for a quasi famous one before he ended up in headlines for raping a series of underage interns over the course of twenty years or more.
For reasons no one could figure out, this goon seemed obsessively, weirdly hateful towards me. It might have been the fact I was pregnant when I started working there and radiated “mother” energy because there’s nothing child sexual abusers hate more than the classic protective mama bear thing. But it’s also clear in retrospect that my friendships with other women in the company galvanized the kind of chick coalition that’s the bane of all predators.
Unfortunately in my experience, no one politics and plays divide and conquer games better than sexual predators. This boss managed to skillfully drive wedges into friendships within the company and everything went sideways over time. Once I no longer had that social shield against the toxic flying monkey faction this goon had created, I quit. But then the boss’s past victims went public in the midst of #MeToo. I came out smelling like a rose while– oops– those who curried favor and stayed are covered in sh*t by association.
Anyway, this wasn’t the first time I’d been marked as the “enemy” by a predator in that creep-filled industry either because I resisted harassment or defended other targets. As much of an honor as it is to be hated by evil people, the problem is when they can see you coming before you see them coming. This type will either turn on the charm beams and try to “cultivate” you and gather intel for later coercion and control or they just outright launch into attack mode.
Obviously it would be better to have a preemptive perv-radar. But, according to forensic psychology (and personal experience), this is easier said than done. For instance, I read in a book on the psychology of domestic batterers and spouse-killers (The Batterer by Golant and Dutton) that many channel abnormal amounts of mental energy into “image management” and defense of public image.
Aside from suggesting that predators are exceptionally good at wearing masks and disarming people, it implies that even predators of average intelligence would have highly developed radars for anyone who might obstruct their predation as well as very polished Machiavellian skill sets in socially destroying those obstacles. Of all predators, child sexual abusers face the most stigma and legal consequences so I imagine the “successful” ones are the most vicious political game players like this former boss.
Consequently, I don’t know if there’s a perfect method for sussing out the devils among us. For one, they don’t wear horns at first. And even veteran FBI profilers have no more than random coin-toss accuracy in detecting liars. But I will say something about traumatic past brushes with predators: even if your conscious mind is fooled, your lizard brain/gut sense eventually gets sensitized and the warnings can show up as body sensations of feeling agitated or edgy following encounters with certain people.
Nevertheless, I still bear in mind that, for every smart and experienced cookie in the world, there’s a particular predator with just the right approach to get past those defenses and disarm those radars. Case in point is how Bernie Madoff managed to bamboozle Holocaust survivor and scholar Elie Wiesel.
I used to worry that being cautious would make me jaded. But I’ve learned that, given the risks our species can present, it’s really too dangerous to be a Pollyanna. Someone here recommended the book Dangerous Instincts by retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole who recommends a common sense system to vet people for positions of trust.
That’s not cynicism, it’s realism and just smart. The upside seems to be creating safety in numbers by building social networks with other “realists” with integrity.
Holy shit, that is positively terrifying.
Admittedly I’m referring to the dark side of a spectrum. But it should put a serious chill in any normal person’s heart that someone is even on that spectrum.
At the end of the day, what could you really put past a middle aged goon who grooms high school girls? The charm makes it even more frightening because someone with an actual conscience would at least appear “furtive” when the guilt or sense of stigma leaked through their rationalization system. From what you say, this guy has no conscience at all to cloud his charm. That definitely warrants erring on the side of caution. Assume the worst, ignore anyone who doesn’t (it’s not their hide at stake) and thank your lucky stars you got out alive.
This is exactly it. Where does it start and end. He has been known to react very verbally violently when exposed in the past (not with me as he blocked my phone number as soon as I outed him), so who knows where the limit is.
Taking risks is all well and good if you’re an abstract painter developing a revolutionary style or you’re going on a hunger strike for an important cause. But humans evolved from one of the most murderous species on earth in terms of killing its own kind and we still carry that capacity even if we’ve evolved to have more civilized layers. Consequently, choosing a partner is often the most risky decision anyone (especially women) will ever make.
A famous psychologist said that humans without the capacity to love are nothing more than rampaging apes. So if someone appears to lack basic empathy (i.e., is missing one of those really important civilized layers), it’s like Russian roulette to guess where the limits are.
“Consequently, choosing a partner is often the most risky decision anyone (especially women) will ever make.” -> this is so accurate and truly terrifying.
Oh NEX (and possibly AP?) lacks empathy alright, he’s the best at faking it though! This guy watched me break down in tears over the termination repeatedly for 2-3 months afterwards and all I can remember are his dead black shark eyes and his ‘words of comfort’ which went a little something like this: you’re so emotional you can’t be rational, one of us has to be sailing the ship here…what a psychopath.
