Things Cheaters Later Claim They Never Wanted
I never loved you! I never wanted children! What is this 30-year mortgage? I was trapped! Mated in captivity! Can’t you see I’m trying to loosen the bonds of oppression with an affair?
(Sigh)
I call this: “If you didn’t want to go to Chicago, why’d you get on the train?” That rewriting of history where the cheater claims they Never Wanted the life they’ve been living for decades. Or never agreed to the deep sunk costs you invested in. Retirement savings? HAH! They never wanted it! An intact family? YOU TRICKED THEM!
So many cheater regrets. So much rewriting of history. It’s today’s Friday Challenge.
Walkaway woman proposed this contest:
During the slow death of the four-year clusterfuck that was my relationship with the Lying Cheating Loser, here are a couple of the things he claimed never to have wanted:
For me to meet his kids. I “pressured” him. Never mind the fact that after he succumbed to my formidable pressure, I was more of a parent to those two sweet humans (every other weekend, holidays, a month in the summer) than he was.
I planned – and paid for – vacations and outings, grocery shopped and cooked, bought Christmas and birthday presents… all the things. What he did? Sit on his ass and play videogames. Because “the kids just want to hang out at the house with me while we roast each other.” Not true. They were just pick-me dancing, and fully aware that voicing any wants or needs would not go over well with Uncle Dad.
Move in together. This happened after I had already met his kids, hence why it’s #2. I “pressured” him into this too. And actually, maybe I did. Through my rose-colored glasses, it looked like living together would mean easing our respective financial burdens. We already lived in the same town and spent practically every night together anyway.
So when he finally, yet again, succumbed to the pressure, he simply blew off paying his last month’s rent. When the shit hit the fan mid-month and the apartment complex threatened to lock him out of his apartment and deny him access to his stuff, who had to leave work and make a panicked, massive moving effort in her truck? Yours truly. Of course, he lied to me and swore he’d paid rent, but the apartment complex somehow lost his payment. Sheesh.
You couldn’t have talked me out of my determination to build a life with this clown, no matter how many red flags slapped me in the face.
I’m grateful it was only four years of my life down the drain before I cut my losses and moved on.
I’m now five years out, blissfully single, living my dream life.
Walkaway, I’m glad you’re out. And I hope those kids turned out okay. Thank you for doing the adulting during their time with Uncle Dad.
So, CN, what did your cheater claim later that they never wanted? What cruel commitments did you force upon them?
TGIF!
I forced my FW to take a 2nd job as a nude figure model because it was the only way he could generate more income for our family. He also said it made him feel appreciated, which he didnt’t get that from the kids or me. He also thought I “used” him just to have kids (even though we had discussions about having kids and how many, which he obviously agreed!!!)
I’ve done nude figure modeling and your ex is full of shit. The model is there for artists to practice anatomy and dynamic posing. Some models don’t even go fully nude.
I’ve also been an artist in a figure class. We preferred people with curves and extra weight on them. And people who came up with good, challenging poses. Sexual comments are prohibited. Always. You get kicked out if you start that.
Your loser ex wins the dubious honor of being the most whiny little bitch, CB.
Just when you think you’ve heard the weirdest FW complaints, here comes forcible nude figure modeling.
I never wanted to be married to a liar/cheater/ thief.
Right now I am sitting at a favorite restaurant on the San Francisco Bay,. I have a window seat and I am looking over at the city. I am having crab and shrimp pasta. I am not wondering who he is with, where he is, or what he is doing. I do not care.
Right now, the known primary OW is in a depressing room in a depressing strip mall, jerking off strangers or presiding over those she and Traitor Ex the Pimp have hired to do so. The patrons and the purveyors of places like that are perpetrators and predators. They’re a growing pile of damage and hurt people in their wake, and they add to it with every selfish decision they make. They are a blight on what’s beautiful about the world, part of the problem, part of what is wrong and ugly, compounding it.
You really are the winner when you leave a cheater and gain a life.
Now that I’m coming out of the fog, and telling friends and family all the BS, I can see just how utterly ridiculous, abusive, and pathological the FW’s behavior has been. But, being the co-dependent chump I was, I spackled the $h!t out of all his nonsense for 25 years!!!! I am sooooo grateful for friends, family, therapy, and Chump Nation for the support. It’s not over yet–we go to court in October, but I already feel so much better having come to terms with reality and taking action.
Same girl. I wasted 25 years building him up into super Dad and all around great guy. Our middle daughter still thinks he was wonderful!! Nahhh he was never home, on the road cheating and all around Disney Dad. He was who I told them he was and they believed me that he was great.
RT, hugs to you. I hope life is better for you now.
Hahahahahahahahahah, forcible nude figure modeling. I love it, OMG. Sooo good!
He told our daughter recently that he never loved me and there was no love in our marriage. I actually have no trouble believing that may be true.
Traitor Ex and the Craigslist cockroach (who is a Chinese national) have not just one illicit Asian massage parlor but two, and they are not just erotic massage parlors but fronts for an escort service. That’s Detective Velvet Hammer to you.
Some people who have very dark deep
secrets want a marriage and children because they need a disguise of respectability to keep others from
finding out who they really are and what they are really up to.
The upshot of this is that this makes
who the both of them really are and what they’ve been up to vulnerable to the intervention of law enforcement.
A meeting with the DA is in the works, accompanied by my FBI Special Agent friend. I have a police officer friend I can call anytime if I need assistance.
Traitor Ex has a new nickname. He’s now Traitor Ex the Pimp. And she’s
Madam Cockroach now.
Human trafficking too? I wouldn’t put it past them to do so.
They wear other people like a hat. In the gay community, getting married to a women is called wearing a beard. It’s meant to make them look ligit. But it is all about image management.
Well done!
A nude figure model…..WOW! That’s pure ego right there.
Thing is, being a nude figure model for artists isn’t something that only super-hot people do – on the contrary, artists want to practice drawing ALL body types, and it’s not sexualized. FW thinking that the artists sketching him are ‘appreciating’ his form is such typical narc BS.
100%
More to do with her actions than anything that she actually said, but there was that time now Ex-Mrs LFTT gave me an ultimatum that either we had children or that she would divorce me. We went on to have three fantastic kids, who she then dropped (along with me) in a heartbeat to be with her AP …. so I’m guessing there’s that.
Oddly enough, her mother told me subsequently that she had always had doubt’s about her daughter’s maternal instincts. Now there’s something that I wish that she’d told me before I married her daughter.
LFTT
After MIL found out her son cheated on me, she opened up about a lot of things about him. She said she would cry for me during our early days of dating because she knew I would never believe anything she would tell me about him. FW was really good and keeping us separate. He would belittle her and would tell me how crazy she was. He still tried to do the isolation after DDay but we already talked enough together to really piece the truth. He has lived off her in some fashion pretty much his entire life. She is an enabler and that will never change. I pity her, but she also contributed to his dysfunction with her enabling. Instead of cutting him off decades ago she just caves in. This won’t change until she is dead or he is dead. If she goes first, I highly doubt FW will be able to function on his own. Someone told me this year that he can’t do anything without a women telling him what to do. Oh well. Live and learn and don’t ignore red flags from the fam.
LFTT — interesting you raise this. Could have been at the rehearsal dinner or at some summer event before we were married, but years later after the divorce, my mother told be that she was chatting with my ex-MIL, who said something to the effect of: “KK is definitely not the easiest person to deal with. I think if anyone can do it, UXworld can.” I’m sure she meant it as a compliment to the way her future son-in-law was raised, but my mother said she thought to herself: “Who says that about their own child?” Answer: somebody who knows.
When we announced our engagement after having been together a couple years (my first marriage, his second) my future SIL was visibly surprised. “Oh, I didn’t know you two were into that”. It was an odd remark as we were mature and went on to have a 30-year marriage.
UX, I got a version of this from my MIL who was so grateful we were getting married because before me he was dating women she hated. She was so happy that he found a normal person compared to what he’d been with (turns out they were all into BDSM which is the cheating he did our whole 25 year marriage). I tried to leave him a year into our marriage because I was sick of having his back turned on me while he played computer games every night – I was bored and lonely and depressed. But my MIL practically grabbed me round the ankles and asked me to help him work on the marriage. So I stayed. 🚩
“We didn’t like Fuckwit until she met you, and then she was suddenly a much nicer person”– my ex sister in law. I thought this was sweet and romantic and I had no idea that it was a huge red flag.
