The Other Woman Confessed
The Other Woman confessed a long-term affair with OP’s husband. Apparently, her conscience was bothering her. But not enough to tell OP earlier.
***
Dear Chump Lady,
Your blog has totally saved me. My story is very unique, and I can’t quite get it to fit into any narrative I have read on the subject — and I’ve read EVERYTHING.
Last year, FW changed.
Withdrawn, depressed. He even went missing from work on one occasion and was found wandering down the road looking like a homeless, lost soul. All stops were pulled out to help him. My whole family rallied around. We went on holiday. I even went to the doctor with him, you know, being a supportive wife – like you are supposed to. He got tablets, went for counselling, joined a man’s support group.
Things were looking up. Still not great, but we limped along – for another year like a 25-year relationship does – when one person has checked out, but forgotten to tell the other.
All the signs of cheating were there.
Our daughters saw messages he was deleting. He was walking the dog whilst having long conversations with a work colleague. The location on his iPhone suddenly stopped working. This was emphatically denied. He gaslit me to within an inch of my life. Messages like, ‘Who would have me anyway?’, ‘I swear on the kid’s lives there is no one else’, ad nauseum …
Then one day, 6 months ago, whilst I was doing something innocuous — posting a parcel — I received a text from him. Basically, he wanted a break from ‘us’. We had grown apart. We didn’t have much in common anymore. He needed to find himself. So, that was it. My marriage ended by text. Still no other woman. Just wanted to find out who he was, after all these years. Maybe the supporting him through open heart surgery, a traumatic accident, his mother’s death, and taking on the sole care of his children whilst he worked away all week, had made him a bit lost.
To my credit, I didn’t do the pick me dance. I had no one to compete with, right?
There was definitely no other woman. He was just looking for himself. I asked once if we could go to counselling to see if we could save our marriage, to be met with an emphatic, ‘No, I don’t want to save this, it’s over’. I never asked again.
So, I picked up the pieces of my shattered life and tried to move on. It was — and can only be described as — a trauma. I felt like I’d been run over by a high-speed train, then left to die on the tracks. It felt insurmountable. How could I continue? I just didn’t know. But, slowly, I got a bit better. I kept going to work, kept my routine. I had great family support. This was going to be okay.
Before the break-up talk, I had booked a trip to New York for us as a family. It was a surprise gift for his upcoming 50th birthday. I decided to go anyway. Me and our two daughters went on a girl’s trip to New York! We were going to have a blast!
However, someone had other ideas.
On arrival, I received an anonymous message (picked up by my daughter, who is 17) to kindly inform me that my dear husband (who still hadn’t found himself, it seems) had been having an affair for 10 years. Ten whole years.
So, here I was, thousands of miles away from my friends and family, my full support system, with this brand-new information. It was the middle of the night in the UK, there was no one for me to talk to. I just lay all night in this strange hotel, staring at the ceiling. How could this be true? Surely, I would know, right?
I engaged with this anonymous person, who knew details about my life that cemented the fact, that this was in fact true. I felt paralysed. They then deleted their newly established Instagram profile, and disappeared like a puff of smoke. We tried our best to enjoy our holiday as best we could. I could feel panic rising in me at random moments throughout the day, and into the night. But I parked it, well, we all did. This was something I would deal with when I was at home.
Unbelievably, we had the best time. A holiday the three of us will remember forever.
On our return, I confronted FW, who confirmed the story to be, in fact, true.
The facts remain sketchy, but he confirmed that it wasn’t the full 10 years (lucky me), and they weren’t together now. She had messaged me, to get at him, as she’d been dumped. Some of the things I said to him, can’t be repeated here, but goodness, I wanted him to suffer.
How could he steal 10 years from me? This was inexplicable abuse. He had put my health at risk. He had lied to me and his children. And he had gaslit us all. My oldest daughter recalls how he shouted at her to stop asking if there was another woman, as there wasn’t, and he would stop communicating if she didn’t drop it.
Again, I picked up the pieces. We struggled on. FW would not tell who his affair partner was. But, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so I set about getting this information. And get it I did! She was the girlfriend of one of his oldest friends. They had since split up, but he really, really (I mean, really) didn’t want him to find out.
I sent her one message, telling her what I thought of the both of them. Then blocked her, and him. I said what I needed to say, and quietly left the room. As far, as I was concerned, they were welcome to one another.
Putting the pieces together, it became apparent that for the last year, she had been putting pressure on him to tell me.
His ‘mental health’ struggles (remember I went to the doctor with him, ha!) were due to this. Everything started to make sense. How could I have been so stupid? Ten years? I never, ever suspected a thing. He was a master at lying and cheating.
FW and I started to talk. He agreed to everything I wanted in the divorce (guilt, ha). He tried to make amends. There were huge strides forward in communication. There were tears, both of us. Hell, I even considered reconciliation. He didn’t want the AP — he left her. I had won! He said he had made the biggest mistake of his life. Then, slowly, I realised I hadn’t won at all. He was a lost cause. Our happy years together were gone. And the grieving started all over again.
Then further devastation, as 1 month ago, I learned that the affair partner had died. Further revelations reveal that she knew the cancer that had returned was terminal, back when she messaged me whilst I was in New York. She was easing her conscious as she prepared for the inevitable. FW doesn’t care that she’s dead at all. Apparently, he never loved her like he loves me. What a complete idiot he is.
