Stupid Things People Say When You’ve Been Cheated On
The Friday Challenge is to share the stupid things people say when you’ve been cheated on. The OP’s friend told her at least the Other Woman wasn’t hot.
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Dear Chump Lady,
Here’s an idea for a post for you:
All the small indignities and insults a chump has to ignore from their well-meaning sympathizers.
For instance, a number of male friends have said to me, “If he left you for a hot younger woman, I would get it, but for him to not even pay for his kids or come to see them…!”
Really? Really?! If he had walked out on me for a “hot younger woman” BUT was nice to his kids, he’d gave your sympathy?!
They seem oblivious to the insensitivity of voicing this to me. And I, because I need all the friends I can get, (because, smear campaign) let it go. Blink and smile.
Not a shit sandwich, but a shit canapé.
Chumpty Dumpty
***
Dear Chumpty Dumpty,
Vulnerability makes people clueless. Instead of sitting with you in your pain, or doing something useful, like showing up with a casserole, they’ll say something dimwitted. I guess they intend to provide comfort, but I think they’re often comforting themselves.
“Thank God I’m hot!” they imagine. Or “I still have sex with my partner! I’m safe!” Or perhaps they feel they have provided some needed wisdom. Maybe they imagine they did you a favor pointing out that the Other Woman isn’t hot.
Thanks, I feel SO much better being left for a gorgon.
There’s absolutely no way to respond to this crap except with gobsmacked incredulity.
I once had a coworker — who is now forever immortalized in my book — tell me that she was so glad the worst drama she ever had in her life was when her husband bought a TransAm.
(Later, the local gossip told me her husband was closetedly gay.)
So, CN, what are the stupid things people say to you when you’ve been cheated on? Got any doozies to report?
TGIF!
I ran into my former SIL (after several years of no contact) who told me she had recently forgiven her ex and his wifetress.
That infidelity had occurred over thirty years ago when she was young enough to snag her current husband – a married neighbor with young children.
Why she thought that I, cheated on by her brother at the end of our thirty year marriage, would benefit from her insight is baffling.
She just had to let you know that she is superior because she has Forgiven. That’s a moment the phrase “bless your heart” was invented for.
She was just making it all about her. Selfish & a cheater. Hope you’re suddenly busy next time you see her or cross the street lol
Shortly after D-Day I was asked “So what does Ex-Mrs LFTT’s AP have that you don’t?”
I was stunned that someone that I thought was a friend could be so crass; they are no longer my friend.
My response, by the way, was “Low standards and a deficient moral compass,” which I think pretty much summed the situation up.
LFTT
That’s some level 10 victim blaming right there. Great response!
That is about the shittiest thing anyone could say. I am so sorry someone you knew had the audacity to say that. At least you now know their character.
QofC,
Something that I learned in all of this was that some people who I thought were friends turned out not to be, and that some people who I though were just acquaintances or colleagues turned out to be the most wonderful friends.
My friendship group now is much smaller, but much more select.
LFTT
Exactly for me. True colors came out. So many utter surprises. I have less friends but several brand new ones too. Some 30 year relationships are over as well as a therapist I had for 32 years who’s advice all supported the cheater. She had seen him before I had and thought he could not cheat or be a compulsive with his underground life. So steered me to change myself…wow
CL warns about “rubberneckers”, but I didn’t understand what that meant when I got here, so — PSA for the fresh recruits: there may be a second tier of people who stay with you after the first big wave of friends/relatives burn out emotionally and drop out of your life. Unfortunately, in my experience, some of those are staying with you out of morbid fascination and a prurient enjoyment of your pain and extreme conditions. Watch out! I had a person like that — after a year or so, I just broke down and called her once, at the end of my rope, and she told me “I’m glad to hear you finally crying”. I thought it was a strange comment and didn’t know what to make of it. Well, months later I finally grasped that she just wanted the interesting experience of intimately witnessing a person in dire circumstances fall apart… the same sadistic impulse my ex has… it was a shock like touching a live wire to suddenly see that.
Wow!! Well, I am strong enough now to take on folks that are rubber neckers, people who enjoy the pain of others. I was too in shock at first but now I can dismiss them from my life also. I’m so thankful to be past the first year…and I’ll get rid of more if needed.
Yup got the same response from a former “friend”. Coincidentally saw that person in a store recently, I was polite and quickly made an excuse to leave when I foresaw an invitation coming “let’s get together”. I could see their disappointment as I walked away when I didn’t wait for that to happen. Nah. You made me doubt myself, supposed friend, comparing me to the OW. That is not the correct response from people who supposedly care about you.
Wow. This resonated w/me, big time. When the FW XW exit-affaired me, I thought I must be less appealing to be with than dog turds. My self-esteem took a major blow (and it was pretty low at that point to begin with, since I was in the middle of a full blown depression).
When I found a counselor/psychologist that was willing to take me on quickly after she formally walked out, I expressed my fearful question to him, asking would I have to be friends with her AP now (unsaid was because, what other choice did I have, as he seemed clearly the better man, having won her luv 🤢🤮)?
He seemed shocked by my question. He quickly said something like, let’s slow things down a bit. Then got me off that train of thought. I think that was when he fully realized just how low I was feeling.
It took me at least six months from then to really only start the journey towards reclaiming some of my feeling of self-worth. I absolutely tremendously doubted myself. And I didn’t need really much help from anybody else to get there. Her exit-affairing me w/no real shot at reconciliation was devastating enough.
I was still emotionally and mentally light-years away from understanding that this was ultimately a good thing for me. That her revealing her scummy character was a win for me, because it showed her true colors, making it clear how awful a partner, spouse, lover and person she was.
It just took me a LONG time to get there. It took time, lots of introspection, and of course, all the similar tales and wisdom from CN and CL. Thank the Great Spirit (I’m pretty much agnostic, but I like this indigenous American idea 😁). I’m really happy the Universe, Great Spirit, God or whatever pointed me into the land of CN.
Happy Friday the Thirteenth everyone (especially Mr. CL!)!
LitR,
I absolutely get your point about being caused to doubt yourself. For a moment I was left thinking that people felt that I deserved what happened to me because I was in some way “less than” the AP.
LFTT
That’s so shitty. Ugh. I’m sorry. What a capital C.
I had a couple people ask me if it made me feel lesser or unattractive because he left me for a younger woman, and when I said, “Well no, because I”ve seen her.” they got mad at me! Like, I’m sorry, did you just ask that in an attempt to gloat over my pain? Why are you angry that I’m not threatened by a dumpy young woman who looks my age, even if she is young enough to be my child? Why would i need to feel threatened or inferior to anyone to please them? The good part about things like this is at least they showed us who they really were so we could drop them.
Ugh, what a demented monster.
I think of the kind of negging as the misogynist trifecta– attacking women based on appearance/purity/parenting. It’s always the same shit. Even being constantly praised on the basis of attractiveness/non-sluttiness/good-mothering kind of reinforces it. Since conventional concepts of attractiveness tend to lean towards “youthfulness” in women especially, ageistic cracks or comparisons are part of the trifecta.
Because my parents were feminist and I was raised to see through this kind of gendered objectification, as a kid I scoffed at the idea that it would ever bother or corrupt me to baited in this way. Hah, not me! Unfortunately what I discovered is that, when the baiting comes in tow with actual violence or threats of violence (as it so frequently does), it gets under your skin and acts like “operant conditioning” or Pavlovian dog training. Like dogs learning to drool at the sound of a bell in expectation of food, women start to go into traumatic flooding when hearing anything smacking of the misogynist trifecta in expectation of violence or simply the threat of not being socially protected from violence. Because you’re not pure/pretty enough to bother saving.
So as a kid I noticed that, after my first “predatory” experience with a rando creep, I became a lot more sensitive to typical sexist school yard bullying. It wasn’t increasing vanity that was making me more vulnerable to it, it was increasing fear. I eventually realized that this was a lizard brain reaction and probably impossible to completely undo. But it does help a bit to recognize that sensitivity to it is created by this operant conditioning association and that the people who lob these types of attacks are, on a certain monkey level, taunting you with the specter of rape or dismemberment.
That is so tacky and crass. I would already feel “ganged up on” to speak to a couple, but for them to just ask snarky invasive questions is gross
Oh, I have so many…
I was shocked to see that some of his degenerate partners weighed hundreds of pounds more than me. I brought this up to my sister, who was offended on their behalf, and she asked why that matters. Well, it matters because I was always too fat, our entire marriage. When I was in fantastic shape, he had problems with my skin having marks from having our child. If I was 10 pounds overweight, then he just didn’t find me attractive and he couldn’t help that, I couldn’t be mad at him for not being attracted to someone who is overweight. I told her all this and that clearly my weight had never been the issue he made it out to be if he was having sex with extremely obese people.
She said, “Well, some people carry their weight better than others.”
So, I’m so disgusting that I need to be in perfect physical condition to be tolerable, even an extra five pounds makes me disgusting and unfuckable, but other women are still beautiful and desirable at 400 pounds. That was a great thing to process during the lowest moments of my life. It’s so weird to me how so many people I knew who strongly believed in bodily autonomy and body positive did not think those things should apply to me. I don’t know if it was because of things he made up about me for years and years but they had all completely dehumanized me, even my own sister.
