UBT: ‘Incredibly, The Schmoopie’
Parul Sehgal in the New Yorker magazine attacks Chump Nation and Tracy Schorn in her review of Sarah Manguso’s book Liars. The Universal Bullshit Translator is here for it.
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It’s not every day that a book reviewer attacks an author’s online support group. This week I was called out in the New Yorker for putting crazy ideas into Sarah Manguso’s head that infidelity is abusive.
Manguso’s book Liars seems to have touched a nerve. She wrote a raw, compelling account of what it’s like to be chumped. And Manguso unapologetically left out the self-recriminations. Which one of Jane’s flaws compelled her husband to fuck strange? Was it the way Jane silently corrected John’s grammar? Or how she resentfully mopped up vomit? Did her pussy fail to enchant? How could Manguso create a villain and not sympathetically examine his motivations? John’s just…. bad.
Parul Sehgal is not the first critic whose head has exploded because a woman suffered and did not also soothe. Manguso committed the unspeakable crime of describing abuse. Relentlessly detailed abuse. Without the respite of bothsidersism.
How could Manguso — a brilliant, celebrated writer! — have committed such a blunder? They have theories. It’s too soon. She wrote Liars right after her husband cheated and left. No, she MEANT for Jane to be an unreliable narrator! Or, Parul Sehgal’s theory on Liars: I put stupid ideas in her head.
An excerpt of Parul Sehgal’s review of Liars:
Signed and sealed, “Liars” is almost impenetrable in its self-conviction—but there is a clue to understanding it, embedded in the acknowledgments. Manguso thanks the cartoonist Tracy Schorn “and the life-saving community of Chump Nation,” an online network of people who follow Schorn’s writing on infidelity. Manguso became a daily visitor to their forums after her husband left her; it was, she said on Schorn’s podcast, her therapy. The group shares a particular vocabulary and framework for understanding infidelity. The betrayed party is “the chump,” the cheater is a “fuckwit,” and the cheating partner is, incredibly, “the schmoopie.” A chump minimizing a fuckwit’s harm is said to be engaged in “spackling.” For the chump to compete with the schmoopie for the fuckwit’s attention is to do the “pick-me dance.” To try to understand the cheater’s motivation is to be entangled in “the skein of crazy.” Chump Nation has a mission to reframe cheating as abuse and to push back against “the reconciliation-industrial complex.” “Lose a cheater, gain a life” is the motto.
These steely certainties, swaddled in baby talk and baby thinking, are the unfortunate scaffolding of “Liars,” which employs language not of harm, hurt, or humiliation but of domestic abuse. “It’s the critical mass of details that makes John’s abuse impossible to deny,” Manguso said on the podcast. “We need to get specific when we talk about covert domestic abuses.” Heterosexual marriage itself is regarded as only questionably consensual. “We are impelled to make this bad choice,” Manguso added. “The entire civilization is screaming it at us . . . from the cradle.”
A little proportion, please. As the product of generations of arranged marriages, a number of them coerced, I find that such claims feel strange, if not obscene. It’s not merely that bandying around these neon words—abuse, coercion—dilutes their power; it’s that these words are being deployed to foreclose thought and impose silences of their own. Chump Nation cautions against posing too many questions about why someone cheats, about marital dynamics or psychology, to avoid revictimizing the chump. The finality of such diagnoses stunts Manguso’s account, keeps it from becoming a more persuasive story, where we would genuinely feel for and trust the protagonist, experience the full measure of her loss and exploitation. There are occasional glimpses of a more complex portrait. (Manguso is too interesting a writer to hew completely to the program.) “Being ignored—was that my trigger?” Jane wonders, considering an old pattern with John. “For rage and, somehow, also, for desire? It turns me on when you ignore me.” Later, when considering her own decisions, her orientation toward freedom or constraint, she admits to herself, “I was a logical person, and I chose restriction, over and over, because it felt good.”
Parul Sehgal on Liars
There’s only one thing to do here. Prepare the Lebkuchen.
Signed and sealed, “Liars” is almost impenetrable in its self-conviction
Horrors. Not a woman with self conviction!
—but there is a clue to understanding it, embedded in the acknowledgments.
This is totally normal. Frequently, I review the acknowledgment sections of books to understand why an author has completely taken leave of her senses.