So, to cut a long story short. FW ran away, denied another woman, then I found out about a 10-year affair. She’s now dead, he’s living with his mate, and me and my girls have to sell our home to survive.
Bernadette
***
Dear Bernadette,
Please tell me you pushed forward with that divorce.
FW doesn’t care that she’s dead at all. Apparently, he never loved her like he loves me.
This tells me you’re still in the pick-me dance, or he’s goading you into it. He lost his Schmoopie and he needs a Plan B.
That man doesn’t love ANYONE. That he could a) try to compare you and b) act nonchalant about her death means this freak is too ghoulish and shallow for any committed relationship.
I’m sorry you have to sell your home, but it’s clear you and your daughters are a perfect intact family without this FW.
FW and I started to talk.
No. Stay no contact. He just wants you to drop the consequences.
He agreed to everything I wanted in the divorce (guilt, ha).
Did you get that in writing? Is it notarized? FWs will promise anything.
He tried to make amends.
He stole 10 years of your life. There are no amends. The best he can do is a generous divorce settlement, paying his children’s expenses, and shutting the fuck up forever.
There were huge strides forward in communication.
He is manipulating you. There are no strides forward in communication. You learned everything from the Other Woman and your own sleuthing. He volunteered NOTHING. Why are you giving him points now for confirming some of the bullshit he was up to? UGH. This is me bitchslapping you through the computer screen.
Trust that he SUCKS.
There were tears, both of us. Hell, I even considered reconciliation.
You considered the cessation of consequences. Which is exactly the outcome he was working towards.
He didn’t want the AP — he left her. I had won!
He’s a lying liar who lies. He led a 10-year conspiracy against you. There’s nothing here to win.
He said he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
Mistake. Singular. For a DECADE-LONG AFFAIR with his best friend’s girlfriend. Please tell me you told that guy.
The biggest mistake of your life would be taking this FW back.
Then, slowly, I realised I hadn’t won at all. He was a lost cause. Our happy years together were gone. And the grieving started all over again.
I’m sorry for your pain — that HE inflicted. Pain = lucidity. He cannot make it better, because he’s the agent of your pain. “Lost cause” means you bought into his sad sausage torn-between-two-lovers narrative. No. He ABUSED you for his own sick jollies for 10 years. (That you know of. I doubt it’s his only affair in 25 years. But whatever, it’s bad enough.)
Then further devastation, as 1 month ago, I learned that the affair partner had died.
Whose devastation? Yours? Your husband is a big shrug about this.
Further revelations reveal that she knew the cancer that had returned was terminal, back when she messaged me whilst I was in New York. She was easing her conscious as she prepared for the inevitable.
Or she was deliberately trying to ruin your holiday. I don’t believe in last minute character changes, even in the face of death. Look, I’m very glad the Other Woman confessed. But I’m not convinced her motives were pure. This woman was quite happy to conspire in your abuse for a decade.
Where are these “revelations” coming from? (Your husband? mutual friends?) She could’ve told you herself that she was sick, vulnerable, and wanted to unburden her soul. But instead it sounds like she detonated truth bombs on you, as if you were her opponent and she’d be goddamned you were going to have a fabulous holiday while SHE lay dying.
FW doesn’t care that she’s dead at all.
There are other orifices. She’s easily replaced. Everyone is replaceable when you’re a FW.
She’s now dead, he’s living with his mate, and me and my girls have to sell our home to survive.
Godspeed on the divorce. I’m not sure what “mate” your husband is living with, but I bet his dick is as untethered as it’s always been. Let him wander the misty moor and fall in a bog pit. You get free.
Bernadette sent me an update:
No, never returned to FW. Living my best life with my two daughters, and two dogs ! No man, and no desire for one. Happy on my own.
I kept the house as FW walked away with nothing. His choice. He wanted to be free.
I really appreciated Bernadette’s statement: “ He was a lost cause. Our happy years together were gone.” I’m not quite at meh because I finally get really angry (yup, I’m angry. Angry is not bitter—-I’ve been gaslit on that too) while I used to just cry and feel so crushed about losing my life partner and kid’s father to some skank without a moral compass. I think of a few photos of us that used to be special and remind me of our decades of history together, and then I snap back to reality (oh there goes gravity). My FW ruined EVERYTHING that was good and he is a total lost cause. WE are a total lost cause. I will only be happy now and in the future without FW. Pretending he is dead is the best strategy.
Possible you’ve been angry all along. Could be pop psych, but they say depression is anger turned inward. So maybe now your anger is aimed in the right direction.
Yes, thank you. I agree with this. I couldn’t be angry outwards so it stuffed inwards. I’ve struggled with depression since FW cheated and left me 7 years in. I didn’t listen to a marriage counselor who didn’t support reconciliation. FW lied and withheld the truth and I believed him. Im mad at myself too. But I’ve learned finally that cheaters have a different value system, their ‘truth’ has no foundation and is changeable to suit themselves even if it causes major harm to others (wife and family). Withholding the truth is part of how they manipulate. Lots of anger for not paying attention to my ‘gut’ and also for being taken advantage of when we had young kids and I was financially dependent and needed stability for kids.
FWs run on, like, a totally different operating system, man.
Go, Bernadette! I love this update and relate to no desire for a new man.
Totally relate. I don’t ever want to be beholden to any man ever again and quite repelled by all men but my son for now.
Wonderful to hear this.
