The Other Woman Sent Me Your Book
The Other Woman mailed her a copy of Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life to get her to leave her husband. She did. Now what?
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Dear Chump Lady,
I’m sure you’ve heard similar outrageous stories before, but your book was anonymously mailed to me two years ago by my husband’s affair partner. She wanted me to leave my cheating husband so she could have him. And now she does.
We are still married, but he is in deep at this point.
We’ve been together 32 years and separated 9 months. Our kids are 21 and 25, thank God! But hers are 9 and 11, and she just had her nasty divorce finalized 6 months ago. I am struggling with how this is going down. I always thought we’d be together. But this other woman has an incredible hold on him. He is 10 years older than her and this was his midlife crisis.
Believe me, I have come a LONG way in the 2+ years she’s been in our lives, but when does he get to deal with the pain too? I feel like I’m the one who is suffering and I didn’t even do anything? How do I move on? He is still paying most of our bills (I guess out of guilt), and after being home with our kids for 25 years, I went back to work full time 7 months ago. It’s SO HARD to see her living MY life. And to add insult to injury, he says he sees us getting back together one day. 🤷🏼♀️ HUH???
Any advice is appreciated as I found your book very helpful, despite being sent to me by the crazy beotch woman who just wanted me away from my husband so she could have him.
Thank you so much!
F’ed Up Life
***
Dear F’ed Up Life,
Ugh. This is not the first time I’ve heard of Other Women weaponizing my book to win the pick-me dance. I can’t imagine those mental gymnastics.
You should really read this book that champions self-respect and leaving cheaters, so I can have… a cheater. It takes a crazy kind of chutzpah to think chumps are the pathetic ones when the Other Woman has been a side-dish option at the pussy buffet.
Did they read the book?
NO ONE WINS THE PICK ME DANCE. It doesn’t matter how many competitors exit the field, the “prize” isn’t worth having. It’s a lesson you both could internalize.
I always thought we’d be together. But this other woman has an incredible hold on him.
The other woman doesn’t have superpowers. She cannot “make” your husband do anything he doesn’t want to do. Look, she totally sucks, but he has agency. He has chosen to reject 32 years, two kids, and a shared future. That’s very painful to internalize, so it’s common to blame the affair partner instead. Oh, if we just stamp out the menace that is this wily seductress, problem solved!
She’s thinking the same damn thing. If I just send Mrs. Chump this magic book, she’ll leave her husband to me!
NO. The problem is HE LOVES CAKE. He thrills to the degrading competition between two (5, 14, hundreds of…) women for the awesomeness of his wandering dick. You can stay in this rigged, misogynistic game, or you can leave it.
I am #TeamLEAVE
He is 10 years older than her and this was his midlife crisis.
He didn’t wake up a cheater in midlife. That’s highly unlikely. Anyway, midlife crises have been debunked, there’s just shitty character. Devaluing you and indulging his entitlement is who he is. It’s baked in. There are ETHICAL ways to leave a relationship. He did not avail himself of those options. Case in point:
And to add insult to injury, he says he sees us getting back together one day.
What an honor! To continue to be of use to him. He might circle back and plug his dick in your socket, like an errant Roomba.
Fuck. That. Shit.
but when does he get to deal with the pain too?
When consequences hit.
I see no mention of lawyers. WHERE IS YOUR LAWYER? The mindfuck channel will flip to self-pity and rage when there’s a divorce settlement. Do you live in a fault state? Did you consult an attorney before you went back to work and screwed yourself out of alimony? What are you doing to PROTECT YOURSELF? These are the questions that should be foremost in your mind, not what the other woman is doing.
I feel like I’m the one who is suffering and I didn’t even do anything? How do I move on?
With a divorce. You’re separated and seem on the fence about ending this. I detect whiffs of hopium. Listen, it is going to suck. Divorce is a meat grinder, there’s no getting around it. But it’s better than the constant devaluing of a cheater. A bazillion chumps here have lived this nightmare and can tell you from personal, painful experience that where you are now — stuck in a pick me dance — is worse than being on the other side of divorce.
Please secure your finances. Fight for half his pension, alimony, the family home, all the things. The plan cannot be “one day he’ll tire of the other woman and return!”
It’s SO HARD to see her living MY life.
Twitchy hypervigilance as to where he is? Economic vulnerability? Right now they’re living in a consequence-free world. She might feel like she “won.” But he’s about to get two sullen pre-teens who know that Mr. FW broke up their family. He’s on the other side of raising children. I cannot imagine that he wants to take on the teenage years again. But maybe he doesn’t think past his dick.
My point is, stop imagining they have a perfect, tension-free, conflict-less life. Focus on rebuilding YOUR life.
Some day some other Other Woman is going to mail her a book… So many FWs, it’s never going out of print.
The mental gymnastics the OW preformed is impressive; cheat on your husband with a married man and then send a copy of the book to get his wife to leave is…just wow.
It’s pretty amazing. On the one hand, that book is exactly what the wife needs. So I guess I am glad it found it’s way to her. Regardless of HOW.
But the idea that the OW could read the book and still want the FW is mindboggling!
She probably thinks “her” FW is different. He’s the unicorn, and their tru luv and her magic hoo ha will ensure his fidelity!
To quote whoever said it first: Denial isn’t just a river. SMDH.
Yeah, she’s a regular Robin Hood of psychopathic twats. She wasn’t collaborating on wrecking a family, bilking their assets and helping to destroy the peace of mind of three innocent people– she was liberating those deluded losers from a sense of false security and helping them get a life!
I was just re-watching Erin Brockovich and am reminded of the bit where PG&E tries to tell the poisoned locals that their municipal and groundwater are only tainted with chromium 3, an ingredient in nutritional supplements, rather than chromium 6, a carcinogenic neurotoxin.
FUL,
You have known that you have had a Cheater problem for at least 2 years and yet you seem to be content to let your FW set the pace/timelines. I would strongly recommend that you look to get on and then stay on the front foot; get a lawyer and divorce your husband, getting the best settlement that you can for yourself. If he doesn’t like it then “f*ck him”; he doesn’t have to like it, he just has to deal with it It is now well past the time for you to set the terms and the tempo …. and once it’s done you can then work out what future you want to build for yourself.
