UBT: I’m Not a Mistress, I’m a ‘Relationship Anarchist’
In a recent New York Times Modern Love column, Kate Bailey, serial side piece, declared that she’s not a mistress, she’s a “relationship anarchist.” Home-wrecking, relationship anarchy. You say tomato, I say to-mah-to.
This upchuck of cheater rebranding came from the essay “My Relationships Have No Clothes” and has been flung into the crushing mandibles of the Universal Bullshit Translator.
My Relationships Have No Clothes
The UBT wonders if you mean this in the Emperor sense? As in you’re cognizant of your own bullshit? Or should it go fetch you a warm blanket?
Anyway…
Our mutual attraction had been evident for a while. Before Thanksgiving, we had walked along Lake Pontchartrain near my apartment and delicately talked around the issue. I took a submissive position; someone else had gotten to him first and there was nothing I could do about that. I would not try to break up his relationship.
But I told him as straightforwardly as I could that I had no moral objection to infidelity.
I delicately and submissively let him know I was game to be his side chick. Which in no way should be construed as trying to break up his relationship.
That was the only way I could think to phrase it. Sex was just sex. I was basically communicating that if he wanted to have sex with me, I was going to enthusiastically approve.
Sex is just sex.
I have no moral objection, because I’d need morals first. #EnthusiasticallyUnethical
I quickly mentioned that what did matter to me was his ability to take care of two women’s feelings at the same time. He looked down at his boots and said that he probably wouldn’t be able to do that.
Wrong answer, I thought.
I’ll fuck you, but you have to pretend like you CARE. Okay?
But our attraction was so intense that we ignored the potential problems. We were already ignoring the fact that he was leaving the next day to go meet his fiancée.
Our horniness trumps consent. His fiancée is just an obstacle to our furtive orgasms.
I reiterated my point about taking care of two women’s feelings, hoping he would understand it better and retroactively concur. Instead, he took it as me concluding that we should keep our pants on, and he closed the discussion.
“We shouldn’t,” he said.
I’m not a complete monster. I care about two women’s feelings! Mine of course, and hers. Which I express by fucking her fiancé. #sharingiscaring
Don’t say can’t.
Using the word “shouldn’t” instead of “can’t” or “won’t” only made our copulation seem more inevitable.
I have oppositional defiant FW disorder.
A few days after our Mardi Gras sex, he said he didn’t regret it but that we couldn’t do it again. Over the following two years we had sex sporadically, and unethically, in that his fiancée didn’t know about it. Each time, he would inform me a few days after that we shouldn’t do it again.
None of this made sense to me. We enjoyed doing it — why the constant back and forth? I never expected him to leave his fiancée, but I did expect a certain amount of corroboration about reality.
We enjoyed being unethical. His moral qualms didn’t make sense to me.
This scenario also had me constantly questioning myself. Why didn’t I have any objection to infidelity?
Because you have less moral sense than God gave bean sprouts.
(Excuse me, the UBT is acting up.)
Why did it feel so natural sharing a man with another woman?
Because you suck the dick of the patriarchy. #sisterwives
(Giving the UBT a thwack…)
Why did monogamy feel like the wrong option?
(It’s working again.)
Let’s blame monogamy for my relationship anarchy shitty behavior!
He and his fiancée never got married.
Someone tipped her off.
I moved away. But we stayed close. It’s been almost a decade since graduate school, and he and I have not lived in the same state since. He has a partner and a family. I have a budding career in television and a busy social life. The last time we had sex was five years ago. (Ethically, that time!)
A while back, I texted him to see if he wanted to chat on the phone. I love talking on the phone and ask for it often. It was Monday. He said he was visiting his ill father but could do Friday. I agreed, but come Friday, he forgot. The business of travel and baby-needs and parental role-reversal had pushed me to the back of his mind. A lapse in care happens in all types of relationships. Someone’s feelings get hurt because there was a plan and someone else forgot. It’s normal.
We’re close in that don’t live in the same state, he’s married, and forgets to call me kinda way.
It’s normal. If you’re a side chick.
But in these moments, with us, the level of effort needed to fix it can become confusing for the monogamist.
This is a hypothetical exercise. I have no idea how monogamists think. #confusing!
If this scenario had happened with a wife, maybe there would be a short fight, followed by Uber Eats and a “Below Deck” binge. If this scenario had happened with a girlfriend, then perhaps flowers would be best to soothe the hurt. If it was with a friend, maybe just a recommitment to plans and a promise not to forget again.
But when he and I have a conflict or a disagreement, we can sometimes get jammed up trying to resolve it. Because I don’t use labels, and because he doesn’t know how to label me, it becomes easy for him to regress to a familiar scenario: I’m the side piece and he’s the unavailable object of my desire.
Labeling me a side piece is regressive and easy. Much like side pieces themselves.
I need an edgy paradigm…
This impulse normally only lasts a moment while we untangle what it is we’re stuck on. And I don’t hold it against him. It’s hard to have a relationship with someone like me who doesn’t dress up her partners as recognizable personas. The anarchy makes people uncomfortable.
I’m not a fuckbuddy, I’m an anarchist! (Who doesn’t believe in personas.)
To me, all relationships are like those paper dolls we had as children.
Paper dolls don’t have feelings. You can crumple them up or set them on fire. #anarchyplaydate
The figures are in their underwear and then you put different clothes on them for different occasions. The base level is the figure laid bare. The base level is vulnerability and intimacy. It doesn’t matter how you dress it up — mistress, relative, friend, girlfriend, husband, lover — the base stays the same. And if the base is good, it’s easy to understand how someone can start off in one set of clothes and end up in another. Some time ago, I just stopped using the clothes to label my relationships.
I am not defined by my relationships. Behold my profundity. It’s so disruptive you’ll need to look away from the glare of my originality. Take a moment.
On the day he forgot to call me, he immediately apologized. When I told him my feelings were hurt, he speculated that it’s probably because I’m not satisfied with what he’s giving me.
I’m not satisfied with what he’s giving me.
But I’ll dress it up as edgy relationship anarchy. #availableanytime
Which took me back to that day at Lake Pontchartrain, wondering again if he, or anyone, can take care of two people’s feelings simultaneously.
So, I really considered it.
Is it possible that, in this case, his assessment was right? Is satisfaction a security that I don’t allow myself by living my life this way?
Nah. I enjoy the Fuckwit Thunderdome. Gladiator games to win a cheater, where the opponent, his wife, doesn’t know she’s competing.
For most people, monogamy means that to have an intimate relationship with a different person, you must end the current relationship before you can start another. One at a time, that’s the rule.
Monogamy has rules.
Relationship anarchists have no rules. Except you can’t hurt my feelings.
He has had three long-term partners since I have known him. If I had to wait until he had no other partner, we would have missed out on this relationship, which is 90 percent TV jokes and “Mad Men” quotes. We never would have the pride it brings each of us when we make the other laugh out loud. Or argue about a movie one of us hates and the other adores. Or the gossip we share about people we know in theater.
He has listened to me cry about my career, which I never do with anyone else. I have talked him through his body insecurities and am able to successfully assure him that he’s still attractive. We push each other in our creative ambitions. I send him details of celebrity encounters, and he keeps me full of baby pictures.
He endures my insufferable name dropping for no-strings sex.
