UBT: ‘I Am Feeling Extra Sad’
Dear Chump Lady,
I was wondering if I could donate some extra Lebkuchen for the UBT for this one? This is about the 4th (I think?) email I have received from Fuckwit since telling him I wanted a divorce (still in process).
Brief History of our “Marriage”:
Married 25 years, 2 lovely daughters.
D-Days #1-3: Caught him cheating on me numerous times, in various ways. Each time he swore he “would never do it again!” Years and years of pick-me dancing ensued.
After D-Day #3, he was diagnosed as a sex addict, though he’s still in total denial of that. Found out he had been cheating on me the entire marriage, even before the ink was dry on the marriage certificate! Enter Reconciliation Industrial Complex, smoking the Hopium pipe, and so much more bullshit as he faked recovery.
D-Day #4: 7 years post-“recovery”, I found the (post-vasectomy) condoms — I’m out, I’m DONE!!!!
Six weeks after I told him I wanted a divorce, he was on no less than 3 dating apps. I will spare you and your readers the absurdities of the reasons why we’re still barely out of the starting gates on the divorce.
For reference, his cheating has involved several dozen partners, including friends, prostitutes, co-workers, business and professional colleagues, strangers, etc. This is only what he has admitted to, or can remember. Basically our entire marriage was a complete sham, and I just functioned as the Wife Appliance.
Throughout the divorce process there has been massive amounts of lying, blameshifting, gaslighting, etc., the usual. And throughout the process he has been sending me emails trying to get me to reconcile. I have given him a clear answer of “NO!” every time, but he still keeps trying. This is the latest. Any chance the UBT is up for a challenge? I just can’t…. I’m exhausted by the extreme cognitive dissonance and his massive delusions. Since receiving this latest one, I alternate hourly between raging and laughing at the absurdity of it. Please help… I am a wreck, and I am in need of a massive dose of validation until my next therapy session.
Dear QuarterCenturyChump,
I know “I’m sorry” isn’t enough, but I am really sorry for the immense hurt and pain I have caused you. I will forever and deeply regret my decisions, my mistakes, my behaviors, and I wish I could change them all. It was 100% my choice to choose those things.
I realize it is a long shot, but I genuinely love you, and care for you, and I want to work though this, and make it work. I am in therapy every week trying to figure out why I would ever make those choices, and I am making great headway in my opinion.
The more I work through things, the more I am in touch with my feelings, the more I am feeling sad about all of this. Watching a movie that reminds me of you, brings me to tears. I feel deep regret when I think of how I treated you, and the loss I feel from not having you in my life.
I miss many aspects of our relationship. I especially miss waking up and seeing you next to me sleeping, cleaning up together after dinner, your friendship, and massaging your feet while you talk about what is on your mind.
I ask you to please take the time for us to meet with someone who can help us talk through the issues to determine if there is any way to save the relationship and not put [our daughters], you and myself through the challenges of divorce, and life after divorce.
My hope is that you will allow us to experience a session or two with a different therapist, who would help us to explore if reconciliation is possible, and if not, would help us walk forward in a more positive light. I believe this will be helpful for both of us and [our daughters].
I’m respectful of where you are in the process. I’m not asking for us to stop the divorce process. I’m asking that we try this to see if there is a possibility, or at least have this help us to move forward more positively.
Love,
Fuckwit
In Gratitude,
QuarterCenturyChump
****
Dear QuarterCenturyChump,
Dear God woman, BLOCK him. Wherever you are in this divorce, I assume you have a lawyer? Let that lawyer be your firewall. ALL communication goes through the lawyer. Get parenting software for anything about minor kids. Then change your number, email, etc. Enforce HARD BOUNDARIES.
He tries to go around? You immediately send all communication to your lawyer.
BITCH BOOTS. Wear them.
You’re suffering because you left the mindfuck channel on. Only you can turn it off. He won’t turn it off. You have to DO something and protect yourself. Is that fair? No, of course not. You’re dealing with a fuckwit. But no contact is the path to true healing. He tries this bullshit because it’s worked before. Shut it down.
Now then… Did someone say Lebkuchen? The Universal Bullshit Translator’s sprockets perked up at the mention of obscure German cookies.
To the job, UBT! A fuckwit has a SADZ!
Grok. How much cookie for that?
You are a very capitalist machine, UBT.
Lebkuchen. NOW.
(I tossed it a snack, like throwing chum to a seal.)
Snarf!
I know “I’m sorry” isn’t enough,
And I’m not even sorry. So what follows will be extra disappointing.
but I am really sorry for the immense hurt and pain I have caused you.
How immense is my sorry? Friends, prostitutes, co-workers, business and professional colleagues, strangers and three dating profiles deep.
I will forever and deeply regret my decisions, my mistakes, my behaviors, and I wish I could change them all.
Gosh, if only there were some magic beans or an enchantment to turn me into a prince and not a serial creepazoid.
I wish I was a better person. If I ever meet a Genie and he grants me three wishes, I promise one of my wishes will be to go back 25 years and stop myself from fucking around on you for the next couple of decades. I wish I could make that wish. I would so waste a wish on you.
It was 100% my choice to choose those things.
Watch me try on my Cloak of Accountability. Whoosh! Watch me take it off by the sixth paragraph. But hey, I chose THINGS! Unnamed THINGS!
It was 100% my choice to risk your health.
It was 100% my choice to fuck your friends.
It was 100% my choice to buy prostitutes.
It was 100% my choice to fake reconciliation, risk your health, fuck your friends, and buy prostitutes. Sometimes all on a single Wednesday. And then I’d lie to your face and complain about your chicken casserole. Because… choices!
#freedumb
I realize it is a long shot,
You got a lawyer this time. Jesus, what the fuck is that about?
but I genuinely love you,
In that screw-a-hundred-people-who-aren’t-you kind of way. But damn, you can really fold laundry.
and care for you, and I want to work though this, and make it work. I am in therapy every week trying to figure out why I would ever make those choices, and I am making great headway in my opinion.
I’m in therapy every week to figure out why I’m such a terrible person, and have concluded that I am awesome and deserve more chances. #greatheadway #mysterysolved
The more I work through things, the more I am in touch with my feelings, the more I am feeling sad about all of this.
Twenty-five years of abusing you and I think I had a glimmer of a feeling. It was sad! I am working through it and trust it will pass like a kidney stone.
Watching a movie that reminds me of you, brings me to tears.
It was the Muppet Movie and when Kermit sang Rainbow Connection, I really lost it.
I feel deep regret when I think of how I treated you, and the loss I feel from not having you in my life.
But I’ve lined up several replacements. Four I met on dating sites and a couple I purchased on Back Page ads. Replacements, however, cost money. Keeping you as my wife would save a lot in legal bills and gives me a veneer of normalcy. Plus you fold my underwear into neat triangles. I regret that my underwear drawer is a mess now.
I miss many aspects of our relationship.
Tidy triangles. Zero accountability. Your continued trusting stupidity.
I especially miss waking up and seeing you next to me sleeping,
Oh good! I can check my cell phone unhindered.
cleaning up together after dinner,
Let this be the foundation of our continued relationship — a memory of me doing a domestic chore I could’ve done unassisted. But instead did with you. #specialchosen1 #Palmolive
your friendship,
Hidden condoms are a token of my great esteem for you.
and massaging your feet while you talk about what is on your mind.
I am not a creepy man with a secret sexual basement, I’m a sensitive listener and friendly masseuse.
I ask you to please take the time for us to meet with someone who can help us talk through the issues to determine if there is any way to save the relationship and not put [our daughters], you and myself through the challenges of divorce, and life after divorce.
In fact, I’m such a GOOD LISTENER that I have ignored your legal pleadings and will persevere in my delusion that sociopathy is something to “talk through.” Is there any way to not put me through the challenge of consequences?
My hope is that you will allow us
US! Yet you persist in being autonomous. An obstinate bitch with uppity divorce demands. How dare you make choices!
to experience a session or two with a different therapist,
If first you don’t succeed, buy a new one. That’s my philosophy with therapists and sex workers.
who would help us to explore if reconciliation is possible, and if not, would help us walk forward in a more positive light.
Divorce so negative. Unlike 25 years of a double life, which is just something you should’ve gotten over already.
Smile more. Walk into the light!
(UBT:
I believe this will be helpful for both of us and [our daughters].
Because taking back a manipulative, serial-cheating fuckwit would model great things to impressionable young women. While you’re at it, stop voting and get back in the kitchen. #wheresmydinner
(UBT: #therewithURdivorcesummons)
***
Rerun today because we’re recording a podcast. But I still need your Fuckwit of the Week 90-second nominations! Leave us a message here. And did you know the internet is magnificent and that you can hire a guy who does MONSTER TRUCK rally voiceovers to do a FUCKWIT OF THE WEEeeeeeeK promo? Yes you can. And yes he does.
I believe there’s no such thing as real “sex addiction” when it comes to these fuckwits. He’s simply a disordered, jackass cheater who got caught. Not someone who needs to be the center of a minute more of anyone’s attention for “tReATmeNt oF mUh DiSeAsE.” 🙄
Fun fact, there is no such thing as sex addiction. The sex addiction industry is even more sinister than the reconciliation one. No professional sex therapy body, board or journal recognises it, none. Instead, in extreme grab-your-dick-in-public-because-a-curvy-piece-of-sidewalk-set-you-off circumstances there can be triggers for compulsive and/or impulsive behavior around sex but it’s not an addiction. Fun fact “sex addiction” was an invented term by a non professional back in the 80s and it went viral via the celebrity network first which made the term mainstream. Still today no study, no offical study by the pros, have found it to be true. I’m only saying this because my FW doubled down with this, his “sex addiction” and it was my therapist who gave me industry publications to show what a farce the sex addiction industry is, no one backs it except the few who are making big bucks out of trying to cure it… sound familiar??? looking squarely at you reconciliation industry ANYWAY for any lurkers/readers who have a FW who is a “sex addict” nothing will add fire to your resolve to leave than reading into this, the history, the origin story, the years and years of failed trials to prove its existence, big pharma involvement etc… blew my mind. Knowledge is power and this should evaporate any lingering feelings around thoughts like ”poor FW, they’re an addict, they couldn’t help it”
I never believed in sex addiction. For whatever reason, it just seemed way too convenient. Interesting that it took off amongst celebs. Really, they are just cheating FWs that have more options than the average Joe.
My view on the whole sEx aDdiCtiOn as psychobabble-alibi-for-plain-old-sexual-abuse was summed up perfectly in this scene from the old Six Feet Under series when Joe (ironically played by a RL FW) responds to Brenda’s claims that sex addiction makes her cheat with, “Oh blah blah fucking psycho bullshit. It’s not sex, it’s betrayal. That’s your fucking addiction.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llxkHYBiKx8
Amen to that.
You mentioned this quote once long ago. I had never seen the clip but wrote the quote near my computer screen for work where I could see it and internalize it. Because klootzak has tried to hang his hat on “it’s an addiction” before. Glad to see the clip! Better than I imagined!
The scene stuck in my mind from the first time I saw the series. Maybe I sensed subconsciously that I’d eventually relate to it personally though some things ring true whether you ever relate to them or not and this was one of them. Some people are addicted to betrayal for sure.
Wow that’s perfect! Also Joe essentially calls her a FW — a f*cking waste. Ha Ha ha!
Me thinks the screenwriter had experienced chumpdom.
I recently read a novel where the wife discovers the husband is cheating and the author got it SO right. They either experienced it firsthand, or spoke to many Chumps. It is easy to write about a Chump being hurt or angry, but it was all the more subtle stuff that you wouldn’t know if you didn’t experience it.
I grew up with an alcoholic parent, and remember all of the chaos and pain her addiction caused. maybe it was untreated depression, maybe it was trauma from how she was raised, but a whole lot of it looked like purposeful self-destruction from my eyes. Her pain, her feelings, her needs mattered and nobody else’s did – especially her children. I would never willingly choose to partner with a person who drinks to excess.
So my guy is caught cheating and gets a diagnosis of sex-addiction. Cool, you k ow what is wrong. What is the treatment plan? Are there medications? What are the short and long term success rates of these treatments? I seem to recall that only 5% made any meaningful change with current treatments. I would not be willing to gamble my physical, emotional, and financial health on a sucker’s bet. He felt comfortable being an absolute ass to me during the discard phase, but after DDay he loved me and needed my help to heal – that it was up to me to save this marriage? Uhh… no thanks. Good luck with that, dude.
2nd Gen, It’s interesting, you say “He felt comfortable being an absolute ass to me during the discard phase, but after DDay he loved me and needed my help to heal – that it was up to me to save this marriage?”