And once in a while you may want to remind yourself that you are no-one’s (and certainly not his) “Plan B.”
LFTT
The worst part of Plan B, to me, is that you can always be left for another Plan A in the future. Nobody works overtime for Plan B.
Exactly! Mine tried this crap too. Letting me know that he envisioned us together again at some point in the future.
In our case I think that was:
A. Him not being able to deal with the idea of me moving on with someone else, so he hoped that he could get me to wait around?
B. Him not being sure that he would find a new gf/wife appliance as good as me, so wanted to keep me on the hook just in case the options weren’t as wonderful as he’d hoped
C. A combo of the two
Whatever the reason, no thank you.
M,
I suspect that it is the “Plan B fallacy” that is stopping FUL from acting decisively in this situation. She (perhaps) doesn’t want to be the one to call it “quits” despite being fully justified in doing so, just in case her FW changes his mind.
LFTT
It smacks of the same game that Dan Broderick played while cheating on Betty Broderick, sort of moving her around on a legal chess board and stringing her along on false hope while he schemed to lower any future settlement when he finally dumped her for the AP.
Not to suggest that FUL will go the way of the infamous Betty but there’s definitely a cautionary tale in there about not getting conned with false hope because of the risk of maddening financial abuse and added emotional fallout when the rug is at last pulled and the game revealed.
I think this is where so many (like me) get hung up, and it is understandable. I was devastated that she was going to get the life that I worked so hard beside him to build. Truth was that after it all settled, she didn’t get my life she got her life, and I was so fortunate to have escaped it.
Yes I had to start over, but this time I expended my energies on my life and my work. Within a few years I sailed past him in terms of financials and stability. In part because of my hard work and going to school, and in part because he descended into gambling and fighting and blaming pretty much every one.
But I didn’t know any of this until quite a few years later when he crashed his relationship with our son due to his own actions and continued selfishness. And since she was his soulmate she was just like him.
So get what is yours, and go on and don’t look back. It is unfortunate that you went to work before seeing a lawyer, but now that you have, don’t quit it until you see a lawyer.
Susie,
It is interesting how many FWs are “so unhappy” in their decades long marriages and just can’t help but cheat. But then they force the Chump to actually be the one to file for divorce. Which depending on what stage said Chump is in, can be an added trauma. Eventually we all realize that we are better off LACGAL’ing the hell out of there. But early on, a lot of us do not feel that way at all. It’s like asking us to cut our own hand off.
I’ve seen some posts online from men* that are interested in demolishing “no fault divorce”. Obviously, this topic isn’t exactly related to cheating but I find it interesting. These particular men seem to be upset that their wives can just decide to divorce them for any reason and then they are seeing their kids less and paying support/alimony etc. They all cite the fact that something like 75/80% of divorces are initiated by women. The imply women get married just so they can quit working and eventually live off their cast off spouses. But I have to wonder, how many of those women that filed did so because the husband left them for a schmoopie? Because after reading this blog for at least a year and reading the archives that go back over a decade, I see a LOT of Chumps that were forced to do all the leg work despite the FW having completely discarded them.
*apologies to the male chumps. This particular topic was very gender specific. (It doesn’t have to be, I bet male chumps have faced the same BS, but the posts I saw re abolishing no fault divorce were about men)
Re the posts from men who want to abolish no fault divorce: Don’t they realize that would make it harder for them to discard their wife appliance when they want a new one? Or is it because they want an excuse to have several women on the string at one time? (“My wife won’t give me a divorce” which sometimes was even true back in the day.) Or…what? Never mind, my head is starting to hurt from trying to figure out irrational people.
I believe that no fault divorce has gotten a lot of people (men as well as women) out of abusive marriages. I think it was so difficult and expensive to get divorced under the fault laws that a lot of people had to stay in horrible relationships. If not stay as in physically stay, then at least have legal ties they were never able to sever. I know that many states had laws allowing legal separation, but that’s not the same as being able to sever all legal ties.
I even read somewhere, maybe on this site, that the suicide rate of older middle aged married women went down after the no fault laws were passed in all states!
” But early on, a lot of us do not feel that way at all. It’s like asking us to cut our own hand off.
Very true. In fact, about a month after fw left, his mother told me he had given an engagement to whore. It freaks me out, I called him the next am and told him he needed to file so we could separate our finances. He balked and said I would rather you file, I don’t want to hurt you. I said too late for that, but you want the D, you file. He did but it took a couple weeks.
I had already had a meeting with a lawyer, and I had told the lawyer that I wanted him to file. Lawyer said actually if you can get him to file, it would given him (the lawyer) more options. But, he said we can’t wait too long, as we need to protect my finances. He filed a couple weeks later. I had already cancelled our joint credit card, and I had diverted my paycheck to another account that his name was not on, and closed out the standing account as soon as the last check cleared.
My view is when I hear the stats that women file for D way more than men, I have to wonder how many of those women are forced to file to protect themselves from a cheating liar.
I suspect those stats don’t represent what many think they represent.
Note: my thoughts are not anti man, but anti cheater.
Often women file because their spouses treated them like crap in any number of ways, not just by cheating. They get to a certain point, especially after the children have left the nest, where they can tolerate no more.
The “women initiate most divorces” is a whiny complaint incels and other MRAs use to try to paint most women as disloyal.
That was my mom’s situation. After I left to go to college (only child), she saw how it was going to be living the rest of her life with a crazy, cheating, verbally abusive, financially irresponsible alcoholic. And she didn’t want to do it anymore.
By financially irresponsible, I mean abusing credit cards and refusing to save money, especially for retirement. My mom never told me this directly, but I think she was very concerned about how they would live in retirement. After she left, she did quite well financially. She bought a small house with her settlement, paid it off, lived frugally, and saved for her retirement. She ended up working for a company with a defined benefit pension and lived mostly on her pension and Social Security when she retired. A success story of gaining a life!