And we fight. I make biting comments that are sometimes too sharp. He doesn’t text enough. He’s avoidant. I’m prickly, and bratty. He’s envious. I say the wrong thing. I brag too much. He’s neurotic. Actually, we’re both neurotic.
Your babies pictures disgust me. Too sharp? If a blob fish and a wax candle had a baby it would be your baby. Bratty? My celebrity encounters keep me warm at night.
In other words, a regular relationship.
After considering his comment, I arrived back to where I normally live. I am no more satisfied and no less satisfied than I would be if I followed a more traditional relationship model. Dressing the doll up might make things more comfortable at times, but it wouldn’t be true to our experience. And if the price we must pay is occasionally having to think hard about it to make sure it’s still working — well, I’m willing to pay that small price.
I had a hard thought. That makes this a real relationship. Okay, there were TV jokes too.
I haven’t believed in monogamy since the grad school experience with him. It sent me down a path that has informed my life ever since. It means that I never think about romantic relationships in an aspirational way. It means that I get to keep my relationships with men and women for a long time, after the sex has dwindled, or as the connection morphs in and out of romance. It means that I get more than “just being friends with an ex.” It means the intimacy that I have with others blooms in a natural way.
Like the way they marry other people, breed, and don’t answer my phone calls. #bloom #wilt
I enjoy having diverse relationships, because that is the reality for so many people, even when they have no words to explain them.
Side piece. Mistress. Other Woman. Option at the all you can eat pussy buffet. Sister wife. Bad example.
Many of those who are unconventional don’t have anyone to look to for answers. As a relationship anarchist, I have a responsibility to reflect unconventional truths and challenge social norms.
Kate Bailey
I’m not a side piece with delusions of grandeur, I’m a PROPHET. With a RESPONSIBILITY for truth-telling! #DontTellHisWife
It’s difficult to question relationship models that have been in our society for centuries, but if we don’t start talking about it openly, it will never get easier.
It’s difficult to be a secret fuck. The side chick who never gets introduced at the barbecue. But someone has to be a relationship anarchist and challenge social norms.
I’m a non-monogamous woman in many different relationships. He and I are still partners in life. Just not the way that most people understand partners, or life.
Words have meaning. Anarchists reject meaning. And words. And monogamy. But we’re free to hook up. Wednesday good? Thursday? PICK UP THE PHONE, LIFE PARTNER. I have feelings!
“Relationship anarchist?” Um, you know anarchists were famous for throwing bombs and starting world wars, right?
Jeez, if cheaters spent half as much time developing morals and ethics as they do on coming up with euphemisms for being shitty people they would be much better off.
She’s not a side piece! She’s the Gavrilo Princip of Relationships! She stopped to get a sandwich, saw a stalled car, and ruined the world for 10 years because she took a walk by a lake with someone that’s just not that into her!
Seriously, he regularly disappears from her life and that never translates into he’s just using you for sex, precious! She thinks it means she has some elevated connection with people because she intermittently fucks around with them?
LOL. Good analogy since, like Princip, Bailey is hardly an anarchist. At Princip’s trial, he said “I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be freed from Austria.” I think the other kid who threw a bomb and failed thought of himself as an anarchosocialist but he was effectively working against his own political values since he and Princip were agents of the hypernationalist Black Hand which was controlled by members of the military.
Like a lot of things, it seems like the term “anarchist” has become a genericized brand like Kleenex. I don’t know what people think it means in common usage other than “sowing chaos” in service of “antiestablishment” but It’s become so vague and contradictory that throwing it around without specifying is completely meaningless. For instance, aside from being oxymoronic, “anarchocapitalism” and its popularity among violent white nationalists, links to neoliberal environmental destruction and anti-labor hardly has “antiestablishment” associations much less a “groovy” aura, at least not while Atlas Network stumps for big oil.
But if she’s trying to align anti-monogamy with the leftier flavor of anarchosyndicalism and posing as, say, some kind of sexual Zapatista, then, by that token, isn’t she sleeping with the enemy by bonking married dudes? Not exactly effective revolutionary mole entryism if she’s getting emotionally involved, right? Plus I don’t think actual Zapatistas would appreciate the ideological appropriation since they didn’t allow sex workers to present at a recent indigenous women’s summit precisely because the hookers service and comfort the Mexican military and corporate occupiers that are trying to destroy the Zapatistas and indigenous land movements in general. Furthermore, I gather that Zapatista women– who often work 20 hours a day to keep their families fed– tend to resent it when Zapatista men use scarce family resources to pay for the same double-dealing sex workers. If Bailey– as most side pieces do– ever took free anything off her partnered schmoopies, Zapatista women probably wouldn’t embrace her as a sister anarchist. And, come to think of it, Noam Chomsky– probably the world’s most well known anarchosyndicalist– was famous for his faithful devotion to his marriage and five kids until the death of his first wife as far as I know. So, nah, I don’t see how that aligns with Bailey’s argument.
Then anarchic business structure doesn’t mean structureless or lack of job security, just generally flat management and worker-controlled production. Maybe the only anarchic parallel that works for Bailey is Black Bloc because some leftists suspect it’s just a pack of thuggy puppets too dumb to realize they’re being used by corporate opponents as agitprop to undermine peaceful progressive activism. Sort of like how the Times is using idiots like Bailey to, IMHO, soften public conceptions of sexual consent in order to erode #MeToo that took down fellow media honchos and, all told, cost the media industry and many of their corporate sponsors the equivalent of the GDP of a mid-sized island nation in lawsuits, broken contracts and dropped stock prices.
So maybe that analogy works. Call Bailey a member of the Hack Cuck underground.
Er I was just gonna say something about Anarchism and Mutual Aid and you did a much better job!
Other than work and chasing after Mr Wonderful this woman has no life.
But she paints herself as having a right old high life, as a bohemian who sticks the Vs up to convention and boring, regressive stuff like appropriate boundaries. She makes sure we know she hob-nobs with people from the THEATRE, donchaknow, not just your common-or-garden celeb but THESPIANS, Dahling!
What with the mental gymnastics, word salads and pompous grandiosity, I reckon she’s just a common-or-garden Cluster B PD! The sort I might write off as a bit of a silly cow with notions of herself if I only met her once or twice, and give her as much of a swerve as I could. It’s only when this type get closer that their toxicity becomes more of a danger!
I can’t believe she can say this shit with her whole chest and not experience a speck of embarrassment. Like lady, if you think this is a brag, you’ve got nothing.
Yes! “With her whole chest” indeed. I find everything she said to be so clueless. It seems like she wants to be seen as someone that doesn’t use labels and who is redefining relationships on her terms. Put that way, it sounds cool as hell. I am definitely more traditional personally. Open or Poly relationships are not for me. But I have great respect for anyone that wants something outside the box and goes for it,so long as everyone involved is and adult, aware and consenting.
But she isn’t a trailblazer. She is literally the most traditional example of a long term side chick. There is nothing innovative or new there. Just a woman being used by a married man, who takes delight in being in on chumping the chump. It’s pathetic.
If she wants to redefine relationships, there are quite literally millions of single men out there. Or men in legit open relationships.
And this brings me back to the often cited “The AP doesn’t OWE you anything, your spouse took the vows, not You can only be mad at your spouse.” It’s true. An AP doesn’t owe the chump anything and our rage as chumps should be directed at the cheating FW. But most APs are not innocent. This one, for example, deserves all the ire.