Bravo! Well done, Bernadette! Fuckwits are always gonna fuckwit, best stay out of their way & let them get on with it.
Yeah, she did it while Bernadette was on vacation to ruin her vacation. She knew that. She knew what she was doing. That was definitely on purpose to cause pain.
I get why Bernadette brought up that he doesn’t even care that the OW is dead. He was with her 10 years and thought she was worth risking his family for, clearly. But he doesn’t even care that she dies? That’s not normal. I think she mentioned that because she’s realizing she never really knew him. The man she knew would have cared about someone he’d known for so long dying. But he doesn’t. I do hope she has pursued the divorce. She needs one. I hope she’s realizing he has never been the man she thought he was.
I thought so too. This OW probably was angry with FW and bitter about her fate so dammit somebody’s gonna PAY! Little did she know that in causing Bernadette pain it also ultimately freed the wife from a user and abuser hahaha
The letter also said AP had been dumped. I do wonder if cancer treatments made FW decide AP wasn’t sexy anymore and dumped her. Then AP decides to call Bernadette for revenge.
It’s not uncommon for shallow FWs to bail on their APs (wives…girlfriends…) when they become ill. Especially with cancer. They don’t like having to look at/care for someone who’s going to through chemo, radiation, constant pain, weakness, and nausea. So suddenly it’s “Oops, gotta go! My dick needs someone who isn’t too sick to fuck!”
Wouldn’t surprise me if AP’s idea of retaliation was telling Bernadette. And FW is mad about that so now he’s not upset she died. Since he’s not exactly volunteering any information himself he’s probably thinking “the dead don’t talk” so if he clams up he thinks Bernadette won’t find anything else out.
Except she’s not stupid and has found out enough anyway.
My thoughts exactly. He dumped her because she was ill and didn’t care at all when she died. After all, you don’t grieve when an appliance breaks. Everyone is an appliance to that guy. How monstrously cold.
I just wish Bernadette had told FW’s friend that FW had been fucking his girlfriend for ten years. The guy deserves to know the truth and FW doesn’t deserve friends. They are only appliances to him as well. I wonder if the friend he moved in with was the same one he betrayed.
I wonder if she realizes the her Fw would have the same reaction if she came down with cancer. Fw’s don’t care about other people unless they’re useful. If they’re useful, fw’s will pretend to care. My fw would have reacted the same, unless there was an audience, then he’d over react. No, it isn’t normal, it’s disturbing. Sadly my son has the same cold heart. Lacking empathy or compassion. They don’t have a conscious.
I often wonder if they’re Sociopaths.
Maybe he actually didn’t care that Schmoopie was dead, or maybe he was such a practiced and artful liar that he pretended not to care in order to manipulate Bernadette even more. “What? Schmoops is dead? I don’t care, you know she meant nothing to me baby. I’ve always been all yours.”
I wonder if it’s even more chilling than “not caring.” I think these types are petrified babies who (like actual infants) become enraged when their partner appliances are unavailable, leave or lose their utility for whatever reason. Except of course actual babies are cute, have the excuse of not being developmentally capable of reciprocal love and caring, evolved to squall when ignored because they can’t survive on their own and their periodic baby rages don’t generally metastasize into dementedly vindictive, radioactive hatred like disordered adult babies.
Bernadette, I’ve read many stories about cheaters who cheat when their partner is ill or terminal. He didn’t want the AP — he left her. I had won! It’s more likely that he didn’t want to be there for an ill or dying AP; that his “best friend,” her partner, didn’t want him there; or she was too tired for fun sex times and the effort to hide her cheating from her own partner, and no further value to him.
You were mighty to take and enjoy that birthday trip your bought for cheater with your girls and without cheater.
You said your daughter is 17. I wonder if he waited and hid his affair(s) hoping the kids would age out of child support. If he truly wanted to make amends, you wouldn’t have to sell your house.
Please believe what’s been said here often: cheaters are lying liars who lie. He’s a terrible disappointment, but now you know the truth and you and your family can keep moving forwards without that albatross of a user.
Bernadette,
Your story is horrific, but you already show glimpses of awesome …. I’m thinking about the trip with your daughters in particular. My advice (for what little it is worth) would be as follows:
You face a long and hard journey … but the longest journeys start with a single step; a step that I think that you’ve already taken.
LFTT
If this letter looks familiar I realize I answered it in 2023 (that post now routes here.) I asked B for an update. I usually don’t screw up my inbox, but I must not’ve scrolled up. More coffee needed. My advice is the same.
Reading your story revesls you to be a caring and empatheic person. You have endured a lot looking for the good. But remember that he chose this. Ten years of inflicting his miserable existence onto you and your daughters. You should be mad as hell and spitting nails over his deliberate actions. I would guess your personality would consistently avoid the emotion of anger, but anger is the force that gives you the motivation to shock this abuser for the sake of yourself and your daughters. Get angry my friend and stay there until he is outside your sphere.
Over at the Washington Post today, there is a letter from someone whose friend went on an overseas vacation, came back, and announced to all and sundry that she was leaving her family for a guy she had a two-day fling with. She’s moving to that country (doesn’t speak the language) and leaving her husband and two daughters (“barely adult”) behind. Oh, and cheater is upset that there is any backlash.