Mine doesn’t claim a sex addiction at all, but he was definitely horrible to me in the discard phase which dragged out for years. Then he changed his mind. (I strongly suspect Schmoops changed HER mind, but I will never know the truth nor does that aspect matter at all, other than being one more of his lies) Once he changed his mind, I became the meanie that wouldn’t forgive him and take him back. His stance on that comes across as so very sincere, he truly can’t understand why I wouldn’t. And there were many days of sad, sad sausage about it. I can’t state in words just how awful the discard phase was, getting over it at all and juts feeling ok about myself is hard enough after living through that. But the idea of taking him back? It’s insane. And since he is a selfish FW all he can focus on is “But I want to come back and I am sad” and he just can’t for the life of him, understand why he can’t just have what he wants. Because they all just want what they want at the expense of everyone else. (Not to mention, he doesn’t actually want a life with me. He just doesn’t like the consequences of his actions and would like to go back to the much smoother life of a wife appliance, one home for his child, less money to pay out, etc)
It’s just interesting how frequently they single-handedly destroy the marriage and then expect the chumps to save it. One thing that sticks with me is that he would never forgive me if I did what he did. I could do something so much more minor than a years long affair, and he would never have forgiven me.
I grew up with 2 alcoholics (1 also used Rx drugs). My father was a raging, bullying, angry drunk. He was SO NICE in public, so charming (I hate charming people – they always want something) and such a bastard in the house. We called it street angel/house devil. Attacking my mother (I had to defend her physically when I was a kid), ruining every weekend and holiday (he always did work every day)….yelling screaming, throwing knives at the poor cats. Mom was a defensive drunk who drank to escape the misery of her life. Yes, he was a very angry man who had a lot to be angry about…but he used other people, even the pets, as targets for his anger and when he got very sick from drinking….he stopped on a dime. Isn’t it amazing how that can work – with sufficient motivation…like impending death….they can stop on a dime. If he had not drunk, he would still have been an angry, abusive man but he would have just been a sober bully…..the drinking is an excuse….oh, I was drunk…not I’m just an angry AH. This is what gave me a defective picker and I picked two cheaters because I was looking for crumbs of approval. I didn’t know what normal or healthy was. It takes a long time to understand how their behavior shapes yours.
My father was also an alcoholic. He started drinking heavily on weekends when I was 8 when he got back in touch with an old friend from high school, and we started socializing with him and his wife. (The friend was a heavy drinker, but I think he was too functional to be an alcoholic.)
A couple of years later, he started drinking daily, and after he was arrested for public lewdness my senior year of high school, he definitely became an alcoholic. (He was tried and declared innocent.) His behavior became more and more crazy and erratic, and that’s when he started cheating on my mother – as far as I know. My mom used to say he was like Jekyll and Hyde, and you never knew which one you’d be dealing with.
Anyway, it got to the point where I told her she needed to leave, and she did, thank goodness. Quite a nasty divorce. Thank goodness I was over 18; it was bad enough as it was.
Mehitable– You wrote, “If he had not drunk, he would still have been an angry, abusive man but he would have just been a sober bully…”
Yeah, there’s no “Assaholics Anonymous” for people helplessly addicted to being assholes (imagine what that Serenity Prayer would be like). Or batterers. One thing the pros say about domestic batterers is that they don’t batter because they drink but drink to help them batter. It’s a well known fact that booze, powders and pills lower inhibitions which is something abusers count on while gearing up for a nice beat-down. It also provides a handy sad sausage alibi: “demon whiskey made me do it, yer honor.” Apparently militant terrorists sometimes consciously resort to this. Militant fascist Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote in his diary about deliberately taking steroids and a drug cocktail (presumably to help snuff any residual empathy and amplify violence) in preparation for his lethal attack on a summer camp. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18282760
This is completely different from people who commit violence or display erratic behavior due to an inadvertent psychotic drug reaction like minors, the disabled or the elderly who have no control over the meds their guardians tell them to take. Batterers and terrorists have heinous but cohesive and practical agendas that precede and outlast any “substance” issue they might have. For abusers, the agenda is typically to instill terror for the purpose of total sexual control. For terrorists, it’s instilling public fear for some organized ideological purpose. Both entirely intend the damaging effects they have which is the difference between those categories and genuinely “crazy” people.
It is like your spouse having an addiction to burning down houses. You would be an idiot to hang around to see if they get past it.
Exactly! I don’t believe in the existence of such a thing as “sex addiction” but even if it did exist, there’d be just as many reasons to get rid as there would if they were addicted to cocaine, heroin, alcohol or gambling!
Addicts of any sort make life a living hell for those close to them. What one needs to decide is does one want to live in hell or does one want a chance of happiness, contentment or at least, peace of mind.
My X chose cocaine and slappers over me and my son , so I chose to get rid, simple as that! Painful and frightening as it has been, I am now starting to experience some peace of mind at long last!
My ex’s behavior absolutely was compulsive, given the enormous risks he took and the fact that he would honestly have psychological withdrawals if he didn’t get the “high” of chasing someone, sneaking around, and getting off. Yeah, it’s definitely an excuse for a lot of fuckwits, but in the end I didn’t care whether or not it was an addiction, I was done living with it.
Sex addict=a selfish/abusive piece of shit who prioritizes their genitals. Nothing more to it.
It’s literally never been, or even been suggested, as a diagnosis in the DSM. It’s sociopathic behavior, the criteria for ASPD speak for themselves.
Yeah, it is used as an excuse so often. It is far more likely he is just a selfish crapwagon. I’m surprised the UBT didn’t explode with all the glurge it was fed. Self serving drivel meant to keep her in line. Gross.
I received a similar fauxpology.
He, too, said he was “really sorry for the immense hurt and pain” he had caused. And he said that he regretted what he’d done. For a hot second, he donned the Cloak of Accountability (love that, CL!) to say he was responsible for the “relationship blossoming.” In the same breath, he credited the AP for “trying to stop it by moving away” (to a place that has great fly fishing, his main passion, by the way).Note here that my FW slipped in a word of praise for the AP while apologizing to me for fucking this AP for years and for lying to me every day. I really appreciated his acknowledgment of her greatness.
After expressing regret and saying he feels “sad every day,” he tried to screw me in the divorce. The shiv came out.
He was unsuccessful, but still…
Judge them by their actions.
After the initial shock had passed FW sent me a text about how great the child mistress was and that if circumstances had been different I’d really like her. WTAF?! He said that she was worried about me and that they had made plans for how to ‘deal with’ me when he finally confessed all.
I can’t even tell you how enraged that made me.
During our divorce I was also told that the AP was “really worried about me” and “praying for me” and that this was “really hard on her” (yes, on HER), so hard in fact that she’d cried FOUR WHOLE TIMES to him in recent months about how bad she felt. Four whole times! He couldn’t understand how unbelievably insulting and infuriating this was… he genuinely thought that maybe someday when I “got over all of this” I’d accept her and we could be friends. This was about the time I realized he had zero connection to reality and the mask started to drop.
Holy Self-Serving-Narrative, Batman!
I started to be enraged on your behalf, then realized that you, Conchobara, are far too spectacular to be genuinely injured by their pitiful little fictions. (Like seriously, “Lipstick, meet Pig.” Can FW even hear himself?)
The “you’d like her so much” trope was tired when Barbara Pym using as satire kindling. And they were still on WWII rations then. FW and OW should definitely not quit their day jobs, if this is their idea of a compelling plot beat.
Okay, I AM actually still enraged, but only because such fuckwittery has no business intruding on our mental real estate. Not yours, not mine, not anywhere in the Greater CN. We run a classy establishment. They don’t belong here.
The actual divorce seems to be where the truth comes out….the rubber hits the road. All the fake excuses, apologies, love bombing….when money and property are at stake….that’s when reality strikes. You see the real person with no adornments.
The AP of 15 years “kept me in the marriage.” 🤷♀️
Yeah, I can relate to the shrug. It is quite a mystery, their sense of reasoning.
While my mom, with BC, was suffering and dying from mets to the bone, FW told me he would not have made it through that time frame and been able to stay in our marriage if it weren’t for the AP he was screwing.
She, supposedly, understood my grief as she had also lost a mother young and helped FW communicate with me through it all. 🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️
Wow, thank God he had an affair partner to help him through my mom’s horrific agony. Maybe I should have gotten myself one, since hubby was busy out supporting his genitalia instead of his wife.
Wtf. You can’t make it up.
I am much too old to be appropriating millenial vernacular, but — dayyuum. I just can’t even with this jackass.
So sorry for your mom’s suffering.
That is truly evil – using your mom’s cancer as cover for an affair by saying AP had gone through this with her mom, I really doubt they were ever discussing your mom’s illness in between fucks. Absolutely disgusting and with no ethics or empathy at all.
“The AP of 15 years “kept me in the marriage.” 🤷♀️”
That’s some Esther Perel logic right there. 🙄
That praise for the whore really is infuriating.
My fw slipped in a “I (meaning he) made the first move, and she is hurting too” This wasn’t in an apology, but in the dumping conversation. I guess if he made the first move that wiped some of the skank smell off her, and well if she is hurting too; well she must be special.
“Trying to stop it by moving away”. 🙄😈 To quote Yoda, “there is no try, there is only do”. Wanker. Of course he tried to get in a plug for his whore. Vomit.
That reminds me of when my X used to say he was “having an affair with myself”!
That’s all they are really, isn’t it Chumpnomore6? Dirty old merchant bankers!
I hope the LW set up an auto-forward to send all of his emails directly to her lawyer. What a tool.
Dear Quarter Century Chump,
You can boil down everything he wrote to “I don’t want to experience consequences for my 25 years of cheating on you.” Notice how he never felt the need to do a deep dive into himself until you decided to divorce him? But now that he’s going to take a hit financially, instead of just having to say “I’m sorry” while having his fingers crossed behind his back, he’s upping his fake remorse. It cost him nothing to say “I’m sorry,” or to go to “sex addiction” counseling. He didn’t think you and the marriage were worth changing his behavior for, and he didn’t.
This time around, with real (financial) consequences in the offing, he’s having to pull out more arrows from the Fuckwit quiver. In this letter he’s not only apologizing, he’s appealing to you, which is nothing more than a manipulative move that implicitly says that if you don’t give him this one last chance with a new therapist, well, then, you’re the one giving up on the marriage, not him.
All of this is standard issue behavior and standard issue prose right out of the Cheater Handbook. Listen to Chump Lady: free yourself by letting your lawyer run interference for you.
He sure doesn’t like consequences. I suppose by DDay 7, he’s used to pushing the right buttons to get her to reconcile. Probably hand-picked a therapist from the RIC who would essentially guilt her into forgiving him and going back to his little game. Mine had a degree in English composition and poetry and oh my, do his missives show his arrogance and verbosity. It is still the same old glurge and self-pity though. I imagine them saying these words with the back of their hand on their forehead, swooning. Pathetic.
CL doing the good work, telling LW to set up communication through lawyers, and parenting software. No more glurge! Good riddance.
Nearly every time I read these letters, the remorse seems authentic, until they make some point that shows their goal and gives their motive away.
Here it was “… not put [our daughters], you and myself through the challenges of divorce, and life after divorce.” He can manage to cheat and hide his sexual infidelities for for decades, but doesn’t want to deal with the realities of legal dissolution of marriage, parenting his daughters if he’s not in the marital home, and living on his own.
Tracy and other chumps seem to see through these letters immediately. I don’t understand why I still find these letters so persuasive, until the cheaters slip up and show they’re after something. Maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part, hoping that they (and my ex) genuinely regret what they’ve done. Any thoughts?
How I knew right out of the gate with this letter that the remorse was not authentic:
He wouldn’t NAME what he did. Second sentence: “I will forever and deeply regret my decisions, my mistakes, my behaviors, and I wish … blah blah fart word salad.” He doesn’t say, “I will forever regret cheating on you. I will forever regret my betrayal of you and our daughters. I will forever regret all the lies I told.”
When they won’t NAME the actual thing they’re apologizing for, it’s game over. Nothing to work with. They’re minimizing or evading the truth when they won’t use the actual words. We see it here all. the. time. “Mistakes were made.” “This thing that was caused.” Cheaters never ever ever take true ownership.
“Cheaters never ever ever take true ownership.”
It’s so incredibly true. I wonder what exactly that is about? Cheating in and of itself is terrible. And stick around CN for any length of time and you’ll see so many variations that are so much worse than just “terrible”. If these cheaters can do all the awful things they have to do to start and keep an affair going, why are they suddenly so precious about admitting it?