Now now, she also chases after encounters with celebrities to humble brag about, quotes from a toxic masculinity show from 2007, and describes herself as being prickly and mean. What a rare and precious gem who must be a pleasure to meet.
I don’t have a NY Times subscription, but what does she do aside from hankering after this one guy from Grad school who will barely give her the time of day?
I thought Mad Men was supposed to be misogynistic as a commentary. You aren’t supposed to think about the behavior being a good thing.
(I don’t know much about it, aside from one or two clips I saw years ago, and that it has a good sountrack.)
The men in it are horrible, that’s the main thing. I couldn’t understand how the main Mad Man was able to pull the birds so much , he wasn’t THAT good looking IMO!
My thought exactly — Mad Men? Mad Men?! That’s the show you love? The one where it’s culturally supported to shit on women? Gurl, whatever.
I know Mad Men is supposed to be one of the best shows ever, but I couldn’t get 2 episodes in for this reason.
I bet she identifies with the Mad MEN….certainly not the female characters. A woman who has positioned herself as the enemy of other women.
YES.
Sounds like she likes him a lot more than he likes her! She’s convenient for sex and she’s dressing it up like her role is based on a deep philosophical intentional construct. When she’s just convenient for sex. I knew someone like this (she died in the last year in her late 60s). She spent all her adult life mooching about feeling resentful because the slightly older married boss with whom she had a child 35 years ago wouldn’t leave his wife and children for her. Every time he was in the vicinity of her home (he lived many miles away) he’d call her up for sex. She’d think ‘this is it, he’s going to leave his wife’ and she’d be disappointed. His wife knew about her and the child but won the pick-me-dance. His wife accepted that he would have sex with the woman when in the vicinity. It was part of their marriage. What strikes me about him and her and my ex (who left me for his exgf from school after close to 30 years since they last split up) is how juvenile these people are. They live their lives in a teenage fantasy film set, with swirling strings and deep feelings expressed ideally in poetry but otherwise in philosophical language and homilies. Arrested development!
She literally took up relationship anarchy and based her whole sexuality and life long relationship framework to keep banging and texting a man who moved away from her and won’t indroduce her at bbq’s.
It’s one of the most pathetic “pick me” dance I’ve ever seen, she’s lying to herself as much as anyone.
She’s going to wake up in her old age alone, mean and with no one who actually trusts her because she’s too cool to actually define or understand mutual honest commitment and care.
She’s taking a bad situation she helped to create, obviously based on mental problems she had originally, and made it into a virtue instead of trying to heal her own problems.
Mehitable, your comments are always so perceptive. This one is dead-on.
Exactly. It’s the mindset of the serial cheater. The “grew up alone, old, and mean with nobody that actually trusts her” happened to somebody I used to know-psychotically opened up the marriage, lost everything in the divorce(for some reason known only to the courts and sanity), moved away to “start over”, pulled the same dumb shit, and continues to have very public meltdowns as guys are not fawning over her anymore. It’s almost like in the social media era there’s a visual record of your dumb shit.
Yup, and I don’t mean to say someone single and older isn’t without value or automatically sad.
I know many divorced/widowed/never married older folks who have rich friendships, are close with their kids/nieces/nephews/neighbor’s kids, volunteer, have pets, are part of a church community, or whatever you have. A romantic relationship isn’t the only way to have closeness.
But these communities still need trust, commitment, and honesty. No one wants to spend much time helping the person who is sleeping with all the Husbands in town and lying to the Wives; however, she dresses it up. Even those Husbands will scrifice her to cover their tracks, cheaters aren’t reliable even to each other.
People can be poly or have undefined relationships or commitment-free sex and still have the integrity to not sleep with someone who is lying to their monogamous partner.
It’s just unspeakably pathetic and shows such low self-value that she decided she MUST bang this guy and argue about movies, so she’ll shape her whole life around it in a way he clearly doesn’t.
I wonder if his baby’s mother knows who has their baby’s pictures.
I know many divorced/widowed/never married older folks who have rich friendships, are close with their kids/nieces/nephews/neighbor’s kids, volunteer, have pets, are part of a church community, or whatever you have. A romantic relationship isn’t the only way to have closeness.
That’s me — meaningful job, wonderful friends, wonderful neighbors, adult kids that like me, a dog, and volunteer work.
The pandemic hit shortly after my divorce was final. I had considered trying online dating earlier, and ended putting that on hold with all the lock-downs.
Then I decided, uh..no. I’m truly fine unless someone shows up among my friends and such in a more organic way.
“Adult kids that like me”: Bingo! For me (at 69), this is the treasure that far exceeds what a relationship could give me, however much I’d like to be lucky enough to fall in love again.
I agree. Knowing that they are successful in adult life and choose to hang out with me at times is enough. I’m semi-retired now, just working to cover my health insurance a bit longer.
The old joke of older men looking for a nurse and/or purse is so very true, so maybe I just stay as-is. Thus far, I have seen anything remotely close although I did go out with a widow a few times. He was a solid guy, but clearly looking for someone to carry on exactly what his departed wife was. Thank you, no.
Wow–I’m not ready to date yet, but if I ever find I am interested in looking around, I’ve heard this “nurse with a purse” thing enough times from people with real-life experience that I will keep my eyes open for this problem.
I’m separated, the divorce is dragging out and I just can’t see myself ever being ready to date. I am currently working on myself, going to therapy, learning how to create and hold boundaries. There is a LOT of work to be done. And dating before I’ve made those changes in myself is a bad idea. Could I change my mind one day? I don’t expect so, but anything is possible. But I do think that by the time I would consider myself ready, I would probably be really over the whole idea. And after putting up with a FW for decades who didn’t lift a finger around the home and was always in a mood, who I bent over backwards to make happy only to have him ultimately cheat on me with a woman 15 years my junior? The last thing I would ever in a million years sign up for is being someone’s nurse with a purse.
Oh precisely-I am not at all disparaging people that are older and single-the specific person I am talking about has simply burned all of her bridges and is now lamenting the existence of rivers.
For the people that like that kind of thing, that’s the kind of thing that they like.
I guarantee this specific nimrod just wants the guy because she can’t have him and he’s loving every minute of it. She does not seem to believe that morals and ethics apply to her when it’s inconvenient.
She’s getting her needs met without actually having to provide anything of substance and now is mad that she is not a priority. “I’m not the problem, society is the problem”.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. A compulsive cake eater.
Yup! I know people like that, too.
Or I would argue she isn’t getting her needs met, but she’s spent years talking herself out of wanting more from him. It’s telling how she had to write this whole piece in the NY Times as a testament to her “Not Partner in Life.” She says she has other relationships, but conveniently, they don’t come up as even a blip on her radar in comparison.
I bet if he left his family and showed up on her doorstep, she’d be over the moon. But then she’d have to face the reality of a real relationship with someone who is honestly not that great versus a decades-long sexy, angsty drama of her lurking in the background and enjoying it when it upsets his girlfriends.
Yeah, that’s her. She’s desperately trying to make it sound like she doesn’t want anything more from him. It’s posturing. She’s exactly the type who enjoys shocking people. I can picture her smug face as she regales “ordinary” folks with her story.
It could be seen as a testament to a polite society that nobody has smacked the smirk off her.