Manguso thanks the cartoonist Tracy Schorn
I blame the subversive pen and ink drawings.
“and the life-saving community of Chump Nation,” an online network of people who follow Schorn’s writing on infidelity. Manguso became a daily visitor to their forums after her husband left her; it was, she said on Schorn’s podcast, her therapy.
I, Parul Sehgal, cannot conceive of what it’s like to be a celebrated author, or a victim of covert abuse. So instead of using my powers of imagination, I’ll weaponize Manguso’s brave vulnerability on a painful subject to make myself feel superior.
Schmoopie? WTF?
The group shares a particular vocabulary and framework for understanding infidelity. The betrayed party is “the chump,” the cheater is a “fuckwit,” and the cheating partner is, incredibly, “the schmoopie.”
I am incredulous at Schmoopie. Why not willing orifice or fuck puppet? Is it because Schmoopie is gender neutral unlike cunt? I fail to understand Schmoopie. What is snark?
A chump minimizing a fuckwit’s harm is said to be engaged in “spackling.” For the chump to compete with the schmoopie for the fuckwit’s attention is to do the “pick-me dance.” To try to understand the cheater’s motivation is to be entangled in “the skein of crazy.” Chump Nation has a mission to reframe cheating as abuse and to push back against “the reconciliation-industrial complex.” “Lose a cheater, gain a life” is the motto.
Leave a cheater, gain a life. We don’t have editors or fact checkers at the New Yorker. I did, however, skim a podcast.
Baby say wha?
These steely certainties, swaddled in baby talk and baby thinking, are the unfortunate scaffolding of “Liars,”
Goo boo wuvy baa baa!
(I’m sorry, the UBT is malfunctioning.)
Snark and cartoons are baby thinking. I leave the sophistication to my turgid 2,000 word hit piece that could stupefy a coked-up hyena. Cable television is selling my reviews as sleep aids for seniors. I wouldn’t know a trenchant piece of commentary if it bit my left nipple.
Waah bah goo!
are the unfortunate scaffolding of “Liars,” which employs language not of harm, hurt, or humiliation but of domestic abuse. “It’s the critical mass of details that makes John’s abuse impossible to deny,” Manguso said on the podcast. “We need to get specific when we talk about covert domestic abuses.” Heterosexual marriage itself is regarded as only questionably consensual. “We are impelled to make this bad choice,” Manguso added. “The entire civilization is screaming it at us . . . from the cradle.”
Infidelity is just harm, hurt, and humiliation.
It’s never cervical cancer, suicidal ideation, or financial fraud. Double lives are an ouchy! So you were hurt paternity testing your children! Keep it in perspective. I once had a relative with an arranged marriage.
A little proportion, please. As the product of generations of arranged marriages, a number of them coerced, I find that such claims feel strange, if not obscene.
Jane CHOSE John. She had agency. Arranged marriages have no agency. Women are never abused in non-arranged marriages.
Watch me completely miss the point on the societal messages women get to stay in hetero-normative marriages. #obscene
It’s not merely that bandying around these neon words—abuse, coercion—dilutes their power; it’s that these words are being deployed to foreclose thought and impose silences of their own.
If Tracy Schorn challenges you to think of double lives as abusive you’ll never have another thought on the subject again.
Chump Nation cautions against posing too many questions about why someone cheats, about marital dynamics or psychology, to avoid revictimizing the chump.
On the basis of one podcast interview, I can authoritatively declare that in 12 solid years of Schorn’s writing on infidelity, she never addresses these topics. I also can tell you how many jelly beans are in that jar and what the stock market will do tomorrow.
Chumps should be stop being butt hurt and devote their energies to understanding WHY their partner cheats. I would give the same advice to anyone pistol whipped by a mugger. Vitamin B deficiencies? Lead poisoning? Was your skirt too short?
The finality of such diagnoses stunts Manguso’s account, keeps it from becoming a more persuasive story, where we would genuinely feel for and trust the protagonist, experience the full measure of her loss and exploitation.
I’m not sufficiently entertained by Jane’s loss and exploitation.
I need more understanding of the exploiter. The same can be said for Charles Dickens’ two-dimensional portrait of Bill Sykes. He had his reasons for murdering Nancy and trying to drown his dog. They remain unexplored!