We see murderers take the stand in a trial and proclaim their innocence. That is understandable in that they know what they did but they don’t want to go to jail, so they will try to get away with it. And sometimes cheating FWs are doing that too. But those aren’t the ones I am talking about. I’m talking the FW that tells their spouse, “I am in love with Schmoops, have been for a year, I am leaving” or maybe spouse walked in on them with Schmoops. We are talking situations where everyone knows exactly what occurred and no one is trying to lie and look innocent. Yet they still can’t ever SAY they are sorry for cheating. It’s bizarre how many of us have seen this. They bend into a pretzel to NOT say those words.
Mine talks about the singular “mistake” he made. Not even mistakeS, just the one. The affair was YEARS, but it’s apparently one itsy witsy teeny tiny mistake. And I know I am not alone. Though he is not apologizing when he mentions this mistake. He is blaming me for leaving him over this one mistake. (I know of one AP. But we were together decades and given what I see on CN, the chance there weren’t others seems awfully slim, but I will never know as he will never admit it)
Good friend, I find that I am also fooled by the “remorseful” letters. These pull at me and at first I fully believe the writer. Im beginning to learn that if someone throws out a bone, I embellish it with lots of meat, and crispy skin, and want to eat it. I did that for years with my then husband. He’d throw out a half truth, and I would take it to mean what I wanted to hear.
It’s different now, after learning from the UBT.
I received one email, 2 years post-divorce, and I saw his statements as ambiguous and I couldn’t understand what he was asking me to do. I ran it past a friend, and she couldn’t figure it out either.
Thanks to the UBT, I answered back in a way that set boundaries “no I don’t feel comfortable meeting with you in person” and did not extend myself to guess what he wanted from me, do the work, and dream that he would change his habits. I did nothing to find a way to meet him, or otherwise talk with him. He never responded back.
It might be! I do think it’s natural and reasonable to want an apology when we’ve been wronged. I so badly wanted my X to apologise and beg for forgiveness, until the last couple of days as it goes. I felt it would somehow lessen my pain and sense of being rejected.
I still would LIKE an apology but I no longer feel that desperate need.
Just as bloody well and all, because he hasn’t even admitted it in so many words yet, never mind apologised! Not even one of his feeble fake apologies “I know sure! I’m sorry Love!” which I now realise was just cant, and meant that I should stop going on about whatever it was he’d done!
My best mate reckons if was going to apologise, he’d have done it by now, but that I might get one once he sees the “For Sale” or the “Sale Agreed” sign up on my house, and by that time, I won’t want it! TBH I do now think it’s best that any apology he makes is too late, so he won’t get round me again because I don’t care and I’m all excited about moving home and starting a new life!
In the unlikely event he does apologise and try to worm his way back in, and I find myself even slightly wavering, I’ll turn to CL and CN to talk sense into me, lol!
Shadow, I don’t know if this will help. But I got the apology. Well, actually, I can’t recall if the actual words “I’m sorry” passed his lips, but what I got was a view of someone who very much regretted his actions. And in my case, it was terrible. He fell in love and was set to leave me for Schmoops. It dragged out over years. Then something changed, likely Schmoops dumped him though he won’t admit that. This happened as he was in the process of finally moving out. And it became a hard press for REC. And I did not want that, but was also still working on holding boundaries with him. What ensued was months of utter discomfort for ME as I had to repeatedly enforce my decision to split. (Ironic as his plan was to leave all along whether I wanted that or not, now I was the bad guy for following that plan)
Really, all I am saying is that so many of us have been betrayed but the details are all different, some FWs just move out one day, some drag it out like mine, some even die and from what I have experienced and seen here on CN none of it is any “better” for the Chump. Each scenario is just different with certain pros and cons.
When my FW dragged out his departure, I was jealous of the ones that got left overnight. And I am sure a few of those Chumps wished they had my situation where by the time spouse left, they had accepted and wanted such an outcome, rather than feeling so helpless/shocked/discarded. Ultimately, we all had bad experiences and I don’t think any of those smaller details would change it by much. I completely understand your desire for an apology. I just think that even those that get one don’t feel any better. My FW is out of my life and he is really not happy. He ended up alone and he hates it and he realizes that he blew up our lives for nothing. I should feel vindicated. And I just don’t. Not at all. (If anyone is in my shoes and is having a party every night to celebrate, no judgement here, I get it. I am rather surprised that I am not. It’s not “meh”. It’s far too early for “meh” and I still get enraged about what he did, so I still care more than he deserves. Maybe my lack of satisfaction over his misery is a sign of weakness. I might actually feel bad for him?
It’s the same reason they are able to keep cheating for so long and so egregiously…..they rely on the good and true hearts of their victims. A decent person cannot think that someone would do stuff like this, you can’t imagine it. Not unless you’ve been exposed to a lot of evil before in your life – I can imagine it but I was too weak to do anything at the time…but most people just can’t imagine someone they love and trust thinking and acting like this. I always recommend the old Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer movie Gaslight (yes it’s where the word comes from) because it really shows how this is done with a vulnerable, trusting person. You want to love these people, you see something in them that appears lovable, they probably are mirroring you to be even more appealing, and then….you find out what they’re really like and it’s truly shocking. But just like in their actions, they always slip up and reveal themselves in the letters too….how can they not. Once a victim is wary, the manipulation shines through.
It’s pure evil what they do. They have no soul and zero conscience. They are monsters.
I think you are doing great in that you DO see the slip ups, period. That’s progress.
Also, my FW is currently lamenting his mistakes as he doesn’t like where they landed him, alone with no AP nor wife appliance. For sure, what he is most sorry about is his current situation and how that isn’t pleasant for HIM. It would be infuriating if it wasn’t so typical and ignorant. He blew up ALL of our lives with his poor and selfish choices. We have a kid too. But all he talks about is how sad HE is. As if this all happened TO him. In the meantime, my kid and I are also dealing with the fallout and WE didn’t choose or cause this.
I interpret this as “I haven’t lined up a replacement (yet), so this would be hard for me (at this time).”
To be fair, there are a lot of complicated and often expensive details that need to be worked out before the swicheroo – in fact, it often takes multiple attempts before one can find an affair partner who’s willing to sign up for the role of “next spouse” – so it’s perfectly normal for the cheater to need to request an extension on the marriage.
Thanks to each of you who responded. You all gave very good answers. I replied at longer length further down,, so you won’t miss my thanks if you don’t scroll back up.
Goodfriend, I think the Nice Guy/ Gal behavior can be a disguise for those who should not be trusted, and it serves to confuse and obfuscate. Aka intermittent reward. Anyone untrustworthy can excel at it.
I had it backwards; I placed too much importance on the Nice Guy behavior and used it to minimize and dismiss the harmful and hurtful behavior. It should have been the other way around.
People whose Nice Guy/ Gal behavior can be trusted as genuine don’t also intentionally harm and hurt other people.
A Nice Guy/Gal who is also harming and hurting is a predator.
When making a pro and con list, I need to pay the most attention to what’s on the con list. Aka, STOP sign list, dealbreaker list, standards and values list, character list, moral compass list, integrity list, Leave If This Happens list.
I should have left at the first lie. But he was such a Nice Guy……
Truth! Every time I start to mellow out on a certain person who’s in my hemisphere because he’s smiling, flirting, doing something nice, I then remember that when he was really making me think that he was breaking up with his 10 year live-in after breaking up the marriage with the affair, he was screwing around with another woman as well.
Its not what they say, its what they’re actually doing when they think no one is paying attention.
I always am wary of “charming” people because I always assume they want something and are willing to manipulate me (the charm) to get it. And that’s usually true. It’s an act.
I think there are people with genuine charm that is rooted in goodness. My late SIL was such a person. People wanted to know her better because of her natural warmth, kindness, and generous, caring spirit. She was not above using her natural charm occasionally in low-stakes circumstances like avoiding getting a traffic ticket, but even then she was completely honest about her behavior (Saying to the cop, “So sorry–it’s a beautiful day and I was playing a great song on the car CD player, singing along, and didn’t realize I was speeding.” Said with a big, charming, and utterly authentic smile.) But she didn’t use her natural charm to lie to people or deceive them.
At her memorial, scores of people turned out with stories about how she had touched their lives for good.
However, I agree that there are many people of poor character who learn to wield charm as a tool to get what they want. These people are dangerous because we want to believe their character matches their appeal.
Good question, Goodfriend! I think FW’s only genuinely regret the consequences, not their actions or behaviors. QuarterCenturyChumps FW, like all of our FW’s, had a choice – cheat or not cheat – yet they did it anyway and made many conscious decisions to be deceptive. They have proven that they are untrustworthy and their apologies are as self-serving and worthless as their lies.
Possibly a reluctance to focus on actions, rather than honeyed words?
Not an answer, exactly, but, in the immortal words of Dragut Rais via Dorothy Dunnett:
“Carry with thee this tale. A hunter went killing sparrows one cold day, and his eyes gave forth tears as he went. Said one bird to another, ‘Behold, this man weeps.’ Said the first bird, ‘Turn thine eyes from his tears. Watch his hands.'”
It’s natural to see tears and think “feelz” rather than “wind chill.” You have to train yourself to watch their hands.
Love this life lesson, in 5 sentences!
Glad to be of service! 🙂 I believe the hunter proverb/parable is Persian in origin, but I could be mistaken. It’s part of the culture of the Islamic world, anyway, and the West Asian/North African rather than the South/Southeast Asian part. If that makes sense.
If you Trust That They Suck and read it in that key, you’ll hear the pathetic, fake, whiny-ass voice it was originally written in.
I’m guessing it causes you stress/anxiety to think negatively of other people (which leads to interpersonal conflict)? Eagerness to trust can be bound up with people-pleasing.
So, a Cheater cheats (a lot) and gets consequences, doesn’t like it and gets all sad. If their children are still minors then QCC will have the joys of co-parenting with an idiot who will make everything as difficult as he can as often as he can. If, however, their children are adults, then QCC should block this loser ASP;.
I have to say that once our youngest daughter became 18 and finished her secondary education (she’s now in her second year reading Law and French at University) I dropped the rope to Ex-Mrs LFTT ….. and it was a weight of my shoulders, and a weight off of youngest daughter’s shoulders too.
LFTT
Yes! My son’s 18th birthday and subsequent exodus to college was a dual celebration of my young man’s independance and the severance of any connection I had to maintain with the XAss. Life is grand.
There’s something tragic and unjust about being forced (under the gun) to look forward to kids turning 18, like it diminishes the full enjoyment of their childhoods. That’s another karmic tax I levy against FWs.
I think that adultery should be both a legal crime and something that does factor severely in divorce and custody. A parent who leaves a marriage for adultery should not get ANY custody rights, IMO. And that should never change. I don’t think they should get anything out of the marriage financially either unless it’s what they personally came with or brought in. Marriages should be governed by explicit contracts with real penalties for adultery. The lack of custody for an adulterer would not only dissuade some from doing this, but it would provide a real penalty and take a lot of pain off the SANE parent – and the child.
It’s still a crime in a few states in the US. However, I suspect it would be pretty difficult to get the police – or a prosecutor – to actually charge and try someone for it.
Mehitable–
While I don’t think criminalizing adultery is legislatable in democratic societies for a lot of complicated reasons, I’m hoping that chumps jump into the advocacy ring in terms of forging the specific language of new coercive control laws around the world because I believe CC legislation could potentially provide real protections for chumps along with victims of many other types of “subviolent” emotional, psychological and financial domestic abuse.
By the same token, while I think it’s legally problematic in democratic societies to automatically bar custody as punishment for adultery, we all know that bumping crotches is typically the least of what FWs do. Cheating is rarely ever “just cheating” and quite commonly comes with many other abusive behaviors that are included in most legal definitions of coercive control and it’s for that— the coercive and controlling forms of abuse– that offenders can (at least theoretically) lose custody in the UK, Connecticut, Hawaii and California due to the recent passage of CC laws.
Like I’ve said before, while working as an advocate for DV survivors, I never met a single survivor who hadn’t also been cheated on in some way or other by the abuser in question. Consequently, I see cheating as part of the DV spectrum and even suspect that, in a nutshell, domestic battering is mostly nothing more than the violent enforcement of one-sided monogamy. I think it’s quite simply protracted rape which, in turn, suggests there’s something suspiciously rapey about cheating as well. But my take on it is still considered a bit “out there” because the social sciences in general– psych, psychiatry, social work, sociology, criminology, etc.– are still pretty mired in old-timey patriarchal entitlement (and short sighted entitlement since half the children who are victimized by these dynamics are male and men can also be victims) so it may be years and years before relevant fields start waking up to the realities that front line advocates can easily see with their own eyes. In the meantime, coercive control legislation holds some promise to provide a bit of justice and protection for victims of “subviolent” domestic abuse. That’s where I’m putting my bets and attention these days and why I’m so glad organizations like Jane Does Well are putting an increasing focus on it. I think this is highly legislatable and doable and I recommend all interested chumps dig into the topic and get involved in some way.