Given the overall levels of grandiosity I’d presume that by “other relationships” she means “people she hooked up with once but now shares a non-connection connection with.” Gods, it even hurts my head trying to THINK like this morass of a human being! At least she has vague comprehension of “sex creates a bond.”
That reality of a relationship after schmoopie leaves must be something else. If he didn’t actively work to break us up and assist in messing my life up pretty hardcore, I’d almost feel sorry for the poor bastard my FW cheated on me for now that I’m out of the picture. I was doing all of the heavy lifting for that slob while she had all of the fun with him. But hey, buy the ticket, take the ride.
My FW had an on and off affair for more than half a decade. Three years before I knew, and then 3 more of pick me dancing and him refusing to leave. Schmoops left the picture within months of my FW moving out. And then he made my life hell because he was losing his happy family “mirage” and yet didn’t get the schmoops as a prize. I was SO angry that she wanted him all that time and then wouldn’t TAKE HIM once he became available. On the one hand, I didn’t have to share custody of my kids with the AP and I was really grateful for that. But once she was out of the picture, it was a hard press for REC and I didn’t want to be plan B. I will never know what happened there. They had a long distance affair. I suspect that she was never that serious about making a real go of it with the FW. Enjoyed having a mostly online boyfriend and helped end my marriage for the fun of it maybe? But she never had to deal with his daily tantrums and moods and I resent that.
Yeah, I left my FW after 21 years because he was in love with Schmoopie. Less than a week after I was gone and she and him got together, she dumped him spectacularly. I was beyond appalled.To blow up a long term relationship with a teenager in the mix for someone you don’t love. WTAF? I harboured fantasies of ghastly revenge for way too long.
What the what? This lady be crazy.
“It’s difficult to question relationship models that have been in our society for centuries, but if we don’t start talking about it openly, it will never get easier.”
I’ll make it easy for you Katie — if a relationship you want to have requires a deliberate deception to be perpetrated by you and/or your intended partner against a third party, and you have no problem with that, then you have a shitty character and are inherently untrustworthy.
She hasn’t redefined ANYTHING. She is a classic long term side chick that wants to pretend she’s something more.
It’s like Amy Poehler’s character in Mean Girls: “I’m not like other moms, I’m a cool mom”
” if a relationship you want to have requires a deliberate deception to be perpetrated by you and/or your intended partner against a third party, and you have no problem with that, then you have a shitty character and are inherently untrustworthy.”
The beauty of that statement is, it works in every situation, finances, work relationships, employee/employer and on and on.
Yep. And also that sentence is word salad. What is “it”? Relationship models that have been around for centuries? If they’ve been around for centuries, why can’t we talk about them? Does she think she’s so delusionally original to be talking about sex outside of commitment for the first time? Why does it have to get “easier”? For whom? My brain hurts.
Seemed to me like the whole thing was word salad.
And the fact that these relationship models have existed for centuries means that they WORK and should be preserved, unlike hers that she’ll take to the grave by herself.
I don’t think that follows. For example, male dominance in relationships has existed for centuries.
Screwing around has existed for centuries too.
She evidently hasn’t heard of Ester.
Holy rationalization Batman!
What a hell of a lot of words to just say “I want what I want and don’t care how it makes other people feel or the impact it has. I don’t care that I am setting up a bomb in some unsuspecting person’s life. I’m a selfish mistress but in an edgy cool way! I don’t want boring things like commitment and integrety. Check out my thrifted Hot Topic fishnet lingree.”
Please, Hot Topic at least has fun things to buy. This schmoopie sounds boring. I think the reason she’s trying to make her affair sound cool is because she doesn’t have much else going on.
True enough! I say this as a queer person who still goes to goth nights.
It’s just co-opting the language of nonconformity to justify selfishness.
You’re not a punk, Katie; you’re just a pathetic asshole who can’t get over a shitty guy from Grad School who doesn’t want you when it’s not convenient.
Real punks are fighting social injustice, saving whales, speaking against corporations, punching Nazis and making music.
A queer person who goes to goth nights! My kind of person, I see.
You’re absolutely correct on every front. “How do I make myself feel better about the affair? I know! Couch it in terminology used for actual revolutionaries who work towards change!”
Katie, you’re not fooling anyone.
I never really followed Sex in the City closely, isn’t this the plot with the married guy?
I always loathed that show but I think you’re right.
Yep, only saw a couple reruns and that was enough for me. One of the few (last) episodes I saw was one where the hot one was at a wedding, and she was caught in the basement with her leg hiked up while the groom was doing her. Grossed me out, never watched another one.
Pathologically self-deluded narcissist. Or is that a redundancy?
Modern? Love?
This is neither, IMHO, and in a galaxy, very very far far away from either.
JHFC on a cracker. But a very good read for anyone who thinks side pieces are an upward trade and wired properly.
But wait. If “sex was just sex,” then why does he have to take care of your feelings?
And how is cheating on his Missus “taking care of” HER feelings?
That inconsistency, even taken just by itself, reveals her fundamental hypocrisy. Her screed is completely disingenuous.
Exactly. She’s more than an orifice!
What an empty, vapid life. Also, at a philosophical, aren’t anarchist morally obligated not to inflict harm on an individual?
Yeah, anarchy really isn’t what this chick thinks it is. But did we really expect amything more from an AP?
If I remember correctly, varying communes, leftist, and fellow-travelers in history practiced “relational and sexual anarchy” as a revolutionary act. Such juvenile thinking.
I’m assuming by “relational and sexual anarchy” you’re referencing abusive behavior, and which, I’m sure some of them do. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Heck, excusing abusive behavior with some political or religious reasoning is all over this blog! Or non-spiritual psychpop BS. Like Esther Perel. “Exuberant defiance” and the like. Or “Eat, Pray, Love” and such. I wouldn’t call it juvenile, though, I think it’s darker than that.
This is a predator that wants what she wants. And people like this don’t change, even as they age.
My ex had a girlfriend like before we married. He supposedly broke up with her for religious reasons, but there were signs that he secretly regretted that. She was in the shadows our entire marriage of several decades, even telling me on the phone several times that she wanted to know how he was doing because he was the “best man she had ever known.” He was at work, and I was home with the kids. How ick to call and say that. Countless affairs and couple of marriages later, she was trolling. Never mind the wife and kids.
He claimed that he wasn’t in contact with her ever, but then went to the area of the country where she was living when he took off. I don’t know if she was one of his “friends” after that or not, but from what I surmised, he had lots of “friends” and was living like a single man.
My thing was monogamy and a committed relationship. My ex’s thing was whatever. So we were not compatible on so many fronts, particularly in terms of our definitions of morality, and I’m thankful every day that the attorneys got it done.
“Your dad is sick and you have a baby to care for, but what about meeeeeee?”
I can’t get over that part. I would feel feel a minutiae of empathy if she wasn’t an AP – I have RSD, I get it – because even when it’s for good reason, having plans forgotten about or pushed aside can feel disapointing, frustrating, or hurtful. But y’know what would help? Not having an affair, but instead being in a relationship where everything is above board, leading to open communication! Seriously, communication can be difficult enough in an honest, loving relationship. But being in a relationship where you have to hide communication, limit communication, or lie to others? That sounds miserable.
so·ci·o·path
noun
a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.