OHFFS,
Yes, absolutely! There are plenty of reasons to want a divorce that don’t involve cheating. I just have more casual knowledge of the aspect where the FW cheats, and the chump has to file because FW doesn’t. And then these men looking to end no fault divorce cite the stat of women doing more filing and the number doesn’t actually represent what they are trying to say it does.
I guess they don’t consider the possibility that women are filing because their husbands are just plain lousy partners.
Daughter,
I’ll take your comment a step further, I think there is at least a portion of them that wants to be able to get married so they have all the benefits of a wife appliance, then BE a lousy partner and have their wives be stuck. Like in the “good old days”.
Yes, this.
That’s exactly the situation FW put me in. Cheated, said he wanted to be with the child mistress but refused to move out and wouldn’t file for divorce. He said he didn’t want to be with me, didn’t want to work on our marriage, hadn’t loved me in years, wasn’t attracted to me…. but it was up to me if I wanted to file for divorce.
Naturally, he tried to talk me out of getting a lawyer because we could sort it out between ourselves. Really? We were going to sort out the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on his secret basement that I didn’t even know about, and all the information that I *still* don’t know about 18 months later because he refuses to turn over everything. FWs really are something else.
Very early on after DDay, mine insisted he WASN’T getting a divorce. It wasn’t just laziness, or fear of financial consequences. He thought he could insist that he NOT get divorced. As if I had no say.
Keep in mind, he TOLD me about the affair. It wasn’t like I suspected it and found evidence and confronted him. He sat me down and told me he found someone else and was in love and intended to be with her, he told me when he chose to tell me. It was years in to the affair. He could have waited longer, I didn’t suspect a thing. I am not sure what made him choose that day.
He wanted to continue with the AP and yet NOT get a divorce. I think he didn’t want to look like the villain that he was and thought if we stayed a family, with me as his “family” but not romantically linked, then others would think since I approved, they should to? It was crazy. But I’m sure there are plenty of Chumps here with similar stories, I doubt it’s unique to me. .
Hmm. Yes, I remember my mom telling me once, after she left my dad, that in the state they resided in, no fault divorce meant that if you wanted a divorce, you could get one. ( And I assume in all states now.) You might take a beating on the property settlement, and you might not get the custody arrangement you wanted. But you could be free of your spouse if you wanted to I think this was after a discussion she had with her attorney about the divorce; this was in the mid 80s.
I think she was actually surprised by this. Seems normal to me, but of course I grew up with no fault divorce laws.
Wow! My situation was similar in that I was totally blindsided by it. I had no clue he was cheating (for 7 years!!) until he told me everything. It was just a random Friday; no particular event led up to it. We had been cuddling on the bed in my office and he starts on this weird, rambly soliloquy about monogamy not being right for men, or at least for him and he needed a more extraordinary life and love wasn’t enough if it didn’t come with butterflies and excitement.
He was clear he didn’t want to be with me. But his motives were purely financial, I think. He started openly dating the child mistress while refusing to leave the house. That left him plenty of money to take her on long weekends and fancy dinners while I was at home with our daughter. Bastard.
Mine very clearly didn’t want to be with me either. Schmoops was his magical soul mate and he made that very clear. I am certain that he would be worried about the financial impacts IF he had thought that far. But as things progressed, it became clear he really hadn’t thought anything through.
He knew he wanted Schmoops and that he would be so happy once they were together. But he also very much did not want to be that guy that leaves his wife and kids for an AP. So in an almost childlike move, he just didn’t think about reality and made up this idea in his head where we wouldn’t divorce legally, but he’d move in with her, somewhere nearby and he would still maintain our garden, he’d see his kids all the time and we would ALL do family activities together. Including going to his parents and extended family’s homes for holidays etc.
Keep in mind that he was pitching this idea while simultaneously discarding me brutally. Saying we were never right for each other and that he had never been happy. (we were together for decades) And just pointing out everything that was supposedly wrong with me. He had no qualms about letting me know she was saving him from his horrible, unhappy life.
I’ve certainly heard some wonderful stories about people that split and manage to co-parent at a level most can only dream of, where everyone, including ex spouse and new spouse get along great and it makes having both parents around for kid’s birthdays and special events really easy and wonderful. But those are so rare. And those situations don’t involve Chumps and APs. Those are cases where the marriage ends ethically, time passes and once everyone has moved on, they learn to navigate their new family.
I don’t care how much of a blind Chump I was. There was no planet on which I was turning up to Aunt Angela’s with my special recipe peanut butter cookies, with ex FW and Schmopps in tow, to play happy family. It was simply a crazy idea on his part. And I really don’t think that he ever thought past “this is the way this can go and I won’t look like the scum I am”.
SOOI, wow, our stories were VERY similar. I was the jailer who forced him into this terrible life against his will but he wanted me to remain the wife appliance while he made a new life with Schmoops and my kids would be SO HAPPY for him. He planned the situation he would need to make his fantasy work but he didnt make enough money to pay for it.
Yes, my discard was also brutal and he listed all my faults in agonizing detail but he didnt file. Ive said it before: I was a WONDEFUL wife but I would NOT have been a wonderful ex-wife. Nope.
My mistake is letting him back when something about his plan fizzled out. I dont know exactly what happened but Schmoops married the man she was engaged to all along. They had 2 kids and divorced at about the same time that my Cheater died.
There were a few people on Earth whose respect he deeply valued and would never have wanted them to know he was a cheater so I told them just to annoy any remnant of him that existed after death (Im Catholic and I believe in Purgatory). I decided to not tell his parents the full extent of it which would have caused them a lot of pain for no benefit.
Processing this whole convoluted mess took years, but Im not to a place where he is “someone that I used to know” who isnt alive any longer
By sort it out between you, he meant; screw you into poverty.
The 75/80% is a fascinating statistic listed, I have always been intrigued by it as a male myself. Besides infidelity, was abuse, drug/alcohol use or abandonment involved? It would be interesting to get a breakdown one day. Many of the RP dudes use it to say don’t get married because women will leave you.