Shudder, that’s so chilling and I’m so sorry you had to go through it. It seems the most typical moment for masks to fall is when you’re at your most vulnerable and reaching out for a familiar hand for support and instead find yourself clutching the scaly claw of Komodo Dragon Man.
I think that’s why those slow reveals in books and films about who the monsters really are can be so unnerving– because that’s often how it happens in life. In any case, I sort of collect the really effective scenes like this because they speak to some of my own experiences.
So, spoiler alert… One of the most heartbreaking and realistic-feeling examples of this in films I’ve ever seen was in Life is Beautiful when the protagonist finds out his riddle-solving buddy is a daft, vapid sociopath. Another effective example is John Houston’s character in Chinatown. You kind of get that Houston’s a creep but the big surprise is how creepy. Similarly, there’s the meek coroner in the brilliant Chilean film Postmortem or Bill Nighy’s character in The Constant Gardener, though Nighy’s performance reveals more about how villains often lose their shit when exposed.
I know it sounds macabre but it comforts me that there are people in the world who understand the dynamics of betrayal on such a granular level and understand that it’s really the greatest moment of horror there is for most people.
Of course Chinatown is ironic since it was written by someone very similar to Houston’s character but Polanski is a weird case of someone who’s best work is all a sort of psychopathic confession. It’s the only reason I don’t cancel his work– because at least he’s “educating” other people about the how villains operate. Most of his early films were from the victims’ perspectives and the main value of the films is that they exposed the elaborate game of chess that abusers engage in to entrap and socially discredit their prey– machinations so complex that bystanders simply can’t believe anyone would go to those lengths and they end up throwing victims under the bus.
Just like it goes down in life a lot of the time.
“If this is so, the resulting gap between conscious perception (that this guy is safe and wonderful) and ancient lizard-brain risk assessment (that he’s dangerous af) can cause shattering uncertainty and despair. If this is so, the first step to recovery is reconciling that gap.”
Yes! I remember telling a friend that it felt like my brain had been ripped in half. I put one fist in front of me and said “it’s like half of my brain is right here saying, yep he’s a monster. We never knew him, he’s just a monster and a con artist.” Then I took my other first and held it behind my head and said, “but the other half of my brain is still back here, and while it is slowly coming forward to meet the other half it’s screaming NO! THIS CAN’T BE! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE! the entire time and it’s incredibly painful.”
That’s really how it felt. It felt physically painful and like I lived in two different realities and merging them was just brutal. You described it really well and yes, bringing the two perceptions firmly together in reality is the absolutely necessary first step.
Hey K! Ooh the 50/50 brain is spot on. I dealt with this for a good few months. I just couldn’t make sense of the ‘man’ I thought I knew and shared those years with, with the ‘man’ that I was observing now. It felt like 2 completely opposite people and I was still so heartbroken over the first, while the second literally made me want to vomit. Thankfully that’s mostly over now, phew.
It still felt like that for me even though I’d previously gone through training to understand the denial involved in captor bonding.
Nothing and no amount of training really prepares people for that level of betrayal which is why even military intelligence specialists aren’t given full parcels of state secrets. It’s because, if agents are taken hostage by the enemy and subjected to random negative/positive reinforcement (a bit of terror mixed in with a bit of kindness on no apparent schedule) by expert interrogators, everyone typically cracks, bonds with their captors and spills everything they know.
I’m sorry you went through it too. It makes me feel a little better that I struggled so much though if nobody can really be prepared to handle this. It makes sense that you can’t prepare for betrayal like this. If you were prepared for them to betray you, that would mean you didn’t trust them in the first place.
To give you a measure of how vulnerable humans are to these kinds of manipulation techniques, in the case of professional spies taken hostage and subjected to advanced interrogation tactics, they certainly wouldn’t initially trust their captors but still might not be able to stop themselves from “bonding” as a survival mechanism if the captors employ things like random reinforcement.
It feels kind of helpless and vulnerable to realize that, as much as we think of ourselves as intelligent, independent beings when we’re safe and at liberty, there’s always a way to “hack” people’s nervous systems to create an autonomic survival response. But that’s what abusers (and professional torturers) specialize in– hacking nervous systems and psyches.
Part of the root of victim blaming stems from the fundamental denial of people who are currently safe and at liberty to concede that, given the right set of circumstances and a skilled “captor,” they too could be hacked.
This one really hits close to home. My FW had a secret gay double life. After D-day, but while I was still living with him trying to figure out what I needed to do, I came across a three-way text conversation between him and two male prostitutes. Up to that point, I didn’t realize he was using prostitutes, in teams actually. Anyhow. He’d set his phone down and gone to take a shower, and I could read the whole thing. One of the male prostitutes asked the other one how he any my FW had met, and the guy responded “We met at a birthday party for a 15-year-old.” The two of them carried on the conversation as if it was the most normal thing in the world — not like it was a joke or anything.