I don’t mean to thread-jack, but it is astounding how many people are calling the friend a rigid, judgmental puritan. “[Cheater] was unappreciated, obv.” “No one knows what really goes on in a marriage.” “Her kids left home, she needed freedom.” “It takes two.” “Husband should’ve known she was unhappy.” “who are you to judge!”
It’s HARD combatting this b.s.
Are none of these morons taking into account that the cheating wife is leaving her family for a guy she had a 2 day fling with?
I am not sayin that a 2 year affair would be so much better. But she has known this guy for TWO DAYS. She doesn’t know anything about him. Thjis goes beyond just the cheating.
That is the kind of thing that makes us wonder if she has a brain tumor. And hey, lots of us thought that in all seriousness..myself included. And we were all wrong. But TWO DAYS??? That is how you know all these people chiming in are not actually thinking critically at all and are just spouting off somethig they read like “it takes two” and “she deserves to be happy”. Mr Two Day Fling could be a Meth-Cooking, Serial killer with a wife and 17 kids.
The people who say those kind of things are moral mutants. It’s always the same stock phrases, too, because they aren’t critical thinkers or the least bit original.
That “it takes two” shit enrages me. “it takes two” to robe a bank unbeknown to the wife. Jeffery Dahmer was married and “it takes two” for him to murder with abandon. If the intimate partner, or business partner or close friend has no idea what is going on; they are not at fault ever, period for any sin, bad behavior of the guilty party.
💯
Jeffrey Dahmer was not married, you may be thinking of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer, who was married with kids. Your point remains the same.
Rader murdered at least 10 people maybe more, mostly women, from 1974 to 1991. Then he stopped. He got caught through old dna evidence in 2005.
I often think about his wife, who had NO idea who she was married to.
Yes, I think that was Rader, the coiner of the term “cubing” to explain to FBI investigators who interviewed him in prison about how he managed to so radically compartmentalize his “killer self” and his “upstanding-church-going-family-man” self for so many years without giving anyone around him much of a clue.
As a middle aged adult, Rader’s daughter wrote a book and admitted there actually were a few little clues that Rader wasn’t quite the mild-mannered milquetoast he pretended to be or that his family had always claimed, namely his periodic blind rages that terrified the entire family. But even rages wouldn’t necessarily lead his family to suspect what else he was doing though it does sort of explain why none wanted to admit that he showed any fault at all– because they were terrified of him and likely also terrified of being viewed as enabling by the public in the case they had the slightest reason to believe he was capable of atrocity.
In any event, the accounts of family members of violent criminals and abusers aren’t always perfectly accurate. Neither are the perpetrators’ accounts of their own upbringings. For instance, I also suspect that Rader– like several other serial killers– lied about his early influences and claimed that he had a normal upbringing. It’s interesting because, just like he seems to have spellbound his wife and kids into “disremembering” or editing out the bit about his violent tantrums, he may also have disremembered/edited in the same way regarding his own FOO disaster.
Once captured and studied like bugs in prison, Ted Bundy and “Co-ed Killer” Edmund Kemper also both attempted to cover up for violent male role models from their childhoods at first. Both mostly blamed their mothers which the FBI latched onto due to the reigning mommy-blaming Freudian theories at the time. But it turned out to be bs. The mums, though perhaps somewhat disordered themselves, never engaged in the kind of abuse that would explain the extreme violent sadism of their sons. Meanwhile the reportedly “frightening,” violent, sadistic and sexually abusive behavior of both Bundy’s and Kemper’s grandfathers (who respectively raised both killers for periods in their childhoods) might explain what both became very well.
Apparently this kind of rewriting and coverup is also common among domestic batterers who often deny abuse by the very role models they ended up emulating. No one knows why this is exactly. It could be that they enjoy duping investigators or playing into the latter’s biases again. Or it could be the tendency of former childhood trauma victims to fear and grovel for amnesty from their original perpetrators even long after the latter are dead.by displaying irrational “loyalty” and keeping the latter’s secrets. Or maybe it’s because child sexual abuse was involved and they don’t want to admit to having been raped as children. Or perhaps their internalization and emulation of original abusers is so complete that they even repeat their abusers’ hatred and blame of women.
Very interesting. I think I would like to read that book but given the FWs ragey episodes, it might make me too anxious to hear Rader’s rages described.
I’m not sure that bit is in the book. I could be wrong but I think she divulged this detail in an interview or article after the book was published.
I think there is a huge internal contradiction in how strongly Western cultures still glorify marriage (lavish wedding ceremonies, marginalization of people who are single / divorced / unmarried etc.), while at the same time ignoring what marriage actually entails in terms of emotional and financial commitment, etc. Instead, people pretend that this agreement, which they entered into voluntarily, is a kind of “prison” from which they can (supposedly) only free themselves through lies and deceit.
“instead, people pretend that this agreement, which they entered into voluntarily, is a kind of “prison” from which they can (supposedly) only free themselves through lies and deceit.”
Interesting take. I never thought of it from quite that angle, but no, it isn’t a prison, you can leave ethically. And sure, divorce is hard. I can see how a FW wants to avoid the pain, stigman and financial hardship of a divorce. I can almost understand someone trying to sticjk it out een if they are unhappy in their marriage, just because the alternative can be scay. (I am not saying that is ok or a good idea, but I can understand someone trying to lie to themself just to avoid all that)
But what do FWs do? They just have an affair instead, and what happens then is, either the spouse finds out, or the affair becomes bigger than a quick fling, and now they have to tell their partner. And then divorce happens anyway, except now there are two sides, at each other’s throats.