I also got “Just because he lies to you, that doesn’t mean he lies to me!” from a woman I stupidly thought was a friend. She also tried to convince me to move thousands of miles away to a place where I didn’t know anyone during that conversation. Before this conversation I had confided to her that I was thinking of suicide often. She said nothing. I gave her a pass because I wouldn’t know what to say either. During this conversation she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my God, what if he kills himself?!” and looked all stricken. Then she said, “Oh, I know you don’t care about that but you have to understand that I care, he’s my friend!” I will never be convinced that she wasn’t fucking him. And I actually would care if he killed himself because I have a child with him and that would hurt my son. She literally thought her “friendship” with him was more important than any of that. Gross.
A woman I met while trying to make new friends said, “And he didn’t invite you to join him?” when I told her about the nonhuman sexual toilet person (that is how the person identified on their profile) he was seeing and the adult baby. As if that was the issue. Barf. I guess it’s my fault because I wasn’t open to having sex with toilets and children. How terrible for me to neglect his needs.
As for him having sex with men and sexual toilets and people who obviously had incredibly poor hygiene and health based on the pictures they shared on the internet, and me being afraid of HIV and hepatitis C, I was told, again by my sister, “You have no right to have a problem with that as long as he’s using condoms.” When I fought that and said “Look, I didn’t sign up for that and I’m not ok with the risk of promiscuous anal sex with strangers. That’s really high risk and I’m not willing to take that on.” I got, “IT’S NOT YOUR BODY!”
Except, it is. This body is my body and I don’t want to have sex with someone who is doing all these high risk things, even if they are using condoms. I never did any of this shit, even in my wild youth because I found it gross, first of all, and also because of the disease risk. I kept trying to explain, “I actually am allowed to have boundaries and end a relationship if I’m not ok with what he’s doing sexually.”
Nope. I’m not allowed. What am I,some sort of bigot? Because I wasn’t a human being to these people, not even to my own sister. That one still really hurts when I think about it. Life is good now but it’s mind blowing to me looking back and realizing what I was surrounded by for so long while I was so sick. I’m just grateful I survived,
I’m just so sorry you had to deal with that. It’s horrible when family isn’t safe.
KatiePig,
I am NOT making any excuses for his behavior. But I might have an *explanation* for one of the things you mentioned. If I recall your story correctly from other posts, your FW very much used you for image management, right? If I have the right situation in mind, it would make sense that he was fine with having sex with women of all sizes but was super concerned that YOU stay a specific weight because he used you to look like the upstanding family man with the perfect family and the perfect wife. Women of all sizes are and many men are attracted to lots of different sizes. But fat shaming is still a thing in our world and if he was using you for image management, then he would want you to be a size that is most “universally accepted”.
None of this makes him any less terrible. But it could possibly explain why you were begrudged an added 5-10 lbs while he was cheating with people that weighed 3x your weight. It was never about his attraction, but about how you might reflect less stunningly on HIM.
What is a “sexual toilet”? Is this fetish/kink related? I’ve never heard of this.
I can’t believe your sister… that’s terrible. I’m sorry.
I don’t know the details and don’t want to. But this person uses “it” pronouns and calls themselves a non human sexual toilet on their BDSM dating site profile. The bright side is I don’t have to do anything for my sister anymore. That’s been such a relief.
You were completely surrounded by venomous ghouls.
I’ve been through various misfortunes in the past where I learned how masks drop when you’re bleeding. Some people just can’t stop themselves from twisting any knife in reach or kicking people when they’re down. You can even see the “glint” some people get in their eyes right before they lash out with some passive aggressive bit of sadism, usually framed as something “helpful.”
Each time this would happen, I’d clean house a bit more. It was very traumatic at first but, over time, I learned there are upsides to social exorcism and that the Taoist expression is basically pretty true: “If you want the universe to fill your rice bowl, clean it out.” For every covert psycho I unmasked and ejected, at least two solid souls would eventually appear to replace them.
But I stop short of “thanking” misfortune or thanking ghouls for showing who they really are. Even when you know from experience how it usually works out, it’s still gutting and awful to force people to risk social isolation while in the heat of real crisis or danger when they can scarcely afford to lose allies. In the end I think I hate “sadism scavengers” even more than I do direct predators.
You are reminding me why I shouldn’t be sad that I dont have a sister. Everything she said was horrible and you have every right to decide on your comfort with risk based on being told the truth.
Before I knew that Cheater had many partners (I thought there was one who likely had a small pool of former partners {based on her culture/upbringing}) I was reacting to the Tiger Woods drama and said “He committed biohazards rape…his wife was not given enough information to make an informed decision so she couldn’t consent” and he made such a strange face. Foolish me did not connect the dots for a very long time.
I used to say the same thing in cases like that! I would call it rape because if she had any idea what he was doing, there’s no way she’d let him have sex with her. I remember saying things like that to my ex, and he would completely agree. He was such a psycho.
“Biohazards rape” – wow that phrase is perfect! Did he make that term up or is that a thing people say?
please let me correct the typo:
biohazardardous rape
unfortunately, I believe I was a victim of this but was very fortunate to (seemingly) not have a negative health outcome
I made that up (Im a nurse and ethicist, so I ought to be able to describe this well, I suppose). I hope he was very uncomfortable when I said it.
On the one hand I’m laughing at the perfect turn of phrase and, on the other, I’m gagging because, for at least the next decade, I have to get double HPV cancer screening because FW rawdogged the Tinder hookup queen.
Pretty much the same as Chumpty Dumpty,:
Male friend said “I understand if he wants to leave you but I don’t get how he can abandon his kids,” (My XH rarely sees kids and won’t pay his child support – 7 years now).
On my actual DD and I was in massive shock and pain (XH ran off with OW – who knew he was married with 3 kids – later found out there were more women before her) one of my best friends said “You need to learn from this experience”.
I’ve never forgotton that she implied I deserved what he did to me. But, it kinda makes sense she cheated on her husband about 15 years earlier to “teach him to pay more attention to her”
Another was a mum at kids school
“Do your kids see their dad?” (No, I’m not stopping him – he’s not bothering to) “Oh, that’s no good, who’s going to be their male role model?”
And the worst: My Aunty said (in front of my 9 uear old son) Your boys won’t grow up properly without a male role model.
Unbelievable. All of these things. I often say my life has gotten smaller and better since I got sane. So many people are not worth any of my time. It’s better that way.
I’d say, “Oh they have a role model. He’s a good example of a bad example.”
You know, I think I did say something like that but she just thought I was being bitter 🙄!
It’s like people expect you to have control over your x’s choices – like sure, I’ll just have a talk to him and he’ll do whatever I say.
Like you always say Tracey, it’s much more palatable for them to believe you caused the cheating and control their actions because then they don’t have to see how vulnerable we all really are.
This!
So many but
He is hurting too. (while playing house with AP, poor sad sausage)
and
You were talking of divorce before he cheated. (NEVER HAPPENED)
Come up alot and drive me nuts.
I got that one- well, you left!
Er… I went to my home country TEMPORARILY to work and earn some money- I didn’t leave my marriage!
Some just hear what they want to hear and like it when you’re vulnerable with them so they can dispense their pearls of wisdom…..🙄
People🙄😥
As I tearfully lamented being compared to the affair (and found lacking) by my husband, I was told by a “friend” that I had married beneath myself physically. So, I guess I shouldn’t have been so emotionally devastated because the man I loved and had devoted my life to wasn’t a physical match to what I had to offer.
Huh?!
My ex obscured the details, but we separated twice in the same year, and he took off to another state for #2. I knew that part of his motivations were to live the single life, but most people looked to me for the reasons. There was a long history of addiction and mental health issues with a suicide attempt between the two separations.
I can’t count how many times his religious family and church people told me that it happened because I didn’t give him good dinners and enough sex. Ironically, I had tried that, believe me. It wasn’t enough.
I didn’t engage on that issue.
I got “Well were you sure it was actually a relationship? Or were you sure there was an agreement of exclusivity? People have misunderstandings all the time.”
Well we had been together for over two years and he lived with me in my parent’s house so I’m very sure I wasn’t misunderstanding anything about the status of our relationship.
And
“Well men need sex. They need it in a variety of ways. It’s natural to them. So he’d be cheating on himself if he didn’t cheat on you.”
That one was probably the biggest doozy I’ve ever heard.
I forgot to add, “Mindfuck, anyone? They’re fresh, and oh so delicious to us shitheads when one of you takes a bite of one when your self-esteem is low. Scrumptious!”
Holy fuck, Batman! Well, now everything is so much clearer to me. As a male, I was cheating myself all those years I didn’t act on my attractions to other women!
The FW XW must have sensed this, and realized only a loser male would cheat themselves of extra sex (spicy sex, too!), so maybe she also realized that she was cheating herself by NOT fooling around w/long married geriatric rich men who coincidentally are also in the power position of being her boss (but who still fucked around w/women other than his long-suffering wife, therefore NOT a loser!).
I am definitely not a vanilla sex guy. But I’m firmly heterosexual and only committed to one female partner at a time, which out of two partners in my lifetime, was pretty much the FW XW (the other only lasted a few months in college, and was fairly shallow. And no sex). Yup, I only wanted to have sex, vanilla or non-vanilla, w/my FW XW.
Obviously, I’m not an alpha male! Do any of the idiots that talk about alphas realize that appellation was incorrectly applied? That they don’t actually exist in humans or wolves, and the guys or women people think are alphas are really just arrogant, insensitive assholes?