This woman is just like one of the paper dolls she described; when dressed up, she looks like a budding television personality and social butterfly, but once you take her clothes off, the base is the same… the same as every other trashy swampwhore who happily peddles her pussy to anyone who bites (taken or not) because whatddyaknow! no labels! no boundaries! no morals! no conscience! no guilt! no rules!
Not to get political, but…
Most forms of political anarchy are in response to an oppressive hierarchy. And, yes, there are rules, in the form of social contracts. Infidelity, however, creates an abusive power dynamic. And you know what a relationship is? A social contract, in a sense. This poor little schmoopie must be lost – she’s as “anarchist” as your typical conservative swinger.
100%.
If I thought our little anarchist here could actually read, I’d say she took Brave New World a little too seriously. She’s about as much of an anarchist as the kids that used to carve the Spinal Tap emblem into their desk in school were turned out to be metal heads. Much like every other cheater(or individual that provokes same), there is no consideration for the fact that there will be casualties-and that one day, they will be one, too.
I wouldn’t want to be the AP in my situation. As much as I can’t sympathize with her as a fellow victim considering what she participated in, I was actually a bit stunned by how FW sold the AP down the river after D-Day.
I have a feeling this is how a lot of FW’s behave when caught. Some might double down on the narcy schmoopie idealization as a defense but others just turn coat. I don’t have enough hubris to kid myself I wasn’t thrown under the bus all along which is why I got out. But I think the extra risk for APs is they tend to provide more fodder for eventual slut shaming and blaming by engaging in a lot of performative pickme deathmatch bonk gymnastics and bitchery towards rivals who generally don’t know they exist.
I don’t care if they front as the biggest woke hippies most of the time, scratch the surface of any he-FW and they’re all knuckle-dragging, slut-shaming, misogynist Frank TJ Mackie from Magnolia. I’ll bet the same is true of male APs as well. So while she was– last I heard– still running around tearfully rhapsodizing about FW as her lost twin flame, he was blurting– unbidden– about the pig noises she makes while eating along with some other things I’d hesitate to put in print.
Not that I ever considered being one but I took it as a cautionary tale for all APs. I don’t know why anyone would play the part considering the strong chance this is how they’ll end up being reviewed. After all, the same adage applies to cheaters and trash talkers: if they’re doing it with you at someone else’s expense, they’ll soon be doing it to you at yours.
I now want to add “as much of an _____ as the kids that used to carve the Spinal Tap emblem into their desk in school turned out to be metal heads” into my lexicon, even if I’ve never witnessed anyone do that. It beautifully illustrates the shallow understanding.
What the hell did I just read?
There’s nothing groundbreaking about having that little respect for yourself.
It’s hardly anarchic to stoop to crawling on the ground for whatever crumbs you can scrounge from some cheating man who definitely ain’t all that.
Anarchy is clear action- not kowtowing to some idiot and pretending to be a ‘free spirit’ paving the way for revolution.
The lady definitely protests too much.
She is dressing it up to be edgy and sophisticated. As if there is something very deep and profound about their relationship. She sounds like a typical borderline, more than likely a freak in bed and always available for this man. She’s completely obsessed and delusional. Other than the once in awhile roll in the hay this guy has no use for her and thinks sharing baby pics lets her know he will never be available. I think the guy is afraid to outright dump her ass for fear she’ll go off her rocker and expose everything. I have no doubt she has saved every text and has many pics.
Ahhh, the criminal thinking errors of the cheating mind! “It’s not cheating if I am ‘challenging the norms related to relationships’ (or some shit.)” Similar to how my clients go “it’s not stealing; I’m simply not paying for something that they weren’t protecting well enough.” So much power in a name!
I also enjoyed how she expected him to drop visiting the ill father to meet her needs. Like, I get how “dude” has blurred boundaries of his own(probably worthy of further discussion in its own right), but I guess if he is going to be morally flexible in one way he has to be completely morally permeable(at least as it pertains to her?) The grandiosity is strong with this one!
Would have been nice if she also just admitted that she wanted her personal OW (you know, his real partner) to take care of his day to day stuff so they could just have random bad sex.
I feel most bad for the wife or baby-mom or whatever she was of “the guy.” While yes, this moron’s thinking errors are taking center stage here, dude is a serial cheater. Like all cheaters, he is using this idiot and doesn’t mind stringing her along(to the point where 5 years after last meaningful contact she still pines for him). And somewhere out there is a woman that gave birth to his children that is at best vaguely aware of the swamp creature she bore children for. To say nothing of how you just know this cretin has tried to get in her head “for the lulz.” Or Relationship Anarchy. Or Histrionic Personality Disorder. Or whatever.
I see some of my FW in all of this-she got involved with Schmoopie when she should have been doing her grad work (to the point where she was in danger of dismissal from her grad program when D-Day rolled around.) And her bullshit reasoning for this was after 13 years deciding that she “loves differently” and was “convinced that (she) could make the polycule work”…even though she was abusing me and withholding affection. I dunno-I was too busy studying and writing papers doing grad work to anything stupid like that-then again I also realized my future is important to me and probably worth taking seriously(granted my g/f back then also ended up cheating under similar auspices, so perhaps there’s something wrong with me and my having priorities more interesting than “never quite leaving high school emotionally.”)
Have a Mighty Tuesday!
To me, there’s a lot of the “ant and the grasshopper” to these stories. The ant works hard today to ensure a lasting future and security for itself and its community of fellow ants. The grasshopper only enjoys today for itself and doesn’t give a shit about building the future. So it doesn’t have one.
I think with so many of these cheaters they want the trimmings of a successful life and family; but still the high school tingles. They simply never matured enough emotionally to understand the difference between grown up thrills and back seat thrills, add in a lack of integrity and there you are. Kaboom 🧨 💥
Imagine if this woman committed this kind of thought and energy to just about anything besides being aggressively in denial about being a receptacle for a man with no integrity. She could cure cancer! Eradicate famine! Colonize Mars!
But no, her herculean efforts were spent writing… this. Eugh.
What was the old Denis Leary bit…”these people(pot heads) should be in the space program with their levels of ingenuity.” This reinforces my urge to never read the NYT again.
Reminds me when my “bestie” cheated with my husband and in her “apology” letter told me she facilitated growth. What a piece of shit. Both of them.
https://www.chumplady.com/ubt-i-know-my-truth/
🤮 That was some of the most contemptible bilge I’ve ever read.
I read that. What a reptile. She’s very good at twisting words and concepts into their opposites to browbeat others into submission. A destructive person.
Man, this one is SOOOOOO easy to take apart, it almost doesn’t seem worth it. Where do you even start with this sad little muffin of a sex terrorist? She’s unable to form a real relationship with someone who wants her full time – she’d rather have the crumbs from some other woman’s table because apparently….that’s all she can get. It’s not that she necessarily would choose sex terrorism as a lifestyle IF she could actually find a man who wants her openly and full time….she CAN’T find someone like this because she’s only good for for a quick fuck and apparently, movie ratings. What a sad way to go through life, poaching on what other women have built up in trust over time because YOU can’t do it yourself and you like destroying what other people have. Sad empty shell of a meat puppet.