Early on I struggled with the idea of this. “Well if he didn’t have an affair and just came to me and said he wasn’t happy with me anymore and wanted out, would it hurt any less?” I truly wondered if it made any difference that he had an affair. Either way I would be alone and sad.
Now..some time has passed. I am single. But I am no longer sad. That sad part was finite.
And I realize it does make a difference. If he had come to me, his partner of decades and said he was not happy and he wanted out, it would have hurt, but we could have found a way to stay cordial, possibly even friendly after a little time, we could co-parent well, we could have divided assets from a place of trust and care. Seeing him eventually move on with a new romantic partner, would still hurt. But not the way it does to find out they moved on before you even knew they wanted out and and while still married!
I remember trying to explain to my FW (who had an extended affair over years, fell in love with AP and eventually married her) that is was the affair and prolonged deception that completely destroyed any chance of us coparenting our kids amicably. If he’d just left, sure I would have been hurt and mad for a while. But the trust underpinning the relationship would have been relatively intact, or at least recoverable over time.
His decision to engage in prolonged deception that extended into every aspect of my life, and my kids lives, utterly destroyed any ability to trust him to put the kids first. So our coparenting relationship was volatile for the entire decade until they reached adulthood. I just couldn’t trust him – and after we split up, he continued proving to me why he couldn’t be trusted (eg. introduced kids to AP behind my back just weeks after we separated after he agreed not to, left the kids alone in a hotel room at a casino for five hours when they were 9 and 11 years old on a Friday night, knowing I would NEVER have done that or agreed to him doing it….so many betrayals of my trust around the kids, all while demanding that me trusting him and communicating with him was “best for them”.).
Our coparenting relationship could have been so different if he’d thought things through with his brain instead of his dick.
But of course, the toxicity is all my fault.
I hope your kids learned to roll with the punches. It is totally unfair they had to learn they couldn’t trust their own father. At a tender age, yet!
With luck, the worst thing that happened was they watched a porn channel while Dad was gambling. I mean, that’s not good, but … could be worse? Yeah, none of this is good. As Chump Lady and Chump Nation say, this is not the Pain Olympics.
One of the commenters on that column actually said exactly that. “Well, leaving is hard. So, an affair is understandable to get a clean break.”
ARRRRGGGHHHH !!!! 🤪🤬
I mean, working is hard. Does that mean I get to rob a bank!?
Incredibly stupid. The last thing an affair does is give anyone a clean break. Sure, it gives the FW a soft place to land, in their AP’s lap, but it complicates everything for everyone.
Divorce is hard but other than kibbles, an affair doesn’t make it easier, it makes it harder.
Yes but complications for everyone else doesn’t matter. As long as they get what they want, everyone else can go to hell.
ITA. I always say that as a general rule, the more ostentatious the wedding, the less committed to marriage the couple (or at least one of the people in the couple) really is. It’s about a fantasy of a life, and when the fantasy doesn’t pan out, they tell themselves they were duped, when in fact they only duped themselves. Of course they are super spesh-ul and therefore can’t be expected to take responsibility for their own errors.
I was *just* reading that Hax column and all the comments. Amazing how many people assume that the wife’s behavior is justified, and the letter writer is, yes, a judgmental puritan. BTW – what exactly is wrong with using your judgment? Isn’t that what it’s for?
Meh, I don’t believe for a minute that Hax’s subscriber-only comment section is an organic reflection of public views while I’m quite sure the public’s Coldplay Jumbotron reaction was.
For anyone who feels depressed or disheartened by the appearance that most of the public thinks cheating is cool, consider the fact that Gallup polls over the last two decades show that the public actually thinks cheating is worse than almost anything, even abortion and human cloning, and furthermore this opinion trend isn’t even tied to religious mores (the same people polled showed increase acceptance of gay marriage). And also just consider the idea that this supposed groundswell of support for cheating is largely manipulated.
Because of my years as a social media moderator for an eco watchdog publication that was constantly beset by paid Monsanto trolls posing as ordinary people (i.e., roach marketers or stealth marketers), I have a sense of how corrupt industries and the media they sponsor create a “wag-the-dog” effect to steer and “correct” public opinion in support of certain icky agendas that the public might otherwise naturally resist.
One typical wag-the-dog strategy is to create the illusion that a particular view is held by a majority of the public on the cynical principle that most people are sheep and will just vote with the crowd. One of the ways of doing this is by flooding media comment sections with aggressive brigading trolls who drown out and scare off normal commenters until they own the space and create the appearance of majority opinion. And even if this doesn’t manage to sway the public (it often doesn’t), the illusion of majority view or just the sheer nastiness and volume of astroturf campaigns can be used by bill mills to steer government policy in support of industrial agendas.
This is also done for political policies such as Citizen’s United which the majority of the public didn’t support yet was passed regardless.
In any case, I and other editors and moderators had a fun strategy against trolls. We would all block suspected trolls (and their useful idiot unpaid groupies or the occasional guilt-crazed industry functionary who defended their company’s products in their spare time) on our personal pages. We could still see them posting on our own publication’s page but their aliases and even alternative aliases used to show up in a different color than regular commenters’ IDs so we could track them and expose them immediately to regular readers. This is so they couldn’t play their bait and switch games and waste everyone’s time by first pretending to be neutral parties who needed “convincing” or, much worse, dox and pry personal information out of regular readers as part of the agrochem industry’s chilling campaign to get opponents on government “domestic terrorist” lists or even trigger SWAT attacks on activists (no joke).