Anyway, the FW XW really had no choice when she realized her boss was available for poaching. She had to move quickly, to stop from cheating herself, and to get away from me, the loser male.
My my my, I should just count my lucky stars they didn’t try to kill me to cement their place more firmly in the family. Really, I’m so lucky!🤮🤢
Backwards things say I, shit oh!🤣
Sorry you were ever told that bullshit, KattheBat!
Cheating on himself. Good grief. What a spectacularly stupid person.
Hi guys, it’s me, the letter writer (: The reason I thought of that idea for CL was because I recently saw videos of the very smart, very capable Angelina Jolie doing press and it seemed to me that she was being exaggeratedly nice and humble and modest. I recognized that energy. It seemed to me that she was making herself small because the abuse allegations around her divorce made her (completely irrationally and unfairly, grant you,) suspect in the eyes of the public and it was a conscious attempt to counter that and gain sympathy and credibility by conforming to cultural expectations for wronged women.
That’s how smear campaigns keep a person on their back foot. You’re constantly trying to show people you’re not a bad person, you’re not a liar, because you don’t know what they’ve heard and they probably *are* suspicious of you. You can’t really win — if you show spirit and acknowledge and deny the smears, you just end up in a he said/she said situation, but if you bite your tongue and act demure, the smearer has forced you to dim your own light.
Oh, poor Angelina Jolie! You do know she’s a serial mate poacher? She married Billy Bob while he was engaged to and living with Laura Dern, and then started up with Brad while he was still married to Jennifer Aniston. I have absolutely *no* sympathy for Angelina.
Yes, she was a serial poacher. She was also reportedly a serious drug addict at one point. I don’t know if parenting might have triggered some actual reflection and course correction but if she can bring attention to issues related to post-separation abuse and weaponization of child custody, it might take half a mark off her track record. Personally I don’t think abuse is ever justifiable so, by the same token prisons aren’t supposed to hire sadists as death row guards for convicted killers, I don’t think Pitt was justified in battering anyone, even an OWife.
For the record, I worked in the media industry, periodically crossed paths with some of the players in these sagas and heard buzz that didn’t always make the news.The main takeaway is that no one had clean hands and it seemed like a daisy chain of sharks preying on other sharks or poachers/abuse enablers getting hoisted on their own petards.
Some might start making “feminist” noises as their careers start to wane but I haven’t seen any address the specifics of how they facilitated harm against other women along the way. At the very least all the women involved seemed to suffer from the hubris that “he’d never do it to special little me”… until the douche in question did it to them too. I don’t know if it relates that each of the women in these dramas reportedly grew up with abusive alcoholic fathers and mothers who couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them. What a sad, spooky clusterfuck.
“it seemed like a daisy chain of sharks preying on other sharks or poachers/abuse enablers getting hoisted on their own petards.” That’s precisely why I didn’t get buzz about Tom Sandoval. I haven’t watched the series, but when I read that Ariana had been to OW to his previous relationship … I just didn’t get people’s reaction.
Yep, it doesn’t make any alleged abuse by Brad ok, but she participated in the abuse of another woman when she started her affair with Brad while he was married to Jennifer Aniston.
I don’t know if Aniston herself was a poacher but she was alleged to be a flying monkey for a poacher pal. I knew the chump/dv victim pretty well– honest to a fault (actually too self-deprecating) and definitely not a poacher so the only one with truly clean hands in that clusterfuck.
Laura Dern too.
Dern started dating Thornton when he was still married to his fourth wife.
Typo! That’s supposed to read “I don’t get why HE got any of his wives”, of course!
Which confirms what you said before… I don’t get why you got any of his wives… women must be desperate.
Reminds me of Imran Khan. I know that he impregnated Sita White and then left her for Kristiane Backer. While engaged to Kristiane Backer, he married Jemima Goldsmith (who later was the partner of Hugh Grant and then Russell Brand). Kristiane found out when a paparazzi hounded her and asked her how she felt! Kristiane lost her entire career for Imran and never found love. She did marry briefly later, but that man was violent and she divorced quickly. I have no idea if Imran was cheating on another woman with Sita White, but I’d almost be surprised if the answer were “no”. Sita died from a drug overdose. In her will, she asked that Jemima be guardian of her daughter with Imran, Tyrian Jade. Imran (who at this point was divorcing Jemima) did not want that and undermined it. In her will, Sita had expressly written that her sister Carolina should absolutely under no circumstances become Tyrian Jade’s guardian – yet Imran did not want his exwife Jemima to raise his daughter and in the end the judge gave guardianship to Carolina (which I still find outrageous).
I don’t get what any of these people see in each other. Stepping stones to money and fame I guess. Let them have each other.
WHOA! I just read up on that – next level! So Laura Dern was engaged to Billy Bob Thornton, left for a shoot and while on that shoot read Billy Bob Thornton’s, so her fiancé’s wedding announcement to Angelia Jolie, in the press! He refused to ever speak to her again (not even for breaking up of course). That’s truly… something.
Without getting into too many details, I have a weird two-degrees-of-separation with Aniston. From what I understand, her bff was a serial mate poacher and Aniston played beard to cover up for an extensive affair. Because the chump in that situation (who, aside from being cheated on, was also violently battered) testified on my behalf under oath in criminal court to bust a workplace harasser (Aniston’s friend’s creepy old affair partner), I tend to think the story might have some truth to it.
Again, even shitty people don’t deserve to be abused. But, from what I understand, Aniston getting cheated on was maybe more “biblical irony” than biblical tragedy.
I get why you say that, but for the life of me, I can’t help but see many of these women not as jezebel poachers, but as the next gullible objects and targets in a long line, and future discards. (Note I said “many”! Not all! Don’t come for me!)
Both can be true. They can be abusers by proxy as well as gullible fools who ignore the red flags that say the mate they are poaching is a predator.
I take a kind of middle ground on this because it’s complicated. On the one hand, as a feminist, I refuse to take the position that women are so weak and floppy that they a) can’t knowingly do harm; and b) don’t have responsibility for the harm they do.
So, yes, there are creepy women out there. Also since the average age when serial killers begin their killing career is about 20, I’m also not as prone to give the “excuse of youth” as some. I knew right from wrong long before age 20 and I’m really not that special. It’s already a low bar so no need to lower it more for women, particularly in terms of betraying each other moreover betraying children.
But, at same time. I recognize there’s always some irony involved when members of a disadvantaged class prey on other members of the same class. I think relative level of responsibility varies according to how direct or indirect the coercion is, reminiscent of what Malcolm X said about some members of the Black community acting like “house slaves” in selling out others. Or what historian and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi said about the “moral gray zone” of ghetto and death camp prisoners selling out other prisoners.
Both Levi and fellow Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt were widely attacked for chronicling certain internal betrayals. Both refused to lie and whitewash history (Arendt even stood up to threats from the Mossad after she published Eichmann in Jerusalem in the New Yorker. The biopic “Arendt” covers this and is worth watching). But Levi was especially eloquent and careful in clarifying that, even if he refused to be silent about internal betrayals and even as he condemned the more gratuitous acts of betrayal (in which individuals were not compelled directly at gunpoint but out of ego or selfishness), he was still not equivocating internal betrayals to the conduct of Nazis captors.
When it comes to moral fine lines like this, I usually opt to take my guidance from the most experienced people with proven track records of studying and standing up to epic evil like Malcolm X, Arendt and Levi. They seem to know a thing or two.
I don’t quite get your “serial killer” analogy – you used that one before in “comment section conversation” with me, but then I couldn’t find the comment anymore and so couldn’t replay. I mean, almost all serial killers are male – and you are using that as an analogy why young women should know better. Aileen Wuornos is an exception, but I try not to think about her and how horrific her life was… or I’ll cry. I don’t think she’s comparable at all with a Jeffrey Dahmer e.g.
But apart from that: I have no idea how you feel about yourself and your journey, but I have learned an insane absurd amount about human nature and also some differences between men and women and also about men in power that I did not even have any inkling of an idea about when younger. Plus: while an affair with any student is bad, I would view professors and teachers worse who have affairs with 18 year old students rather than same age 45 year old students. And yet there is a power differential for both. I also essentially disagree with Gregg Wallace – who implied that there is no difference in likelihood of repercussions in speaking out against sexual harassment for young women just starting out in life and career and what he termed “middle class middle aged women”.
Plus there is so much gaslighting going on – all the societal grooming going on towards women on why they should not say no to a man, especially an older one with power and money. Including the odd “girls mature so much faster than boys”, which is only ever used to groom them into relationships with older men rather than to explain why more girls need to get into the boardroom straight out of college…
I think it is easier to give into pressure by men when young. I unfortunately still chumped now while not in my teens, 20s etc anymore, but the amount of “you need to do this sexual thing that you don’t want to otherwise you don’t love me” definitely worked better in my 20s. (To be clear: I have never knowingly been the OW. Once unknowingly – oddly she knew about me, yet wanted him, who is a serial cheater and psychopath, back. I still don’t understand why – I don’t have much value as a partner due to my disability, but she does. I guess trauma bonding etc but the level of stuff that she put up with and continues to do so is still hard to believe let alone understand for me. He is more of a cult leader though. I don’t mean that he’s religious, it’s more that I have seen him manipulate people into the most … horrible and effective ways possible. He’s extremely skilled at what he does.)
I think it is easier and more common to be naive in some ways when young – like naively believing that he may cheat on one woman, but not on all etc.