UX, their parents know.
My son is married to a woman with undiagnosed BPD. The first time I met my daughter-in-law’s mother was at the courthouse wedding.
I expressed my hope that despite their volatile dating relationship, the marriage would settle things down. (Inside, I knew better.)
She replied that her daughter has volatile relationships with everyone, including family, dating back to puberty.
There would have been no talking my son out of marrying her regardless (I tried).
We live, we learn, we LACGAL.
If you don’t mind my asking, what is the attraction of your son to this woman? What is the appeal? Is it physical beauty or is she exciting because she’s unstable, or something else? I try to avoid people like this myself (I grew up with it in FOO) but somebody’s marrying them and I don’t get it.
This thread has me thinking. I just recently had a conflict with my parents when I was at home staying with them and I got sick. Short version of the story is that my father did not pay any attention as I got sick enough to be hospitalized, and then, after dropping us to the hospital, did not communicate with me at all while I was in the hospital. When I raised it later that I was extremely hurt that he basically watched TV while I was being tested for serious illnesses, and then diagnosed with something serious, he yelled at me, gaslit me, told me he had not hurt me, and said it was my expectation that was the problem. He then tried to shame me for feeling hurt, expressing disgust that “at almost 50 years old!” I seemed to expect to be “taken care of like a child!”
The whole thing was very distressing, and I had to reach out outside my family system for support. To them I am definitely the problem. Our relationship has been volatile since I was a teen. They definitely experience me as hard to handle, and I suspect that if I were to get married, there would be whispers of the kind of poor guy who would put up with me. I would hope that if my future partner were ever to hear such whisperings before committing to me that I’d hear about it and we’d talk.
For me, the recent blow-up experience ultimately is a gift because it was like a little reenactment of the cycle of neglect/abuse, my distress, gaslighting, my mom taking my dad’s side, and then pointedly moving on like nothing had happened, sweeping it under the rug that I had expressed upset, with doses of anger and shame and “disciplinary action” if I tried to bring it up again. I saw how they basically trained me and my siblings to see my reaction to my father’s behaviour as the problem, not his poor behavior. I can understand how I became the “difficult” person that I was when that cycle went on regularly with no outside support, no adults to talk to, and no Internet with blogs like Chump Lady.
It’s much easier to see how the FWs who paid me a little bit of attention (often sympathizing with me about my dad!) got into my life, and why it was so hard to believe myself when I soon had feelings that I didn’t appreciate their exploitative behaviour toward me.
I thought maybe there was a Friday challenge in there somewhere, around whether or not chumps have realized how their family of origin set them up to tolerate, or not even recognize, the user energy of FWs.
Hmm, I reacted pretty strongly to the idea that “families know.” I have been that person looking at a relative getting into a relationship and feeling bad for the person who is getting into a relationship with my sketchy family member. And I’ve read so many stories here of what a den of snakes FWs often come from. Maybe there’s a challenge that can incorporate all dimensions of FOO vulnerability, for the chumps who wish they were warned by their ex’s family, and for the chumps whose own families would easily throw them under the bus.
Magnolia–your insight into your FOO is powerful and you are mighty for standing up for yourself. In your case, your family wouldn’t know–they would probably be more supportive of a relationship that fit within their cycle of abuse.
Narcissists, they can’t stand if attention if off them, even if it’s attention given to their sick child (children).
That’s a great idea for a challenge, Magnolia. I must say that I admire your insight into the factors that went into you being tolerant of exploitative assholes. I’m sorry that your dad sucks.
I also agree that a lot of good people do come from toxic families, so I would have to factor that into whether it’s smart to heed what they say. If my FW’s family had warned me I probably wouldn’t have believed them. He seemed like the only sane one in the bunch. Little did I know he was just good at hiding his freakiness.
UXWorld,
All too often our FW’s families know them for who they actually are and never quite tell us (ie the Chumps) in time to do anything about it.
I understand from my Sister in Law (Ex-Mrs LFTT’s half sister) that there was a discussion between Father in Law, Mother in Law and Sister in Law just before I married Ex-Mrs LFTT along the lines of “He’s too good for her and it’s only a matter of time before he finds out who she really is.” Her family had her card marked well before I even met her.
LFTT
MIL said FW has always been a pathological liar. We compared notes. Ohhhemmmgeeee!!! He’s never told the truth!!!
Probably a combination of being glad to be out of target range themselves (get them off “our” hands) and also hoping that maybe this nice guy or gal will be the one to straighten out Problem Child Cain.
UW and LFTT,
I should have taken note when his sister-in-law mentioned that mine was “prone to excess.” Took me way too long to figure that one out.
LFTT, it’s probably true that in many cases, somebody, whether the FW’s family, your own family or a friend, had doubts about the FW which weren’t expressed. I guess family loyalty won out with your in-laws instead of warning you. That was wrong of them.
I found out after Dday that my dad did not believe FW loved me. Shortly before he died, he told this to FW, but not to me.
I guess he didn’t want to hurt me and thought I wouldn’t listen, but I could have used a heads up and I do think it all might have clicked into place for me had he said so. I was leaning in that direction anyway, since FW was not behaving lovingly, hadn’t been for quite a few years.
I think he did try to warn me before I married the creep, but he was too oblique about it and I didn’t know he was talking about FW. He said something about how women should be wary of men who are just using them and are unsuitable as husbands. I wish I’d taken the hint.
Unfortunately, the family members are probably afraid the chump-to-be will just spackle and get mad at them AND then tell the FW child, permanently poisoning the in-law relationship. FWs never leave anyone any good options.
Having our children – 2 month old and 2 year old at D-Day.
He stated in his deposition that we had not had sex for years (also what he told the mistress). After my lawyer reminded him about the conception of our children, he changed his testimony to be that we had sex twice and I conceived unexpectedly each time… I had to find my ovulation tracking pages for court to try to prove that the kids were planned.
Im so sorry. Having to prove things for court is such a horrible thing to deal with but having to prove this is awful. The judge must have thought your ex was appalling. I had to prove all sorts of things to a judge too and luckily was able to with reams of documents. Its no fun.
Oh please. That’s like what children want to think of their parents. There are two kids, so mom and dad must have had sex twice.🙄
That’s what my grown ass loser ex said about my kids father and i….that even though I was married to said kids father for 7 years he told himself we only had sex twice (2 kids).
Of course the same loser talked incessantly about his exes in the most ridiculously inappropriate ways. He was such an insecure loser that he wanted to ram his exes down my throat but pretend I was pure.
Don’t know why, his dick didn’t much work anyway.
Is “we had sex twice” a thing?! I heard the same thing!
Crummy sex life aside (now I know why….see my post above) it takes more than twice to learn you can’t get pregnant because you have fibroids and need them removed.
This may be the infidelity equivalent of the alcoholic who says they “only had two drinks.”
Postpartum Chump, I’m so sorry your FW put you through that. To me, denying they wanted their kids is one of the most egregious things a FW can do.
My ex, the Lying Cheating Loser, got a young coworker pregnant after I dumped him and he moved to another part of the state. She was a single mom of three, and now pregnant with twins by the LCL.
She ended up having an abortion – no doubt coerced by the LCL.
To no one’s surprise, she was soon pregnant again, and now has a toddler who is the spitting image of the LCL.
Of course, per the LCL, the child isn’t his.
Why on earth would he be having unprotected sex with her …..I assume he understands the basic facts of biology as he had kids with you. It’s so crazy – she caught him once with a pregnancy and he escaped that through abortion but he’s STILL having unprotected sex with her? I don’t understand the mentality here. And I can’t imagine the mentality of someone denying his own kids. They’re so abnormal, maybe it’s not possible to understand this kind of disordered thinking and reactions. As for her….how many kids does she think he’s wants to or is able to support?
Wait? What? And why did you have to prove child planning in court?! This seems like something from the witch trial era!!!
The Limited was always wishing as if he was looking for a Genie. His irresponsibility and child like decision making were a huge burden. At 57 he was distressed that he never went surfing.
His complaints were always voiced to other women who had their own homes and assets. Yet none were takers. That was until he’d met a disturbed bar whore.
He didn’t want his home.
He didn’t want a relationship with adult children and granddaughter.
His wish was finally granted. I divorced him and thank God I did. Recently, I heard his true soulmate was never happy. Misery does love complaint.
What, wait– I’m 64 and I am distressed that I never went surfing. And I am a good person! But I totally get the rest of your comment.