But in the comment sections of various other mainstream news sources’ social media pages, the trolls could not see us posting under our personal accounts when we commented on articles relevant to toxic industrial issues and we couldn’t see them. Because of this, we were able to post arguments and links undercutting the industry defenses without getting mobbed and attacked. But the really interesting bit was that, once each of us had blocked approximately six thousand trolls (close to the actual number of paid stealth marketers Monsanto was reputed to employ), the comment sections of mainstream news sources became virtual wastelands save for a few normal people who dared to counter the troll arguments. But, if we commented under our alternative accounts that did not have block lists, those comment sections would be jam packed with supposedly “regular people” stumping for the chemical industry.
The main point I’m making is that literally no genuine member of the public was commenting in defense of the safety of forever chemicals or pesticides, etc. The entire “groundswell of public support” was engineered and almost entirely fake. But if you weren’t behind the scenes on this, you’d be left thinking that your fellow Americans all rabidly believe it’s safe to hose down toddlers with agrochemicals. If you didn’t agree, you’d probably just feel depressed in that “what hath God wrought in man?” kind of way and would stop trying to counter the bs out of a sense of existential woe and defeat. Which was part of the point of creating the illusion of majority opinion: a campaign of attrition to dishearten the public into silent passivity.
Anyway, I sense the same thing is more or less happening in regards to cheating with a few differences. For instance, much higher numbers of the brigading cheating apologists in comment sections are obviously personally motivated and most probably aren’t getting paid to do it. But that doesn’t mean they’re not fomenting brigades much like industry trolls if just because guilt is ugly and abusers are clinically known to be highly attuned to “zeitgeist” and intensely and pathologically driven to manage image. Also media with an agenda to whitewash infidelity may be pruning out the comments they don’t like to increase the “groundswell” appearance, though mostly this isn’t necessary if the trolls are nasty enough.
Admittedly in regard to cheating it’s a lot less clear what the particular political and financial agenda is behind the wag-the-dog astroturfing. Maybe it’s because the porn and dating app behomoths (that most mainstream media are cross-invested in, including Google, CBS, MSNBC and Fox News) depend on cheating and cheater mentality for market expansion? Or maybe it’s because the media and other industries lost gadzillions during #MeToo purges and/or pervy media owners and editors are personally driven to “correct” all those judgy public prohibitions against sexual misconduct.
Whatever the case, because of her consistent cheater apologism and WaPost’s general patriarchal political biases (owned by Jeff Mega-FW Bezos after all), I sense Hax’s comment section has been been turned into a screechy viper pit of like-minded brigading trolls (whether personally driven or paid) which most normal people don’t want to wade into.
Idk about the trolls, but it’s possible because a lot of people canceled their Washington Post subscriptions last fall. Including me. So the remaining subscribers who can comment are OK with Bezos and his actions. Not exactly an unbiased sample.
No idea what % of the populace are sheep. Enough that getting stampeded by sheep is no picnic. You’ve written about the “social ruin” threatened by abusers and their flying monkeys. It’s funny (ha ha) that successful abusers are like successful comedians: they know how to read a room. Sometimes chumps must go against the zeitgeist to take reasonable measures to protect themselves: see a lawyer, request a post-nup, etc.
Also you’re probably right that, like successful comedians, FW’s learn to read the room. A few studies of domestic abusers concluded that that many tend to channel far more psychic energy into “image management” than normal which would probably include a elevated sensitivity to the psychology, opinions and biases of people around them and the general “zeitgeist.”
Anything related to domestic abuse or sexual abuse (related issues since the driver of most domestic abuse is arguably one-sided sexual control) tends to separate wheat from chaff in social contexts more than almost anything else.
I’ve seen with my own eyes how these kinds of situations can make direct bystanders behave out of character, where even those who might strongly disapprove of abuse/rape/workplace harassment/cheating in principle (and respond this way in Gallup polls), might suddenly find themselves going Swiss or even knee-jerkedly victim-blaming when someone they’re only tangentially socially connected to is exposed as a perpetrator.
It’s gross and unsettling which is probably why Stanley Milgram did the shock experiments to figure out why regular Germans too often allowed or participated in Nazi atrocities. Basically a lot of bystanders act like witnesses to a brawl and, in deciding which side to take, they instinctively factor risk to themselves. If the risk is high, they figure it’s probably safer to side with the more aggressive party (typically the instigator)– or at least not be perceived to be too supportive of the victim for fear of angering the instigator.
I have a feeling this is probably due to some hardwired evolutionary fear humans developed since the time of our ape ancestors where the most dangerous thing in the monkey realm was getting in the way of a rampaging ape in rut. It’s probably why most line of duty deaths in policing happen while intervening in DV situations. Consequently, a lot of cops don’t like to take those calls because hell hath no fury like a batterer in the midst of reinforcing and rebooting their unilateral sexual control over captive partners.
I think it makes a little bit of sense that the moral compasses of bystanders might waver in reaction to overt violence. But something else lurking in our hardwired instincts might be an inkling that even a seemingly nonthreatening sexual creep could potentially turn menacing in defense of their sexual compulsions. According to recent studies, this can even include female fuckwits.