I totally agree that women more easily fall prey to predators when young. Less life experience, less grasp of red flags, less general social and economic power– it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. But that’s totally different than someone getting enlisted as a proxy abuser of another person. Even the most naive individual might balk at that prospect if they had any empathy.
I think she has been rightly suspect in the eyes of the public because she was an AP. I don’t care what kind of gloss she tried to put on her image now. Her marriage to a FW fell apart and now she is working image management. Nah, she gets no sympathy from me.
I think the most hurtful one was from my mother. She said, “At least you can still see your husband, while I can’t because he died!” Keep in mind, my cheating ex husband left me for his coworker while MY FATHER was dying in a hospital. My mother was saying I was better off with a cheater because “I could still see him” and she was worse off because my father died. She’s been on an info diet because of this and many other hurtful things she’s said during my separation/divorce.
My mother told me, “You made your bed; now you have to lie in it.”
My father said, “You have to get over it; it’s no big deal. Everyone cheats. Men ave NEEDS, you know.”
Later, when his mistress dumped him because he had cancer and she was afraid she’d “catch it,” my father drove to hours to my house to cry on my shoulder about how devastated he was that his mistress left him and my mother was being “cold and unforgiving.” I told him to grow up and get over it; he deserved what he got.
Hello fellow member of the Shitty Parent Response club! Were you also pushed by one of them to get back with your cheater or to keep the cheating x’s image good? My mother still does both of those!
When my second husband-to-be swung a canoe paddle at me in full view of my parents, my father talked me out of canceling the wedding. “He’s Latin,” he said. “He’ll get mad, but he’ll get over it right away and it will be as if it never happened.” He also told me not to let him get away because, “You’ll never find anyone better.”
A few years later, when I left him I flew across the country to tell my parents in person. I explained that he had strangled me into unconsciousness and then dumped my presumed-dead body on the highway along with my dog. My father shook his head and said, “Damn! You used to be able to beat your wife as long as you didn’t use anything bigger around than your thumb.”
I should have gotten up and walked out of their house, and often wish I had done so even though I would have needed to walk or hitch-hike 9 miles to the nearest town so I could get a bus to the city . . . My mother’s response to my father’s statement was, “He’s just joking.” Like that made it OK.
It was partially my fault for listening to my parents. Why did I think they had my best interests at heart when then never had before?
Oh my God. You are free now if you are here. God Bless. Parental betrayal is something super dark.
Thank you. I’ve been free of that man since 1988. Free of worrying about my parents’ opinions, too.
Damn, the “Latin excuse” for domestic violence is quickly killed by spending any time in Latin countries and discovering how massive the protests against domestic violence and violence against women have been compared to the rather tepid, infrequent and commercialized marches in the US. It’s also interesting to see how more men merrily tend to join the protests in Latin countries compared to the US.
On top of this, I’ve also noticed how it’s more common to see men shamelessly pushing strollers and walking around carrying babies in baby harnesses in Latin America.
The thing about third world countries is that humanitarian legal enforcement– including enforcement against violence against women– tends not to be that great in general so this can create a bit of a skewed impression that these cultures are particularly backward in regard to sexism. That’s not necessarily so.
This is very much not my experience, but I’m so glad it is going well for you there.
I think I was making a muddy argument, sorry. Believe me, I don’t mean there isn’t considerable sexism, especially in provincial zones. It also depends on country. My main point was that the cultural excuse is bs because it’s based on the idea that US society is a post-feminist paradise of equality.
I first started paying attention to this because the exceptionalist myth is often used as war-footing– pretending that our invasions of third world, oil-rich countries are really just to save women from the veil (by helpfully burning them off their bodies with white phosphorous attacks) and forced marriage (by droning their inlaws and kids to smithereens). Meanwhile the domestic homicide rate in the US is about the same as failed states like Iraq.
There are actually fewer Latin countries with worse DV murder rates than the US than there are Latin countries with better rates, sometimes by half or less.
Anyway, it’s relative.
Whoa, they really suck!
Yes they did. They’re both gone now, and I’m still angry at myself for not walking out, hitchhiking to town and taking a bus to the city airport.
I’m single now, with no plans to date or marry again. Christmas is so much nicer without my parents or an angry man around!
A friend of mine who lost her husband to cancer told me the opposite. She said she was better off bc she could visit her husband’s grave with her memories in tact and never worried where he was. This was better and easier than what I was going through. This meant so much to me bc I knew how much she missed her husband and was grieving hard even 5 years after he died. This was a profound statement as to the grief I was experiencing.
That is a wise and good friend.
That is a crappy thing to say to you. I found my husband’s cheating to be more painful than his death but I caution Chumps to not say this to widow/ers because they wont understand and it leaves that chump looking like an asshole.
a friend of my mothers first husband died horrifically and she thought it was the worst thing until her son got divorced from a cheater and she said to me, divorce is worse! Stunned to discover it, but without a doubt. That was good to hear from someone who experienced both.
I think it depends on the empathy level of the widow/widower. The issue with my situation is that my mother was the one who would keep bringing up the comparisons by herself, made the situation all about her, and tried to make me look like an asshole because my husband left while my dad died. Since this is a pattern she’s always had (me being her scapegoat, being competitive/saying she does things better than me, etc) I’ve already learned to not respond and I don’t tell her much of what goes on in coparenting or my divorce.
She’s also tried pushing me to reconnect her with my ex so she can do her own twisted version of the pick me dance where she “saves him” or makes him feel better by doing something for her. I’ve been divorced for over a year and a couple months ago she started saying how much she missed a particular food my ex made. She then tried to get me to ask him to make that particular food for her again because she thought “it would make him feel better.” I noped out of that stupid idea very quickly. I like where my coparenting boundaries are thank you very much.
I’m so sorry about this parental betrayal. You are doing great. Just stay here for the wisdom.
“I guess they intend to provide comfort, but I think they’re often comforting themselves.”
I think the stupidest was from my mother in law. She said and I quote “I think fw just wanted his freedom, you guys got married young”. And yes I think she said it to comfort herself, no one wants to be the mother of a lying con artist. Especially given she knew me really well, she knew I treated him well. I just stood there and stared at her and then walked inside my house.
Our relationship started to unravel after that. Not just because of that, but it sure hastens the fall.
Oh and ironically, of the two of us I am the only one who got her freedom, he was stuck with the town whore. They managed to parlay their exciting secret life into a down hill slide into massive bankruptcy and fall out with our son.
This reminds me that when I first saw my MIL after d-day, she told me that men do this all the time and that I should forgive her son and take him back. She had such a confused look on her face when I explained that he WANTED to leave me to be with the AP. She couldn’t process it.
One week later, she happily and quite literally embraced the AP. I’d known that woman for more than 35 years. Easy come, easy go, I guess. Like mother like son.
Later, when she realized that her son was upset that I was NC (as were our adult kids), she again tried to convince me to forgive by sending me the odd homily and various bible verses. 🤦🏻♀️ I never responded, although I was tempted to send her a copy of the Ten Commandments (the relevant ones).
By the way, she’s also the same woman who sang a religious hymn to drown me out at a restaurant when I pointed out that cheating is a sign of low character. What a scene!
A so called friend commented: “The AP looks like a guy and maybe he’s into that!”
All of our 31 years together and he always leered after very feminine types, and I’m that type too.
What the actual fuck.
One woman said immediately “now it’s time for you to be friends”. 5 years prior, she also said a week after my father’s suicide, “now it’s time to heal”, which I had forgiven her for. The friends comment on healing? That was the last time I spoke to her. Later, I said to a woman who invited me to speak in her class, that I was lonely. She said, “get a dog”. I said, I have 2 dogs, my small little dogs. She said, “get a big dog, so you can hug it at night like a person. Everyone’s lonely”. Then she said, “I was divorced once. We were married for a year. I was 20.” She was married for 10 years and had a child while we had t his conversation on the way to the class…Anyway. I don’t think about those women much. I just try to be grateful for those who stuck by me and knew he was shit. I am not meh though. I love coming here and reading everything and hope to some day be meh. This time of year is hard for me. Thank you Tracy, for providing this community.
UBT: “Now it’s time to move on” = shut up already!
What is wrong with these people who are inconvenienced by YOUR pain?
Hurry up and feel better so I don’t have to deal with you !
I hope you apologised for being a human with real feelings instead of a cardboard person pretending to be permanently happy….
HAHA. Seriously. I made a typo – I forgave her for the time to heal about my dad, even thought – what?-it was time to cry. But not for “now you need to be friends.” Just nope. I was in literal shock from my Dday. Whatever. Good bye to them. No missing them!
Haha yeah- need to be friends my arse!
I hate it when people say that.
People with no standards expecting us to justify their crap judging of character.
I got several “I KNOW he loves you”- ummm no, people who love you don’t bring men into your house when you are at work and engage in dangerous kinky shit. Another “well, at least it wasn’t with another woman!”- oh yeah, the gender makes a huge difference. The fact that my husband of 20+ years prefers men, and has secretly been leading double lives, having unprotected sex with dozens of men definitely softens the blow. Hold my beer while I take another HIV test. People will say anything to minimize the horror because they cannot hold space in their own minds for the possibility that might happen to them. I learned to offer up a “sanitized” version to anyone who asked. “He wasn’t making good choices with his free time”.
His relatives gave me the “he loves you so much” during separation #2. That made the second time he took off in a year.