There are occasional glimpses of a more complex portrait. (Manguso is too interesting a writer to hew completely to the program.)
Occasionally Manguso breaks free from Schorn’s indoctrination.
“Being ignored—was that my trigger?” Jane wonders, considering an old pattern with John. “For rage and, somehow, also, for desire? It turns me on when you ignore me.”
Jane is turned on by John’s shitty behavior! FINALLY an insight! Schorn would call this the “pick me dance,” but who takes the ravings of a lunatic cartoonist seriously?
Later, when considering her own decisions, her orientation toward freedom or constraint, she admits to herself, “I was a logical person, and I chose restriction, over and over, because it felt good.”
Jane chose captivity and poor treatment because it felt good. Therefore, she only has herself to blame.
Since there’s a good chance Parul will be reading your blog now, I’d like to invite her to a round table conversation with some of us chumps where we can detail not only how cheating indeed rises to the level of abuse, but also how CL has been one of few resources available that has saved many a life from the condemnation of sustained abuse and gradual insanity. What an infuriating person!
I second the motion.
I took “life saving” to be more literal. I want the reviewer to know that, when I was suicidal and so thin my co-worker thought I had cancer, Tracy made me laugh and gave me a forum in which to call the cause of my symptoms “abuse.”
Do you remember the Upton Sinclair quote, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”? It’s a waste of time trying to argue “our side” to an individual who works for the other.
The same idea is behind the quip “It’s not that they don’t see, it’s that they disagree.” Sehgal heard the podcast with Sarah and obviously, at the very least, combed over reader comments to Tracy’s send-up of the New York Times review of Sarah’s book, many of which described things like financial abuse, STDs, trauma to children, smear campaigns, coercion, even violence, etc. — in other words, descriptions of categorical “domestic abuse.”
Sehgal even claims to understand abuse due to family of origin issues. But unlike genuine advocates and survivors have done in response to the increasing inclusion of psychological abuse, coercion and control within the definition of domestic abuse, Sehgal doesn’t welcome the more surgical definition and reliable statistical harbinger for violence (coercive control has been found to be the “golden thread” which best predicts risk of domestic murder). Instead she rankles at it and sets the victim advocacy clock back fifty years by using ye olde misogynist trick of setting up a “pain Olympics” competition, claiming that anyone who wasn’t coerced into staying in a relationship at gunpoint or, say, with threats of being lit on fire by their in-laws isn’t really entrapped nor a genuine victim.
Since Sehgal ironically bandied about the term “coercion” in her review, she’s clearly capable of reading the introduction to veteran advocate, shelter movement spearhead and coercive control expert Evan Stark’s book “Coercive Control.” She could discover on her own that Stark is explicit that the failure to protect victims and children from domestic violence and domestic murder starts with the stubborn institutional insistence that abuse only be defined as involving fists, fire arms and tire irons. Over the course of his fifty years in the field, Stark learned that most domestic violence survivors cite emotional and psychological abuse as not only the most prevalent but the most paralyzing and devastating form of abuse, even more than violent assault.
Sehgal surely knows better but she also obviously also knows who butters her bread. For whatever reason (financial, ideological, political, whatever), her employers at the NY Times and New Yorker are currently in the throes of some gonzo cheater defense crusade. In short, she’s a shill. Trying to “educate” a shill is like battling the Omnidroid from The Incredibles– the robot that learns to beat opponents by fighting with them.
I heartily endorse this idea! Pahrul needs to be educated out of her entitled stupor.
Chump Nation cautions against posing too many questions about why someone cheats, about marital dynamics or psychology, to avoid revictimizing the chump.
Yes, we do caution against trying to get the fuckwit to acknowledge the “why” of it. Because it’s an invitation to more lying. Full stop.
I already know why my ex husband cheated. He felt entitled. He was also stealing money from the marriage. I’m not talking about a little pilfering here and there — I’m talking about in a community property state, he systematically skimmed 40% of his pay, his partnership distributions, his bonuses … leaving the family struggling to meet expenses on the remaining 60% of his paycheck combined with 100% of my paycheck. He did this for 24 years, because he was ENTITLED.
I have no patience whatsoever for anyone who presumes to lecture me on “why” he cheated. His cheating was every bit as wrong and abusive as his stealing. If you wouldn’t make excuses for his stealing … why would you make excuses for his cheating?