Actually this woman makes me think about the corrosive effect of cheating on the CHEATER’S character. Some of the men she may have offered her meat sack to might not have cheated otherwise or maybe just had the “one night stand” but with her pursuit of men who are NOT available to her in a relationship, perhaps she is also corroding the character of someone who has this weakness and might have built up the strength to resist it eventually. We talk here all the time about how cheating effects the faithful because that’s the purpose of this site but cheating also destroys the character, whatever there is of it, of the cheater. Whatever morals or ideals or feelings they may start with before the affair(s) each time they engage in this behavior, they also destroy these things about THEMSELVES and drag themselves into a moral abyss that must also be destructive to them. There’s nothing good that comes out of this for any party – the faithful spouse, the cheater, and this piece of shit who eats away at the relationships of others like an acid. This kind of person is destructive to society as a whole.
This is why it’s so vital to change a babies pooey nappy, or clean up an adult of incontinence of faeces, asap! It’s because if left, the faeces will excoriate the skin and leave it red-raw. This is why babies cry so violently if they’re left in a soiled nappy- it’s very, very painful! Ultimately, it’s also threat to the integrity of the skin which could lead to serious infection!
Your description of this appalling person is apt!
Funny you should mention it…my personal morality canary(not my FW for the record) reminded me last night “Jeff, you will never have to worry about judging yourself for cheating. I do, and I have to live with that, and I hate myself for it.” Been thinking about that a lot today.
I had a boss on a side gig that had a PhD in theology and was a minister(also an atheist, ironically enough.) Every now and again I’d catch him when he was getting ready for a sermon and he would work through topics in religion with me(apropos of nothing usually-was not what I was getting paid for but hey).We come to the topic of “sin” and what it really is.
Long story short, he says to me “Jeff, what sin really is, is the kind of action that harms YOUR soul.” I think about that a lot, too.
I totally agree-these kinds of people are destructive. What scares me the most is articles like these rationalizing and normalizing their “dysregulated tantrum”(again, I owe you a dinner, whoever here coined that) and spreading that particular darkness. It’s not so much the bullshit behavior-it’s that these people(and I use that term loosely) have zero problem with what they have done. When this fool does it, it’s “relationship anarchy”. When a sociopath behaves similarly, it’s murder.
You remind me of an Elbert Hubbard quote: ‘We are punished by our sins, not for them’. I am a pretty bog-standard Christian (I am not sure that was entirely the case for Hubbard – in contrast to the author of the newspaper piece here, I think he might have been an actual anarchist!) but I find the quote very true, and helpful in trying to work out what is truly sinful.
Interesting, but they also don’t believe they will be punished.
Studies have shown that criminals commit crimes because of anger, jealousy, pride, greed, revenge, and the like. They believe they will get away with it.
But what I know of my ex’s life after he left is he’s paying for it. I don’t think he would say that though. He believes that he’s living his BEST life.
One of the authoritarians at the World Economic Forum in Davos (perhaps the single most destructive entity in the world but that’s for another forum) was talking this week about how all rights were just fictions we made up and that God and apparently everything relating to morals are just stories we tell ourselves. Well, if that were true, then there’s no reason someone couldn’t just go up and stick in a knife in him because…what rights does he have. People have come up with these conclusions over generations because we need rules to live by to maintain a civilization and ensure its survival and these are the ones that seemed to work. To me, that’s what the Bible actually is – it’s not morals imposed by God, it’s morals people saw that seemed to work and then they said that “God” said all this stuff to give it moral weight. And compared to what has evolved in the past few decades, the old rules DO work much better. I’m very concerned about these people who push this lack of basic morals and ethics….like those who think that shoplifting is okay because…liberation or some such. There’s always an excuse for bad behavior, but those only make people worse. There may have been points in various cheaters’ lives that might have set them on a different path if they had not been tempted in various ways. Once you start, it’s exactly like what that person said to you – “Jeff, you will never have to worry about judging yourself for cheating. I do, and I have to live with that, and I hate myself for it.” ” That person not only fucked up things for the spouse but also for THEMSELVES. Living without morals or ethics or concern for others IS unhealthy and leads to individual destruction and destruction of society. We HAVE to have these things to be healthy and productive.
Good points! I’m with you on the WEF! Schwab and his cohorts make my blood run cold, even if he does come across as a ham actor playing a stereotypical Bond Villain!
Their philosophy seems to be the same as that of habitual cheats-
“Only what I want matters because only I matter. If it harms YOU, tough, because YOU don’t matter!”
Amen– so to speak. 😀
You make a great point that “thou shalt not commit adultery” is largely about keeping the peace. I think the stricture may exist for the simple reason that humans– unlike our sexually indiscriminate ape ancestors– likely evolved as monogamous. To the extent that interloping on committed couples (a lot like trying to snatch someone’s children) carries a high statistical risk of unleashing the hardwired beast in many people, creating social prohibitions against infringement probably cuts down on vigilante violence and murder rates.
Primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that the evolutionary leap to human language was probably driven by by the impulse to keep tabs on mates through gossip. Personally I wonder if another of Wrangham’s arguments which borrows from the “expensive tissue theory”: that early human brains grew larger as guts and immune systems (85% of which reside in the gut) grew weaker when we learned to kill pathogens in food through cooking– also makes an argument for monogamy as an anti-STD strategy. Weaker immune systems = less resistance to crotch cooties.
Preach it, Mehitable. I guess we may differ on belief, but I agree with your argument. Especially enjoying the ‘so, tell me again why I shouldn’t stab you’ angle 🙂
This NYT column is satire right? A creative writing piece? I know it’s a no-no in our current culture to be “judgy” but (sorry not sorry), this woman is a monster.
The UBT is looking sharp!
If we didn’t judge….we wouldn’t be able to HAVE a society. Judging is essential for setting standards, standards are essential for maintaining civilization.
We have to be able to judge in order to set appropriate boundaries and discern red flags accurately! That passage in the Gospels is used by liars, cheats and other wrong-doers out of context and not in full. Christ said to judge ourselves first before judging others, but He also told us to be shrewd as serpents as well as gentle as doves. Being shrewd involves making accurate judgements!
Agreed! Forgot to put “/s” for wee bit of sarcasm…
Also judging is essential to keeping safe. Reminds me of The Gift of Fear (which I haven’t read yet).
This Kate Bailey? https://www.networkisa.org/profile/kate-bailey
If so, the NYT’s is really scouring the loser barrel for its endless adultery-is-groovy content. Since the interactive corporate connection search site Muckety was killed off, it’s become much harder to dig up increasingly hidden corporate ties so I can’t tell if the Times’ pro-cheating bent is due to the company’s or board’s cross investment in porn (like every other major media outlet) or because the board and editors are Epstein Island alum.
One thing I’m sure of: this is serious wag the dog spin, not a faithful reflection of public opinion. Back in 2014 when Gallup published another poll showing that public prohibitions against adultery were doubling down even as the public was becoming more accepting of gay marriage and single parenting, the Times published a whining editorial response, claiming– obviously falsely– that the poll reflected growing religious fundamentalism.
Also I have the impression the pro-cheating spin has become heavier post-#MeToo so, like I’ve said before, I suspect it’s an oblique way of trying to soften public conceptions of sexual consent because nervous media pervs can’t exactly openly defend rape and workplace harassment. All they can really do is muddy the ethical waters a bit “merchant of doubt” style and try to frame whistleblowers as somehow “uncool” and “sexually repressive.” They could– as Bailey seems to be gymnastically attempting– try to wrap it in feminist and LGBT flags and then accuse critics of being bigots. If this chases back a few sexual abuse lawsuits or keeps a few Ailses and Weinsteins from being cancelled, it’s at least something.