My head spun around with that — how is love going off to extravagantly live the single life while your wife has to do all the explanations, keep the house running, and deal with the grief/anger of your college kids and more? That is NOT love. That is ugly selfishness and manipulation.
RIGHT?? gross
Yes, I got “I KNOW he loves you” a lot too. Hated hearing that.
This: “People will say anything to minimize the horror because they cannot hold space in their own minds for the possibility that might happen to them” and this: “’He wasn’t making good choices with his free time.’” All of it, really, but those two comments especially, I will remind myself of and borrow! There’s also my favorite response to the unsanitized version: “It’s not your place to define his sexuality.” Really? How about we call it “not straight” and leave it at that.
Yes, that’s how I finally understood how certain groups of people reacted to my mess. They minimized because they couldn’t enter into what I was going through and preferred just to deny it for their own maladaptive reasons.
The place where I most experienced that was at church. After preaching there part-time for over twenty years, certain members just cannot see that my ex was anything other than what they saw from the pulpit. It’s been years now since he lived in this area, and some periodically still ask me how he’s doing, as if he just moved away for work or something. But I realize that it’s part of how people wear and encourage emotional masks there. I also hear a lot of spiritual bypassing in their discussions, no wonder.
I need to tie up some loose ends there, and then I will be leaving that group in 2025.
Yay for you! You will be freer!
While separated, and just a month before I initiated divorce, I was sharing about how little hope I saw for my marriage with my cousin’s wife, who asked “Was it really that bad?”
Now, I am actually glad that I seldom see her and her husband. Way to pile on the getting a woman to doubt her reality crap, gaslighter!
The AP was 25 yrs a friend and very integrated in my friend group. So a guy friend who know’s both of us well says to me that he just can’t understand how FW chose AP over me. He’s going on and on about how much better I am (which was partially bc he was sussing me out to see if I was interested in him), but then says that the only thing he can think of is that she gives the best BJs. Ummm…excuse me? I should have just walked away but instead said that was BS bc I give the best BJs. I’m still ashamed that I felt the need to say that. Well actually shouted that in his face. Add it to the list of indignities that DD brings.
” I should have just walked away but instead said that was BS bc I give the best BJs. I’m still ashamed that I felt the need to say that. ”
OMG. I’m sorry if you regret that, but that is such a good comeback. If it makes you feel any better, in the early days, I frequently had a revenge fantasy that involved one of his friends telling him “Gee, I can’t imagine how you gave up SortOfOverIt, she just gave me the most amazing blow job I’ve ever had in my life”. I didn’t want to ACTUALLY do anything with the friend. But FW was a jealous nightmare and if that ever happened, his head might actually pop.
BigCityChump, i kind of love that you shouted what you shouted in that guy’s face. i do. and i see nothing wrong with it. #noshame
ME TOO! NO SHAME!
A neighbour and her husband came to cheer me up in the early days. The AP was a 20 something year old Asian woman. I am 55 year old Caucasian. My friends husband pipes up in the conversation ‘young Asian women are very attractive though’. Exactly what I needed to help cheer me up 🤣.
I didn’t like the “you are pretty, you will find someone” because I was obsessed with keeping my family unit intact.
I found comments like “Well I dont know what that would feel like, my husband only loves me” as juvenile and selfish.
Oddly enough…one thing that rubbed salt in my woulds was the common (at the time, mid ’00s) “Promise Keepers” movement in the US…they sold license plate frames that said “blah blah, my husband loves me”. I thought “cant you just be happy with your blessing, do you have to rub it in my face?”. There was some gal at work with one of those and I ended up seeing it nearly everyday.
I never told my parents so spared myself all the horrible things they would have said. I did tell my brother (who I later learned had cheated) and him listening to how horrible it was for me likely made him squirm.
What caused me trouble is when people learned that he had been a bad husband (to whatever degree I opted to share with them) and they knew he died. There is a very human tendency to try to wrap it all up in a pretty bow akin to “Well he was bad and now he is dead, problem solved”. My lived experience was not that at all…I suffered through YEARS of abuse hopeful that he would come to his senses and be the kind spouse I thought he could be.
His dying caused me to have to forever give up on the long hoped-for change that people have in movies where they redeem themselves.
In the long run, I have made peace with it all but when I was truly a fresh widow deeply grieving (it was 2 years before I would learn the ugliness which I eventually learned about his cheating), people acting like it was a lovely turn of events felt to me like they were saying “Oh you lost your left leg and your 2 story house turned down…heck , you didnt need all those stairs since you couldn’t walk up them anyway”.
Neither widows nor chumps who are in deep pain should suffer the pointless Comparison Game of the Pain Olympics.
I’m sorry that you went through that. The double, ugly whammy.
Most people are just horrid about crisis. They say and do the wrong thing more often than not. I kinda always knew that, but it was illustrated twenty times over during the breakdown of my marriage and then my separation/divorce.
I basically had to start over and make mostly new friends after my ex left. I also ditched his family once I got my head together. For those people, that places me in something like the “toxic” category, but it’s really the opposite. They are so off base that I wasn’t going to overcome the mess unless I put some distance there.
I got “You know what your husband likes in the bedroom. You must not have been doing it.” That was from my mother.
I am so sorry.
“Well I’m glad to see you’re not trashing the other woman.”
It was a preemptive directive and– grrrr– head-pat not to do the thing I hadn’t yet done but frankly had every right to under the circumstances. Fortunately this friend changed his tune completely when I explained the circumstances: the $40K in dissipated marital assets and kids’ college funds the AP guzzled and gobbled over the course of 18 months. When he considered the financial abuse/receipt of stolen property angle and impact on kids, he was livid and shared an old-timey South American gallows humor saying about side pieces and collaborators in general:
No odies a la chancha sino a quien la engordó (Don’t hate the sow but the one who fattened it).
At least he armed me with the world’s best paralyzing taser of a comeback to his own patronizing bs. I’ve used it several times to “maliciously agree” with side dish defenders. The effect is very satisfying.
I want to offer a counter incident for the challenge. My late grandfather, who was a very kind and very traditional, Catholic man (in all of the positive ways), upon seeing me for the first time after the divorce was underway gave me a big hug and told me that he didn’t need to know the details but that he believed that it was something I needed to do. I miss him every day.
That’s very sweet, we all need more people like that in our lives. Mine came in passing, in the form of a much older lady who’d worked with both me and the X on my ultimately failed attempt to redecorate our home. I didn’t think she’s seen behind the “aw shucks I’m such a nice guy mask,” but when I ran into her a few years later and mentioned I no longer lived at the house she put her arm on my shoulder, smiled, and said, “You are a very brave girl.” Normally I’d wince at being called a girl but she said it with such respect and such obvious recognition of the situation that it really made an impact.
A FORMER friend looked up the slutwhore on FB and said, “OMG she’s drop dead gorgeous” which is not what you want to hear when you JUST found out that your hub of 30 yrs was cheating with a coworker. I thought I couldnt feel any worse, but guess what, I did. That insensitive comment was pretty much the last time we spoke. That wasn’t necessary. I didn’t need to hear that.
Yeah just NO. Good bye
For the most part everybody was pretty respectful. There has been a lot of stunned silence and staring into the middle distance when I tip that particular hat (I did get a “I’d probably run that bitch over for you” recently, which while not the desired outcome I definitely appreciated.)
About the most insensitive things I’ve gotten have been in that vector of “it was probably your fault/two sides to every story”. Things that we know are patently untrue-abuse is a deliberate, unprovoked, awful action.
I got one “she must not have been satisfied with you”(which when I iterated how much I really loved her they ran back, but pulling a knife out of a back does not repair the stab wound) and “it sounds like she checked out long before she cheated.” Which stung-the person that said that had also been cheated on pretty significantly.
I make no secret of the fact that I probably deserved to lose my fuckwit…before her version of correcting my mistakes was destroying my reality and most of my ability to trust. But seriously, don’t rub it in because you don’t have anything productive to say. I’ve learned a lot in the last 15 months about “you don’t need to say something just to show you have something to say about it.”
Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!
My soon to be ex had a hooker habit. Shortly after I caught him (lots of data, plenty of receipts) I filed for divorce. He acted like a complete sociopath before/during discovery-all the usuals..gaslighting, manipulation, laughable lies, creepy secretive behaviors-constant emotional/psychological abuse.
FW had completely cut off communication with friends and family during this time- so no one knew we were divorcing until they heard it from me. When I finally connected with one of his best friends I shared the erratic behaviors around FW’s habit (they were wild and frequent) and I explained that while no excuse whatsoever, I suspected a compulsion/addiction and/or other severe mental health issues.
Given I had receipts, his friend did not question whether or not he had been regularly visiting hookers after/during work. And he did not argue with me about erratic behaviors-FW even climbed out of an egress window in our basement to meet one late at night- you can’t really rationalize that.
However…unsure of whether or not this friend wanted to confront FW about a “problem” he said to me “maybe he doesn’t have a hooker addiction- maybe he has a ‘massage parlor girlfriend’ he’s meeting all over the city for ‘nooners’. Seriously, I have a friend that dates a stripper”.
Yep.
The logic there. Real brainiac this one.
The whole thing was so idiotic. And even if it wasn’t multiple hookers (although I am confident it was) a “massage parlor girlfriend” is STILL A HOOKER.
A therapist reported that a very high number of cheaters actually fall in “wuv” with hookers. That level of delusion has to relate to either dementia or personality disorder.