But to clarify: I still plan to go surfing. Sorry about the digression but it’s kind of a thing with me.
I guess he just wanted to be a 14 year old the rest of his life.
I remember my now ex was getting morose about his late forties birthday coming up and asked him about it. He was sad that he was never going to be a fighter pilot or some such thing, that is was just then sinking in that the door had closed on that as a possibility. He was well over 300 pounds at that point, so I’m not sure he would even fit in the cockpit.
I should have given him that Sylvia Plath story about the Fig Tree for his birthday.
Hilarious 😂 😃 I m still laughing
I’ll add that the OW’s idea of assets were made suing innocent people and bragging about it. And she didn’t own her home; her apartment was condemned a year after he moved in. She thought he had money.
I’m very surprised about so many gold-diggers who don’t do their due diligence and check if there actually is the gold to dig
Well the 25.00 Red Microwave. He wept bitterly that he never wanted it. How the Sluterus bought that as a justification to cheat, I just still giggle about. I hope one day she buys Gas X capsules instead of tablets and he schtups a CVS cashier a in a public restroom to show her the error of her ways. That’ll fix her!
The Red Microwave….right up there next to Bagged Salad….
😂
Mic drop!
After 20yrs together and two children that he “always wanted “ he told me I had tricked him into having children and I it was my fault as I should have been on the pill. He said if I wanted love and a husband /partner he couldn’t be it! He then had a meeting with our teenage kids to ask them what they thought about him having a child with OW? ( “because at some point she would want a kid”) They were not that happy about it and said Dad you always do what you want anyway so why ask us now?. Then the OW had an affair with her boss and left him. What were we ? The practice run?
I can’t imagine how he thought that would go over with the kids and why he even bothered to ask. What kind of answer did he possibly expect?
Your post just hammers it home that it doesn’t matter what they actually say, they just chat bilge! Absolute bull’s crawn! Just any old pile of shite that comes into their thick heads at the time that they think will stun us into silence and submission! The only reason it ever does though, is because it IS such shite! You’d get more sense out of a toddler at times!
Those of us who’re wired up properly expect seemingly sane adults to talk sensibly and rationally, plus , we don’t lie like they do!
Chump Lady, thank you for running my Friday Challenge suggestion!
My former bonus kids were teens and pre-teens when I was in their lives. They are now young adults, out of high school and both working. They live with their mother and have supportive grandparents nearby.
Their dad moved back to his hometown, five hours away, when I dumped him. I think he’s seen them less than a dozen times in five years.
The kids and I are connected on social media, and I’m cheering them on from a respectful distance.
Ex later claimed he never wanted to be a university professor, wanted to do international consulting.
Given his teaching load he could have done both (my sister does!). Or he could have quit the teaching gig and done consulting full time– again, my sister did that as well at different times.
And of course, no, I never told him he had to become a professor–just revisionist history.
Two kickers:
1) he was so unhappy in academia I encouraged him to do the US federal gov’t program where folks with advanced degrees work in govt agencies to make the contacts/obtain the applied skills to do consulting work, all so he could start doing said part time consulting… It meant I was home alone with the kids for 10 months, but I did it! ; 7 months in he “did not want to end up like his parents.” WTF ?? Two months later he admitted to the 10+ year younger AP; he loved her, but he had not cheated! Even after that pronouncement he could no say the words “I want a divorce.”
(and of course, trickle truthed, there were at least 2 other APs over the years)
2) after he and AP/now OWife moved overseas for said consulting life, kids went to visit for 5 weeks in the summer– they spent the time torturing eldest offspring (13 yo D) with talks of how good their marriage and by implication how bad I was to him… eldest said the message they got was that I was a monster, yet Ex left the kids in my care??…. 3 months later eldest attempted suicide. Ex then attempted to go back to the university as a lecturer faculty member, but they refused to hire him back. Apparently he burned a lot of bridges during the year he was back from leave, and planning his departure.
Postscript: Eldest thankfully was unsuccessful with that attempt and a second planned attempt– and now is relatively healthy, happy, and a college graduate !
It’s been 12 years since those days; now i can shake my head at it all.
I am also with a wonderful guy– almost 6 years together– who wanted a relationship with someone his own age!
I’m so glad your eldest is doing well now! When they are so emotionally abusive to their own children that they drive them to self-harm, that shows how evil they are. Pure poison!
I’m so glad your daughter is doing better. What it does to the children at any age is the hardest to grasp. Children should be able to count on their parents for live, guidance and support always. They become avoidant immature subhumans.
This has been one of the most painful things I’ve had to deal with after my 29 years imploded after finding out he’d been lying and had that secret sexual basement and realizing he was about 12 years old. I went through nine years of painful and horrifying miscarriages to finally be successful having my daughter. Then, FW saying he never really wanted children (after having scads of unprotected sex with randos through the years) and rejecting our daughter and saying he would rather have had a SON…I just can’t fathom it. He now lives with someone who has kids and pets…oh, he claimed not liking animals either, as evidenced by his abusive treatment of them. Horrible. I suspect sociopathy, which is what most of these creeps demonstrate by their behaviors.
FWF,
Yes the 12 year old mentality. I’ve said that lot this year after 27 years of marriage.
He’s a monster! Yourself and your daughter are better off without him but I’m so sorry the two of ye had to endure him at all!
Men like him should be chemically castrated IMO! They don’t deserve the gift of a child and aren’t fit to be around them!
What you describe with your FW are s a genuine disordered mind. You are incredibly lucky to have escaped him.
FuckWitFree, he definitely seems like a sociopath.
My sociopath ex, the Lying Cheating Loser, claimed to be a lover of animals, particularly dogs.
After I “forced” him to move in together, we adopted a cat as a rodent deterrent. When the cat would meow at the back door (which was in our bedroom – old house quirk) to be let out at night, the LCL threw shoes at him.
Then the LCL bought a German Shepherd puppy. Guess who ended up walking and training and caring for the puppy?
Now, five years later, my Gus cat is seven and living his best life with me and a kitty companion, Scout.
The German Shepherd puppy got dumped on one of the LCL’s fuckbuddies shortly after he left town, and given a much better life.
Shocking behaviour. What a horrible creature he is.
Holidays! To the Galapagos, Kenya, Mauritius, BVI, Italy, France, Austria, Namibia, Spain, Berlin, Prague, I could go on. Apparently ‘the holidays weren’t that great either’. I think I was the ‘either’. I forced him every time!
Klootzak said I only planned vacations so I could go on them. What the hell? Was I supposed to plan vacations for him to go on without me? It has been 4.5 years since DS and I have had a decent vacation. Oh, klootzak gets to go on dive trips and international trips (“for work” 🙄) but we have been stuck home since I planned a Disney World trip for us when DS turned 4. We got 4 whole days. We haven’t had a full week off somewhere since DS was 3.
I’m not keen to splurge while all the legal fees and everything are up in the air, but I plan to take DS on a decent, week long vacation someplace great as soon as possible. We are very much due. I work full time and I’m entitled to decent vacations as well. I mean, really!
I wish I could find someone to force me into holidays like those.
I wouldn’t put up with living common-law & staying “engaged” so I apparently forced him into a wedding & marriage. His mother commented that she never thought he would get married (after the wedding, that was super thoughtful & kind). The FW & AP now live together & you guessed it, are “engaged”. I wonder if they have fights over not getting married yet lol? Anywho, my ex is what CL calls a “future faker”. Whenever I see my ex, I sing to the children’s tune “Baker’s Man” & change the words: Faker Faker Faker’s Man, Bake me a disappearance as fast as you can! Pat it, Prick it (seems apropos), mark it with an F, put it up your a-hole for your kids & me! Eh, it makes me laugh & reminds me of who he is, in case my mind wanders to the “better times”.
He said I “tricked” him into marrying me. In spite of the fact that he pursused me relentlessly and then was asking me to elope with him only months into our relationship and I put him off (we got married 2 1/2 years after we started dating).
He never wanted the house. That was all ME. The mortgage was why he couldn’t reach his dreams. Never mind that our mortgage was SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than rent in our area, it took 8 1/2 months to get the house (short sale) so it’s not like he didn’t have time to change his mind, and that he signed the approximately 10,000 documents required to close. It was mostly because (like just about every home) it needed some repairs and upkeep.