Many of the women in the DC group I helped out with all left due to the reasons listed above. The other issue I see is people staying in marriages after infidelity, I am in another group and the majority of the men in it have cheated multiple times on their spouse and the spouse is staying, it’s wild. I am a turd in their punch bowl as they get to see the other side of the coin, makes them a bit uncomfortable.
“Besides infidelity, was abuse, drug/alcohol use or abandonment involved?”
In my case Josh, all three applied. But my cheater didn’t file or progress anything legally, he forced me to. And his Twu Wuv got sick of waiting for her big PayDay — which became my PayDay on settlement haha — and after a year on the phone and a scant 3 weeks together (she was in another country) she dumped him. He circled back to me, but *plot twist* I was done. I filled out all the paperwork and left it for him to sign but it took him ages and many reminders. Apparently after all that my cheater didn’t want a divorce. Awww. Poor thing. I wasn’t that awful after all.
PS Note to CL, my previous comment to Josh gave me a “awaiting moderation and spam” note and then disappeared completely. Very random!
I just fished it out of the spam filter. That can happen. If your comment goes poof, email me.
Thank you! I will for sure even if it probably was just a one-off
Focusing / distracting with “who filed” finger pointing and blameshifting is just another form of FW gaslighting.
It’s like “hey I admit I cheated BUT YOU FILED FOR DIVORCE!”
It makes the act of filing for divorce the crime and not the cheating. The filing is a direct consequence of the cheating. Not the other way around.
A very close person in my inner circle is a top family lawyer with decades in the game. They confirmed to me in their experience that men only ever leave marriages for another partner (once they’ve secured another partner / ie cheated) whereas women will file for divorce or separate purely because they’ve had enough of the marriage (for a variety of reasons) and rarely, if ever, for another partner.
The exception to this is (as we know here in CN) the case of a chumped male spouse who divorces his cheating wife and files first. My lawyer friend conceded this is possible of course, but also noted the men rarely if ever admit to that reason. Or the cheating wife who has finally found her Twu Wuv and is going scorched earth and files first. again possible but not the typical scenario. So, I guess it’s complicated.
This stat is skewed in cases for many of us chumps (myself included) where the FWs force us to do all the heavy lifting legally to file and complete divorce even when we didn’t want to — we had to — following brain until heart catches up style. What of the chumps who fall in the middle as a number of cake eating FWs want to stay married and have cake.
Then there are the runaway husbands who don’t want to reconcile are in the minority (maybe someone else can chime in here on this?) and so the wife is of course forced to then file.
My own runaway husband came back when his OW dumped him so the problem is there are so many variations and so parsing these to determine “who filed” is the least of the issue. The why of things not the who filed is the key.
But this is just my understanding. Because of “no fault” divorce and the new and swiss “irreconcilable differences” reason for such no fault divorce, the real picture is opaque. And FWs love them some opaque.
As in your case, Cheater ended the marriage; I just managed the paperwork. I didn’t “initiate the divorce”; he willingly and repeatedly broke his vow of fidelity. My brain led; my heart only started healing a couple of years ago, thanks to CL & CN.
I tend to think a lot more women file NOWADAYS because women have more options now, especially with education/finance, then they did before. And there are more laws against domestic violence, etc. I urged my mother to divorce my father literally starting when I was a small child, literally, and she was afraid because he had a gun(s) and she was afraid he would find us and kill us. She might have been right. Also, she didn’t have much by way of resources of her own and she had health problems, many stemming from child birth. When you consider things like this, and that the burden of taking care of the kids was usually more on the women, I think it’s not surprising that when some women get older they just say, I had enough, and go for the divorce. I don’t think they’re leaving for some hunk….I think they’re leaving because of decades of “I had enough”.
💯 Wives today have more awareness about sub-violent abuse reasons to leave a fuckwit, plus more flexible career and childcare options than ever. There is virtually no reason to stay with, say, a husband spending thousands on cheating and giving the wife STIs. Period.
MRA/redpill dudes have “fAulT diVorCe!” on a very weird pedestal. Giving enough rope to hang themselves. Hey, wannabe “plate spinning” cheater fuckwits, that fault divorce you have a hard on for is only going to cost you more, take longer, and officially adjudicate you an Adulterer, an Abuser, a Deadbeat Dad, and/or an Abandoner; plus it’s going to come out in very expensive litigation discovery how much these coomers are spending on phone sex lines and chatbots in their nasty little secret sexual basements. 🤣
Yes exactly Mehitable. I replied to Josh (above) about a lawyer friend who can confirm your thesis.
Not knowing I was in a pick me dance for years before D day with 2 Cheaters gave me a front row seat at the wrestling matches. I had 2 character deficit men who WERE NOT GOING TO CHANGE. If they had picked me, they would be sniffing for more OW as soon as i thought I’d won 🏆 the prize and beat off the lawyers. My first cheater was 32 when he started meeting up with OW at Golds gym..just work out partners ya know. Midlife crisis? My second cheater was 58 when he started acting out his fantasy life of porn -EAs, – massages and OW. Midlife anyone? Nope!! This is baked in character chromosomes deletion. You can’t cure it without years and years of effort on THEIR PART. Looking at cheater#1 35 years later? From what the kids tell me, he is the same person but older and tired.a bully still and treats woman as property.. Cheater#2 is so messed up but married to a lady he met on line 20 years younger. I could not cure that even with the strongest medicine. Dear Fed up. 📚 READ Tracy’s book.29x..you’ve already stepped on all the landmines. Please stop, read, and do an about face. You’re heading for a cliff. This man doe NOT LOVE YOU!! You can get on top of your finances,health, mental HEALTH NOW or pay the price later. You are now the OW and giving your husband his best life ever in a harem. NO NO No!!
Dear Fucked Up Life,
I hear you on the “see her living MY life.” My life, after all, is a god-damned mess.