In any event, if this is like many other anti-feminist corporate campaigns (see Susan Faludi’s Backlash), the usual routine is to get dumb, desperate and struggling female hacks to front it. This is known as “reverse culture jamming”– revoicing or “ventriloquizing” some politically oppressive corporate message in a groovy, humanitarianish, freedomy tone. When I worked for an eco-health publication, the chemical industry tried every improbable form of reverse culture jamming under the sun from trying to cast pesticide carpet bombing as pro-LGBT and pro-racial equality to trotting out gaggles of pseudo-hipster she-shills to spin anti-aggro chemical activists as somehow anti-feminist and elitist. The logic used to this end was stupid, ahistorical and hysterical and couldn’t possibly have swayed anyone with half a brain but that wasn’t really the point. I think the point was to generate a certain mass of news content for the echo chamber so that policy makers on the take could pretend to view it as the predominant grassroots public view. The point was probably also to make the next gen of student loan debt-encumbered MBAs and STEM grads feel a bit less filthy for taking jobs with Bayer, etc., so they could still have hipster piercings and go to Burning Man without feeling like doomed hypocrites.
Whatever agenda is behind the current pro-cheating crusade, it seems to have a similar format and ring to it which suggests something rather sacred or profitable is being defended. I just can’t tell yet what that is. Maybe it has something to do with backlash to the coercive control legislation movement which could potentially change divorce, custody and criminal policies and laws. Or maybe pro-adultery is the last bastion of defense for the amorphous tribe of abusers in the world whose right to take power over various categories of victims have been eroded in so many other ways.
“If this is like many other anti-feminist corporate campaigns (see Susan Faludi’s Backlash), the usual routine is to get dumb, desperate and struggling female hacks to front it.” Hell of a Chump, your finely honed–and quite distinctive–critical edge once again gives me something interesting to think about!
Daaw, thank you. But the real thanks go to Susan Faludi for dissecting corporate jujitsu tactics and UC Santa Cruz anthropology professor Susan Harding for coining “reverse culture jamming.”
This tickles me, because Susan Faludi was my student when she was a college sophomore. Not that I take any credit for having helped to shape her–she was already off and running, a brilliant woman.
Wow, now there’s a super cool connection. I usually don’t care about celebs but I’d be a groupie for Faludi, lol. I’ll bet she remembers you well since you were obviously one of the profs who didn’t feel threatened or thrown off by her. When you read about how outliers and original thinkers tend to get squelched from young ages, I imagine it must take very special grit and an incredible support system to survive with missions and visions intact. Every positive influence and bit of good will along the way has to be helpful.
Fully, 100% agree on the “wag the dog” take. I believe it’s far more common than we think. Also, love how well you explained reverse culture jamming!
Also….there is nothing empowering about being someone’s hidden side piece.
Thank you for HIGHLIGHTING the pro-cheating crusade by these degenerates because that’s exactly what it is. It’s anti-family and ultimately anti-human (definitely anti-woman pushing this sister wife loathsome shit). And there MUST be money at the root of it because as the Good Book says “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Including pushing adultery.
The whole cheater apologism campaign in the media is so relentless that it reeks of financial agenda. I just can’t quite figure out the angle, whether it relates in a roundabout way to the gabillions lost by media companies and their sponsors in the wake of #MeToo or the argument that porn– which now has higher profits than all media combined– and the burgeoning dating app industry both rely on infidelity for market growth. On the other hand, there’s also the history of media companies shooting themselves in the foot financially to zealously uphold patriarchal values, like ABC cancelling Cagney and Lacey when it was among the most popular and profitable shows in history because execs hated how supposedly “masculine” the female characters were.
She wants the one she can’t have and it’s driving her mad. The lies we tell ourselves.
I cannot stop chucking over here. This faux-sophisticated bullshit works with anything!
“I’m a bipolar rutabaga. Just not the way most people understand ‘bipolar,’ or ‘rutabaga.'”
Why do these horrible people (looking at you, FW) always, always decide that screwing around for its own sake is some kind of impossibly sophisticated move that nobody in norm society can understand? If it’s not sophisticated when squirrels do it, how come it’s proof of your status as a superior human who’s transcended mere morals?
So effing tiresome.
You don’t have to be monogamous as long as you are honest and open with everyone, but cheating is BAD FOR CHEATERS TOO. She ain’t getting away with anything, she’s just justifying and planting some tulips on top of the garbage heap.
Tracy, I suggest you send your UBT to the NYT as a rebuttal to this narcissistic self-aggrandizing letter. I shudder to think that some people read this and didn’t really think critically about it from the perspective about the true level of destruction this sociopathic “relationship anarchist” is talking about.
Great idea
This is just so SAD. Does she have no self awareness at all? She’s actively pining for this barely-willing minimally-invested Fuckwit then writing about how amazing she is because she’s managed to cling to a thread of his attention by being cheap and easy. Girl, mistresses have been doing this since the beginning of time. You’re not new.
She talks a good game for someone who’s evidently too scared to open up the comment section on her article. She knows she’d get eviscerated.
How does tripe like this get a professional platform? Unreal.
How does tripe like this get a professional platform? Maybe because print news media is dying and increasingly resorts to something called “native advertising” — basically ads that pretend to be editorial content– to stay afloat, the NY Times included. John Oliver explains it well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_F5GxCwizc#action=share
Personally I wonder if the current pro-cheating “tone” in media relates to the fact that both the massive streaming porn industry and growing dating app industry arguably rely on infidelity for market growth and the fact that both are major media sponsors, Many legit media companies like ABC, Fox and Google are heavily cross invested in online porn and dating sites. But finding the profit connection isn’t always that easily traceable. Like, say, when the companies represented by various media corporate board members are cross invested in certain industries or board members are personally invested, sponsored content may not even have disclaimers because the ties are obscured. It would be very interesting if, one day, someone will does a deep dive into the finances and ties of members of the NY Times corporate board.
I also suspect that mega rich assholes in general are very invested in influencing divorce laws and policies. You could even call them “activist” about it. It was arguably mega rich FWs– who typically go through chumps like doses of salt– who managed to turn the state of NY into the place where fair division of assets in divorce goes to die. As the Weinstein and Ailes scandals demonstrated, there are a lot of epic FWs in media and news. Even if their companies take the fall and they don’t end up losing their own money as a result of harassment and rape lawsuits, they might still lose most of it in the divorces that frequently follow. Since they know they’re pigs, why wouldn’t they use their power to ensure their swill troughs stay full and they don’t have to pay the consequences for being pigs? It makes sense they’d use their power in media to try to soften public objections to shifts in divorce policy that favors abusers.
Is this why some places have only No Fault divorce only now, as here in Ireland, I wonder? Not to ease the trauma of divorce nor to make it less of an ordeal but to protect adulterers from the just financial consequences they’d face if their victim could still sue them for adultery, or any other sort of abuse in the divorce courts?
I’m a bit annoyed I can’t sue STBX for adultery, but on the other hand, it’s meant there’s no point in me doing anymore digging, which saves me from the horror of any Secret Sexual Basement he might have, but it prevents me from suing him for theft of marital assets for cocaine and sordid encounters as well!
So, No Fault divorces are for the benefit of the perp, not the victim! So much for “progress” and human rights, eh?