I spent a long time puzzling over that. My FW was over 60 at the time, and I really struggled trying to understand what was going on. Why would he be at a birthday party for a 15-year-old, and meeting male prostitutes?
So I have to understand now, this was a coded reference. It was not a birthday party, it was group sex using a 15-year-old.
I was devastated, trying to wrap my brain around that, trying to figure out how I was married to this man for 24 years.
Oh gosh that’s just so gross. A 60yr old group sex’ing a 15yr old. I can’t even. How is this even real life. I’m so sorry that was your experience. Hopefully this isn’t too fresh and you’re out of this. I can only imagine how violated and furious you must’ve felt. Sending love and good thoughts your way!
That is so horrifying. I’m sorry. I was wondering about the birthday party for a 15 year old too. That’s not a code I knew about. How absolutely horrifying that they feel safe enough to just say that to other men. No fear that the other person is not a pedophile. That is so horrifying.
I get all the pain, but truly you are better off without him. This will not end well for either of them, trust me.
At a certain point, I got that I had let go of my ex and all his horrible shenanigans and be glad that marriage was over. I think that pretty much happened late in the divorce process because I was very much at meh when the judge signed off. Everyone is different though. From the final separation date to judge sign-off was a couple of years, so I had a lot of time to work through things.
Thanks Elsie for your feedback. I’m sure you’re correct, and I’m starting to believe this little by little. I’m glad I’m no longer living a lie that I wasn’t aware of for the entirety of the relationship that’s for sure! What a total waste of my time, money, etc. I think for the most part the only thing I’m grieving now is for the end of my pregnancy which is something I refuse to forgive or forget. But I’ve accepted it and it’s not stopping me from doing life 🙂
It’s mind melting when you realise who they actually are. I ditto the bullet-dodged comments. Apologies if this has already been mentioned, also if this story which has been big in Australia freaks you out, but … yeah. Worse things can happen than Leaving a Cheater and Gaining a Life.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/30/the-teachers-pet-podcast-husband-guilty-of-in-four-decade-old-australia-cold-case?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Hey MM! Yes I remember listening to this podcast and then doing a LOT of googling! Another truly terrifying case. And doesn’t fall too far from home unfortunately, yikes!
According to a recent study performed in Bolivia, this is a typical driver of violence in DV: “Dawson was motivated by a desire to continue an unfettered relationship with [fill in the blank].”
Obviously not all cheaters progress to killing their primary partners but many are so viciously abusive in the process of cheating that they seem to have murder in their hearts.
I think especially predators who pursue underage targets could weaponize their spouse’s “disappearance” or death in various ways: “She is gone, we are free to pursue our relationship now.” “She is gone, I am sad and I need you to comfort me.” “She is gone, there is no one to protect you from me anymore.” I think the latter is relevant especially if they had used the presence of a spouse or partner as a means to gain their target’s trust before. It is sickening.
Truly terrifying.
Yeah, this is a really tough one. You have to go as no contact as humanly possible. No mutual friends either. You don’t really want friends who are ok with a man going down to the local high school to find sex partners anyways. Block him and his schmoopie on everything.
I went through this. One of the things I found during the divorce was he was talking to a girl who had just turned 21. His conversations went back at least five years and talked about them having sex. I felt sick. 16 is legal in many states, including mine, but I’m not ok with adults having sex with sophomores or juniors in high school. Pretty much nobody cared. Even friends with teenage daughters, whose home we had stayed at, whose daughter had friends over while we were there. They still hosted him, after knowing his sex partners were the ages of their daughter and her friends. I couldn’t connect that reality to the person I thought he was. The person who openly condemned such behavior and was “protective” of children of family and friends.
I was so, so horrified. It is an awful feeling. Everybody thought he was a good guy! He was so good with kids! So much so that I used to feel guilt for not being able to have more children! But what I found out about him did not in any fit with who I thought he was. It was not possible for him to be both realities at once. I had to accept that I did not know him. My marriage was fake and my husband was fake. I loved a mask.
What I need to stress is that whatever you know… there is worse that you don’t know. Three years after my divorce, my ex was arrested for trying to meet an 11 year old child for sex. Two years later, when he was finally sentenced, I found out he had child porn of infants and toddlers being r*ped on his phone when he was arrested.
Whatever you know… there is worse that you don’t know. Trust the sick feeling you have of realizing that you do not know him. Because you don’t. Predators will build elaborate facades of false personality. It’s how they hide and get victims. It’s why so many people will defend predators, even when there is clear evidence. They are very, very good at hiding and building relationships to protect themselves and smearing anyone they think can threaten them. The ones who aren’t good get caught right away. If he’s in his 40s and hasn’t been caught yet, then he has skills.