“that’s MY happiness! My love! How dare they give it away when I have given them so much of me!”
It’s infuriating!
Givers (us chumps) give selflessly. Takers(fuckwits) take selfishly.
So, how much more of you are you willing to give this idiot? More accurately, how much more are you going to permit him to take from you?
You are not the problem. He is.
He has proven that he is not worth your time, energy, or effort. Do you want to wait for THAT to “come home and see reason”?
I don’t know about you, but I’m not letting my fuckwit come back around just so she can betray me again. And I refuse to live in the further world of paranoia and gaslighting about when the other shoe will drop. I did a similarly length’d Pick-Me Dance myself-I lost. Because the only way to win is not to dance.
You’re worth more than that.
I find it HILARIOUS that Schmoopie sent you the book, and by extension…here. To where her kind are prey.
To me, the bottom line is always the same: you will never view your cheating spouse the same way again and you will never fully trust them again even if you do the recon. This is why recons almost always fail. And most cheaters don’t have any significant consequences for cheating – they just say I’m sorry and buy presents, keep hoovering, and some spouses take them back….but they haven’t really changed anything about themselves which is something that requires dealing with consequences over a significant period of time. REAL CHANGE IS NEEDED.
Ultimately the decision to cheat and keep cheating was made by your husband. Infidelity is a series of decisions over time, to look for another sex-romantic partner, to date the, to groom them, to flirt with and become involved with them, to have the affair with all the logistics involved, and then to lie to you and hide it, while keeping contact surreptitiously with the AP. Frequently there is a strong financial aspect as well of buying gifts, spending money on hook-up places or vacations, or guilt offerings to suffering spouses. THESE ARE ALL CONSCIOUSLY MADE DECISIONS, sometimes very cunning, and not any kind of “affair fog” or great impassioned love. They seek it and they find it and they want it and they do it and they keep doing it.
So AP has won a cheater who will probably become discontented with her at some point as their life together is a fantasy. Some cheaters WANT fantasies so this is the life for them, others want the fun but can’t handle the responsibilities that come with being intimately involved with ANY other person. Sometimes the AP’s bail. These are unstable, untrustworthy people throwing away usually pretty good lives for bad choices. They may be able to keep up an external facade for Facebook but the internals are rarely good. Your spouse’s best years are BEHIND HIM. Your best years may still be ahead even if you are older….your life is different than you anticipated, very different, but it might also become better. At any rate….if you took him back, as I say….you would never look at him the same way you did before, you’d never feel the same way about him again, you’d never fully trust hi again….even if things were quiet for years, something will come up to trigger you. Ask me how I know.
So this psycho bitch did you a favor by giving you the best book on the topic of how to handle infidelity ever written, and the advice in there is all good and you get more here as well. And a support network too, we all care. As bad as it is now….it will get better for you….and I think it will get worse for him. It usually does….at least on the inside. Good luck!
What is really f’edup is how clear it is (from the outside) that he is stringing the OP along to avoid financial consequences.
That needs to end. FUL, you didn’t put in 32 years to live on crumbs of money or affection. Half of every penny earned was/is yours. That was the contract both of you agreed to, along with agreeing to forsake all others. He breeched the contract. Go after what is legally, morally, and rightfully yours.
Get angry. You have every right.
Also, I worked at a minimum wage job (though it was a secure job) and money was really tight for me for quite a long time. But, your kids are grown, and all you need to worry about is you.
If you are not yet legally separated he can run up a lot of debt and dispose of a lot of money, and he can do that quickly. If it is from retirement funds in the form of loans that you didn’t know about, you might be able to recoup some of that. It it is from disposable funds accounts, that will be almost impossible to recoup.
Don’t delay.
F’ed up Life,
Welcome to the Chump club, but sorry you are here. I never thought I’d be here either, after 3 kids and 30 years of marriage, but here I am! Tracy is right, the true misery is staying stuck, trust me, I have been for several years now for financial reasons, but I have light at the end of the tunnel and am working towards my D-day for him, which is DIVORCE! lol. Let’s see how he enjoys his D-day. And let’s see how yours enjoys his! This man has revealed his true inner self to you (everyone), and as Maya Angelou would say, “When people show you who they are, believe them!” Get your attorney (and make him pay for that too) and get everything you can and move on, find a truly good man (they are out there because I refuse to believe there aren’t any). And best of luck to the shitty OW, because, if he can cheat on you with her…you know the saying. He is only faithful to himself and his selfishness! Cut off the cake supply. Good riddance Mr. Cheater!
Mine also thinks we will re marry post divorce once he grows tired of AP.It must be amazing to live as if consequences and/or rules don’t apply to you. Post divorce he is all hers forever. No trade-ins no take backs nothank you
Yep, no backsies!
Hopefully he keeps thinking that until you get as favorable of a deal as you can. Then post D, disappear.
Once you are divorced and have been no contact for a few years, you’re going to look back on this mindset and be so grateful you’re free of the abuse— I am! Get the divorce finalized. Set the trial date and have a trial if he won’t meet your bottom lines… I did. A judge will likely give you WAY more than any narcissist will willingly agree to. Put him in your past and focus on upleveling your future. Get new credentials, go for a promotion, improve your health, return to a childhood hobby, try new hobbies, volunteer, plan some travel …. Get so busy building your new life that the old is eclipsed. Start today. Limbo is the worst. Only you can move forward, one tiny act at a time. We understand it’s terrifying and infuriating and you just want your “old” life back. But there’s no do overs. FW was always capable of this… he was a con artist. Always was, is, and will be. You’re not. You’ll be ok about 3-5 years after divorce is finalized and you’ve perfected no contact. Your future self will thank you.
Oh and as far as that “midlife” shit. I know many, many, many folks who lived and live well beyond midlife, and at no time did they go batshit crazy, light themselves on fire and jump in a dumpster. And many of them went through much worse things than midlife struggles.
I thought it was a mid life crisis and confronted him with that idea and he copped to it (claiming that was the issue). That put me down a deep dark rabbit hole and kept me busy. Joke was on me because I later learned that he had cheated from the start and the truth was SO MUCH worse than a midlife crisis that he spared himself consequences copping to it.
