UBT: ‘I Will Return With a Fuller Love’

Plus, he used “that is important,” not “who is important,” which I always read as diminishing someone’s status as an actual, you know, human. It may be a common misuse, but certainly revealing.

I am not one who buys the “oh whore is not the enemy”. Yes whore is the enemy, same as whoremonger. Whoremonger is embezzling from the marriage and whore is taking that stolen money and time. They both plan and plot behind the chumps back. Some women never find out about these dual shit piles. I maintain the lucky chumps are the ones that do find out; and the earlier the better.

Yes of course a disclaimer for the ones who don’t know about the spouse, I am sure there are as many of them as there are reformed cheater unicorns.

What is really galling is that these piece of shit whoremongers think they deserve a faithful spouse but their spouse doesn’t.

” … I have been together with her.”

Yeah, I’m fucking somebody else. Why do you ask?

I asked the same of FW. Always “I would never cheat on you”. At one point I actually said “we can get past this if the affair is over…”.(what was I thinking? SMH ) I was told by him “ doesn’t matter because I’m not cheating….” Had been cheating for at least 1.5 years. He kept me thinking he was depressed, I kept trying to ease his burdens, trying to get him to counseling, I was so ridiculously scared of the unknown.

“This is the Tour de France of his life”!!! Ha ha, that’s brilliant! Let’s hope he gets a puncture!

I remember just standing there with my mouth hanging open when fw would go into one of his rants (screaming at me) over such stupid shit.

He must have realized what he was doing, because about three months after he left he wrote me an apology letter for acting like such a dirt bag. I don’t remember what all it said, but I do remember thinking you did all that stuff to my face, you can apologize to my face. He never did. My guess is he wasn’t willing to listen to what I had to say.

If it wasn’t for the fact that FWs would be all over the chance to reverse adultery charges once they got served, it would be the perfect affair-buzz-killer. I didn’t get that overt in signaling “two can play that game” but did traipse up to the brink a little. I had never dreamed of goading FW with jealousy traps up to that point so it was pretty clear that it wasn’t some sign of chronic personality problems but a reaction to crisis or some kind of survival instinct at play.

Before D-Day when I was 90% sure FW was cheating and was starting to take a friend’s advice to quietly get ducks in a row, I had been out of state for an extended period with the kids getting a long course of intense specialized medical care for my middle child in the only place this was available. From the texts and secret credit card charges I saw after D-Day, FW was basically living with the AP for most of the time his family was away. The AP’s excited blabbing that FW was shacking up and “taking it to the next level” spilled over and eventually reached me through a young colleague of FW’s. But before I got the confirmation and during the months the kids and I were out of state, FW would fly in to visit (more and more infrequently) carting things the kids needed. He’d receive the deliveries at our house and would unbox them to fit them in suitcases. So I did a few punkish things to shake off the gaslit paralysis I was in. One of my pranks was to send myself swank silk lingerie a few times.

Maybe there was an element of pickme dancing in there but I was so crushed and discouraged at that point that I didn’t have it in me to seduce a slug. It felt more like defiance and throwing a wrench in the gears and a way of testing the enemy’s weaknesses. I hadn’t spent a dime on myself in ages thinking that we were saving for a beautiful future for the kids while FW secretly racked up debt to placate a grasping side piece and claimed we were cash-strapped. So the lingerie purchases really stood out. Furthermore FW had always nagged me that I didn’t need fancy clothes, that he preferred me in cotton and no makeup and had pressured me to donate all my old designer work gear. It was like he was trying to turn me into a dull-colored nest mate while he played peacock. Doing this was probably the first time anything amused me in six months.