“Like I’ve said before, while working as an advocate for DV survivors, I never met a single survivor who hadn’t also been cheated on in some way or other by the abuser in question.”
I think this is absolutely true, in various ways, the sexual cheating, sometimes financial or physical abuse, but also things like gambling and the incalculable and hard to measure element of PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE, which is all to often ignore or belittled and which can be the most difficult thing of all to recover from. A bone will heal but does the mind always heal? Especially if you don’t realize how a behavior affected you or if you internalized abuse or you created psych-paths around it, as I did – you navigate the labyrinth of abuse – I am still, nearing 70, understanding ways that my childhood and cheating abuse have affected me over the years. Things I couldn’t even think of before because I was too busy surviving. And I am one of millions…..maybe billions (I hope not) who try to recover from these traumas. They need to be recognized – I’m glad you are doing the work, we need to many people like you.
I, alas, have to agree, it maybe difficult or impossible to make adultery illegal as our society is far too permissive for that – too many politicians, lawyers, business tycoons, etc engage in this kind of behavior for them to make it illegal….but we can try to see more consequences for it. When I was a child many, if not most states, were “at fault” meaning adultery was taken into consideration in a divorce and the outcomes could be shaped by it, financially and in custody – as they should. I am old enough to remember when “no fault” divorce came about and I was against it EVEN AS A CHILD because I could see it was wrong and where it would lead. And it has. I’d like to see us go back to “at fault” divorces and adultery and desertion taken as the major factors in shaping divorce outcomes. I don’t know if we can do that either as again, we have a very permissive society that seems to refuse to say NO to any behavior no matter how outrageous or destructive. People now refuse to grow up. In lieu of that I would recommend that people go back to the ancient custom of drawing up CONTRACTS UPON MARRIAGE. Now maybe some very wealthy people do this in pre-nups but I don’t know how extensive a practice that is or if it is mainly honored in the breach. I think EVERYONE who marries should have an actual mutually negotiated contract, with perhaps some standard boiler plate items, but something so that people take a look at what the worst IS that can happen in a marriage, on either side, and both how to manage the worst, and also their general expectations of marriage. It would take marriage out of the romantic, google-eyed wedding day excessive bullshit, and into the everyday of diapers and bills that we all actually live in. That would be my proposal at this point. I hope that eventually people regain some kind of moral sense about marriage and that it is about responsibility and ethics and honesty towards your partner, children and others. We have to visualize these kinds of things before they can happen – I don’t just want to give up and say, this is the way we are and we can’t do anything because I DO remember a time when things were different.
Thank you for YOUR service!
Mehitable, I’d like to agree with you. But I think no fault divorce has enabled a lot of people to end abusive marriages when it might have been extremely difficult to prove abuse. Or other grounds allowed under law. I’m with Apidae on that one.
An example – My great grandparents were divorced in 1913 on the grounds that my great grandfather was an alcoholic. I have no idea if he actually was, or was this just a convenient pretext to end the marriage? Idk. (I do know he died of a stroke at age 50, but so do lots of people who aren’t alcoholics.)
That said, I’m with you on the marriage contracts. I don’t see that realistically being enacted in to US law. However, people can protect themselves to some extent with prenups. I’m not a lawyer, and I have no personal experience with a prenup. But it’s my understanding that some of them essentially levy financial penalties on an unfaithful partner if the infidelity leads to divorce. As in, you get less of the marital property. Also, I’ve read that many more people are signing prenups now before marriage. Maybe people are becoming more intentional about the commitment. I hope.
Dear Mehitible– Bless you but I’m not doing any real service right now (other than trying to raise three responsible, healthy teens). But I hope to contribute again in the future. When my kids are all launched, I have plans to get a degree in something related to criminal psychology– whatever certs are required to write professionally about intimate abuse, abuse recovery and the politics of domestic abuse.
Just to respond to some of what you wrote– I’m not sure our society is that permissive. A Gallup poll in 2014 found that Americans seem to be growing less and less tolerant of adultery as a social issue. The interesting thing is that, because the same people polled seemed to be showing more– not less– tolerance for things like gay marriage and single parenting, it’s clear that condemnation of adultery wasn’t solely related to religious mores/trends but might instead relate to growing public awareness of the wider social toll of domestic abuse and toxic FOO dynamics (maybe we should thank Oprah and pop psych for this). Whatever caused this social effect, adultery came last on Gallup’s list of 19 “major social controversies” in terms of public acceptance– several slots below abortion and human cloning.
What does that tell you about the current manic media campaign to make adultery seem groovy and acceptable? To me it smacks of “wag the dog”– a case of the media attempting to “correct” and influence organic public opinion (which seems to be overwhelmingly that adultery sucks). I don’t know whether to chalk up the wag-thedog campaign to creepy cheating media editors or the fact that most major media these days are heavily cross invested in streaming porn (Google alone invested $3.4 billion just a few years ago) and online dating apps– industries that both arguably depend on married people committing adultery for market growth.
Anyway, take heart that not everyone thinks cheating and other forms of psychological DV are acceptable. We may be less of a minority than we’re being led to believe.
Good lord, no. Fault-only divorce means that chumps, and victims of other forms of abuse, have no legal right to end their horrible marriages until they can prove to a judge – by a preponderance of the evidence – that the FW was an adulterer. And if your FW destroys evidence, rushes to the courthouse first, or has control of the finances – or if you have a jerk of a judge – good luck escaping. At-fault divorce is exactly the kind of thing the RIC and Jesus-cheater types love.
I know you think it’s a great way to punish FWs. It’s also a great way to chain chumps to their abusers and give the worst, most sociopathic FWs power.
There was never a golden era where people were thoughtful about marriage. (When was Romeo and Juliet written exactly?) Better education about marriage, and how that is a legal arrangement as well as a romantic one, would be far more helpful to people than assuming everyone is stupid.
I think most people are stupid when they get married, LOL. I think that’s what happened with Romeo and Juliet – the typical teenage thing taken to an extreme. The parents were actually right about that one. But most people now, especially young women, seem to romanticize marriage way too much and especially focus on the weddings, which I absolutely hate. I always hated weddings anyway, such a conspicuous waste of money. But I agree, there needs to be a lot more education about what actual marriage entails and the responsibilities thereof. I’d like to get rid of a lot of these romantic ideas. They may be fun, but they’re incredibly destructive.
People romanticize marriage “now” perhaps more than in the past, because it is less about transferring a woman from her father’s literal ownership to her husband’s literal ownership than it was in the past. shrug.
I understand what you’re staying but I really do think adultery should be factored into divorce arrangements – so at fault should be an option. If a couple wishes to not go that route and they agree, so be it. But I’d like to have a club to use on these people. As I say in another post, perhaps the best answer right now is marital contracts at the beginning of every marriage.
Yes, pre-marital contracts would be good. There’s no such thing as pre-nups here in Ireland, and a legal contract before marriage, plus far better marriage classes ( we have to do them here and IMO it was a complete waste of time, absolute bollix!) beforehand could and probably would help potential chumps weed out potential cheats plus give them some vindication, protection and maybe even and financial compensation when a cheat slips in under the fence as it were!
“I think it’s quite simply protracted rape”
I think it should absolutely be considered rape. If you are exposing me to sexual contact (with another person) without my knowledge and consent…what else can you call it?
I meant to say that domestic violence is protracted rape. I think of DV like adding tenderizer products to meat– a way of “softening up” the target for later chewing (fucking). As for whether cheating is automatically rape, it gets complicated. Yes, on the one hand, robbing others of sexual consent (and whether they’d voluntarily agree to have sex if they really knew where their partners had been or where the schmoopies of their partners had been) is definitely akin to rape. But “akin” isn’t really a legal definition. That’s why I’m putting my bets on coercive control legislation.
Funny that you use the tenderiser comparison HOAC, because I’ve described what my X did to me as sort of subtly hitting me over a long period of time with a metaphorical meat-tenderising hammer, one of those wooden yokes with the little spikes on it.
He started off with gentle taps and by the end he was really getting into it, as I’m convinced that malice was a secondary driver in his cheating, and that he was getting a little thrill of sadistic pleasure from demeaning me, to punish me. I now think he was punishing me for daring to try and take back some control of my life as he was more and more out of control and that was affecting my son and me, as well as himself. In his mind how VERY dare I try to bring back any order out of his chaos, which he was enjoying so much, so I had to be put in my place, but insidiously and covertly, because the coward never had the spine to be open , direct and honest with me unless he had lost his temper and was shouting! But sit down with me and have a mature, civil discussion about issues and problems? Not a chance!
I know that his behaviour was/is manipulative and emotionally abusive but was was it also some sort of coercive control do you think? I’m still processing all of this, not to untangle HIS skein but for myself, to get as clear an idea as I can as to who and what I’ve been dealing with so I can protect myself better AND help me build the best possible case for the Church annulment.
You have a way of looking at these issues that I find really thought-provoking and helpful, plus you’ve so much valuable experience as a DV advocate. I’d really value your insight.
Shadow–
I’m not sure but I think I shared this video before in which Dr. Ramani discusses new research findings that sadism is often a component of narcissism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brqV_WGlbRc&t=2037s So as for your question of whether the abuser in your situation “intended” the specific harm he caused and reveled in a sense of victory over causing it, apparently it’s quite possible he did.
I take the warning not to “untangle the skein” when the untangling is in the direction of “fixing” the abuser and keeps us enmeshed and entrapped. But “understanding” doesn’t have to include sad sausage sympathy and amnesty. It can be done very coldly like inspecting a bug under a microscope to understand how it stings and to find an antidote or cure or prevent reinfestations. By that token, figuring out the MO of abusers after someone has escaped and would never consider returning can serve different purposes like a survivor understanding the deeper damage done to their psyche or organizing a list of subtler red flags to avoid getting entrapped by future abusers which is a big risk for survivors.Those fuckers love to play rescuer and they’re helped in this ruse by the fact that survivors tend to be treated pretty badly by social contexts, making a “rescuing” wolf in sheep’s clothing “shine” in comparison.
I think I wrote this a while back: As far as locating hidden scars and wounds, I think it can help to consider an abuser’s intent, the specific things they were trying to gain by committing abuse. A therapist who consulted with the organization I worked with said that abuse is very much like Pavlovian operant conditioning– using trauma and terror (subtle or un) as a means of instilling a set of instructions that would typically involve the victim losing all agency, being wholly emotionally and psychically dependent on the abuser, having no friends unless these friends served some use to the abuser and, when the abuser is “done” with the victim, the victim will never move on to a fulfilling life or future relationships. Personally I even think this kind of abuse as a form of psychic FMG or castration– a way to ensure the target will never fully function sexually or socially again.
If a victim finds themselves still depressed, oppressed and socially isolated long after the abusive situation has ended, they might consider that they’re still “following orders.” And, if you think about it, the first step in rebelling against unjust orders would be knowing what the “orders” were. If an abuser was covert and indirect in their “fear/obligation/guilt” campaign, it may require working with a therapist and doing a lot of journaling and memory work to recall all the ways in which these “orders” were instilled and dependency was fostered during the course of an abusive relationship.
Basically, in cases of coercive control where there were no broken bones or police reports “certifying” that abuse and a campaign of terror had happened, it can be really difficult to conceive of an abuser “intending” all this psychic damage, particularly the types of abusers who cop a pose of detached disdain during discard. But that’s where a bit of postmortem untangling can help clarify. For one, the appearance of “detached disdain” might fall under the theory of “masked dependency” where abusers form such infantile dependency on intimate partners that they begin to hate and fear the partner’s “power” to abandon and destroy the abuser which the abuser paranoically believes the partner fostered deliberately (a projection because the abuser themselves gets off on fostering dependency in order to relieve these fears).
Imagine that the facade of detached disdain is one of the main goals of a typical abuser precisely because it compensates for the wormy, pathological infantile dependency that secretly drives the abuser. Achieving detached disdain must feel like a great crowing victory to someone who was catastrophically ashamed of their own “weakness.” But abusers can typically only erect this detached facade by “displacing” all that wormy, infantile dependency to someone else, typically an intimate partner. It starts to become clear that abusers actually need to destroy, discard and abandon partners in order to achieve that sense of victory over their own internally driven pathology. How can they feel “pursued” if no one is chasing them? How can they feel “pined for” if no one is pining? In short, that great crowing sense of victory is tantamount to sadism because the abuser needs the victim to suffer to generate that “ping” that they’ve achieved their goal of “turning the tables.”