There was a little rash of studies in the past five years regarding something authors dubbed “hyper-femininity” as a hypothetical counterpart to “toxic masculinity.” To the surprise of some authors, it turned out that hetero women who most strongly rejected feminism and purported to support trad gender roles requiring men to be dominating and women to be sexually passive and accommodating to men were actually the most sexually coercive and aggressive to men.
The authors of a few of these studies concluded that the common themes between sexually coercive women and sexually coercive men were “hostile sexism” and that both tended to invest in “rape myth acceptance”– the view that men are uncontrollably sexually driven and can’t help themselves and that victims who say “no” don’t really mean “no.” So I guess the way “sexually toxic” men expressed these beliefs was by sexually coercing women. And the way “hyper-feminine” women expressed these beliefs was by viewing male resistance to sex as not sincere or else abnormal, contemptible and something to be ignored and overridden.
Because the definition of sexual coercion that authors described included not only getting targets drunk, using emotional blackmail (threat of smears?) and/or physical force but also deceit, I assumed this might logically include she-cheaters in the equation.
Anyway, the point is that, regardless of gender, pervs seem to be pretty intimidating to a lot of bystanders and, unfortunately, most human beings are self-preserving cowards who reflexively distance themselves from perceived victims.
It’s disappointing but it fits with the Nuremberg testimony of an Auschwitz survivor who said “Ten percent of people are always merciful. Ten percent are always cruel. And the remaining eighty percent can go either way.”
I’m so glad CL can discern through the bullshit of cheaters. It’s a handy skill!
“I engaged with this anonymous person, who knew details about my life that cemented the fact, that this was in fact true. I felt paralysed. They then deleted their newly established Instagram profile, and disappeared like a puff of smoke.”
Bad when AP’s do it, but absolutely life saving when neutral 3rd party witnesses do it.
To add nuance and context here, whenever I see fact patterns like this I worry this kind of discourse will discourage folks who are NOT Dirty Cheating Affair Partners from TELLING Chumps. Anonymously, with proof, remains a safe way to do that. I say this as someone who is eternally grateful to the anonymous truth teller who freed me from a psycho cheater over a decade ago. Your karma is rocking!
That being said, yes, messengers too often definitely do get shot.
TELL ANYWAY! Early and often! It’s the right thing to do. Even if you might get mistaken for a cheater or an affair partner, tell anyway.
The anonymous workplace whistleblower in my situation was initially afraid of getting shot but warmed up after a few dummy account email exchanges when he realized I wasn’t going to punish the messenger or fly off the handle and jump off a ledge.
I wish more people would do this because I learned a lot from that exchange and it also increased my faith in humanity. For instance, apparently he wasn’t alone in feeling ethically “burdened” with witnessing a creepy workplace affair. Learning this probably prevented me from knee-jerkedly assuming that bystanders knew and approved of the behavior which I think is a pitfall in traumatic betrayal. The risk is that chumps can end up feeling like humanity is generally awful and there’s no safe harbor and no future because everyone sucks. The result can be existential angst and social withdrawal on top of personal betrayal.
The whistleblower also completely demystified the affair by describing how coworkers resented the mess and how they thought the AP was a trashy, icky, desperate, two-faced psycho who kissed up and slapped down and FW had weirdly transformed into a swaggering creep and the butt of jokes. I think that spared me from any trauma-driven temptation I might have had to pickme dance since I learned out of the gate that there was nothing worthy of competing with and nothing to win.
All told, I think the fact that one person was ethically moved to warn probably protected me from one of the worst injuries of this kind of betrayal which is not just to “self esteem” but also to our esteem for humanity in general. It spared me from that kind of psychologically isolating cynicism.
My first cheaters OW would call and ask Where is cheater????? Then hang up. I never tool even that hink. Gall rises up in my throat when I read these stories of deception..because I was so fooled. My #2cheater got seriously depressed and ended up with a psychiatrist and on meds. Called it bipolar depression
After reading CL I wonder if that was an affair gone bad and he was ONLY depressed because he lost??? That was 15 years before I found out about my cheating husband of 30 years. Could it be???? I shutter to think. But then I read up on Maria Shriver whose husband Arnold fathered baby within weeks of Maria’s pregnancy and with the housekeeper RIGHT UNDER Maria’s nose. And that boy, Joseph looking uncannily like Arnold. 14 years of “not seeing”..and telling yourself it can’t possibly be true. The truth came out 14 years later in therapy. We are not the only ones…they see amazing liars these cheaters and we truly trust. The perfect combination.
I agree with your suspicion that a lot of cheaters get “catastrophically depressed” right at the point that affair partners start turning the screws and pressuring them to make a choice. I sense the depression is not so much about fear of loss of the particular affair partner but because the bait and switch betrayal dashes cheaters’ fantasies that they’ll ever be able to get their infantile emotional and sexual needs met without normal adult reciprocity.
Basically what these disordered types want is to return to a fetal stage where nothing is required of them and they’re floating blissfully in amniotic fluid and being fed through an umbilical cord. It seems like a lot of witting affair partner typically bait the hook with this kind of offer at the start of affairs– pretending that they’re just in it for fun and bonky thrills, yeehah. But, over time, many affair partners will incrementally up the ante and start putting the pressure on to commit which comes as a terrible shock to many FWs whose main aim was to avoid genuine intimacy and responsibility.