He also said we “weren’t ready for a baby” at the time, years after we actually had the kid, in spite of the fact that we’d discussed it at length and he, you know, got me pregnant on purpose. Having to be a responsible dad was why he couldn’t achieve his dreams. “YOU wanted a baby, and we didn’t have enough money!”
Then he said he didn’t want me to be a SAHM, in spite of the fact that we’d discussed it at length and agreed that I should stay home with the baby, since my job didn’t pay enough to make the cost of infant daycare worth it. (It was because HE then lost his job, so it was of course MY FAULT that we were broke – go figure.)
He said he wanted a divorce (and was the one that actually filed, albeit 3 1/2 years later) but then dragged his feet and fought me every step of the way so it took AGES.
He said he wanted to sell the marital home during the divorce, and then tried to back out once we already had a contract.
He said he needed to be with someone “bubbly”, which means he NEVER wanted me, as “bubbly” is the last word I or anyone else would use to describe me (blech). It’s not like he didn’t know I’m an introvert and a homebody. I suppose he thought he could change me into someone else? So he left me for OW. Who was, btw, not “bubbly” – she was just brash and loud and childishly emotional (jumping up and down when she was happy, stamping her feet and screaming
or hitting herself when she was mad, like a toddler). I once heard her (we worked the same job) nearly have an orgasm over … a piece of saltwater taffy (“oh my GOD, it’s SOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOD! OOOOOH.”). I reserve my excitement for something…actually exciting. Not a piece of mediocre candy. I find people who are this over-the-top to be exhausting, and it comes off as really, really fake.
The grass was always greener and the shine always wore off. Every job he was SO excited to have gotten, he ended up complaining about and hating after a years (or less). He expected things to make him happy, and then when they didn’t, he would decide he’d never wanted that anyway so someone must have forced him into it. He started abusing OW too, once he realized she was a flawed human being like everyone else, and not some angel sent from heaven to save him from himself.
It’s really nice to be the sole decision maker, and not be blamed for everything that someone else supposedly agreed about and then renegged on when it didn’t solve all his problems. It’s nice not to have to perform like a circus animal in order for someone to believe that you feel the way you feel.
Oh, and FW wanted another dog (after we were separated), you know, for our KID. I think it was mostly as a way to bribe our son to want to come to daddy’s house. I told him up front that if he got a dog, it was HIS and I wasn’t going to help pay for or take care of the dog (and reminded him that our son was only with him half the time, so he’d have the dog by himself; plus our son was only 8 and not really old enough to be solely responsible for an animal). FW got the dog anyway, and then got mad at me for not paying for obedience training, not helping walk the dog, not paying for vet bills, etc. Eventually he called me really upset and said that the dog had bitten our son and our son was afraid of it, and would he be a horrible person for sending it back to the shelter. I, of course, said if the dog was agressive, he should not keep it. So he gave it back just a couple of months after he got it.
Two years later (after FW died), my son and I were talking about the puppy for some reason and I mentioned that the dog had bitten him and been agressive, and my son said that that had never happened and he had loved the dog and was sad when daddy got rid of it.
So FW manufactured a story so he didn’t sound like a horrible person for just … no wanting to take care of and clean up after a puppy that he got as a Christmas present for our kid.
(I am glad he got rid of the dog, because FW died about a year later and I would have been saddled with a dog I never wanted in the first place in an apartment that didn’t have room for a rambunctious dog.)
He was nothing only a spoilt child inside by the sounds of it!
I suspect a fair few of them were spoilt as children, although others were abused. FWs all seem to end up becoming monsters of selfishness anyway.
It all boils down to that in the end, doesn’t it? Monstrous selfishness!
Mine seemed to think he wouldn’t need to work at all if it wasn’t for me. Which, maybe he was right since he is not currently working as he awaits his trial for attempting to have sex with an 11 year old. He won’t have to have a job in prison. I guess he got his wish.
Oh he’ll have a job alright. Most cons don’t look too kindly on kiddie diddlers. His new prison job with be as a sheath – either for shivs or dicks!
I hope he never sees the outside world again!
KatiePig – I swear our FWs must be brothers. They have the same horrific, evil behaviors, including the ones that land them in jail. Hope you are going to the ‘palooza, because I would love to grab a drink/coffee and compare notes!
Haha (not to the pedophilia, obv, though JUST DESSERTS). My FW seemed to have a similar opinion. The only reason he “had” to stay at jobs he hated, pay a mortgage payment, and wasn’t a famous Hollywood movie director was because of me. (The two movies he DID make would never have happened without me, but to hear him talk about them, I never existed and had nothing to do with what success he had.) The reason we were broke was because of me since I dared to be a SAHM for two years, which made me “lazy”, (so he gets w/OW who was a stay-at-home WIFE before she was a SAHM and the job where they met was the first job she’d had since she was about 18), and not due to his layoffs or his irresponsible spending. Nope, all my fault. I “held him back” from achieving greatness. I was also, apparently, only with him for his money (I laughed in his face and said “What money???”).
Hilarious that once we split, I paid off all my debts in a year, bought a car, a house, and have money in the bank, in spite of also paying for a $50K divorce, while he ended up completely broke and up to his ears in debt even though he and OW were sharing expenses (and she was handing him THOUSANDS on top of that) and I was doing everything on my own.
There is a book called “the Change” by Kirsten Miller about three women who get super powers in menopause. There is a scene where one them is begged by her ex-husband to “lift her curse” because his life is a shambles since they divorced. He hasn’t brought in new clients, he hasn’t had any good ideas, he isn’t adulting well, so his job may let him go. She explains that all the networking, all the effort, all the ideas? They were hers. She didn’t mind that he took credit for them because they were a team and she trusted him not to eff up the marriage, but there they were. Soo… good luck with everything.
It was a pretty dark book, but that scene really resonated.
You are MIGHTY!
My ex never wanted “to hurt me” lol
Mostly, the things my ex never wanted we just simply didn’t do. My ex never wanted to go on many trips, so we didn’t go anywhere. My ex never wanted to go to movies he wasn’t interested in, so we didn’t go to anything only I wanted to see. My ex never wanted to grow up, so I did most of the adulting and was called a nag if I asked him to stop leaving messes I had to clean up or reminded him to do something he’d said he would do. His main thing after d-day was to accuse me of always trying to make him change. It’s not change, you dolt, it’s expecting you to be considerate of the partner you professed to care about?
I guess I’m spared the rewriting some chumps get because I was such a pushover to begin with.
When FW said he wanted a divorce, he said he never wanted to marry me (he asked, I said yes and he demanded I set a date), and when I asked why he would marry someone he never wanted to marry, he said he was on a merry-go-round he couldn’t get off. WTF? Two weeks later I found out about the Schmoopie (I highly recommend private investigators). Of all the Schmoopies (I later found out about), she was the only one that insisted he leave his wife or she was going to tell. That scared him into action. He later complained that she was making marriage noises and I told him he HAD to marry her because he would look like a bigger dick if he didn’t, just ask around. Evidently he did ask around and it was confirmed. Can you imagine knowing that the ex-wife insisted that he marry you? Know wonder she ended up drinking to excess.
He claimed he never liked or wanted the house that we purchased together in 2005 (at his insistence). The same house he “couldn’t believe” we actually had to privilege to live in. Now, he’s upset that he didn’t understand that he “was being forced to give up all his interest” in the house as part of the divorce settlement because he got caught red handed and I had a VERY good attorney.
LOL, same. FW did nothing but complain about our house, and claimed the mortgage was the reason why he was “stuck” at his job (which he had also really wanted). Every time someone came to our house, they commented how cute it was, and said things like “this is a really lovely house”. He couldn’t see it.
He offered it to me in the divorce (he had originally said I’d only get it “over his dead body”, but changed his mind after he had let it run to wrack and ruin and didn’t want to repair it, plus it was too small for OW’s kids to join in), but I decided we should sell it. I couldn’t afford to buy him out, and OW had been all over it and it was kind of spoiled for me. I wanted to start over somewhere new, and I’m very glad I did. Ironically, he died during the divorce proceedings, so I got all of the profits on the sale of the house.
i made a lot of compromises to be with you. uh, no.
you’re too much of a feminist. this, after YEARS of faux feminism. it burns my butt that he lied about supporting women and it REALLY burns my butt that i fell for it.
for some reason i find this subject depressing.
it feels like a monday on a friday, i don’t know why.