Think of the lyrics to “Under My Thumb” by the Stones: “Under my thumb is a girl who once talked down to me…” It’s basically the masked dependency anthem. There’s something protective in understanding this MO as well since victims need to know the risk that if they do “defy orders” and rebuild their lives, former abusers may almost telepathically sense the moment their former victims have moved on. It may make abusers feel that their “beautiful evil” has been melted and undone. Some may show up like bad pennies in the hopes of renewing the campaign of destruction and some may even be dangerous.
Therapy with experienced and non-victim-blaming trauma specialists can obviously really help the recovery process but people don’t need permission from specialists nor PhDs in abnormal psych to “know the enemy”– maybe just a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War because part of recovery from abuse is also a distinctly political act. While victims tend to come from all walks and be varied, unique and individualistic, abusers tend to be same, gray and predictable so that once you’ve “untangled” the MO and tactics of a typical abuser, you’ll often find that these tactics show up in wider political contexts and it starts to become clear that whole populations can be controlled through gaslighting, “lovebombing,” fear/obligation/guilt and the deliberate “engineering of despair,” etc. In the process of unchumping themselves, someone can go further and develop a degree of political sophistication the better to navigate life and gain immunity against the bigger slings and arrows. Since a lot of interesting people go around doing just that– deconstructing tricky and deceptive policies, laws and political figures– as a routine manner of participating in democracy, there’s some good company to be found on the postmortem untangling journey and that knowledge applies to so many other things. Anyway, that’s why I think that process of development goes beyond the purview of psychology/psychiatry because it can be about individuals undergoing political growth and evolution.
I might call it attempted murder if it involved HPV or HIV or syphllis or anything else that might eventually kill or cripple. Especially if it affected infants in utero or at birth. But…..I’m the last of the Puritans.
He clearly has zero pulse on the utter destruction of his actions. He’s asking for reconciliation like a teenager asks you to be his friend again after calling your hair ugly.
He’s on a different plane of existence and I encourage you to leave him there! Congrats on the divorce!!! Cant come soon enough ❤️
I love this: “He is on a different plane of existence.” Yes.
“…and not put [our daughters], you and myself through the challenges of divorce, and life after divorce.”
Cheater logic:
*Having sex with a buffet of people while married is OK for the children.#allyoucaneatbuffet
*Getting a divorce is so darn negative and challenging for the children. #hypocrisy
As CL always says, “It’s not what I did (cheat repeatedly), it’s your reaction to it (refuse to accept, divorce). In this situation I reckon it is better for the kids and LW to divorce. His obvious narcissism projects what he feels would be best (retain wife-appliance, and social credit of a family at home) for him is what would be best for everyone! That’s how my FW thought. He seriously didn’t understand why what he wanted and felt he deserved wasn’t what everyone else would think was the best decision. We are all just the NPCs in their main character game. The only one whose needs and wants matter are the FW’s needs. So disordered.
QCC – Every once and a while, a 2X4 is necessary. Wrapped in hugs.
There’s no further translation required when his ACTIONS are clear. And there’s no time for baffled delay when your daughters are learning from your actions, as well. You have a narrow window to demonstrate mightiness before they navigate their own relationship with FX and their future partners.
Do for yourself what you would wish for your daughters – good health, job skills, community, resiliency.
Block him, go through (high conflict) lawyer, and use parenting software. You are going to be busy !
This is so very, very true. And it applies to boys, too. My now teen is still upset that I stopped him (then a young tween) from calling police at the first blow–which gave me a concussion. I got friends to immediately get my ex out, but by the time I reported, it was too late, turned into “she said, he said.” Teen boy still brings this up and is still upset with himself, me, and the friends who came but didn’t report either.
It was a very narrow window, and I regret my lack of clear thinking, despite my concussion. And those “friends” are not longer friends.
Oh my gosh, sounds like reality of divorce $etting in his pitiful mind. Less money for subscriptions & condoms. 🙄. Keep moving forward 1/4CC.
Sandyfeet , “$ettling” LOL! Also the reality of joint custody…kids every other weekend, or whatever. Much less time to f— around!
Yeah, my FW was unemployed by his own actions at the time of dday and divorce. Of course he got a job really fast when he realized I wasn’t taking him back. He heard that I was dating again, later, and when I dropped off our son, he bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t afford to date. I just glared at him but I was thinking “Yeah, you don’t have MY hard earned money to F around on me with anymore!” The nerve of him.
Who knows? Maybe he’s lying. Maybe he really is sorry, but his sorry isn’t the same as your sorry. Or maybe it is, and he honestly wishes (and perhaps even believes) that he will reform. None of that really matters, practically speaking. He may hope, or believe, or wish, or promise, to start being a good husband but he can’t pull it off. Whether he really wants to (or not), it ain’t gonna happen and you can’t stick around waiting to be betrayed again.
To be honest, if he is genuinely sad that means he cannot behave himself even when it’s against his own self-acknowledged best interests (which doesn’t bode well for the marriage); if he’s not genuinely sad then he’s manipulating you (which doesn’t bode well for the marriage); for people whose spouses don’t even pretend to be sad, they don’t even care that they betrayed you (which doesn’t bode well for the marriage). All roads lead to Rome here.
Involuntary, I agree with everything you said and will take it a step further. Even if he actually were going to change and be completely faithful going forward, and I agree that the likelihood of that is nil, what then?
Chump takes them back and spends the rest of their life wondering when /if it will happen again? In my case, I found out FW was cheating because he TOLD me. Had he not, I never would have known. It was long distance and his devices were locked down, and I didn’t suspect. (Well, he has admitted that AP threatened to find me and tell me, but he told me himself, whether that was out of fear of her getting there first or as he said a “desire to not hide it anymore” I don’t know.) If I took him back tomorrow, whether he spent his remaining days as loyal as the days are long, I would forever be on guard. No one wants that life.
Maybe there are some chumps who are in situations where they could reconcile without feeling that way. In my case, with an affair that went on for years and a FW that was abusive in other ways, I can’t.
Such a great point here! Even if he does feel really sorry….what difference does it make? He created this horrible situation she’s had to endure for so long and he is basically saying he has no self control, so…yeah, keep living with this shark that can’t help circling you and taking a nip occasionally…it’s what he does. One of the things I wish people would do instead of going to Wreckon is consider that some things cannot be fixed, or fixed to your tolerance. When a beautiful thing like an antique vase is broken….your eye is always going to go to the flaw. You always will know it’s there and the tendency will be for it to break again along the same fracture line. We may feel sad about some of our actions, but what’s done is done, it left a permanent scar and some things cannot be fixed or altered. It’s the outcome of his actions.
Well said. It doesn’t matter how genuine his remorse is; the absolute best-case scenario here is that he cannot be a faithful, monogamous partner no matter how much he wishes he could be.
(Of course, as we see from his letter that best case doesn’t exist; he chose not to engage in therapy or to vaguely handwave at changing his behavior until the LW imposed consequences.)
Spot on, CL, as always.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again — If they really did understand and care how heinous their actions were, they wouldn’t just refrain from asking us to give them more chances. They would be too ashamed to ask for such a thing. They would refuse to consider it. They would WANT us to move on and heal. Hell, they would voluntarily pay our moving expenses and child support.
Any person who can willingly annihilate your love and trust and risk maiming or killing your body (yes, many diseases that can harm or kill you are sexually transmitted) does not deserve you. Full stop. Suggesting otherwise is its own red flag.
(And speaking for those of us who have been legit healthcare providers via licensed massage therapy, the whole sexy masseuse trope is like a sexy nurse trope. It blurs the line in ways that harm healthcare workers and spa workers. I have zero good feelings about the people who deliver those services pretending to be like the healthcare and spa providers, or for the people who purchase pretending to be customers of those services. More than once while in a public place, I ended up fielding sideye and stares because I was scheduling via phone and had to say aloud “Are you trying to solicit sexual massage? Because I don’t do that. I’m a licensed healthcare provider. If that’s not what you’re seeking, I’m ending this phone call.” Yuck.)
Oh, yeah, and how did I know they were seeking sexual massage? Pretty easy. Tell tale signs:
Aggressively pursuing a same-day session. (Fantasy driven.)
Only willing to set up a noon appointment. (Deception driven.)
High stress on questions about confidentiality. (Deception driven.)
Questions about off-street parking visibility. (Deception driven.)
Complimenting my very common first name. (Seriously. Yeesh. Fantasy driven.)
Wanting to know how many masseuses work in the same building. (Fantasy AND novelty driven. Darling combo.)
Calling me a masseuse. (Yes, some people use the word nonsexually. Most don’t these days, though, especially if they receive massage regularly. so it’s a contributing factor in the intent assessment process.)
Asking if I’m “female”. (Because you’re a Firengi, clearly.)
I was never in the business of helping narcissistic assholes cheat on their spouses. Absolutely non-negotiable. Anyone who showed up and started seeking more than healthcare found themselves standing in my lobby five minutes later with me demanding they pay for the session anyway. And they all did. Yep.
Amiisfree, my massage therapist told me this happens to her.
Because one of her cousins does this, my daughter talked about getting a massage therapy license in the future as a backup occupation while she navigates a career in illustration. It’s not that she takes massage therapy or the licensing process lightly but happens to have a natural talent for it along with art (and music and math and a bunch of other things. Teen conundrum stage). But then my daughter learned that the cousin, an aspiring classical singer, only takes massage therapy appointments with women or, on rare occasions, will accept male clients but only if they’re referred by people she knows well because of the risks in the field. My daughter started thinking twice about the whole thing. She’s also been put off her love of gaming by Gamergate. Girls have it as tough as they ever did. I’m doing my best to prepare her for battle so it doesn’t kill her soul.
I totally get this.
One way I was able to target my work meaningfully was to reach out to hire a medical claim billing service and reach out to doctors and chiropractors offering my work under prescription as injury recovery work. That did streamline most of my clientele, but it took a few years to build that side up. For starters, I rented a room in a building with other health practitioners, I was VERY careful where and how I set up advertising, and I worked another PT job so I could grow things slowly. And I got very, VERY good at phone screening.
I didn’t generalize by gender. (It’s hard to do that without being legit discriminatory, actually. A legal risk. A person might get away with it, but it only takes one complainant.) I did ask key questions before even discussing scheduling. “What kind of massage are you looking for, how did you learn about me, what are your expectations going into the session”, etc.
And I had a general statement I’d make, along the lines of “I’m a licensed healthcare provider and some of my work is prescription-based for injuries. My massage space is relaxing, but also somewhat clinical. I always adhere strictly to state and local laws. Also, clients aren’t required or requested to undress for massage, and you’ll be properly draped for modesty at all times. If that works for you, we can move forward to scheduling.” That tended to make people either hang up on me or get more assertive with their inappropriateness. Either way, they didn’t make it to my table, which was the end goal.
It’s do-able. But it does take clear intention and communication, and really good boundaries.
Plus, the fact that we’re even having this conversation is illustrative of my earlier point — which is that it sucks that people pretend to be LMTs and other sorts of legal business operators when they aren’t, just so they can help other people cheat and/or obtain illegal services. It’s shitty to the community, it’s shitty to the partners they’re helping deceive, and it’s shitty to many other people besides.
(I don’t intend to debate about whether other people should want to do sex work or not. If it was a legal business and everyone knew exactly what was happening and it was done in a non-clandestine, adult-consenting, health-department-participatory manner, I wouldn’t judge it. But lawbreaking and deception don’t become acceptable just because a person wishes laws, diseases, etc. worked differently than they do, or because they don’t think it should bother people to be deceived. Wish in one hand and shit in the other and the shitty hand almost always fills up first.)
I like to say that I have upmost respect for clinical massage therapists. I found someone who is really expert at my health club and my partner has seen her, as well. I started seeing her after I had some sciatica-related issues. She’s become a personal friend with whom we have socialized. It infuriates me to think of people who might give her a hard time (though she’s completely capable of handling them). If I ruled the world, everyone would have a competent massage therapist, especially as they get older! The world would be a happier place.
Great tips, thanks! I’m not sure my daughter really wants or needs to wrestle so hard with ethical considerations and embattled boundaries at her tender age but frankly those issues and complications exist in ALL arenas (which is why I wish I had magical superpowers to protect my kids at all times. Man, if I ruled the world…)
Regarding the issue of sex work, I had an interesting argument some years ago with FW’s pseudo-feminist cousin about it. Being part Indigenous (not sure which part since she’s more blonde and middle class than I am), she attended the Zapatista Women’s Summit in Chiapas, Mexico and came back complaining bitterly that the Zapatista women had banned sex workers from formally presenting. But I didn’t think the ban contradicted the Zapatista feminist platform at all because of the fact that almost all the sex workers in Chiapas are there to serve the military bases that were erected by government specifically to suppress the Zapatistas. If the hookers went away, life would be a lot less tolerable for the soldiers and corporate honchos installed on those bases so I can totally understand why Zapatista women question the “solidarity” of local sex workers. Furthermore, the local hookers regularly take money from married Zapatista men despite the fact that Zapatista women– including the movement’s women leaders– work an average of 20 hours a day just to survive on top of caring for homes and children– inequality within the movement that the summit was addressing. So why in the hell were they going to let these “Vichy” sex workers take the podium? I argued that if the sex workers were there to discuss all the dangers and abuses of the profession (something that generally only former sex workers tend to do) the Zapatista women might have lent the stage but instead the sex workers were trying to peddle their profession wrapped in a feminist/indigenous flag.