As for why he wants a child with this girl… my ex left me because he found a female pedophile. She was willing to roleplay pedophilia with him and stayed with him after his arrest. So there may be an extremely dark reason as to why he wants a “family” with this one. That’s why I say block them both. Do not interact. These people network with other predators. I have been followed, approached, threatened, and have had to file police reports. Do not engage with them. It is not worth it. Take care and stay safe.
KP: ditto re this being a great summary!
“You don’t really want friends who are ok with a man going down to the local high school to find sex partners anyways.” -> 100%, I share zero ethics and values with people who are ok with this kind of behaviour.
“16 is legal in many states, including mine, but I’m not ok with adults having sex with sophomores or juniors in high school.” -> same here, but I (and the majority of the population) am not ok with grown men having sex with people who’s brain hasn’t finished developing.
“I couldn’t connect that reality to the person I thought he was. The person who openly condemned such behavior and was “protective” of children of family and friends.” -> this resonated so much, NEX would make fun of his brother’s r/s with an equally young girl (the brother is 38, the girl is 20/21) all the time, bitching about how they could possibly have anything in common etc etc…oh the hypocrisy.
“What I need to stress is that whatever you know… there is worse that you don’t know.” -> yep that’s what everyone tells me, which is really quite scary. NEX always joked that when he died his brother was under strict instructions to burn his laptop and his phone. He said it in the most jokey way possible, insinuating it was full of un-pc jokes/porn etc…god knows what could actually be on there…
“As for why he wants a child with this girl…” -> that’s the bit none of us can figure out. He got 3 other women pregnant besides me, managed to get us all to terminate unwillingly, go figure why not this time…but yes I’m sure he can get away with much more considering OW is essentially young and dumb whereas we have a couple extra decades of life experience on her.
“Do not engage with them. It is not worth it. Take care and stay safe.” -> I actually got a lovely (not) essay length text message earlier today from an unknown number depicting me as mentally unstable (how ironic) and trying to (unsuccessfully) disprove what was written up in the blog post. Not engaging took every bit of self restraint but it’s just not worth my brain power!
That was the most concise heads up I’ve ever read about this type of predator.
Thank you. I’ve done a lot of thinking on it since a girl I worked with asked what advice I would give after living through this. I also found the book Predators by Anna Salter very helpful. She talked about how “nice” many of them seemed. It was validating and helped me make sense of a lot of it.
Thanks for the book rec – it’s on my list now!
KP,
I just want to say how much I appreciate your comments and sharing your story of escaping from and recovering from your ex’s abuse. Glad to read that the consequences caravan flattened him.
Thanks to Velvet Hammer for recommending Predators by Anna Salter.
You’ve polished the explanation into a gem which is going to help a lot of people, especially those in the throes of chaos who need all the bullet points in one cohesive gulp.
I empathize with the dissonance. I just found out my FW met schmoopie from a sugar daddy website. He was 48 and she turned 21 a few weeks prior, not even 4 years older than our daughter. There were others. I learned how the site is coded on credit card statements and one of them facebook messaged me and simply stated she was an escort and was 22 at the time he paid her $300 to meet and that he was looking for a “sugar baby” and she even told me from which website. She also said “you deserve better” so he must not have left a very good impression!
I can’t believe after learning this and fearing how his and schmoppie’s ethics and lack of morality will affect my 9 year old the 40% of the time they have her, and therefor using an attorney, has caused his family to turn on me. They were my family for over 20 years. I then start to question if I am too rigid and old fashioned. He had told me he was more “evolved” and “believed in a lifestyle I did not agree with”. WTF??? What kind of person agrees with that? Who agrees with living a double life and leaving your wife and kids in the dark for years? I hope EMDR helps me shake the dissonance because with his family now seemingly in support of his “evolved” life and angry at me for getting an attorney, I have doubted myself more than ever. I have to use friends to bring me back to earth when I share my story and see their faces twist in disgust.
Hi CC! Jesus H Christ that’s quite the shit show, I’m sorry you’ve been dished this to deal with, the injustice is infuriating isn’t it! I definitely recommend EMDR for trauma therapy, I’m down to once/month now but started off with once/week, once every 2 weeks etc for a good few months. It hasn’t been life changing/altering, it’s not a miracle cure unfortunately but I definitely think it helped speed the healing!
I hope your kiddos are doing as well as they can with all this as well, I don’t have any (yet) but I can only imagine how much more difficult it must be to also worry about their well-being as well as yours!
You hired a lawyer?! GASP! How could you be so mean, so judgy?!
Hahahaha how dare she?!