OMG people. Unreal.
Yep. Who says “nooners” to a woman that recently discovered cheating? For some reason that part really stuck with me. And how was his random friend that dates a stripper relevant to my situation in any way?
The amount of housecleaning of people that happens with the divorce is intense. But in the long run- YAY
My brother and his wife told my kids right after the huge devastation to our lives that I would remarry in 3-5 years. Wtf?!
I think they felt at a complete and shocking loss to be positive and that was their way of saying “ this too will pass”. ( it’s been 6 years and I have no desire on this earth to search for a new partner and most likely never will)
Another close friend told me “ he just wants everyone to be happy”. I keep plenty of distance from that relationship, as I know full well she is an easy subject to his manipulations.
My ex SIL, sent me texts saying her other sister is best friends with her ex, so much so that they could almost consider remarrying each other. 😵💫
That same SIL said to me that “ I could be happy too!” at a point where I had no idea how I would survive such a devastating betrayal. I guess implying he was so miserable, he needed to cheat on me to get joy back in his life.
Had another friend who is great buddies with her cheating ex, even to a point her new husband does things with him, send me this text while I was on a 6 mos hike crying in my tent every night as the fuckwit had run off with the five year mistress and filed for divorce.
This is what she thought was going to be helpful to me:
Begin by repeating these phrases together:
“I’m sorry ( insert name of cheater here) please forgive me for all that I have done to you. Thank you for all that you’ve given to me. I forgive you for all that you’ve done to me.”
Repeat this every night for 41 nights
(I did this @ bedtime-you can repeat this mantra as often as you wish because it will help release negativity and bring positivity and peace into your life.) at first it irritated me to say the words and then in a few nights I was saying them sincerely and it was amazing how they were helping me after only a week of saying them somehow I had some peace.
Yeah, I cut her out of my life. She’s the dearest sweetest person and as ditsy and unaware as they come. I had to move away from that. I was never going to be friends with someone who betrayed and abused me that bad and I knew very early on that it was the right decision.
What a ghastly thing for her to tell you to do !!
Your other friend…Mr “just wants everyone to be happy”… that phrase sits so poorly with me. My mom was an alcoholic with Borderline Personality Disorder who thought of nothing but herself for decades. When she became demented, that was one of her last phrases and after so long of her not giving a fuck about me, it was nothing but her feigning to care when she didnt.
One of my adult children (FW#2 was her step dad) said when she found out, “People do stupid things when they are stressed.” He had been fired from his dream job recently, for backstory. She has always been the one child that seems to “not mind” what he did to me and act as if I deserved it. She even once said, “you were often mean to daddy.” So I told her, “because he was always treating me like shit. Somethings moms don’t tell their kids, like when they are being abused by their husband!” Especially when they were small children! No way was I going to share all the emotional abuse he was doing to me. She was silent after that. She has been treated the same way by men in the past, so you think she would have empathy for me, at the very least, but NO. Even her brother (also from first marriage) said she was being weird and mean to ME about it.
This is the same brother, my son from my first marriage and my first cheater husband- He told me after he found out about 2nd husband, “I’m really sorry mom, but I thought you were being kind of cold and mean to him too.” This was right around the time I pretty much knew he was cheating and was going to get a PI for proof, but then I just picked up his phone one day and saw everything I needed and he tried to strangle me to death over the phone. But my son said, ” I will always feel guilt and remorse for thinking it was you, when it turned out to be him being a piece of shit. I am so sorry.”
See what destruction cheating causes? My son now has to carry shame and guilt because my FW husband was being a sneaky, lying, cheating piece of shit! It just fractured our family and caused this ugly “thing” that will always be there.
Oh, and then there was my therapist who piped up pretty early on in my therapy…”I need you to see your role in this.” I quickly corrected her by responding, “Nothing I could have said or done deserves that treatment. NO ONE deserves to be betrayed and abused!” She never said anything like that again. We finished the EMDR treatment and then I was “thankfully” done with her.
That isn’t therapy that’s abuse. A bad therapist is particularly awful. So sorry.
Thank you! Yes, I was taken aback by her saying that and was so down for a long time. I had really hoped she would be my rock, as I really don’t have anyone in my life that is close besides my adult children, and I didn’t want to treat them as my therapist. I am currently looking for a grief counselor to help. I have been abused all my life, even as a small child, and was so freaked out when second FW husband cheated that I thought I was losing my mind. But at least I am away from the therapist, who said that and would always say “this is not criticism” and then follow it with criticism! Sheesh. She also said I should not play the victim. “I am an abuse victim”, I would correct her. Yeah, good riddance lady!
God what a shitty therapist! Imagine how many people she’s harmed with that line of bull over the course of her pathetic career?
I feel like it takes a lifetime of training for people– women in particular– to gain immunity to this kind of victim blaming spin because it runs so deep in the culture and has been weaponized by junk science. You’re so smart for seeing through it and rejecting it.
Oh, thanks for that! It really was because of this space, Tracy and good people like you and the others here, that helped me see what she was doing and correct her. It was disappointing though, I was hoping she was going to be a good therapist and she started out that way, just seems like she took offense to me “acting” like the victim. She even told me once “careful what we call abuse”. And I had to correct her on that too! I even told her to go read Tracy’s book! I doubt she did, she has it in her mind that she is right and that’s the end of it, I guess.
Eek, yeesh, that proscription against “playing victim.” Nothing pisses me off more because, hello, the only people who “play” victim are perpetrators. Meanwhile actual victims absolutely hate being victims as much as cancer patients hate having cancer but, nevertheless, need the “diagnosis” in order to get treatment and protection and survive it.
Furthermore, much like someone pretending to be sick will be far prettier and more appealing than someone who’s actually sick, actual victims suck at being victims while the fakes typically excel at it. While real victims are ugly crying alone on the bathroom floor or are half catatonic or babbling like traumatized loons, the fakers know how to move the crowd by letting one delicate tear gently stream down their lying mugs as they cinematically murmur out their fabricated, blameshifting tale of woe.
When I first started working in advocacy, I soon realized almost every survivor would hear this directive from bystanders and helping professionals from the second they first tried to reach out for help– don’t play the victim. It typically had paralyzing and debilitating effects on survivors as if they’d had an evil hex put on them. Consequently, it was one of the typical victim-blamey bits of spin that would really stick in the craw of advocates. We’d sit around after hours dissecting and deconstructing and trying to come up with condensed retorts or killer comebacks in order to preemptively “ward off” the evil spell or break it after the fact.
I still have difficulty explaining why that particular directive strikes me as the rock bottom worst thing anyone can say to a genuine victims but I think it boils down to the fact that, more than anything else, traumatized victims need to be believed in order to heal. There’s even an entire documentary on this theme titled The 81st Blow which was drawn from the testimony of a Nazi death camp survivor at Nuremberg. In describing their own experience escaping Auschwitz and traveling to Israel, the survivor recalled the story of a child who miraculously survived 80 lashes at the hands of their Nazi officer. With 80 blows being set as the outside limit of what any human being could endure, the individual testifying described the “81st blow” as arriving in Jerusalem to rejoin family members who’d escaped prior to the war and then not being believed when they tried to describe conditions in the death camps. The implication was that, after everything else that former victims had endured, the thing that often killed their souls was being regarded as liars by the very people who were supposed to have their backs.
Clearly the above isn’t a perfect analogy and there’s a difference in scale between survival experiences yet there are similar principles running through each, one of which is that truthful people desperately need to be believed.
Someone who was formerly a friend said, “my mother had an affair, and she was the happiest I’ve ever seen her.” … um, thanks?
I feel like that former friend’s statement was incomplete so I took the liberty:
“My mother had an affair and she was the happiest I’ve ever seen her… I mean I could hear her laughing as I hid under the table at the age of six watching her have drunken sex with this rando dude she made me call ‘Uncle Petey.’ It sure beat the times she’d hit me with a hairbrush and scream she wished I’d never been born.”
My actual mother used to hit us with the hairbrush, and anything else that came to hand. She (nor my dad) ever had affairs though.
Sorry for clumsily evoking that bad memory. 🙁
I guess my point was who really knows what that ex-friend’s mother’s baseline emotional state was so that deception and betrayal made her “happiest.” I remember this bit (spoiler alert!) from the Sopranos series where the sociopathic gangster protagonist recalls in therapy how his clinically borderline mother was never happy unless his thug dad brought home stolen meat. There are some flashback scenes about how the fact the slabs of beef were the spoils of crime actually turned the mom character on. Otherwise the mom character was pathologically joyless and hated everyone.
It’s all relative, isn’t it?
There’s also another possible way to interpret it. The lone exception to the “cheaters have personality disorders” rule is that there’s a slightly elevated tendency of battered women to overlap and “exit affair” as they leave batterers if just to have a body guard on hand as they make their harrowing escapes. It’s the one, rather rare situation where someone may technically “cheat” without necessarily having some underlying character issue since extreme duress and danger can drive people to do uncharacteristic things. All the same, this rarely works out since– ugh– mate poachers typically suck and women who leave abusive relationships in this way have a 50% chance of simply ending up with subsequent abusers.
Anyway, if that ex friend’s frame of reference was to a situation like this, they clearly never matured or grew a day beyond that childhood experience if all they drew from it was the idea that the only people who cheat are actual victims (uh, Scott Peterson?).
Or not. Maybe mom was just the full-out guilty party in that family and this friend internalized the abuser role model?