Well, no big surprise FW’s cousin had this attitude. I learned she trades cash and favors with a middle class local escort within her hippie enclave in exchange for a bit of informal pimping (mostly to married men, so also no surprise that she views monogamy as “repressive”). I learned she also used to pimp her hetero gal pals to FW before we got married. She may be gay herself but it’s her manner of being transactional with men. Frankly I think she’s a she-creep and proxy abuser and can go stuff her faux feminism. The one thing we agree on is that the German model for legalized prostitution is horrible and the Scandinavian model that penalizes johns and not sex workers is better.
Indeed, HoaC. I have lots of feelings about sex work as a trade and its intersection with opinions about feminism. Many of them conflict.
I have my own feelings and perspectives about sex work. I feel it devalues and disempowers both the person doing the selling also socially devalues others who are commonly viewed as similarly transactional (people of color, and also generally women, children, and other marginalized and vulnerable people.) I don’t need or ask others to feel or think the way I do about that. I’m entitled to my opinion, and others are too. (Plus there’s plenty of valid data to bear it out.)
I know some workers are in situations where they feel empowered in a way I can’t see. I’m not going to try to define anything for those people. I don’t define others’ experiences for them, and I admit that I can’t know what it’s like to do that job. I observe what I observe, and I feel what I feel based on it. Same goes for all of us.
So, laying that conversation down, next I peel back the onion layers. For me, the base of the bulb laid bare amounts to this:
I don’t morally judge transactional sex as a standalone concept. I also have no problem whatsoever with morally judging deception and deceptive practices.
In the vast majority of sex work transactions, both the customer and the worker are aware that they deceiving others, and both know full well that learning about the deception would emotionally harm others, and the acts themselves also have the potential to harm others physically.
In fact, whether it’s about sex, money, drugs, healthcare, beanie babies, or any other topic — when a person makes a business model of intentionally helping their customers deceive others who trust them, knowing that doing so could harm a person close to that customer, I DO morally judge that person’s APPROACH to their profession.
Consent matters. I don’t care if a person puts on a full body condom before having sex with a sex worker. If a person promises monogamy to their partner, visits a sex worker, then goes home and has sex with their partner without ensuring the partner can make an informed choice (especially true for unprotected sex, a common feature of agreed monogamy), that’s a violation of their partner’s consent. It’s at least rape-adjacent for that reason.
A sex worker may argue that they can’t know what’s up in the customer’s life. I agree with that premise. Yet the former sex workers I’ve known here and there all managed and advertised their businesses by delivering services in ways that helped themselves avoid law enforcement AND helped customers hide their participation. Using a deceptive business name, for example, to charge sales, and/or being especially discreet about scheduling and parking and such.
Then I DO judge that person’s deceptive actions. I DO judge their willingness to assist their customer to harm the customer’s partner. I judge it because it’s deceptive and cruel and shitty and harmful. (Note, “I only hide it because in my opinion it shouldn’t be illegal” is not a morally justifiable excuse. If it IS illegal, then you’re still being deceptive. That’s a character issue.)
I haven’t had to lie to my partner or family or friends or acquaintances to do any of the jobs I’ve ever had. Choosing a job that requires that level of deception is a choice. It also requires you to be less than authentic to continue. That doesn’t seem very personally empowered to me — but there’s MUCH more nuance to such empowerment discussions, and CL’s forum isn’t the right place to debate those.
This forum IS relevant to discussions about deception and violated consent and broken agreements and human damage. Intimate deception is categorically different from other forms of deception. Intimate body contact is categorically different from other forms of human body contact. False equivalencies need not apply, as I don’t entertain them.
Amen to all the above. I’d like to see a law where schmoopies and sex workers are liable for receipt of stolen goods if they take gifts, money or amenities that dissipate marital assets. Under existing law, ignorance that something was stolen is no defense for the receiver. If this ever came to pass, can bet sex workers would start googling clients and would be warier of the married ones if they knew they might have to pay back fees plus damages. Of course something would have to be done with the language of any law like this to ensure the targets were more along the lines of high priced escorts rather than poor streetwalkers. If I ruled the world…
As someone who grew up in poverty in the slums (now called the Hood) where I routinely saw prostitution both on the street and in the brothel a few doors down, I can tell you: Whore is not a compliment in any language including the Zapatistas. Transactional relationships involving sex always degrades sex and the people involved. There is no way around that. There is no way to empower “sex work”, it is inherently disempowering by equating the most intimate physical process with money and goods. The people who provide it are usually financially needy or on drugs or they wouldn’t do it. The people who consume it, have no regard for these people and use them like an appliance (sound familiar?) and discard them afterwards. So many “sex workers” are trafficked and the more this type of thing is accepted, the worse that will get. There is no upside to “sex work”, which should be called prostitution, and we need to stop encouraging the worst vices in humans, whether it’s degrading sex, or encouraging gambling, or drugs, booze or any of the other things that our elites seem to want us to pursue….rather than THEM.
I agree! The buying and selling of sex in all it’s forms is dehumanising ( and therefore an evil) because it is treating human beings as commodities. As mere things rather than human persons, and that goes for all , from trafficked, enslaved children to the most expensive “call girls” and “concubines”.
“So why in the hell were they going to let these “Vichy” sex workers take the podium?”
Were they also banning women who did other forms of work that supported the military bases – waitresses who served military officers, housekeepers who cleaned their homes, nannies and gardeners?
Apidae– The military doesn’t just badger the Zapatistas, they’re killing them. The assassinations used to be performed by paramilitaries paid under the table by the military but now the military seems to be knocking them off wholesale, all for the sake of various transnational corporations that want carte blanche to wreck the ecology of Indigenous blood lands.
Here we talk about going NC with Swiss friends and crappy inlaws– and that’s even without the risk of extrajudicial murder. I don’t know how Zapatistas regard waiters or truck drivers working for the army but I’d hardly fault them of they were hesitant to fraternize.
Omg this is similar to the email I got from my FW, with the added benefits of “But, if you would of provided this, I wouldn’t of” connotation throughout the email.
I now feel so much more validation to say NO RECONCILIATION.
Thank you
I would so borrow a truck to back over him for you. This was my life plus 10 years.
OMG, I got the same letter, just with different words (the sentiments were identical, I’m so sorry, I’m in a new program to help me change, can we just talk to a therapist and see if we can repair things, blah blah. Ummm, big effing nope, after years of cheating and 2 years of fake “recovery.” Thanks, UBT!
Thanks to everyone who responded to me above. Pre-divorce, I seemed to catch on quickly. Now, nearly every time I read these, even knowing in advance that Tracy saw them as UBT fodder, they seem to be genuine remorse, not the fake Naugahyde, until they give themselves away with a request/demand, and I can see the cheap fauxpology (brilliant, Spinach!) as a bid for chump favors/concessions.
Must be hopium. Post-divorce, Fraudster texted and emailed several apologies. I’d like to believe his remorse is true. (And also that he means the positive comments about me.) In reality, I think it’s his bid for attention and image management. In a few months, he went from his swinging singles apartment complex to assisted living. He’s called to ask us to visit. The lack of company and kibbles must sting.
Block. His. Number.
Thanks for the credit, Goodfriend, but, for the record. I’m quite sure I didn’t make up “fauxpology.” I borrowed it from someone else here or elsewhere on the internet.🤓.
Still an amazing neologism that you had the good taste to share!
Skewers & Spinach, my mother spoke fluent French and “fauxpology” was a fave expression of hers since my childhood!
Quarter Century, Wow, I am surprised the UBT did not have to put on some serious boots to wade through that boatload of crap. You need to block this guy as Chump Lady suggests (knowing it is a re-run, hope you followed the advice).
This to me looks like he is not sorry about cheating but he sure a hell doesn’t want to divide assets and not have an appliance at hand to cook dinner, raise the kids and so on. Everything in here is typical cheater speak with him trying to be Mr. Nice Guy. Please don’t give him any attention, he is just running low on kibble and trying to get some kibble from you.
When I was going through the very long divorce process, I had everything go through the attorneys. Once he found out his communications were costing him money, he learned. The last I heard from FW was more than six months ago as he paid out the last of our agreement. He sent two emails (one with each funds transfer) about how horrible I was and he was just so forlorn and I took him to the cleaners and so on (well, he fought it so when retired judge from the judicial settlement conference thought I get more, that was that, he (judge) also said if it went to court I would probably get more than that). Yep, the emails triggered me for a bit. I was also torn between anger and just laughing hysterically so I decided that I would invite some of my girlfriends over to dissect the emails. So, I had some snacks and wine and we just had a great time (three of my friends were also chumps and one was still happily married). We did out version of the UBT. If you want to do this type of thing, I highly recommend it. We later burned the emails.
OP, I hope you are through the process. It does get better on the other side. My walls sing now and I am very happy!!!!
“…if not, would help us walk forward in a more positive light“ Boy, did THIS line catch my attention. Translation? I want to use therapy to mind-fuck you into going easy on my in the divorce. Ask me now I know this lol. I unfortunately wasted time and money on “marriage counseling” which he tried to use as divorce counseling. He wanted a nice happy divorce with rainbows and sunshine and puppies and no consequences where the children and everyone else would think what he did was just fucking fine.
Anyway, quarter century chump, no “positive light” for your incredibly abusive manipulative dumpster fire soon to be ex cheater. Take Tracy’s advice and block block block. Lawyer, lawyer, lawyer. You do NOT have to talk to him directly about anything. The sooner you stop doing that, the sooner you’ll stop being a wreck. (Side note I’m seven years out from that BS, and I couldn’t be happier)
I know today’s post is a rerun but even if it wasn’t I would want to share the encouraging news that the latest film by one of my favorite filmmakers passes the “chump litmus.” Because Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain has always wrestled with the intersection between political abuse of power and sexual abuse and also treated the issue of adultery and coercive control with due gravity in his English language film “Spencer,” I had hopes that his latest, “El Conde” (about Chilean military dictator Pinochet), would pass the test. It did. Spoiler alert: at one point adultery is referred to in voice-over as “the oldest and most revolting crime” or something along those lines. Pinochet was certainly an epic FW aside from being a mass murderer.
What a relief not to have to toss Larrain into the growing pile of FW filmmakers and authors. I don’t know if others relate but, these days my enthusiastic anticipation for new films and books by favorite filmmakers and authors is tempered by the fact I now see everything through a chump lens. I’m just not going to enjoy something if there’s any hint of romanticization of/apologism for cheating or other forms of emotional/sexual abuse. I don’t think it makes me less of a pure “art appreciator” because, to quote Soviet era composer Dmitri Shostakovich, “Nothing good ever comes from a rude man.” Shostokovich simply didn’t believe that true artistic genius and cruelty could exist in the same human being and makes a really compelling case for it in his autobiography. Since Shostokovich is no slouch as far as artistic certs, I don’t any reason to apologize for questioning the intrinsic value of works by “ethical relativists”– even if they’re selective about it and only target one type of people like, say, women or spouses, etc.
The problem with the “chump lens” is that it really cuts down on the number of things I appreciate whether in a “deeper arty sense” or for pure entertainment value. Oppenheimer? Bleah. Barbie? Nope. FW “artists”– just like garden variety FWs– are all like members of, say, the Man Boy Love Association and constantly doing PR for their heinous choices by trying to slip domestic abuser apologism under viewers’ and readers’ noses like we won’t notice that we’ve just been “immunized” a little against empathy for victims.
So El Conde gets a chump thumbs up, never mind all the cannibalism and decapitation. Let’s see how it goes with “Killers of the Flower Moon” which I’m also really excited about.
“I don’t know if others relate but, these days my enthusiastic anticipation for new films and books by favorite filmmakers and authors is tempered by the fact I now see everything through a chump lens.”
Absolutely. Once you see the reality of cheating, you can’t unsee it. This applies to old books, movies and music too.
“Barbie? Nope.”
May I ask why?