According to fw we did get married and stayed married for 35+ years for the wrong reasons. I told him I married him because I loved him and wanted to create a life together. I’m pretty sure I was his appliance and cover for a 35 year secret life. When I said that I missed having little ones and though it was hard I would do it again he said he hated every minute of it.
When the roof of the house we’d just purchased leaked because of ice dams, he blamed me for making him buy that house. What?
Why blame anyone? Why not just act as a team/partnership to tackle an unfortunate/distressing problem?
By the way, that he would blame me in that moment of house-stress to relieve himself of pain seemed especially cruel and spineless. The buck never stopped with him. In fact, he blamed the AP for the affair. You see, she flirted. She pushed him into it. The poor guy!!!
Same. After the basement flooded, he suddenly had never wanted that house and I forced him to buy it.
I’ve noticed similarities in our exes before, ISTL. sigh
Yes that’s common apparently. Women who spend their lives chasing unwilling men and forcing them into sex / affairs / secret holidays / buying cars even.
I might have believed he found one of these women in his lifetime but as far as I know he’s met about a dozen and never managed self defence. His poor Weenie got trapped in all these vaginas time after time. Almost enough to make me cry…..
Oh, and I should clarify that he very much wanted that house. I didn’t have any idea what he meant when he said that I had made him buy it. Yet another example of his cowardice. #gaslighter #spineless
Let’s begin with — thank goodness that racist sexist narcissistic asshat FW is gone.
During our marriage, these were FW’s beliefs:
* Only wanted one kid
* avoided his own parents and kicked and screamed about visiting them
* mocked “soccer moms” and thanked me for dressing nicely and not “looking like a soccer mom” — in fact, son was not allowed to play soccer (“it’s a third world sport”)
* wouldn’t let us get a home with a “carport” (he only allowed garages) or any place without sidewalks
* I wasn’t permitted to buy a minivan when we had a baby — because “no way are we driving a minivan.” Also “no Subarus — that’s for liberal feminist crunchy women”
* wanted to raise our child under one religion and we were in agreement that it would be Jewish
* wanted me to quit my high paying job because he admittedly was jealous and competitive with his pay
* wanted me to be a stay at home mom to raise our son
* he’s a hard right conservative and hates far left Liberals
After DDay:
* “AP is so wonderful. She has 2 kids and that’s what I always wanted. How dare you only have one child?” (he also told AP that I never wanted children and I didn’t want my son — I got to read those texts of gaslighting and lies)
* “I love visiting my parents — too bad you kept me away from them” (his parents believe I’m the reason he rarely saw them during our marriage)
* AP’s kids play soccer and she is the proverbial “soccer mom” looking unkempt and driving a minivan. She finally sold that and bought a Subaru
* AP’s house has no sidewalks and has a carport. It’s also cramped and he’s 6’5″
* “You never let son go to church! He should be celebrating Christmas!” And his parents got totally behind that one. (never mind that FW doesn’t go to church — which his parents also blame me for)
* AP is a single mom and works. You won’t get a job! Why were you a stay at home mom when you should have been working?”
* AP and her parents are very Liberal. I doubt seriously that he lets them no who he really votes for. AP also never seems to go to his parents’ place anymore (FW just takes son without her) because they are openly hard right conservative and I’m sure it is ghastly at the dinner table LOL
MichelleShocked, laughing from the UK about ‘soccer being a third world sport’. That told us!
“Also “no Subarus — that’s for liberal feminist crunchy women”
😆 What a ridiculous right wing kook.
Soccer third world. Has he heard of the Premiship?
Isn’t it amazing how the AP becomes the the “soulmate” for these FWs? HoWorker/Wife was a never married with no kids, only three very large rescue dogs that she locked up for at least 16 hours a day while she only just worked. Apparently, I should have also worked as attorney while doing all the house & child duties. What’s funny is he’s finding out, that while she works out, she doesn’t water or snow ski, run or participate in sports, which our family did in spades.
Asshat made a comment a couple years ago about HoWorker/Wife about not finding her sexually attractive at all. It was an odd comment so that’s why I remember it. It did ring true as she is not his type at all, but there obviously was something there for him to say that out loud.
I once made a list of everything FW said he disliked about women (he was very judgemental/critical of people, so I heard a lot over the years). It could have been a point by point description of OW. She was so far from what he said he liked that I was flabbergasted.
I realized that FW didn’t actually have a “type” or any standards. The only thing that mattered to him was abject devotion and ego stroking. He was willing to overlook everything about OW that he didn’t like because she gave him those (and sex). I have no doubt that if he had lived, he would have done to her exactly what he did to me, and suddenly express his hatred for everything he had told her he liked about her. Because that was how he operated. I also watched OW change just about everything about herself to match what FW DID like. After about a year with FW, OW was completely unrecognizable as the person I first met. She resembled nothing so much as … ME.
Klootzak also started loving everything about me and then hated everything about me. He just goes for anyone who gives him kibbles. When I stopped being a doormat, suddenly he didn’t like anything about me.
“She was so far from what he said he liked that I was flabbergasted.”
This was the case for me too. She’s an unmarried single mom who had her child as a teen, is very hippy-dippy spiritual and has some extremely out there spiritual beliefs. There is nothing wrong with any of those traits. But they are all traits that he has always been very dismissive and condescending of. All of them. Always said my divorced friend who has a daughter would never find a man because no one wants to date someone who has “someone else’s kid”. And don’t even get me started on the spiritual side. It isn’t just that he dated someone with those beliefs after being so dismissive of those ideas for decades. He bought into them. Deeply. Cue my brief concern that he had a brain tumor. I’ve seen others say the same and it’s funny, but clearly common, sometimes they change so much and behave so against type that the only logical explanation IS a brain tumor.
But the truth of it is that she apparently gave him a lot of attention, and those kibbles meant more than his family. It’s just that simple.
Yes we’re waiting on MRI of the brain results right now, but I don’t hold out too much hope on that.
Don’t mean to sound callous here, but wondering if it’s just him.
My ex had a huge list of what he claimed to have never wanted and how I had single-handedly wrecked the marriage. He had put that together with his religious family, and they tried and convicted me without me present. That was in the first month of separation after he took off to another state. They were supportive of the distance and told me that no professional counselor was required; they would do the counseling.
Of course, I shared that situation with my therapist (licensed PhD) and others who said that was an example of a toxic, controlling family. I couldn’t imagine how we could ever reconcile with that level of family involvement, even down to open discussions of our sex life that were of course, one-sided.
My attorney did an intake appointment and then wanted what he called a “marital history” appointment so he could begin working on a trial strategy. He was expecting a lot of trouble from my ex’s mental health issues and the attorney my ex chose. Going home from that appointment, I realized that there was nothing left to work with. I cried more after that appointment than I did when I signed, but I was fine after that. I had to divorce, and I had an outstanding legal team.
But yes, meh, and the next chapters of life. I can’t believe how much better things are now.
He never would’ve married me. He hated our house and had never wanted to live there. He called it a prison. This was after 30 years! And this only came out after I discovered the serial cheating, snooped in his phone and uncovered multiple texts where he fantasized to his friends and sex partners about leaving me the day after our youngest graduated and only ever referred to me as “that bitch that I never should’ve married.” I still have trouble wrapping my brain around the deception.
Mine told me he never wanted a divorce, even though he was cheating, because he was Catholic and they married for life………..I could not get my head around that one., and he added, just in case the knife wasn’t deep enough, that I only married him to have children, so I guess sticking around for 30 years was because I was too lazy to look elsewhere. Lovely. When we meet now, he is the angry one……go figure.
My FW said I only married him because he was the first guy to pay attention to me. Ignoring the fact that I would get hit on/asked out for dates nearly every time I went out in public. Even when I was married and wearing a big diamond ring. Oh, and for his money. Despite the fact that he was a 27 year old college student working as a waiter when I met him…
Kids. The man who explicitly insisted he wanted to be a father by age 30 — and NEVER participated in birth control in any way — was LIVID when I somehow got pregnant (by myself?) with child #4. The pressures of the impending birth made my ex so “desperate” (direct quote) that he had no choice but to hook up with a random stranger when I was 8 months pregnant and then keep on boinking her for the next 7 years until I found out. Then I got both “I never loved you” and “I never wanted kids.” 🤔🙄
I can relate Krispy. My FW ex said that I “killed” our love 10 years previous so he didn’t feel married “in his mind” so he gave himself permission to live a double life. When he told me this, I begged him to tell me what I had done to kill out love! The only thing he could come up with was that somehow I forced him to have a fourth child, our only daughter. I remember having a discussion about trying for a fourth child. We agreed to try over the summer and if I didn’t get pregnant we were done. He was just counting on me not getting pregnant, but I did. My daughter is the best thing FW ex ever gave me! He sucks, and has been a jerk to her her whole life. Ironically, he has “killed” whatever love his daughter may have had for him.