Whatever is the case, some people are like that: they kind of intellectually petrify and stop emotionally developing at whatever age they experienced certain catastrophes, consequently the world is full of decrepit five, six and seven year olds. I think of them as the ones who didn’t emotionally survive. The dead giveaway of their trauma zombie status is saying stupid, callous, hurtful shit to other survivors.
Not to worry! At my age it’s all in the rear view mirror. I found myself being incredibly sad for the “friend”‘s father, who was the chump and now a lonely old man…
That is incredibly sad.
When I was venting about my ex’s literal Disney-Dad antics (taking daughter to Disneyland, but getting her back with rashes or sick, poorly brushed hair and old, stained clothes that didn’t fit anymore), I had one male family member say, “Oh, at least he’s trying to be a good dad.” Umm… no, neglecting basic health and hygiene, but taking her to theme parks is categorically not “being a good dad.”
Later when I was theorizing to a male friend about the fact that my ex seemed to resent that I was the preferred parent by my toddler daughter, he said, “Well maybe he’ll be a better dad now.” What? So racking up a gambling debt behind my back, constant lying and manipulation, an emotional affair and a discard is all ok if he’s feels less insecure around our daughter? WTF? I called that shit out. Unfortunately, this male friend had a knack for excusing bad male behavior – “maybe he was just nervous,” when I complained about a guy drinking too much on a date or only talking about himself.
I’ve since distanced myself from this friend but it was utterly infuriating to hear.
After my ex split to another state, someone at church said something similar, “Maybe he’ll be a better husband and father long-distance.”
What? How does that work?
HAHA it doesn’t
Mine isn’t a specific comment but a recent recognition that some people are desperate to give me information about the ex even though I have made it crystal clear that I am strictly no contact and that includes hearing any ‘news’ about him. People think that, because life is treating him somewhat negatively, I will be interested in hearing the gossip. I’m really not! Good or bad, I don’t care to know. I’ve had to shut a couple of conversations down very firmly and quickly recently. 5 years ago my life was in tatters. 4 years ago I was a week away from decree absolute. One month ago I sold off the former marital home, made back the money I paid to him to buy him out, and downsized into my new mortgage-free house in a new location. I could stop working if I wanted to, but I enjoy my work and I will carry on until that changes, if it ever does. I am finding my feet in baby steps but I’ve pictures on the walls and the removal boxes have gone. Headspace is freeing up at last, just in time for my 65th birthday. The last thing I want is to hear about the ex. He does not have the privilege and pleasure of being part of my new life, so full of opportunity. If he chooses to hear about me, that’s his problem.
congratulations!!!
Thank you.
Congratulations! My divorce was final nearly five years ago, and I’m semi-retired, so I’m there with you.
I also got some “news” a year ago that I didn’t care to hear. It didn’t surprise me at all, and I told the person that I didn’t need to hear more. My ex is precisely in the situation where I figured he’d end up. After all, being married to someone for several decades gives us particular insights.
But I’m in such a good chapter now. No regrets.
That’s so good to read. It’s empowering to say that I don’t want to hear ‘news’, I find. And it’s easy because I don’t have the connection of children with him although it was a long marriage. I was left for his exgf from school from whom he had split twice before he met me. There was zero reason to think they would be third time lucky. And the ex is still who he is. He was so full of smug satisfaction through the process that there was no way he was ever going to become a person that she would ultimately find acceptable. Plus she had children with her ex so reliving the teenage kicks was going to be a struggle. I prefer my aloneness to being part of that toxic drama.
Gotcha there, too. My personal life is low drama, and I like it that way.
“I guess it’s easier he left you for another man and not another woman.” This “greatest hit” in the aftermath of my husband coming out as gay at 18 years of marriage and 2 young kids. And my other favorite “Did you know he was gay? We could see it.”
““I guess it’s easier he left you for another man and not another woman.”
I said something about this above, but this just shows how people think that we chumps are hurt about what our FWs did with their genitals, period. As if that is ALL cheating is. They completely miss the whole living a lie, being betrayed, having your entire life turned upside down part.
“I hope he’s okay.”
Uhm, really? You hope HE’S okay?
One friend told me that she couldn’t believe our 27 year relationship wasn’t real. But then she realized it was real for me, just that FW never really cared and that made her feel better about being fooled for so long.
Another said a former coworker of FW’s wasn’t surprised because FW flirted all the time, for years.
My favorite was “Divorce is never easy, no matter the circumstances. You are both good people who are hurting and true friends will stand by both of you.” I blocked her. She can eff right off.
“War is never easy, no matter the circumstances. Germany and Poland are both good countries which are suffering and their true allies will stand by both.”
– Benito Mussolini, September 1st, 1939
Not long after Dday, my mother said that because Mars was very bright in the sky, it was a sign we’d reconcile. I pointed out that Mars is the god of war.
Fortunately I usually had a quip on hand for the stupid comments.
I’m slow on the quips lol but I usually think of great ones weeks or months later. ;D
Oh come-on!! You can sit in the church santuary even though cheater and (new24 year younger wife )sit there too!! He won’t hurt you now and there’s enough room for both of you!. ( daughter in law)#2 cheater
…So, will you go on a cruise ( with cheater #1 and his wifetress)to the islands with the whole family. ???A cruise ship is big, you’d never see them! (My Daughter with cheater )
Two more- A
Couple at church who are the same culture as my X husband’s new wifetress. I had poured out my story to them so they knew. Then they ran into my X and wife at Ikea. The next week my former friends husband told me “Your X looks so happy and his new wife is very sweet… We like her!!!
Next…pastor about to marry my X and OW . I poured out my whole story to him.and my heart break. Then he said, but we are counseling them now and she is very nice. I told the pastor I was nice to.
Cowards always say that about the most terrifying side in any standoff as they grovel for amnesty. What they really mean is “Oh thank God they’re being nice to me because the alternative would be really, really bad…”
It never fails. In every social situation in which abuse of one kind or another is revealed– whether domestic abuse or workplace harassment or assault, etc., — you’ll always see a certain percentage of bystanders curling up into furry balls at the feet of perpetrators and start inventing fault in victims. Sometimes it’s absolutely shocking because, prior to this moment, some of these traitors will have made all sorts of woke-sounding noises which made it seem impossible for them to side with abusers. Yet they down they go like pre-programmed Manchurian candidates.
My mother would call this “throwing the cheese on the floor” because you never really know who’s a rat until you see who squeaks and scampers to the cheese. From experience I’ve come to believe you can reliably measure how dangerous or even lethal a perpetrator is by how much bystanders are groveling.
I really would like to know the actual percentage of people with this instinct.
Since I worked in an industry that’s packed with narcissists, there might have been higher than average numbers of “Manchurian candidates.”
One workplace harassment/stalking situation was extraordinary because coworkers were split right down the middle and even a couple self-identified feminists turned flying monkey. I was so blown away that I blatantly interrogated everyone involved about their childhoods to see if my dad’s theory was right that all bullies are former victims.The flying monkeys were all weirdly candid about their upbringings despite the fact they couldn’t possibly believe I was making a friendly inquiry. Anyway, yep, all grew up with family abuse of some sort– mostly witnessing domestic abuse– and all were still enmeshed with the family abusers or even dependent on them in some way.
Interestingly, three of my allies had also grown up with abuse or dysfunction but were not in contact with former abusers. The mother of one of my allies had crossed the Alps on horseback with him to escape Spain and her Francoist abusive husband. Then another close friend had had to pull a knife on her stepfather at the age of ten which prompted her mother to leave the guy. In both cases these single moms managed to put their kids through Ivy League educations. So I gathered there was something about victims “winning” in these stories that seemed to make some immune to flying monkeyism.
Yes, the implication of these kinds of comments is just horrid, being that “nice” people aren’t cheated on and “nice” people deserve to be married. It’s a widely held belief even if they don’t tell you that to your face.
Or that a cheater can be charming and bring gifts, they can say they TRIED but you wouldn’t forgive them. OW/ OM can also be charming or be any career known..be the best doctor, nurse, teacher, SAINT in other worlds..they can cheat and not grow horns and carry a pitch fork…
Image management is like their part time job. My ex had to take his HR person with him because he was. so hated and she protected him. I always knew he was a psycho at work, but denied he was at home, too.
There were several beauties, but my top 3 were:
1. “He must have been so unhappy.” Alternatively, the variation, “Maybe that’s why he drank so much”. Translation- poor man couldn’t handle the guilt of constant betrayal. My response was to note that unfortunately the correspondence did not indicate anything approaching guilt or unhappiness, just delight and smug self satisfaction in deceit.
2. “Do you think it’s because you worked so hard?” Translation – you were too busy concentrating on your career to notice straying/give attention to FW. My response was: “No, I believe it was a defective moral character.”; and
3. “There are worse things that can happen in a marriage than adultery.” Can’t even begin to try to translate here, just WTF?! I responded to this one with “You are absolutely right, he could’ve been diddling the children, that would’ve been a lot worse.” This happily shut down that avenue of discussion!
Shudder– reminds me of family-killer Chris Watts in prison telling his cellmate that his dead wife “worked too much.”
I watched a documentary on Scott Peterson yesterday. I was previously only loosely familiar with the basics of that case.