I’ve never been “cautioned” about frequently going on and on about parallels between cheater MO/psychology and forensic studies of batterers and serial killer. The reason I repeat this stuff is that certain theories like “neutralization,” “cubing,” “masked dependency,” etc., actually fit serial cheaters quite well… give or take broken bones or being skinned alive. In fact, social research is increasingly discovering that enforcement of one-sided monogamy may be a typical driver for domestic violence and homicide.
You could definitely call that a type “skein untangling”– yet I’ve never been told to pipe down. So I gather the thing Tracy is mostly warning about in terms of skein untangling is getting sucked into abusers’ or their apologists’ sad sausage psychobabble or blameshifting alibis and consequently further entrapped in trying to “fix” them.
At least in my view, the problem with skein-untangling is that most of the accessible pop psych formats for this offer false “hopium.” Unless someone can find examples of reformed serial killers, there’s not a lot of “hopium” in drawing that parallel.
In any case, I think what Sehgal is really complaining about is that this forum doesn’t offer sad sausage explanations for abuse and doesn’t embrace victim blaming “takes two to tango” precepts. Her argument is a throwback to the dark ages of victimology when the same was demanded of survivors of severe violence– that they “consider” the abusers’ perspective and “contemplate” how they brought it on themselves.
Ah, but there are those who *would* make excuses for his stealing. Right up there among the excuses is, “Well it was HIS money anyway.” But the money I earned was OUR money, apparently. And cheating is, according to my late father, the unrepentant cheater,
“no big deal. Everyone does it.” Everyone except females, I guess.
My XHCheater had stuffed away tons of funds into.his own accounts while he went from job to job and bought cars, Motorcycles and went shopping. I kept my steady job and didn’t take sick days unless I was near death. I did NOT know in the end that my XHC had scammed marital assets for himself.along with paying for massages and doing woman at work until HR stepped in. Our divorce showed me he had plenty and got the house as I thought he was broke and in need. Too late for me to break even, I settled for my freedom first. If you are being intimately abused, other abuse may be more hidden. A forensic accountant was necessary but I had no idea. My skein to figure out, but I’m sending out the flares to all the chumps who bleed for their cheaters. You are being used, not loved at all. FYI
They do it because they can, and trying to understand more is an exercise in psychological futility. I really wouldn’t wish that kind of trauma on the critic… but I’m certainly tempted to.
They’d just say ‘but they’re nice to ME’ 🙄
Finished her book a couple of weeks ago. It is brilliant. I don’t even know where to start. Ok …describing Tracy as a “cartoonist” is only a tiny piece of who she is. Let’s minimize her credibility shall we? You ass!!! She and Chump Nation saved my life. Infantilizing the Chump language and premises is unnecessary and petty. Perhaps a fuckwit protests (cheats) too much.
Describing Tracy as a “cartoonist” is a dead giveaway.
Yeah, I’m a cartoonist who writes. Like a bear who rides a bicycle.
Who translated the Rosetta stone? That is what Tracy did for me. Translating and the interpreting the cheaters secret codes so I could understand it. I’m pretty sure the translator of the Rosetta Stone got push back. But it still stands today as the truth of those languages. Just like Tracy’s work will be applauded more and more in the future. Long live Cartoonist who speak and can read in multiple ancient languages!!!!
I discovered Schorn in 2015. Thank goodness I was an absolute mess. My ex left me in a financial mess and going to get an STD test was so stressful and humiliating at the time. I had very young children and was emotionally distraught. I found this book that somehow helped me survive the worst moments. I would have spent years doing the “pick me dance”. Also just not moving on with my kids and being the sane parent. It has been several years since D day. I am grateful for being a part of this community.
Ridiculous victim blaming piece! Gross how critics will pretend abuse is not happening, in order to maintain their air of high sophistication. What is with this women throwing betrayed women under the bus like this? I guess I’m not sophisticated enough to understand.
Oh and yeah, count me in as a ‘Jane’ who experienced sTD, suicidal ideation and (after separation) discovered financial fraud. Right, being nonchalant about secret-double-life infidelity is just what sophisticated betrayed spouses do!