Oh it’s complicated. I took my teen kids and some of their friends and the collective cringing began in the first scene. I think it’s safe to say we’re all pro choice but jeez, symbolic infanticide? If little boys were shown bashing the skulls of baby dolls against rocks the film would have been cited for encouraging domestic violence and child abuse (not to mention mirroring a particular killing tactic of Nazis in occupied Poland and the Contras in Nicaragua, shudder). There were other cringy things like the Barbies undermining the Kendom coup by setting jealousy traps. I mean, sure, haha on the one hand. But it seemed a bit narcy (“Our twats are so special that men fight each other for them!”) aside from being awfully close to an Andrew Tate take on feminism– you know, “them feminazis is babykilling hos who want to cuck and repress all menz…” Not that I’m prone to “whatabouting” when it comes to men’s rights but as a flaming lifelong feminist, I wince a bit when the trolls get fed.
I appreciated the “Barbie deprogramming” scenes though I wish they’d been better written. Interestingly my daughter’s nonbinary friend whose mother chumped their father particularly hated the movie (all except Weird Barbie). I didn’t mention to the kids that Greta Gerwig cheated with her current husband while his former wife was pregnant (damned babies…) but I could smell a bit of FW thinking in the film and I guess my daughter’s friend did especially. In the end all the kids compared the film negatively to Everything, Everywhere All at Once which I haven’t seen yet but will.
If you don’t mind, I’ll take a crack at that. The original Barbie doll was based on a post WW2 German sex doll, I think called Lily, IIRC, and while I played with Barbies and loved them as a kid, I think the main focus of Barbie is ALWAYS on consumerism and superficiality – lessons I don’t think kids should learn. Her relationship with Ken is based on him as an object, to me, he’s the necessary boyfriend, who completes Barbie’s “lifestyle”. Barbie can be many things….but the one thing I have never seen her portrayed as…and I mean….EVER…..is a wife and mother. The beginning of the film, which I’ve seen in reviews, pictures little girls destroying their baby dolls in a particularly hideous manner, which is grossly unhealthy. Children, and that is both sexes, should be encouraged to nurture and protect and play with others, including toys, in a healthy way that helps them to be healthy adults. For me, that was my pets, as well as stuffed animals – I didn’t care for baby dolls. They were too hard and plastic…..as ironically, is Barbie. I think Barbie and Ken are unhealthy role models and push unhealthy ideals onto children. If I had kids, I’m not sure I’d let them play with a Barbie or other fashion type doll. Most girls will someday become wives (or equivalent) and mothers and that should be honored, not equated to financial transactions, which I think is both the origins, and the purpose, of Barbie. I know people will say I’m over-thinking this but I don’t think Hollywood in general produces healthy products…..the less movies & TV shows – and cell phones! – kids are exposed to, the better to me.
I’m the same way – when I find out about an artist’s really bad behavior, I just don’t want to watch their stuff anymore or give them any support. It’s like giving kibbles. I haven’t seen a Woody Allen movie since the Soon Yi/Child abuse info came out…..I can’t watch them, even the old ones I loved. And it is SO COMMON for movies & shows to apologize for cheating or try to present it in a positive or romanticized way, probably because so many of the HWood people are abnormal, disordered people – that’s how they live themselves, or they just use it as a plot device. It repels me. Even a movie like Dr. Zhivago where I can see the artistry and great aspects like what happened in the Russian Revolution, the whole romance of Zhivago and Lara absolutely repels me, as it should everyone. Charles Dickens is another one – when I found out how badly he treated his wife, with his own cheating, how absolutely abusive he was, it colors how I read his books. You can’t escape your own nature, if you are a BAD PERSON….and I think adulterers are BAD ABUSIVE PEOPLE, that is going to come out in your “art” and you’re either going to minimalize it, or explain it, or excuse it, or romanticize it. That extends to other things too….like even though Leni Riefenstahl was a great filmmaker…..I can’t watch this without knowing she was also an ardent Nazi. Great artistry in the service of evil does not make it watchable. I’m just not sophisticated enough to rise above evil.
I guess Shostakovich isn’t sophisticated enough to rise above it either lol. His autobiography Testimony is actually very readable and has what I think is the best three word first line of any chapter I’ve read: “I hate Toscanini.” The rest of the chapter relates to exactly what we’re discussing.
Serial cheaters rely on RIC. As we know once a cheater, always a cheater. They grow accustomed to forgiveness and use it to avoid consequences.
Yet chumps often don’t understand disordered cheater logic. This is where actions rarely match words . What they say is meaningless. It’s best to shut down access and let an attorney handle the divorce .
Serial cheaters rely on RIC. As we know once a cheater, always a cheater. They grow accustomed to forgiveness and use it to avoid consequences.
Yet chumps often don’t understand disordered cheater logic. This is where actions rarely match words . What they say is meaningless. It’s best to shut down access and let an attorney handle the divorce .
Super cake eater.
Yeah, you need to block him. You’re also going to need to get rid of a lot of other people in your life and I’m sorry for that. It’s very difficult but also very necessary. Sex addiction is not real. He’s just a destructive degenerate pervert who likes to abuse people. That means there are other degenerates he’s been fucking in your life right now masquerading as normal people because they seek out and find each other. You do not want those people around your daughters. You’re going to find out horrifying things about people you trusted. I am so sorry. But anyone who stays around him or sides with him is probably involved with him sexually and should not be trusted. And yes, since he’s a “sex addict” that could include his own family, or even worse, yours. These degenerates will fuck anyone open to it and they don’t care who they destroy by doing so. I don’t want to make you paranoid but you have to be very wary when dealing with a cheating degenerate of this level. He could be fucking your children’s teachers, he could be fucking men he works with and their wives, the office manager at your dentist, etc.
If someone says something off or excuses what he’s done, be done with them. It’s not worth it. Trust me on that. I had to install an expensive security system and talk to the police and my employers about stalking because of the perverts my “sex addict” ex husband brought into my life. Don’t give them any opening into your life.
Oh, and whoever diagnosed him as a “sex addict”, that person is also a degenerate he’s probably fucking. Stay away from that “professional” too. It’s not a real diagnosis.
Katie is right. Anyone who tries to excuse his behavior or give him any kind of cover or tries to make you see “reason” or “forgive” him, is suspect. Even if they are not involved with him personally they probably engage in this kind of behavior (or would like to) because….birds of a feather. You would be amazed at the kinds of networks people like this create, it’s like something out of a horror movie. Be wary and try to develop new networks of people, especially friends, those close to you, who have no involvement with him. It’s better to be safe than sorry, assume the worst.
“Anyone who tries to excuse his behavior or give him any kind of cover or tries to make you see “reason” or “forgive” him, is suspect. Even if they are not involved with him personally they probably engage in this kind of behavior (or would like to) because….birds of a feather.”
I have come to the awful conclusion that my late mother may have had an attraction to my FW. She sided with him for the entire marriage, even when it was crystal clear that he was mistreating me. After Dday, I remembered back to a time when she tried to show him pornographic material and was enraged when I refused to allow it. Who in the hell thinks that’s appropriate? Gross! She even accused me, with utterly delusional beliefs, that I had done bad things to him which I had not. She interfered in my marriage all the way through, and constantly told me I was lucky to have him.
What else am I to conclude but that she was jealous?
It makes me sick to think of it.
I’m pretty sure she fuckwitted on my dad, so that’s your birds of a feather right there.
So sorry you had to endure that circus of horror. Reminds me a bit of Mrs. Penniman from Henry James Washington Square.
ONLY because it’s related to my journey, one other possibility it that your mom was a covert narcissist. Those people undermine you so subtly you don’t notice it, and it includes taking other people’s side against you, frankly just for the hell of it (and the power dynamic — they know it will hurt you).
I just finished a book by Debbie Mirza, and it’s the first book I’ve underlined as much as I underlined LACGAL. I read it in my mother’s hospital room and I went into it interested in understanding the dynamic I lived with in my marriage — but the more I read, the more I realized my mom was also a covert narcissist and a pretty strong one. Among other things, covert narcissist parents seem supportive — but then they question your friends, take other people’s side against you because it seems “reasonable.”
They also give you really bad advice! Like the opposite of your gut. And perhaps they know it’s bad advice — really, they’re trying to undermine you and fuck with you while appearing to be a connected, supportive parent. Anyway, given my recent realization, throwing that possibility out there.
From the time my kids could talk I taught them how to apologize – Name what it is you are apologizing for and then ask for forgiveness but understand that they do not have to give it. This “I am sorry that I hurt you” is bullshit. I always asked, what exactly are you sorry for? Blank stares. Make them name it – cheating, abusing, spending family money, giving an STD, lying, etc.. That is an element a real apology needs.
All of UBT’s translations here: Quite precisely what my eX has been thinking, I’m sure of it.
Especially this bit:
“Keeping you as my wife would save a lot in legal bills and gives me a veneer of normalcy.”
Thanks UBT for the hilarious validation.
What a novelty. FW misses his wife appliance…..who knew? Who woulda thought he’d miss all that chump support he got from the little woman for years. I wonder if it’s worse to find out your entire marriage has been a sham – you absolutely KNOW then that it’s NOT you, there’s no doubt of that, except you might wonder what took so long to figure out….but who can believe someone could be such a psycho liar for decades? Or if it’s better to have the final exit affair but some good memories from the past. AND…..Sex Addiction is a bunch of bullshit. Can you be addicted to sex? I guess. You can be addicted to anything if you have that kind of personality, but most of the time I think it’s just a smoke screen for moral & character failings. I think that’s true with drugs & drink too (I grew up with both, both parents)…..it’s an excuse for doing what you wanted to do in the first place but you need a good cover story. I can’t help it, I’m a sex addict……Bernie Madoff was a money addict, apparently. I’m a chocolate addict, I’ve got to go rob the Godiva store. It’s just more endless excuses for why I’m a FW…..I jes’ can’t help it. Please forgive me and take me back, Mommy, I’ll be a good boy next time! Addictions tend to go together – like sex, drink, drugs, gambling, etc….it’s all risk taking behavior to get me a maximum good time with no blame because….I jes’ can’t help punching your punchable face. These people would do these behaviors anyway if there were no stigma or consequences and they could do it openly, but all these things are just smoke screens. They do what they want to do.
Many of these marriages remind me of the old saying “Familiarity breeds contempt”. What I see in these FWs behavior towards their spouses, over and over again, is contempt….born of familiarity. There is SADISM involved in many of these stories, you can see it….they do things that will deliberately and knowingly HURT their spouse…so it’s not just about the “sex”….it’s about all kinds of negative emotions resulting in them treating their spouses like….oh….Cinderella….hey Cindy….you no good fat ass ragamuffin….I’m gonna go head off to the ball with my latest floozy….you missed a spot – you need to re-scrub that driveway with a toothbrush and it better be clean when I come back for din din!!! It’s like having a slave to kick around. They’d never treat an affair partner like that…..they’d probably charge extra anyway. Never underestimate the anger these people carry around in them, the hatefulness and the amount of sheer SADISM many of them have toward their unwitting, loving spouses, who constantly try to “do better” and fail because YOU CAN’T DO BETTER. The point is for you to fail so you can be abused some more. It feels GOOD! How can he kick you in the ass if you keep standing up?
“The point is for you to fail so you can be abused some more.”
Absolutely. It’s why they convince themselves that the AP is so much better, even though by definition, somebody who fucks married people is a POS. That way they have an excuse to abuse you for not measuring up to their delusions about how awesome the schmoopie is. They set you up to fail. If you meet their stated expectations, they just change the goalposts so they can continue to hate on you and abuse you.
A streak of sadism is definitely a part of a cheater’s makeup.
And it feels horrible when it is happening, but it is confusing especially if it seemingly came on quickly. At first I thought what the heck did I do to make him so mad, you think they will snap back; because they have before, then they don’t.
“Never underestimate the anger these people carry around in them, the hatefulness and the amount of sheer SADISM many of them have toward their unwitting, loving spouses, who constantly try to “do better” and fail because YOU CAN’T DO BETTER.”
Very well expressed and I think this is exactly the plan and what is going on. I once asked my spouse after DDay if he treated anyone else in his life as badly as he treated me. He made some comment about punching walls in mistresses’ places, but he knew full well he treated no one in his life as poorly as he did me and I was the one that loved him more than anyone else. Maybe that’s why, because he could and someone had to be abused in his eyes.
UBT did a great validating analysis of the quagmire of sludge thrown its way, of course it did. And CL’s advice is on point once again. This guy is not fixable and not worth any more precious time.
“It was 100% my choice to choose those things.”
This is where he admits he’s not really a “sex addict.” An addict, by definition, is no longer choosing to indulge, he/she actually cannot stop and needs treatment in order to do so.
Sex addiction does exist, but it is extremely rare and so severe (acting out multiple times a day, usually heedless to whether or not they could be caught at it) that it would be impossible to hide. A double life = not an addict. Having the wherewithal to convince both a spouse and a therapist that he/she intends to change = not an addict. A true sex addict would be trying to fuck the therapist.