One new to me detail that really stuck out to me. When the cops got ahold of a picture of him with Amber Frye* at a holiday party, he calmly responded “you don’t think that is ME, do you?” It is worth noting that this wasn’t some photo with 60 people in it, grainy and small, all zoomed in, this was a nice shot, waist up of the two of them looking right at the camera. It was so clearly HIM. And he STILL tried to lie right to their faces.
*Amber Frye was not an AP. She didn’t know he was married. Was told he wasn’t and had never been, then later he told her he had been married but he was a widow. He told her that 2 weeks BEFORE Laci went missing. Once Amber knew the truth, she bravely worked with the police against him.
Cluster B types seem to self-spellbind with their own bs– like, if they repeat lies often enough or yell them loud enough, this has the power to make untrue things true! And, the more they do it, the worse they seem to get at reading the room and figuring out when people aren’t buying their bull. It seems the disorder involves a very demented, nihilistic relationship with the truth in general– this idea that truth is only what you can make others believe is true.
Speaking of Amber Frye, it’s interesting that Nichol Kessinger, the AP in the Chris Watts murder case, asked Google, “Did people hate Amber Frye?” after Watts was arrested.
I thought that was sort of astounding that Kessinger could mistake her own situation (knowing full well Watts was married with kids) for Frye’s (when Frye was clueless about Peterson’s marital status) and assume the public would be just as confused about this (nope, the public got the pitchforks out for Kessinger– why Kessinger lives in hiding to this day). I’m guessing that was also a typical delusional symptom of personality disorder, probably because people like Watts, Peterson and Kessinger tend to create their own ethical echo chambers where they start to lose sight of the fact that the public at large doesn’t applaud their sociopathy.
I love your comebacks.
ME TOO
During the separation, I collected evidence because I live in an at-fault state. A P.I. collected enough; it was like that show “Cheaters.” Add to it, both of her kids, my step kids, told on her. The divorce took forever; she went “on the lam” so to speak. Trying to locate her long enough to have her served was like playing Whack-a-Mole.
It took 6 & 1/2 years. She still denied any cheating, despite 300% proof. Incredible.
I’ve said this before (maybe even on this post if it’s a rerun) but MY OWN SISTER said, “All I know is only unhappy people cheat.”
FFS
I’ve heard that if you’re ugly or overweight people are allowed to cheat on you- that was what my father said. I pulled out a People magazine with all the stars that were so obviously perfect to the world and many of them are cheated on..didn’t change his my Dad’s mind
I think some of that is that, until it happens to them, many people have a very narrow view of what cheating actually is and what it actually does to the victims.
I think for many, they see cheating as simply “they broke the rule that you can’t have sex with anyone else”. And until it happens to them, they almost see it as an arbitrary rule. And media has often portrayed affairs as just a universally understood temptation that no one could possibly resist.
Very often in movies, it is an average looking middle aged man who gets pursued by a young super sexy vixen. (I’m thinking Alan Rickman’s character in Love Actually, the actress that flirted with him all but humped his leg every time she saw him) It is often portrayed as just too hard to pass up. “oh, he loves his spouse but he had the chance to touch a woman whose body he had never seen the likes of outside of Playboy before, how could he not?”
But in real life, we know the problem with cheating isn’t just “you promised not to touch anyone else’s genitals”, but it’s SO MUCH MORE. it’s the emotional betrayal and the ripping apart of a life that was built together.
And the cheating is often done with someone no more attractive than the chump. And the Chump is often outrageously gorgeous to begin with. One of my kids heard that Sabrina Carpenter, a pop star that looks like a Barbie come to life, was cheated on. They mused “who would cheat on HER?” And I had to list all the beautiful celebrities that have been cheated on and explain that cheating is NOT about “upgrading” but about lack of character and wanting to have cake.
Until it happens to them. Wasn’t it said at one time that Rape was an act of passion??? That is until war, wheelchair patients, children, mentally ill in units under lock, prisoners…we are so slow to grasp the horrors of affairs and Rape so as to excuse it. My Xhusband told me woman jump on him at work and his confession on D day was that he was raped at work!! He told me I needed to ask ALL THE GUYS who worked with him in maintenance the number if them that were sexually attacked and molested by woman at work. So much so they used empty patient rooms and had sex those beds ( my x workrd in a hospital)to.allow attacks. HR investigated and let my then- husband OFF WITH A WARNING!! The lady had filed a report but since she hardly spoke English and worked in the cafeteria…no one listened!!! Just such ignorance of the majority and cheater apologist stun me.
I was told that I was too ambitious and that was why he had other women. And he drank because my ambitions emasculated him.
So he just handed you the magical formula to destroy him? I hope you’re planning on running for queen of the world soon. Apparently just the fact you have this aspiration is like a silver bullet to a werewolf so just keep scheming your future world domination. 😉
From the same friend:
“Well it was all a bit of a fairytale wasn’t it”
“Love gets messy sometimes” (referring to my ex fw and his schmoopie – the latter whom she hadn’t met).
So fairly unempathic and mildly dismissive. The respective subtexts being ‘Learning you were a bit of an idiot for ever having thought it was real’ and an added ‘ah well the heart wants what the heart wants’.
I think people who make these sort of moronic, unfeeling comments always have there own issues as Tracey says.
In the case of my friend she herself has been an OW on occasion (as I’ve posted here previously our friendship is under review/on probation).
I also sensed that during the time that I did appear to be blissfully married (I thought I was) that deep down there was envy on her part there.
My ex FW was very manly and handsome. I remember once that she felt upset about losing a job position and went to comfort hug into him in a spousal way if that makes sense.
I don’t think he was attracted to her, but makes me wonder what would have happened if he had been.
The irony is that if a a partner ever betrayed her trust she would be furious…
I shut any rubbish comments right down by talking of my lack of consent
It’s a mistake to underestimate the envy and ill-will of friends who perceive your marriage as covetable. My former best friend’s feelings for me curdled over it and turned into active malice. I was oblivious, because my marriage didn’t seem enviable to me.
Yeah, I suspect my former best friend may have fucked the FW while we were dating. We were roommates and he was waiting with her for me to come home. When I walked in they were sitting very close to each other on the couch. They were sharing a bag of chips, so I figured that’s why they were so close. But the expressions on their faces were weird and I couldn’t put my finger on what was so unnerving. There were no signs such as messed up hair or clothes half buttoned, so if they had done it, it was awhile before I walked in. Only after being chumped over thirty years later did I realize what it was that bothered me about the way they looked- it was smug and self satisfied. FW swore he never did anything with her, but he lies like most people breathe.
Certain people are jealous and covetous by nature and will always want what they don’t have. Even if they don’t really want the person for real (like FW’s OW, who didn’t want him as anything but a lapdog) they will still get a thrill out of ruining somebody else’s life. I think they know there is something missing in them, a cavity that needs to be filled. So they fill it with the shipwrecked hopes and dreams of others.
Chump Lady put her finger on the heart of our shared predicament as experiencers of betrayal: Nothing makes us as a society feel more threatened, and therefore more vulnerable, than acknowledging that women are not safe and supported. Nothing is more subversive than to name and call out the systemic betrayal and subjugation of women and children. Yet our entire society is built on the myth of forever marriages and loving daddies. If you have the bad luck to have passed through this ordeal, you are the living embodiment of the Uncomfortable Truth. Most people just can’t deal. The isolation and disbelief are the painful side effects of the collective will to deny the truth.
“The isolation and disbelief are the painful side effects of the collective will to deny the truth.”
Word.
I also got the “at least she left you for a guy that’s a total loser,” but I think my personal least favorite stupid thing was something I heard from the doctor.
“I saw your wife in here the other day. I can’t believe how thin she is!”
Normally, I just didn’t say anything at all, and that’s usually a good rule, but this time I couldn’t help myself. I said
“Oh, yes, thank goodness she’s in shape and an attractive size. That makes all the adultery and her leaving me SO much easier to deal with. At least I got to sleep with an attractive woman.”
Obviously, that was not a helpful or appropriate thing to say no matter what. But I do have to wonder what kind of show your cheater put on there. Mine likes to put out the idea that we are still besties, getting along great. So if I had been in your shoes, the comment from the doc would definitely have annoyed me, but I would immediately think “the FW probably makes it sound like I’d be thrilled that he is on a health kick/getting in shape”.
Your mileage may vary, but for me, OI always have to consider the source, “what has the FW portrayed to this person that may have painted how the person speaks about FE in front of me?”
I hoped as I read that he was trying to say she was scrawny, to boost your morale. Not that body shaming is the way to support a chump.
Pardon my French, but fuck that doctor w/a chainsaw!🙄 What an idiotic thing to say.
He said it was because he thought I had cheated on him.
The incident he was talking about was some 12 years in the past and no, I never cheated on him.
It all stemmed from an incident where I took too long to pick him up from a friend’s house. He claims he waited for 2 days. He also said even though he had no evidence I had cheated he really felt I had, so it must have been true (emotional reasoning).
He basically gave himself permission to sleep around with other women for the next 12 years as a form of self medicating, which helped him cope with his feelings of feeling neglected, forgotten, and betrayed when I didn’t provide his transportation in a timely manner.
Note: He’s a 3rd generation logger. He can carry a full sized cooler filled with food and ice while at the same time have a 5 year old sitting on his shoulders while he’s hiking straight up the mountain through the brush. I guess some weird thing happens when he’s in more populated areas that don’t have sharp increases in elevation because he can’t use a phone to call me, can’t call for another ride, and can’t use his own damn legs to walk his own a** outta there.