Probably all of us reach that point in life where we’ve got more runway behind us than ahead of us and you think of what you did and didn’t do, and what you want to do with the time you have left. All those aches and pains and health problems start popping up out of nowhere and you know Death is gargling around some corner. Most of us try to figure out how we can make our lives better with what we have – better job, go to school, do something different, investigate religion, learn new hobbies, etc. Jumping off to another person is not going to solve YOUR INTERNAL PROBLEMS….not gonna stop you from aging, just gonna make you look like a damn fool. Affairs don’t just happen….people go LOOKING FOR THEM….and they sometimes look a while before they find someone sleazy and reckless enough to do it. They start with the talking and the flirting, and it goes by stages. No one’s eyes meet across a crowded room and they start screwing on the dance floor. No, no….it’s a whole bunch of deliberates steps and decisions, involving a lot of calculated lies and manouvering (can never spell that) and photos and messages and hidden cell phones and shifted money, etc. It’s no more magical than a magician’s trick. Nothing is more calculated than an extra marital affair.
Especially considering the bits in the book about fighting hard for as big a settlement as possible, I think it’s very unlikely the OW actually read the book, just saw the title (probably in her own chump’s Amazon cart) and assumed it was the usual victim-blaming bitch slap claptrap about how chumps’ loserishness drove the cheater to cheat, ergo “get a life, bitch, because this life doesn’t want you!” The AP probably also interpreted “get a life” as “get a job” (and leave more of the marital assets for greedy meeee!).
I really hope F’ed Up Life lives in a fault state but, even if not, avails herself of a pit bull attorney and a forensic accountant to go after every penny of marital assets that were dissipated on the affair because it’s pretty clear from what F’ed Up says that a large part of the OW’s motive is economic. Whenever a chump says that an AP “wants my life,” they usually mean the lifestyle the FW’s income affords and it usually means the AP did not have that lifestyle prior to banging a married FW. And FW in this case likely knows it. Even through the delusional haze of his own narcissism in which he imagines his dewlaps and ear hair and neck wrinkles are smokin’ hot, FW has to sense in his cantilevering gut that the ten year age gap means raw physical attraction probably wasn’t a real driver for the AP (nor was his shining integrity since, der, no one knows better than the AP that FW is a lying liar cheater) and so FW has probably been flaunting those assets in compensation.
I hope FUL lives in a fault state and in an equitable distribution state. She probably does because most states have equitable distribution. If so, and if the judge is so inclined, she may end up with a very decent settlement.
FUL,
We all can relate. I was worried how I’d get by without “the love of my life”. I made every excuse for her fucked up behavior possible. Mental health issues, our teen stressing us out, FOO, I should have been better for her, and on and on and on. You know what. I went through all of that, and was able to remain faithful. I believed the marriage was good, but if they disagree, do the right thing, not betray us, string us along, gaslight us, blameshift.
Deep down, I knew along what I needed to do, but I fought it. I was convinced I had a unicorn. I didn’t. You don’t either. It sucks, but it does, slowly start getting better once you accept reality. Go NC, and fight for what you are owed.
Good luck.
I could absolutely see an OW sending a chump CL’s book. They believe they will never be cheated on because They Are Special, so of course they see “winning” the pick-me dance by getting the Cchump to leave as a good thing.
My XH also tried that “maybe we’ll get back together after a few years divorced” nonsense. He actually *did* try to come crawling back a few times in that first year, and I was even dumb enough to date him the first round. Then he told me that he wanted to keep our relationship a secret from the OW, even though they were ostensibly broken up, and that was the final push I needed to flush him for good. It’s been 9 years and I have no regrets.
OP, I hope you flush yours for good, too! Sometimes you just have to flush twice!
Yep, you needed a “no return” policy. No backsies!
I remember when my ex (before the D was final, but legally separated) called me and wanted to talk. No way was I taking him back, I had already done that once to my complete horror. But I was curious. Anyway, he said he wanted privacy so he suggested a place outside of town. I said nope, you want to see me it will be in the center of town in front of God and everyone, no one hides me. He did agree to it and it was a sad sausage event.
He called a couple times after that, (I wouldn’t meet him) but I don’t think for a minute he wanted me back, he was just trying to destabilize me. I never talked to him much again, except for the occasional grandkid event where there was and nod, how’s the weather moment and I kept moving.
It’s not surprising that OW doesn’t think she’ll be cheated on. The flip side of “I’m so special that I don’t have to obey my marriage vows” is “I’m so special that he’ll never cheat on me“. It’s all part of “the rules don’t apply to me”, whether those rules are literally rules (such as “though shalt not commit adultery”) or only figurative rules (commonly acknowledged sets of action/consequence pairs, such as “if he cheats with you he’ll cheat on you”)
Oh, but her hoo ha is special! (/s)
My situation dragged out long enough that things ended with Schmoops before he even moved out. He was in the process of moving and I think she dumped him. (He says he did the dumping, but he lies, so we can’t go by what he says) . So then he went hard for reconciliation. And I was long past that point. And I remember being so angry that Schmoops had no issue getting involved with a married man with kids, staying involved for years and then as soon as she basically won the pick me dance, she left. I wanted to call her and say “Uh uh, you wanted him so damn much, you come take him!” And when I was uninterested in reconciliation, I became the enemy. I was somehow the one ending this marriage and he was angry at me and it was scary. I was afraid he wouldn’t leave.
Ultimately, my situation is pretty good. Schmoops was around long enough for me to find out I was married to a FW, and have a lot of time to really come to terms with the fact that I don’t want to be with a FW. And then she left, so I don’t have to navigate a post-Divorce life with an AP around spending time with my kids. But when she first left, I was pretty furious at the position I was left in.
Such a childish mess the husband and OW have created!
This is not worth the energy to untangle it. You can’t trust either of them. Thankfully, your kids are older, so no custody issues. They certainly will struggle as they question their childhood, but at least they are at the stage where they are more aware of their thoughts and emotions.