For me, it wasn’t so much a case of “I never wanted . . .” (she wanted oh so much), but rather “I never asked for . . .”
Pleasing a fuckwit often means not only meeting their explicit and implicit needs and wants, but exceeding them. Demanding that they take extra time for themselves while you hold down the fort. Delighting them with little tokens and gestures that they didn’t even know they wanted until they got them.
But when god forbid I would remind her of those things in the heat of an argument, I got: “I never asked for that.”
I keep remembering more and more things the LCL “never wanted.”
When he got fired from his warehouse job, I offered him work with me in my housepainting business.
Much as he claimed to hate it, he lasted about a year. He quickly became a competent painter, but remained an awful employee (excessive breaks, crappy attitude) making me hate a job I love.
Working with me was supposed to be a temporary solution until he found a job. He applied for exactly one job, then abandoned all job hunting efforts.
I suggested he enroll in college on the GI Bill. He agreed. Then proceeded to drag his feet, purposely miss application deadlines, and do everything possible to sabotage the process.
Of the two colleges in town, he opted for the one that originally was a women’s college and only began enrolling male students in the 80s. No doubt, he figured that one was the better hunting ground for new fuckbuddies.
It took a full year to get him enrolled. It took him one day (orientation day) to find and begin sexting a fellow student.
So yeah. He never wanted me to meet his kids, he never wanted to live with me, he never wanted to be a painter, he never wanted to go to college.
But he also – or so he claimed when I dumped him – never wanted to lose me.
No wonder I was exhausted after four years of all that.
He never wanted to be faithful, that’s for sure.
Mine “never wanted kids” either. He seems to have forgotten about ejaculating into a specimen jar for fertility treatment.
Out the door, Asshat said “I’m finally thinking of myself first”, and, “You owed me Son”. Both statements set me on my heels and I realized that we really weren’t in the same 25 year relationship. He also said, “your dad is lazy”, an English Professor who retired at 60 after teaching for 30 years. What’s really funny, is his father and HoWorker/Wife are both PhDs. I almost laughed at that statement.
So the scuba and sky diving hobbies, boat, me providing 100% of kid rearing, robbing Peter to pay Paul to always remain solvent in order to pay for whatever gift we couldn’t afford tp make him look good…….all that was for me. In exchange, I “owed” him a son, which apparently wasn’t enough to pay my tab. Who knew?
Oooh oooh! The list is long but distinguished, will shorten:
-more than 2 kids, but refused to get a vasectomy
-me to be a SAHM though we talked as nauseum about it and said we wanted that for our kids
-to move to a new house, says I was the only reason he took on another mortgage and work of a move
-to have to keep working (48 yo) but since we are so demanding he has to-you know how 5 needy kids and a wife can be
-he’s moving out today and now that it’s real he doesn’t want to anymore
Understandable if he really didn’t want these things, BUT he never spoke up about it. So I guess he’s really more mad that he’s weak and can’t use words correctly.
I forced my FW to “not be a rancher.”
I denied him his Saturday morning Rifleman-watching dream of ranching.
In retrospect, ALTHOUGH ALL OF THIS HAPPENED YEARS BEFORE WE EVEN MET, , I should never have made his parents give birth and raise him in the suburbs of Chicago, and I never should have made FW’s mom and dad tell him to choose a marketing degree in college.
Although it was against my will, I forced FW to take a corporate job and move us to Florida and the suburbs. Sure, sure, I cried and begged him not to take that job just because his mom was insisting on it, (not even kidding), but that was all just a part of my sneakiness. Then we ended up in Virginia when he pursued yet another corporate job. And for his entire life, even before we met, I forced him to never ride a horse or show even the slightest interest in livestock or attempt to grow anything more than a few tomato plants.
But ultimately the video game playing suburb boy with alcohol and drug addictions will never get to be a rancher because I forced him into a life that he pursued even against my protests and even before we ever met.
I am the g*d-damnedest greatest FORCER on the planet!
Mwahahahahaha?
“ALTHOUGH ALL OF THIS HAPPENED YEARS BEFORE WE EVEN MET”
Yes. FW blamed me 100% for why he wasn’t where he wanted to be in life. Completely ignoring the fact that he had dropped out of highschool, done drugs, abused alcohol, etc. and that was why he was still in college in his late 20s. I met him when he was 27. I had nothing to do with his youth, his parents, his academic success or failure. Nothing. If anything, I helped him get further than he otherwise would have, by managing our money (something he was not good at), cosigning on his car, buying him equipment (with my credit, because his was terrible), peeling him off the floor when he was depressed and wanted to quit on the movie he was making, etc. Yet he claimed I had contributed NOTHING to our marriage or his life at all.
Yep, this right here. My FW would still be working part time jobs at sporting goods stores or Cinnabon and laying around in bed all day if he hadn’t decided he was so in love with me that he had to make changes and grow up. His idea, not mine. But his whole life is my fault. We are all entitled to roll our eyes at this sort of thing.
We were unable to have children. After 20 years of “trying” we decided to adopt an infant.
Five months and $25,000 later, we welcomed our infant daughter into our family.
At the blame shifting phase after D-Day (a month after our 35th anniversary) FW said he never wanted to adopt, and had never wanted children of his own either.
I would have appreciated having that information prior to saying “I do.”
I bet he was annoyed that the $25K adoption fee cut into the thousands he spent monthly on his hooker habit.
Mine was not “I never wanted” but “I never agreed”. Is this similar enough? I wanted to plan for retirement. I wanted some security for old age. eX made no progress for this during most of our 34 years together. We had zero retirement plans. So I took the initiative. I thought of a whole plan, we would do x, y and z to secure our retirement. HE AGREED to it. So I thought we were agreed and were making a mutual decision, as equals, like grownup married couples do.
Well near the date that we were supposed to enact plan x,y,z, I was doing my part to prepare to enact said plan and he announces to me, “I HAVE DECIDED that we are not going to x,y,z.” In other words, (paraphrasing), “We are going to keep everything exactly has it has been for all these years. Nothing will change.”
Did you note the unilateral decision making there? The laying down of his decree, as if he were the king and I’m only a subject (a kind, sexy, faithful, trusting, useful housewife subject)?
He has since emphatically claimed that “I never agreed to that!”
But now I finally, finally get it; eX is a manipulator and a liar. About everything important.
Mine said I was a bitch when I became pregnant. Naturally he had to options besides adultery……….
My ex pos was really good at lovebombing. He remembered every date and would send me weekly emails commemorating our “weekly anniversary”. Always did flowers and gifts on holidays and birthdays….would send me emails at work telling me how much he loved me.
TBH it was always over the top for me but I would thank him and respond in kind.
After I found out about the whore everything flipped…..claimed he never meant any of that and only did it because he thought it was important. So he basically admitted the entire relationship was phony. Even though I knew when I found out about the whore that the marriage was over, him telling me he’d been phony the entire relationship was really the moment I was truly done.
I remember asking him at that point why he married me and he said I was the best he was ever going to do. I always knew he was phony but foolishly believed the love bombing.
He was right about that. Now he’s 68 and alone with limited funds, a limo dick, and a cheap shitty toupee. Let’s just say I’m in a far better position.
Of course despite everything he didn’t want the divorce. He had a good life with me as I made a lot more money, he was just such an insecure phony that he needed pathetic ego stroking too.
Whatever…..I think his whore ex gf is now on marriage #6 (she was on #5 when I ieft him) so maybe if he gets lucky he can be #7. He never seemed much interested in actually being seen with her though, he’d dated her before me and nobody in his circle knew she existed.
“I remember asking him at that point why he married me and he said I was the best he was ever going to do.”
I’m surprised he was aware of that. Most of them seem to think they are great catches who can always do better than whoever they are with.
I think it’s because he greatly values phony images and knew that I made him look good. At his core he was deeply insecure and terrified that people would figure out who he really was.
He liked things that he’d be mortifying if his family, friends, or church knew about.
The irony is that people mostly did have him figured out. Not the fetisg stuff but the phony image.