Yep I remember my FW going to a psychiatrist and being prescribed anti depressants – then spending two weeks off work on the couch. I went along with him, trying to be as supportive as possible and did everything at home while he adjusted to the meds until he could go back to work.
I strongly suspect now that this incident was related to the OW because it was so out of left field and despite talking and talking I could never really get an idea of what was actually wrong.
Then it just went away as quickly as it started (when they got back together, I suspect)
Hell of a chump!! You are so eloquent in your descriptions!! I’ve never heard of going back to fetal life and wanting not to do anything for a relationship and then freaking out when a heartbeat is needed by OW. The free ride comes to an end. I think alot of cheaters hit this wall, look at their wife appliances and see how easy we make life for them….so they come back into the fold until the next easy fish is hooked and they can be king again. Oh my goodness! For me to think that my X was having EAs or whatever he was doing and getting rejected and then needing psychiatric help and it was all a reaction to his basement blowing up !!!!!!!???? Its totally hitting me right now. I blamed it all on his bipolar dad and him inheriting his Dad’s mental illness. I know I’m untangling skeins, but that kind of double life for years and years is possible as I now know!! It blows me away. My x-changed jobs every 2 years and I know he had EAs each job but I let that go since HE LOVED ME THE MOST.
He told me everyone didn’t appreciate him at work when he quit.who knows if HR was on him much earlier than his last affair at work!! I’m just talking out Loud to those chumps who lurk on here and think they are safe in their cheaters life because they have changed them by their love or their police work and the cheater is Sorry????. I truly doubt it, they just get better at it!! Just wow!!
“it was all a reaction to his basement blowing up.”
Yikes, sounds like it. I don’t even think it’s from fear of lost “wuv” but just the image-conscious sense of “being a loser” and the dashed fantasy of finding the perfect metaphorical amniotic sac to drift away in and the perfect metaphorical placenta to fill their every need.
If you think about it it’s quite sad because desiring that level of regression is like wanting a living suicide. They are regressively suicidal.
Hellofachump, I might differ a bit from the suicidal pact and rather lean towards this fetal individual is using whomever can be used..ie mother figures, to such out their life forces if at all possible .parasitic. . They don’t want their “floating on clouds “life to end…no, they want anyone in the way of that life..out of their way. Self centered, so that taking their own life would not be good for a central king…but rather your light and your joy grabbed up. No we can’t allow that at all
Sucked up
As Yogi Berra is supposed to have said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” From observing, and from reading Chump Nation — if your spouse requests:
(1) “a break” or “space”
and/or
(2) an open marriage —
You need to hire a PI. Quietly. Play dumb, act like nothing’s wrong, like you don’t suspect a thing.
Hooboy. Looking at that, it’s so hard. Nobody wants to do that. They want confrontation, clarification, explanation, repentance. Crocodile tears!
It is so hard to keep your cards close to your chest. “How can I be so underhand?” No-one wants to think that their beloved has been underhand (as confirmed by the PI) for no telling how long (longer than the PI can prove).
A PI can be expensive, but not as expensive as blowing your time and your health (both physical and mental). In terms of mere money, not as expensive as being shafted in the divorce. Proof!
100% agree with this!
Unfortunately just about every therapist, advice columnist, and flying monkey bystander give out the stupidly dangerous advice to talk to the FW first.
(3) Renewed wedding vows. Start the countdown: most couples split within two years. Hopium on the chump’s part, squid ink on the FW’s.
Back when I cared to learn more about the FW’s betrayal objects, I contacted some of them to find out what they knew about me and my (adult) child. He shared a lot of private info, as did the FW in this case. But more telling was that the betrayal objects, whether they were single or married, all seemed to think that the encounters were no big deal. That they transactions they had were not important, memorable, or life-changing in any way. They were very comfortable “confessing,” as they felt they had done nothing problematic at all. Getting drunk and going to his hotel room, going on road trips togther, week-long trips, none of it was seen as wrong by any of them. This is a sad and yet affirming story. I am so glad she has moved onto a better life. Contact with these betrayal objects is a window into a sordid facet of our society.
I met my XH in Utah. When he asked me out, we discussed at length the fact that he was Mormon and I’m not. Mormons are supposed to marry other Mormons in the temple; it’s a big deal for them to not get a temple marriage. I told him he needed to think about whether he could live without a temple marriage. He said he could.
10 months into our marriage, he told me he had made a mistake. He told me he needed a temple marriage after all. He even went to the Mormon temple to pray about it and came home saying God had told him to divorce me and pursue a temple marriage. He insisted he had no one in particular in mind; he just had a newfound passion for temple marriage, in the abstract. He was adamant we didn’t need therapy because therapy couldn’t fix me being a non-Mormon, and I was otherwise a “perfect wife.” It was just a temple marriage problem.
After a few months, I offered to join the Mormon church so he could have his temple marriage after all. He looked horrified. He said he was still divorcing me. He began to cycle through reasons like “we have no peace in our home!” (So much for “perfect wife”.) When I suggested therapy to work on the new issues he was raising, he flew into a rage.
We later wreckonciled. After we divorced 10 years later, I found out the real reason for this incident was he was cheating on me.
I’m convinced that anyone who wants a divorce for vague and evasive reasons while refusing to go to therapy is secretly cheating.
Marriages are about seven times more likely to end when the wife becomes seriously ill than when the husband does. (Research February 2025, Journal of Marriage and Family.)