I think “no fault” came on the scene posing as “progress” from the days when women couldn’t file for divorce. But it ended up slanting tort and property division to the benefit of abusers.
She is right about the paper doll anology, from the front she looks like a whole person, but from any other angle there is zero depth, paper thin, there is nothing really there. On a more snarky note (continuing the analogy) she is something to be played with a few times and thrown in the trash.
Just another delusional amoral cunt who thinks she’s empowered by spreading her legs to another woman’s partner. When in fact, she’s an untrustworthy person, a bad friend & a bad example of sisterhood. Isn’t she just so modern & edgy though?!
It is staggeringly stupid to think a FW can take care of the emotional needs of one partner, let alone two.
After reiterating how important his caretaking of her emotional needs was to her, she went on to explain at length that she has no emotional needs at all.
She’s either flexing fake IDGAFs to seem tough or she’s a cold-blooded sociopath.
Why doesn’t she just do polyamory and stop using sex as a non consensual weapon against unsuspecting chumps? It’s not hard to be ethical and have non traditional relationships that don’t destroy others.
The poaching is the thrill, not the sex itself.
Yes–as someone said above, she enjoys not just doing something illicit but also (if my understanding of actual people I’ve known serves here) damaging other women’s lives.
Women with mommy issues come to mind. But, from what I learned in DV advocacy, that’s not always because their mommy was the worst parent. Researchers have observed how adult batterers end up so deeply internalizing the behavior of violent childhood role models that they also internalize and emulate the abuser’s contempt, blameshifting and rage towards the victim parent which is quite frequently mom. Though female child victims in abusive family dynamics often veer towards passivity as a survival mechanism, this isn’t always the case. Some girls will also internalize their abuser’s contempt, blame and rage towards the victim parent. I suspect this is partly what creates “Vichy” types who have it out for other women.
What is new here? As a child I used to ride through NYC Times Square with my parents where prostitutes( back in the 60s term) used to walk the avenue. Dressed real colorful and smiling. Waving down cars, looking for anyone with the time and money. I’m sure plenty of them had REGULAR customers, husbands, fathers, fiancée. I’m sure back up at the hotel room or apartment, these 1960s prostitutes had conversations about the wife, the kids, the job. Heck you could pay by the hour and get more conversation or more action or both. I’d say our special relationship anarchist is missing out on one big tip by giving herself up for FREE. She could have a second paying career instead of fighting monogamy for nothing. Come on Kate!!! Where’s that MBA sense from grad school?
I read somewhere that side pieces who take but don’t declare gifts and amenities from affairs that exceed the gift exemption can be reported to the IRS, at which point the value may be filed and fined as undeclared income. I guess that’s IRS code for “ho.”
Just opened my eyes said my prayers and read this from Hell of a Chump. I laughed immediately at such connections as the IRS.One of the things CN & Tracy brought back to my life as I recovered from a lifetime of being chumped, hey I just turned 7️⃣1️⃣ yesterday, is my sense of HUMOR! Going through abuse, police, restraining orders and divorce x2, is nothing to laugh about. But Tracy and all of you can be so hilarious with snark, wisdom and experiences. When I can laugh, there is HOPE for me or at least a good life can come out of sorrow. Yes we can fight the good fight and still Crack up with the ridiculous and turn hurt into comedy. Comediens do it and make money on it!!! Thank you Hell of a Chump, CN,Tracy, Mr.CN and all the crying heartbroken💔folks out there…let’s laugh through our tears and March forward! TO MEH!
Laughter is like a tourniquet for someone who just lost an arm in a woodchipper. I’m a big fan of gallows humor which, in studies of wartime POWs, appears to play a strong role in survival.
Now that is funny!! Humor is like A tourniquet after a wood chipper chews off an arm! You know, there was zero to laugh about at first. It was all a huge drama. But now I crack up at my cheaters lies and how I went into shock trying to get him to see my value and get treatment for his bipolar acting out! I see how hopeless that was now, but not then. Anyway, wish i could do stand up comedy, but I don’t have the timing!
Quite a few comedians like Peter Sellers, Andy Kaufman or even Maria Bamford have made careers of odd, slightly off or “naive” timing which is refreshing and unexpected compared to the usual hack routine. So maybe take an improv class for fun and explore your own quirky groove.
Comedy is the other side of tragedy ….That’s a great idea! Laugh through your tears. Thank you for the list of comediennes!
Wow. This person speaks and behaves in exactly the same way as a former colleague of mine who had borderline personality disorder. The people who bought this colleague’s BS and were seduced (into either professional discipleship or sex) typically ended up getting the hell out of there, often with bad scars to show for the experience. Like numerous other women, I was her friend for a while until I realized she was angling for my husband’s sexual attention and otherwise poisoning my life.
Through decades of hard, consistent work in psychotherapy, she was able to become less toxic (though still quite troubled) by the time she died, which I account a true triumph on her part. It’s shameful that the NYT prints–as if some kind of “thought” is being showcased–a screed that so clearly emanates from psychological disturbance.
Exactly – her behaviors remind me of women I’ve known with borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder.
Delusional. She’s essentially a stalker and refuses to acknowledge it.
Chump Lady at her finest! The observation of “oppositional defiant FW disorder” is literacy genius 🥇
Amazingly, she’s not the only person who has found that monogamy doesn’t work for them/isn’t something they are interested in.
There are lots of ways to be non-monogamous. Unfortunately for her, all the ethical ways involve little things like not lying to people, and not participating in someone’s efforts to deceive their romantic partner(s). Guess she is too much of an anarchist for that.
Or she gets off on the hiding and lying, but doesn’t want to admit it.
So she thinks of people as paper dolls. Wow.
Yes, others are merely 2-dimensional to her, which I suspect is a projection of her own shallowness, like most cheats and knowing APs.
This woman is delulu. I would no be entirely surprised if I discovered that this take on the relationship is entirely one-sided and he just responds to her requests for baby pictures that she can be edgy about, and updates her once in a while with pseudo-intimate insights about his life, to keep her from going off the deep end and running amok in his life. She says sex is just sex, but then why does she choose to have it with someone who she knows is unavailable if not for the frisson of the invisible power move she is making on the other women, thinking she is so special because the guy is willing to shit on his primary relationship to hump her. She wants attention and to be some juicy secret fantasy because she is an avoidant, has abandonment and intimacy issues and couldn’t handle the ins and outs of a real-life relationship and I can imagine she would go off the deep end if she found out her partner did exactly the same thing she has done with someone like her. A bit like my comment, her piece went on a lot longer than was necessary.
I suspect loverboy is thinking about her a lot less than she is thinking about him. I doubt his own wife/partner is that invested in him. I dont mind these sort of blogs as it is good to have insights into the internal workings of your average crackpot. A bit like HG Tudor’s yt videos where he shares all his nefarious thoughts. The “we dont have to follow the rules” is one FW trotted out post D Day. Apparently the legal system disagrees.
P.S. I think the youngins call this variety of person a “pick me”. I cant say anything that my daughter interprets as me claiming to be some sort of non conformist (for example, benign comments like I dont like shopping for shoes) without her saying “you’re not like the other girls.” Claiming to be an anarchist is a source of mockery in my household.
the crushing mandibles of the Universal Bullshit Translator.
Tracy, you crack me up. Thanks for everything you do here.