You have to emotionally detach for your own well-being but don’t expect that this relationship is necessarily going to go the distance. Whatever.
OJ Simpson left his wife Marguerite when she was pregnant and they had two other young children. He was having an affair with Nicole Brown (among others).
Nicole Brown Simpson was an other woman, and at eighteen years old when they got together, pretty much a child IMHO.
I believe OJ and Marguerite lived in the house on Rockingham in Brentwood where he later lived with Nicole. My understanding is that OJ and Marguerite’s third child drowned in the pool at the Rockingham house.
You could say that Nicole stepped into Marguerite’s life.
Whenever it crosses my mind that other women are getting some prize, I think of Nicole.
It takes a long time and it’s very difficult to feel that you are not being rejected; you are being protected.
They don’t get character transplants.
Cheating is abuse, and the damage caused by the cheaters and the side pieces is devastating, causing unimaginable pain and fear and suffering. No one who understands what love means, that it’s a VERB, does this to ANYONE.
Exactly!! So Marguerite and OJ were high school sweethearts. OJ was an unrepentant adulterer his whole life who never stopped dating, and hardly ever spent any time at home with either of his sets of kids; during the marriage, Marguerite was essentially a “married single mom.” (Nicole would eventually become a “married single mom,” too before Nicole also filed to divorce OJ.) Marguerite had filed for divorce from OJ for the first time in the mid-1970s. They wreckonciled, and a few years later had a third baby: daughter Aaren, who died by accidental drowning in the backyard pool in August 1979, shortly before she would’ve turned 2. OJ and Marguerite (she had filed again) had divorced in March 1979 – OJ blamed Marguerite for Aaron’s death.
Nicole met OJ in 1977, when she was an 18-year-old waitress at a Beverly Hills nightclub. They began dating while Simpson was still married to Marguerite, who was then pregnant with Aaren. Nicole and OJ dated from
1977 until they wed in February 1985; Nicole was pregnant with Sydney when she married OJ. Sydney was only 8 and Justin only 5 when OJ killed Nicole while the kids were asleep in the house. It was a MIRACLE the kids didn’t wake up and find Nicole’s body at the bottom of the outside stairs.
Leave a cheater, gain a life, Marguerite – quite literally. What a bullet dodged.
“you are not being rejected, you are being protected” — thank you for this phrase and for this info about Marguerite and Nicole.
Yes, they aren’t a prize at all. But there are always people willing to overlook the obvious. Now being more aware, I can smile it a mile away, but some don’t.
Wow, thank you for posting this, VH, I had no idea of Nicole Brown’s role as an OW. As awful as things were for Marguerite especially with the little one’s death, at least she didn’t have to face that last day. If they had stayed together, maybe he would have turned on her. Requiem for an OW.
I have a friend who lives near Gretna Green in SoCal. I was visiting her not long after the murders and we went by Nicole’s
condo late one evening. The blood had soaked into the Saltillo tiles which paved the walkway. They had not yet been replaced. I will never forget seeing that.
Thanks to the culmination of my life experiences, DV education, my brilliant therapists and Tracy’s work, I no longer think staying with a cheater is an option.
More importantly, my daughter has been taught never to be a cheater, a side piece, or tolerate cheating. I have to also credit being clean and sober for almost thirty eight years. I want every single wit possible available to me at all times.
Game Over is the wisest response.
IMHO
It just shows, you take up with a messed up, disordered man and you never know where it’s gonna lead.
Great post.
Wonderful people don’t screw around with people in committed relationships, and wonderful people in committed relationships don’t screw around.
You found out who he really is.
She’s delusional and in denial.
Let them drink Kool Aid.
Thank you for posting. I appreciate the support! Unfortunately this is not his first affair in 32 years (the others were not long term). But you deal with it, move on, and believe you hopefully nipped it. Obviously not. I have spoken to a lawyer, and I’m just trying to mentally get there. Having to say goodbye to everything I’ve known pretty much my entire life and planned for the future, is not something that I take lightly. My plan was to have him continue to pay the bills and keep this standard of living as long as I saw fit. Meanwhile working on me and moving forward! Thanks everyone!
Also, make sure you’re tested for all STIs. I apologize if this was already mentioned.
I strongly recommend you read material related to “coercive control” because I suspect that your abuser has been using insidious and relentless psychological and emotional intimidation and manipulation tactics against you all these years in order to keep you in your box and prevent you from intruding upon his secret double life. The good news is that you may be very surprised that the very moment you no longer feel afraid of his angry retaliation, you may suddenly also feel free of any sense of attachment you ever had towards him. Because he might have been fostering a false sense of attachment through fear.
There’s no nipping anything that has already happened. The length of time does make it OK either. Short term or long term, deception is deception is deception is abuse is abuse is abuse.
Like me, maybe what you have known for so long in life now has an asterisk next to it. Infidelity is a unique form of destruction in that it destroys present, past, and future. The truth is that I don’t know him and I never did; what he thought, what he felt, what he was doing and who he was doing it with and for how long is a room forever locked to me. Half of my life is in that room and I don’t have the card key to it. It’s enormously mind-blowing.
Whenever I get the painful feeling of not
knowing where he is, who he’s with, and what he is doing, I remind myself that I never knew.
What’s new is the realization that I never knew.
Hugs to you. You are lucky to have washed up on these shores. Keep your posts free of identifying details because there are predators here.
jhorton – I’m confused by your submission to a blog which your FW and OW are probably reading? You may want to talk to a therapist in order to have a confidential ally.
JHorton,
It really is terrifying. I think a lot of Chumps here are on the other side. And they KNOW that leaving IS the best choice. The only choice, really. And their advice to “Do it!!!” can feel scary if you aren’t there yet. I get it, I think they are 100% right, don’t get me wrong, but as someone that was pretty much frozen with fear, I understand the idea of “mentally getting there”.