The first time FW flew in with the stuff, he tossed it at me with a look of boredom while unpacking as if to say, “Yeah, that’s not going to work. I’m too sparkly for you!” I learned later during the “full disclosure” part of RIC that the AP had amassed quite a collection of uncomfortable, porny synthetic lingerie for the affair so FW would narcily and smugly assume women didn’t buy this stuff for themselves but as part of a sweaty pickme dance. The AP’s porn gear was also likely purchased with the money she saved from having everything else paid for on my family’s dime. That may be why FW didn’t nag me about the cost as he typically would have despite the fact La Perla isn’t cheap and still bore price tags (though gotten new on Ebay at massive discounts). I never looked at him, just smiled and lovingly put the things away and he never saw them again. I didn’t touch him on that trip and wore a ratty old t-shirt to sleep. Hey, he loved cotton. The second time he showed up with items like this, he handed them over carefully with ever-so-slightly shaking hands. I said, “Cool, thanks” without without looking at him and promptly put the things away, never to be seen again. Suddenly he was texting me every time I walked out the door, started talking about taking flights every weekend until the treatment was finished and going to Paris for our anniversary. Then he hacked my phone.

He left again but reported he wasn’t sleeping and was having nightmares. He sounded shaken when he told me about a few of those dreams. First he dreamed I was ravished by a shadowy figure and he couldn’t find a gun. He dreamed the kids’ strapping art teacher had turned into a giant with eight foot legs and was chasing him around the vacation rental. Then he dreamed his late playboy bachelor uncle and dysfunctional dad came back from the dead to tell him how lonely they were. Turnaround is fair play I guess. I’d been having nightmares for a year.

From the credit card trail, it looked like FW abruptly began spending more nights at home than at the AP’s tacky condo which she’d plied her drunken cheater dad to buy her and had decked out as a bonk pad just for FW. I saw old emails where she’d wheedle him to weigh in on decisions over purchases of crappy wall art and furnishings. At least he didn’t pay for the stuff according to the credit records. In any case, it seems pretty clear from texts and email trail at that time that the AP was feeling the tide turning. I later saw the flurry of messages in which AP was nervously taking the temperature of the affair, whined that her cat missed FW and had emailed FW links to pot dispensaries “for sleep! xox” Lol. The links included mention of the AP’s “VIP membership” to several dispensaries (since the year weed was legalized). Like the bar and bistro bills on the secret credit card that made it clear that either FW or the AP had been driving with massive blood alcohol levels on many occasions, the dispensary evidence didn’t boost FW’s “good father” impression management from a legal perspective and it completely destroyed his DARVO charge that I was “unstable” and therefore “a danger to the children.” That last accusation was drawn from the fact that I kept losing weight and wasn’t sleeping. It had clearly been a veiled threat against my custody of the kids and had left me in a state of complete terror. It was such a relief to douse the threat.

By the time I confronted FW with what I’d learned and announced I’d retained a lawyer, he was already exhausted, defanged and primed with anxiety, had the AP breathing down his neck and exploded in confessions, showed me the secret credit card bills, gave up his device passwords and dumped the AP. I did get sucked into the RIC nonsense for a spell but having all the evidence, the written confessions and the documented money trail made my lawyer’s job easier when I did a 180. Fault state. Oops.

I risked doing things that “felt good” but were too vague to boomerang. The gestures might seem juvenile but I can’t regret that it gave me strength. No joke. My doctor reported that my chronically high cortisol levels had suddenly dropped to almost nothing which signaled I was on the verge of developing lethal adrenal insufficiency– thus the fainting, etc., and other grounds for FW to deem me “unstable.” I didn’t have Addison’s– it was all stress. My labs improved after this. For some reason it helped to understand how much cheating is, as Velvet Hammer puts it, a three legged stool that would collapse if the “victim leg” came loose. The little pranks seemed to cause FW and the AP to get sloppy to the point that I found out sooner rather than later.

As I’ve said before, I did a few other things that laced some humor into that horrible time. Now when I get occasional intrusive flashbacks to that period, I remember the little gestures and laugh. Beats traumatic flooding and adrenal collapse.

Good one! ????????????

Just a little harmless fun, I wasn’t going to leave you…

” I have a small confession of my own…, but when you get back all will return to normal, take your time”