He’d have been happy to keep me around for the money and phony image and then do what he wanted behind my back.
Oh! I got so many of these reminders about all these dates he remembered but I didn’t — first email (we met on match[dot]com), first phone call, first meeting, first date, first kiss, etc. He was also a very good love bomber. He would call me at work every day until texting was a thing, then he would text me all the time. I was so irritated because of the disruption that I would find myself lying and saying I was in meetings just because it was too much.
I honestly don’t understand why they do all this over-the-top stuff if they are also living this whole separate life. I get wanting to keep us on the hook but why bother?
He never took it all back, just gaslights me about how these things never happened.
Mine was good at love bombing too. If we were waiting in line he’d massage my shoulders, he’d leave flowers on my pillow, very attentive. That all immediately came to a halt once we got married.
No more flowers, shoulder massages, or affection. That was related by ridicule and disinterest.
When I asked why he stopped being so affectionate, he laughed and said I don’t have to, we’re married.
When I’d hear people say how happy he was with AP, it gave me a sense of comfort knowing the love bombing days are numbered. I’m confident knowing it won’t last, it isn’t who he is.
Passive aggression is my ex’s modus operandi; he almost never said anything outright, including that I’d made him do things he didn’t want to do. But he sure could imply things that I was supposed to infer the meaning of, and they all added up to my being a bad person who kept him from being happy and realizing his potential. I spent decades in my marriage learning to see myself through his eyes, and internalize the “lesson,” that I was a faulty, bad person whose actions and constitutional shortcomings prevented him from being happy and successful. (I guess I don’t have to tell you that, far from holding him back, I always wanted to make sure that at work–we were both professors–he got the same chances and rewards I did, and worked to make that happen, all while shouldering the vast majority of the domestic burden and care-taking his emotions.)
One time, however, he slipped up and said it out loud. He was unhappy and I was to blame. It was my fault he was unhappy (because I was a faulty person who because I was faulty couldn’t make him happy). It was my fault he wasn’t promoted (because he was unhappy and therefore couldn’t produce). It was my fault he was fat (because he was unhappy and therefore ate to compensate for the unhappiness that was my fault because I was such a bad person). And although he didn’t say the reason he’d taken up with our ex-student was that I made him unhappy, he did say one morning after he’d gone to “an academic presentation” with her, in a kind of “voice of quiet defiance” (ahem, Spinach), that he was “happy again,” with the clear implication that being with me made him unhappy.
But of course at no time in his suffering and unhappiness did he ever say he wanted a divorce. It served his purposes too well that I would continue on as the self-accusing second wage earner and wife appliance, feeling bad about myself and working hard to buck him up.
From my current perspective of five years out of a 35-year marriage, I now think I spent the whole of my marriage feeling I better up my game and dance faster, even when he wasn’t involved with another woman. And this dynamic was established early on. At one point early in our relationship, he said to me, “I’m not in a position to be in a relationship right now,” so I started working very hard to make him feel the relationship was worth his while.
Hell. On. Earth. I have peace now that I’m not worried whether or not someone I live with is “happy”. Hamster, meet wheel.
I think we were married to the same person.
Adelante and ISTL,
Yes. My ex was the same person, too. He excelled at passive-aggression and at getting others (mostly me) to care-take his emotions in order to keep him happy. Ugh.
.
The father of my children had an alcohol problem before we met. He also was rather promiscuous IMHO. I had reservations about both issues, but foolishly believed his promises to change and married him anyway. He also started having weight problems, which increased after we married. I’ve had to watch my weight all my life, diabetes and alcoholism run in my family. I fixed healthy meals, and always limited consumption of alcohol (usually wine with a meal) because I was aware of my genetic issues.
He blamed me for his weight gain. I pointed out no one was going to lose weight if they consumed a minimum of 6 beers a day. He said he wasn’t drunk. I said, when you space out the beer with lunch, supper, and social consumption you don’t get drunk, but you do gain weight. He said he needed the beer/drinking to feel relaxed and “normal” and it increased his conversational abilities. He claimed I was trying to make him feel bad, by pointing out a way he could address his own issues with weight, and alcohol.
Later on, he blamed the alcohol for his “straying.” He was lonely, working and traveling. He chose his own work. I asked how he thought his choice of going into a bar, and starting to drink, would help him make good choices? Again, he accused me of being harsh and judging him.
So, you see, I was evil all along. I was trying to keep him from feeling “normal.” He never wanted to drink too much, or gain weight, or cheat, or actually develop diabetes and impotence, and ultimately die at 76. It was all my fault for not being willing to turn a blind eye on his choices, and my judgment drove him to make bad choices, which ruined his life. He had no part in any of these choices he made.
You can lie to other people and hope they won’t find out. However, if you lie to yourself, you have to suffer the consequences of your lies. He may have wanted many things he did not have, and not wanted many things he ended up with, but he never made the choices he needed to make to be healthy, have a good marriage, or be a good father to his children. I do not accept responsibility for his bad choices, and anyone who wants to believe his version of reality needs to find a therapist to guide them back into the real world. Any FW OW who wants to believe this kind of lies is already headed in the wrong direction. I have no mercy for anyone who finds an acceptable excuse to date a married person, and actively work toward dissolution of that marriage. I truly believe that bad choice will come back to bite you, it’s just a matter of time.
Portia–what a picture of the “lying to yourself” that comes with addiction. Very eloquently described.
Portia,
Some of this sounds all too familiar. Mine let alcohol run his life for many years. He hid a lot of it with his work travel, but when home it was just out with the guys watching games at the local watering hole, lodge or legion for hours on end. He eventually lost his license but it still didn’t sink in even with all the implications of that. Oh and the great conversationalist, always happier out talking to strangers, anybody except being home with his family. Should have gotten out sooner, but it’s hard when one is trying to hold a life together for everyone else. Anyway I’ve had my D-days over the past 6 months. He is out now but still determined to ruin his life. His therapist hasn’t snapped him back to reality so far. In fact he has him reapplying for his drivers license ( for the second time) and working on his resume to maybe get a part-time job. He’s going to need it since he continues to waste his retirement savings on multiple scam dating sites and porn, hoping that something will stick. I always appreciate your posts. You have a lot of grace and wisdom.
Silly really….but after 40 years of marriage on a random phone call he said, “I need to ask you something. Would it be okay if I had a girlfriend?” And when I said, “Well, that’s supposed to be me,” he responded, “Someone to do things with, go out and eat, go to the movies……”
And that’s the exact moment I knew. The man has not been to the movies in at least twenty years. Even when we all went as a family with the grandkids at the holidays just a couple of months before this, he stayed home.
Within a few hours of this conversation, it was clear he wasn’t asking if he could look for a girlfriend. She was already in her spot and it was time for the grand discard of me. Wow, covert narcs can do a spectacular reveal and instant discard!
Wow.
This also reminds me that during the terrible discard phase when he was acting oddly and treating me worse, my daughter had visited with our 5 mo-old granddaughter. We asked him if he wanted to join us for a walk, and he snapped back, “No! I want to tie this fly.” I remember being shocked that he would miss this chance to spend time with his daughter and granddaughter in order to do something frivolous.
Now my daughter has no relationship with him, which is a result of years of emotional abuse and not simply his failure to agree to go on one walk.
But there was a pattern there. He wanted to do only what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it.
Also, this memory makes me realize that my kiddos (and, by association, grandchild) were swept up in the whole discard phase. In other words, they were discarded, too. My ex is a pathetic human being. And he feels sorry for himself now. And I’m to blame for all of it.
Sad.
I didn’t have to endure this particular mindfuck.
But maybe next week we can have a challenge of all the joy and opportunity we Chumps cruelly denied FWs. I never made him do anything, but I “wouldn’t let him” this & that. Lol if only.
After 27 years, only married me because he felt sorry for me. Funny, every time I turned around, he was there. I had been married before for 16 years with 2 young children and was separated on the way to a divorce that was long overdue ( that’s another story). I had a full-time job, was supporting myself and still lived in my home and sharing time with children with the STB-ex. He had a daughter from his previous marriage and I later realized he was not as involved with her as a father as he pretended. We dated for 3 1/2 years before getting married. After my divorce, I sold my home and lived in 2 other places before we were married and moved in together. It’s not like I needed to be married, he asked me. True colors later exposed. We are recently separated, he is a binge drinker, has run down his retirement to 1/3 of what it was on dating and porn sites in the past year. He’s talked some about FOO issues and being a wallflower in high school. He was sad to leave our home, but really not all that remorseful about all the things he’s done, entitled acting while it was happening. Just sad for himself really. Therapy seems to be getting him nowhere. As soon as he left and just prior to, he’s back on porn and dating sites, spending more, doing everything possible to try to hook up with someone. He is 70 and I am now 67.