I’ve been trying to get there mentally too. And I will gently point out, the delay didn’t make it easier. As ChumpLady said, divorce is brutal, and I don’t think any amount of time can really make this process easier. I do know that I dragged my feet, and all it has done is give me more crap of his to deal with. And less time to heal. It’s prolonging the shit sandwich aspects.
Let me throw an idea at you – it may not be true in your case, but it often is. Maybe you’ve spent all your adult life fussing over him and he’s been the main focus in your life, certainly your emotional life…..if he wasn’t there all that energy and time and thought and emotions could go towards YOU. Just things YOU want to do and see – you don’t have to consider him any more. Even happily married people sometimes think….if I weren’t married I could do X,Y, Z, whatever….when you’ve been spending all your emotional currency on one guy who doesn’t appreciate it and probably doesn’t reciprocate….that doesn’t leave a lot to spend on YOU. You might be surprised at how much fuller end enjoyable your life might become without him in it. Many people say this, it’s very common – they don’t expect it but then they become aware of how much they did for the spouse and it just wasn’t appreciated. It could leave a lot more for YOU. You don’t see that now, but I bet you will.
The problem here is that the only thing that will guarantee that you keep at least part of your life, the financial and resource part that will help you to create a new life for yourself, is a lawyer. You can’t rely on your husband’s promises or good will. You see what those are worth. We don’t want you to be left high and dry by a liar with a gold digging OW. Believe me, we understand the pain and how hard it is to act, but you have to protect yourself and the best way to do that is to get a good pit bull, ass-tearing lawyer and get as much as you can for yourself in a legal settlement – one that should include whatever marital funds he’s spent on this affair as well. That’s your only real protection at this point, I would not rely on his guilt or sense of decency. If he were a decent man, he would not have been cheating on you throughout your marriage.
As for him coming back some day – they say that when they picture a future where they are too old and and messed up to attract any new OWs. By that point the money would be gone too!
We’ve got your back! Come here when the going gets rough (and it most likely will, at least emotionally), and join the facebook group for 24-hour emotional support. Chump nation is full of smart, caring, knowledgeable people, and I’m glad you found us.
Everyone always says “get yourself a shark lawyer” on here! Hasn’t anyone else run out of money due to litigation abuse? I had a lawyer for a year and gave her all my money, and all I have to show for it are some uncompleted legal firms and letters and emails countering false allegations and re-asking for documents my husband’s legal team did not provide.
Chumpty Dumpty, I’m sorry your shark ate you instead of doing the job she was hired for, which was to end your marriage. She should have gone after your husband for payment, which would have given him an incentive to stop the nonsense.
You have to be all-business when dealing with your next lawyer; know what you want, when you want it, and leave your feelings at home (or with a therapist.) You have to be firm in your resolve to get this done. You need to find an attorney who will aggressively advocate for you; the prior lawyer saw you as a victim, and victimized you.
Get moving, get it done. All things are possible!
Thanks! But I don’t have money for another lawyer or therapist. Minimum wage job at the moment and it’s not cutting it.
Hire a shark of a lawyer, a forensic accountant (both without revealing anything to the asshat). Get half of everything, and when he has the inevitable meltdown, let him know it was thanks to schmoopsie and the advice you took from her gift. Let her have that (being charitable) poop flavored popsicle.
“But this other woman has an incredible hold on him. He is 10 years older than her and this was his midlife crisis.”
Schmoopies don’t have superpowers and he isn’t helpless. He’s a shallow, selfish jerk who decided he wanted new and shiny.
Mid life crisis is mostly a myth, as CL says. IMO, you have a trusting that he sucks problem. You’re still telling yourself the OW is to blame and that the FW is not fully responsible for his behaviour. You will only start to heal from this when you accept the reality of who he is and take the steps to be divorced. She doesn’t have your life, because she is trash. The most important part of your life is who you are. Her life will always contain chaotic elements, no matter how shiny it looks on the surface. His will too. They are both liars. They are greedy, amoral and self-centered.
This is not a prescription for a happy life.
Go forward with your own life with integrity and self-honesty, and a big part of that is to stop rationalizing to yourself so you can avoid facing the fact that your FW sucks. Best of luck divorcing the disordered. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
My ex took off after he had been retired less than a year, so he was sixty-something and reinventing himself. He had been talking about leaving for over a decade, but no way could I have predicted that as a newlywed. Unlike some of the others I dated, he seemed like the steady and devoted type. Ah, no…
I know what you mean. Mine seemed the same way. He had been planning on dumping me after retirement, but got caught instead.
“Some day some other Other Woman is going to mail her a book… So many FWs, it’s never going out of print.”
Sad but true.
excuse me, what…. !!??!! Somebody out there in fuckwitlandia is not really thinking things through….
I know it is perverse, but I get pleasure out of thinking of Cheaters having to raise the younger kids of their younger partners while the Xspouses are finishing up parenting the first round of kids.
Empty nesting can be lovely and I wish every cheater many rainy miserable Saturdays handing out Capri Suns to the pee wee soccer team while the Xspouse sips tea in cafes.
I dont know exactly what my then-teens would have done had Cheater fully implemented his plan to leave but they are clever and would not have gone peacefully into the fantasyland of Cheater and Schmoops.
I had an epiphany when I was bemoaning the “loss of what we’d built together,” and “she will have MY life,” it became clear to me that everything “we” had, I BUILT while he was off twaddling at the P buffet. I realized at that point that I would have no problem building again…elsewhere. It was incredibly liberating.
OW are absolutely shameless in their quest to lay claim to the wandering dick. It won’t stop wandering, and it will almost certainly wander back to you at some point. The trick is to have a wall of steel built first. Let it crash into that and see how it feels.
Your husband will never feel the guilt, pain, remorse that you desperately want him to feel. He may come back when life with OW gets less shiny, and he figures you for an easy mark. DON’T BE ONE! That’s just asking for thia to happen again. Let him find his new shiny elsewhere. Gwt a pitbull lawyer, serve his ass those divorce papers, and go find out why the gain a life part of this is the best thing you will ever do.