This guy is just a garden variety entitled, abusive creep.
He needs to use that Palmolive to wash his dirty dingus, hopefully with some pickling vinegar added. Go pickle the pickle, fuckwit.
Addiction is not a regular disease model. All addiction has a certain degree of choice. Part of the “cure” is choosing not to do the activity. You can’t choose not to have cancer!
My FW didnt want to leave me, he told me he loved me. But not enough to not have affairs. I felt loved alot of the time. He wanted me to be the wife appliance, for residual benefits and image, but wanted to have his affairs too. Cake. In the old days when women could work or own property and needed men for protection, this type of marriage as a business worked. Now we marry for love and all if us on here want monogamy. But you can see how the patriarchy wants to control the narrative of society and culture. Keep women in their place for power. Its too late for that the genie is out of the bottle. Unless we go backwards and have a totalitarian society. Freedom comes at a price. Thank goodness there are good men out there who support women. We just need to raise our sons right to make more of them!
Chumpolicious, there is indeed choice to use a substance in the beginning, but in a severe, long term addiction, the physical dependency makes it almost impossible to stop.
A long term opiate addict, for example, can’t just choose to stop without some kind of support to get clean, such as methadone.
None of this is applicable to sex addiction anyway, since it’s not a physical dependency like opiates or alcohol. However, people like today’s FW, who claim to be sex addicts, insist it is just as powerful and as hard to quit as heroin. That’s rubbish. At any rate, the stupid FW admitted he was choosing to engage in the behavior, which does put the lie to his helpless sex addict nonsense.
I think we all agree there is no such thing as Sex addiction. Sex addiction is not recognized as a diagnosis in the DSM-5-TR. It’s a convenient bullshit excuse for assholes to do whatever they want, and evade responsibility and consequences for their actions.
I agree with this. Today, we had a wonderful conversation with the lovely young man working the drive up at a fast food restaurant that my son likes. This gentleman VOLUNTEERED telling us that he quit METH!!! That he has held down a job for a year and a half and ditched his toxic girlfriend. Before we drove away, he told us that we are officially his favorite drive up clients. To Hell with that! From here on out, I am going inside to give him a hug!!!! All of this to say that if he can overcome a meth addiction then… just WOW! These cheater losers have no excuse.
Agree with you Chumpolicious!
I’m working on getting two sons there and avoiding having them turn into their father.
Might take a village to raise kids, but one good parent can make the lion’s share of difference in their lives. It means too much to me to come out short of that goal.
Wow. This email is all about him. Even your foot massage is about him.
You have told him no, you are DONE. If he respected your right to autonomous decisions he would accept that even if it hurts.
But he won’t accept that, he thinks he should still be able to control your reactions and your life. He is entitled to get you to work things out by whatever means!!! He’s always gotten his way before!
He will use emotional blackmail about your daughters, how sad he is etc etc. you are a caring person, and he knows this is hard on you.
Here’s the great thing- you are divorcing him! You don’t have to waste your emotional energy on him!
Of course part of you may feel bad, because you are a normal person with integrity. Remember how he has shown callous disregard for YOUR feelings and your health! And STILL he is thinking of himself and not you! The apology is just a way to Hoover you back in.
Think how FREE you can be from this! Like CL said, block him! Protect yourself for a change. Revel in the healing silence. Enjoy not having the psychological burden of figuring out what he’s doing and feeling, where he is etc etc.
Put yourself first! Here is a great poem that has meant a lot to me- I hope it helps you!
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Hello CN,
I’m officially in the divorce process and I thought I had achieved some level of meh, but no. I’m still very angry and hurt. Still crying and feeling abandoned, betrayed, violated. Reading this blog reminds me that there are some real a-holes out there. I’m so sorry everyone. No one deserves this BS.
It is a hard time to go through.
I do think a healthy amount of anger helps propel us through. I had a hard time getting to the anger stage. My preacher even told me, I need to get angry. Once I let it come, it helped.
Yes, as John Lydon wrote “Anger is an energy!”
The anger really helps. And I think that is counterintuitive. I’ve spent my life hearing that getting enraged is not productive and being calm is the way to go. And in so many situations, that is true. It’s actually true for Chumps too. Screaming fights, throwing things, name calling and worst of all texting tirades to the FW? Understandable, but not helpful. Marinading in rage and walking around in a tizzy constantly? Also not great for a chump.
But feel it. Feeling grief is normal and you should allow yourself to feel all your feelings. But don’t live there.
Anger? It propels me forward. Anger helps me get over the fear of leaving a relationship I’ve had for decades and expected to have til death. If you allow yourself to quietly embrace your anger when you are alone, it is productive. And it keeps my head straight. When he starts his sad sausage routine, I remember that he is sad because of the terrible choices he made and that he is blaming me for those choices and his sadness with no regard for what he did to me. Anger keeps me from falling for that BS. I don’t have to scream at him or show that anger. But accessing it is a good thing.
No one at all deserves this BS!
I’m sorry to hear you are struggling so intensely right now. It’s a lot lot lot to deal with! You feel like you are losing your mind and will never get it back. Like the ground under your feet is no longer there.
I’m five years post divorce and still will randomly just cry about it. In the supermarket, driving in my car, when triggers remind me, all the time.
But, I’m way more functional than during the divorce process.
It’s so deeply unjust what happened to us all, and most of the rest of the world just doesn’t and can’t understand why it’s so hard for us to move on. If it wasn’t for this community, I would feel completely misunderstood, even though I know I have ppl that love me. They can’t take in the enormity of it.
CN fully gets it, the validation that you’re not crazy and it’s actually a thing that happens to a lot of ppl, helps so much, seriously saves ppl’s lives. I believe that is actually true.
You will start to have longer periods when it doesn’t overwhelm you as much as you move forward some. If you’re walking through hell, just keep going as the quote goes.
My ex FW wants us to be friends now, feels enough time has gone by and I should be ready to accept the new reality ( he is remarried) and not throw all our history away from my bitterness and inability to forgive.
Yeah, in his alternate reality maybe, but not in mine. I’m still plenty angry at the A-hole, all the lying, deceit, abide and playing me for years. Doesn’t sound like much of a friend to me. I’d be better off with no friends!
I don’t ever want to see the man or speak with him again in this lifetime.
I won’t be friends with someone who knowingly lit a match and torched my house to the ground.
He thinks I will change my mind on that and mellow out too and I’ve seen desperate emails that he thinks I might actually mean what I’m saying. He will find out how much I mean it. I keep my word.
I am currently moving funds around to buy him out of our planned retirement beach house. I don’t live there and won’t, but sharing it these last five years has been really stressful for me and it’s holding me back from getting free of him.
A few more months, I will own it, take over all the payments so we no longer need a joint checking account. Then he will get the surprise of his life when I fully go no contact forever and always. I’m a little nervous thinking about it too, the finality of any connection after a 44 year history with the man. I know it’s the only right decision though.
Hang in there, DrDr, you are still early in the process, hate to say it, and probably have way more processing to work through with lots of tears and anger. I know I did.
But, the good news here is that we will finally be free of abuse. Even if we never knew about it, we do now.
We love ourselves too much to let someone destroy us like that. The raw emotions just show how much was invested, everything.
They show very little emotion because they didn’t bond and can’t and are superficial in all relationships. It would be miserable to be them.
Well, keep remembering to breathe, better days are coming for all of us somewhere out there. Lots of life left to explore and enjoy for us.
We are going to be free to live a real life, that’s something to look forward to! 🩷👍😊
The double wound of senior chumpdom – more years invested and fewer years left to heal. People understand this when they hear of aging and devoted pets abandoned. And, of course, the FWs who do this can’t spend any time on their own.
Yes, I do feel that as a nearly 63 year-old. I feel sort of cheated out of time, as well as out of the fidelity, respect, honour and love it is quite reasonable to expect from one’s spouse, and that we chumps DID give to the FWs!
FWs can never repay the debt of the TIME they stole from us, and I’m not sure I’ll ever not be at least a bit annoyed about that!
” and not throw all our history away from my bitterness and inability to forgive.”
Love it when they nuke us, forget every good thing we ever did, treat us like dog shit, then want us to be friends.
I am many years out and he is dead now; but for all those years I only nodded if I saw him at an event, which was rare. Rarely ever spoke to him again. No one needs to spend any time trying to be friends or have an abusive person in their life.
We had no power in stopping them from abusing us; but we don’t have to continue giving them access to us.
That abide is abuse. 🫤
OK so my X2x was a serial cheater that I knew nothing about. When caught he went to counseling and said he was cured of his problem but it was really me who drove him to it. Your creep us used to you getting weak and giving in. They know exactly how to Play you as a PROFESSIONAL manipulator. You, dear one, are a vending machine of use. The only way to break free is to go absolutely no contact. It does not sound like you are ready as you are playing into his rotation of lying to you and all his woman. He DOES NOT LOVE YOU, HE DISRESPECTS IMMENSELY as my X2x did me. Get tough and file, go no contact and see how he loves you then. See how his masks falls of. You are replaceable with anyone except you have his house maybe kids and money he will lose. I’m sorry you are of use an appliance, a front for his using woman, no matter what he says.
Oh part 2..while my X2x was cheating he 1. Filled the tub for me with bubbles, clipped my toe nails, rubbed my back, lite candles, took me to bed and breakfast, buy me pretty underware, rubbed my feet, brought me things to eat that I loved. Yes he did all this. Actually it was so he could get sex and he would be furious if I said no. Coercion with rage for days. I did not see all this until no contact which at first was like getting off of crack. I am not kidding. It was a tragic bond and it was horrible. When I realized I was unloved and just used, it just about broke me. But it was true
This poor chump. I hope she went no contact and got an excellent settlement!
My translation of this letter is: “Oh, s—, this is going to be expensive, and I’ll lose an excellent wife appliance. Maybe I can gaslight her into coming back.”
All I can think about this Chump is- just what type of devaluation did he dump on you for 25 freaking years? It must have been bad, because he expects you to roll over and submit. Of course, it’s not so obvious, when it’s happening, but later we can see! That’s one of the revelations that comes with freedom, the clarity. Sometimes it just knocks you over, I put up with that?
Hope she ditched this crazy guy, for good!
Great UBT today 😂 I didn’t remember this one!
“Sexual Addiction” isn’t actually a thing. It’s a way some people ‘act out’ and the closest description the psychiatric community has agreed to is that it might be tied to compulsion disorder, and frequently tied to drug or alcohol use.
(See * “I was drunk every time I paid a prostitute/cheated, so I’m not responsible for my choices. I can’t help it if I chose to get drunk every single night so that I wouldn’t feel so guilty about paying a prostitute/cheating. I’m an addict!”)
#CircularExcuses
These poor li’l sex addicts who seem to destroy multiple lives just get off on it, for lack of a better phrase. In their anxiety/OCD/substance usage they find something that gives them an extra rush and isn’t usually (#faultState) illegal. We don’t tie a big colorful ribbon around bank robbers and excuse them as following a compulsion they were helpless to resist. We don’t even allow petty criminal to go on unabated with the excuse that their anxiety caused them to steal lawn flamingoes (#ThreeStrikes) . And I have yet to see the psychiatric world try to gain sympathy for serial killers. No, we call ’em what they are: A danger to society. Then they get locked away.
Conclusion: In this day and age, we KNOW that ‘sexual addiction’ isn’t real, but golly, the idea that people be taught to control their baser impulses is considered too old fashioned. Worse still, our society has stopped reminding adults that ALL our decisions are made consciously and with intent, good or bad, and we are not simply the hapless victims of momentary compulsion. (#MakeBetterChoices!)
How to tell the difference between a person who suffers from actual psychological disturbance/addiction and a person merely acts on selfish impulses:
1)The first person often lives under a bridge or near a dumpster and frequently goes hungry. If they get bad enough, they are institutionalized. They are frequently unaware of the possibility of repercussions.
2) The second type tends to hold a job, pay bills, and is cognizant enough of their bad actions to organize lies. They absolutely know there can be repercussions, and work very hard to avoid them.
All that work — the lying, the hiding, the money, the time management … It would be easier, faster and cheaper to just change their behavior. They simply don’t want to. (#Haven’t beencaughtyet)
Congratuations, QuarterCenturyChump, on freeing yourself! Your future life, no matter what it holds, is going to be one helluva lot better than the last 25 years. And as a side benefit, your daughters are going to see a beautiful example of how someone can stand up, say, “Enough!”, and walk out the door. Your choices right now are a GIFT to them!
Dear Chump Lady,
Today you have given me the words I want to paint on my wall: “BITCH BOOTS. Wear them.”
Great advice and a laugh at the same time. Thank you!