GLC, he likely won’t have that long to live if he’s 70 and still abusing alcohol. Yet this is how he chooses to spend his remaining years, drinking and jerking off? Yet such a pitiful loser says he felt sorry for you? Typical FW projection.
My FW could be his twin, only ten years younger. He was also a high school nerd and became a binge alcoholic for many years, is a hopeless porn addict and has whined about FOO issues and blamed them for his cheating. He’s had lots of therapy and only got worse. Imagine having to live inside their heads. There must be a constant whooshing sound from life passing them by.
I’m sure there are many, however the funniest one was having a nice yard/cutting the grass too much. Earlier in our marriage, if I let the grass grow a little, my ex would make little jokes like “You longing for the jungle?” Just innocent, friendly barbs. Then when she began her gaslighting phase, one of the largest sticks in her craw was how often I cut the lawn. “You’re cutting the lawn again?! You cut it last week! You’re just trying to get out of household chores!”
Just one of the many moments I was left dumbfoundedly speechless.
Cheater played drums in his high school marching band. His favorite topic to talk about is himself including his high school years. His high school was small and he claims he was unpopular, skinny and people made fun of him. Not sure how much of that is true, as he was voted most liked in high school.
Our son played trumpet in high school marching band. Our son was a gifted trumpet player and people would stop to say how well he played.. Instead of saying the band sounded good tonight, or all the kids did a great job. It was an opportunity to tell people he played drums in his high school marching band. He’d then ramble on about the time he was in band, then if they stuck around they’d hear the story about when he played bells for their Christmas program..
I offered to buy him a drum set and he didn’t want one.
He’s always wanted to play drums ever since we got married but I wouldn’t let him…
Apparently I held him back from pursuing his dreams of being a rock star.
Funny, I didn’t want him to cheat but that didn’t stop him
FW has only ever had 4 friends that I know of since he was a kid. He talks about how miserable middle school and high school were because he was tall and skinny with bad acne. He also has said he hated college for the same reasons. BUT he went to USC and was in the famed marching band and will talk the ear off anyone who will listen about his time in the band. He still insisted on going to Homecoming and any other games we could just to hear the band and talk about his experience.
But whenever he was invited to participate in the alumni band or alumni events he refused.
I have no idea what that was about.
Oh this is a good one. After almost 30 years of marriage and the fact that he proposed to me 4 times before I said yes and raising a wonderful daughter together, he claimed that he never loved me and was forced into the marriage and he should have left years ago because I ruined his life by not letting him go back to school and hang out with kids younger than his daughter! I did not care if he went back to school . It was concerning who he wanted to hang out with. Anyway guess who always worked and kept the household going. It was not him. I always worked a good job while he constantly got laid off because he can’t get along with people. And he had potential to make really good money. Karma has got him as he is now broke can’t afford to get his car fixed and must take public transportation. He’s mad because I’ve not yet retired at which point he gets a percentage of my retirement. He retired really young so I’m already getting a portion of his. And I’m doing fine financially. Anyway, it was horrible when the marriage broke up but I’m at meh now and Tuesday came awhile ago.
After us having dated exclusively (or so I thought) for 8 years, living together for another 2, and finally being married for 24 … then separated and divorce for another 4 … for the very first time, he came up with an entirely novel and never-before-evidenced theory of why HE was the REAL victim: apparently, I tricked him and got pregnant; he never wanted to have kids.
Actually, that’s not how I remember it at all, but put that aside for the moment.
As usual, he never actually told me this himself. He told our daughter (not age 27) and then told her not to tell me.
Seriously, who does that? Even if it were true (and it isn’t), who tells their own kid that? Fortunately, she saw through the manipulation and asked me about it, and we ended up watching the home video from when she was born.
I said something similar to my FW: you sound like a worm!
Who does that?
Lying liars who lie, cheat and bang a triangle with anyone, even their kids, to manipulate, sometimes just for the fun of stabbing their Chump in the heart, because the are jealous that they only have a lego where their heart should be.
Typo up there — I means “now age 27”, in case that wasn’t obvious.
He claimed he never loved me, I guess that was the only thing he had.
He obviously wanted the boats and man toys that I did without so he could afford. He obviously wanted me working in the community and politics to help him get his career opportunities, I mean he must have he asked me to do it. I guess it was an extreme burden for him to have to pretend to love me, and pretend to have desire for me all those years.
If there had just been some way he could have gotten me to be a devoted wife without the silly trappings of love and commitment, well he could have been happy all those years.
“I never wanted to buy that 200 year old house and fix it up.
I wanted to have more kids.
I wanted to move to the west coast.”
“Basically I wanted, or didn’t want, every major life decision we made together in 25 years of marriage,” quoth the fuckwit. Nice try. No takesies-backsies. So grateful to be well away from that gaslighting mess.
His biggest one was how I coerced him into marriage by getting pregnant. He had a bad case of the mumps as a child and had been tested and declared sterile, so we hadn’t been using protection. At the time I was pregnant and after the baby was born, he was overjoyed because he had been unhappy that he’d never have a child.
Such a greasy liar.
Now the grown up version of the sweet baby girl he was so thrilled with is not in his life. He doesn’t care. He tossed her away just like he did me. That’s the thing that makes me the most angry. I think the fact that she is disabled is part of it. He doesn’t want a “weird” daughter because he can’t brag about her. I believe the SOB is ashamed of her and resents her almost as much as he does me.😡
How’s that for a miserable subhuman asshole?
That’s terrible! What a dick.
OHFSS,
He is. That is sad and awful but he has to live with himself. Fortunately your daughter has you.
On DDay he told me that it wasn’t my fault [he cheated and lived a double life], he just married the wrong person. He moved in practically instantly when we started dating, he suggested we live together, he proposed, but somehow I must’ve tricked/forced him into all of it.
Oh and through the power of my towering anger that managed (somehow) to live alongside my overwhelming depressive emotions, he was forced to stay with me for almost a decade after realizing “he didn’t love me the way a husband should love his wife.” He was alternately worried about my anger and my emotions so it was best to just start a second life instead of asking for a divorce.
Yes!! Me too. I’m aggressive! And controlling. So he had to stay here with me even though he never liked me? Meanwhile he was cool with me cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, getting the taxes done, etc. taking the kids to the doctor, guitar lessons, track meets, etc. Pathetic!
This one is timely for me. In my most recent interaction with FW, he claimed that I had cheated too. I was surprised, as I would think I would remember cheating. He said that he may have done it physically, but I cheated in my mind. Still confused, I asked for clarification. He told me this was about that dirty talk I would do during sex–the dirty talk HE DEMANDED that I do. He said he found it gross, in retrospect, and it convinced him that I was thinking about other men–which was “just as bad” as anything he did, maybe worse. So to follow FW logic–he demanded that I talk dirty, at which point he felt insecure because my dirty talk about appreciating his manliness was over the top and didn’t seem to apply to him and his… um… shortcomings. Therefore I must be thinking about other men, which means that I was imagining some other guy. And that imagining of some other guy was just as bad or maybe worse than the actual prostitutes he was purchasing. I’m SO glad I am not married to that FW anymore.
Two buckets of crazy.
Hello, Comcast? Which mind fuck channel is this?! Dear lord.
Carol39 and WalkawayWoman–this all sounds so exhausting and crazy! It must have been such a relief to each of you to get away from these people.
Omg Carol39, I thought I was the only one who experienced this!
My FW was very insecure about the size of his penis. (He was average, but I guess he wanted to be pornstar-sized.)
He complained if I used other adjectives than “big” that I found his size inadequate and unsatisfying.
But if I called him “big” I was lying / mocking him / fantasizing about other men.
I couldn’t win. Glad I’m no longer forced to play his stupid games.
During confrontation and one of the many reasons he proclaimed “I never wanted to be the man of the house!”. You’re (almost) 36 years old my dude, I’m sooooooo sorry you need to adult and mow the lawn once a week?!
I think the sentiment was part of a much bigger issue in his head but that along with I keep the fridge too full were weird highlights I’ll never forget.