Chump Nation cautions against posing too many questions about why someone cheats
Does it, though? CN seems to raise the question often. It just comes to an unavoidable conclusion that the “why” exists in the cheater who made the choices and did the things, not in the cheated-on who skated along thinking they shared a reality with their partner. What is this terrifying closed-mindedness that won’t offer admission to the questions of what a chump did that was just as bad?
I seriously wonder if Sehgal is a FW. If not, she certainly seems to have existed well apart from the experience of having your entire worldview upended by the crass deception of the person you’re supposed to be closest to.
Arranged marriages where woman have NO SAY AT.ALL and they are property…that is the baseline here. So there is a long way to go to self empowerment and maybe impossible in many cultures. I feel blessed to be free of my abuser.
Whoa ChumpLady is having a week, and it’s only Tuesday!
Barbra Streisand writes in her autobiography about a time when she was invited to give a speech about feminism and she chose to talk about women who betray other women instead about sexist men. The day woman aren’t divided against one another is the day the world will change for the better. I was that young smug woman at one time, too, same as this young reviewer.
She seems to be something of a careerist, good at self-promotion, so writing something like this cheap, willfully obtuse review is going to help her generate views — and make lots of cheater friends in high places. Because she is the cheater’s apologist dream! But it makes me sad for the old New Yorker, that used to take the high road and eschew this kind of second-rate cleverness. I used to love the New Yorker and I still subscribe, but it has lost its subtlety and humor, I find.
Maybe in traditional Indian culture men don’t cheat? I don’t think so…?
You’ll see, Parul. We’ll be here waiting when you need us.
Perel, Parul, P.U.!
The liberal thinking. There are no losers. Were all winners ❤️
That same liberal logic dumbs school kids down so they can feel good about being stupid.
🖕them.
I think you mean mainstream pseudo-progressive thinking. A genuine progressive wouldn’t be arguing for a return to the old-timey definition of domestic abuse as only that which involves fisticuffs, guns and honor-killing.
Yeah I thought the same HOAC — isn’t this generally considered a progressive magazine? What is with all this arranged marriage bullshit, and literally saying habitual “hurt, harm, and humiliation” are not abuse? OMFG. I definitely, other than the general “both-sideism,” did not think this review aligned with liberal values.
Sehgal is doing the usual apologist trick of setting the bar for abuse– or hegemony or violent colonialism or any other (fill in the blank) expression of repression– at “lethal,” as if no abuse or degradation less than that even counts as abuse. This is especially true since Sehgal referenced arranged marriages in India to set the bar. This invokes nothing less than in-laws dousing a daughter in law with kerosene and setting her on fire because she didn’t kowtow or wipe the ass of her husband with sufficient groveling worship. So basically Sehgal sets the bar in hell.
In a way it reminds me of “witch dunking” in Salem where, if you didn’t actually die from being submerged in water while strapped to a chair, you must be a witch! Yes, survivors of extreme psychological coercion and control may physically survive but does that mean the abuse these survivors endured is somehow “really good for you” and “healthy”?
A good measure of whether even the least directly violent, psychologically abusive behaviors of most cheaters towards chumps– such as lying, gaslighting, DARVO, veiled threat, etc– is really acceptable is to consider whether these behaviors should be codified in academic child-rearing manuals as a way to develop psychologically healthy children.
It’s not to say that adult victims are as skinlessly vulnerable as children but what kind of principle or precedent are these apologists trying to set in terms of what constitutes injurious abuse?
You are correct.
Errant nonsense, and this is about politics exactly how?
Not political. My daughter taught in an Illinois inner city school. You are in denial.
Take it from a liberal living in a liberal paradise — that’s not even close to actual “liberal thinking.” Better to leave the cartooning to our talented host.
Nope, my daughter taught in an inner city school in Illinois.
As a liberal among many others, I feel relatively qualified to speak to “liberal thought.” I have at least a working knowledge of my own thinking. And that’s not “liberal thought,” mine or that of anyone I know or even know of, no matter whether or where your daughter taught.
It’s common knowledge in the scholastic community whether you want to ignore it or not is up to you.
Anyone who’s read Diane Ravitch or has simply raised secondary school-age kids in the last decade or so might be aware that the incremental privatization of public schools has chased out most of the genuinely dedicated teachers, many of who end up developing certified PTSD over the current testocracy and all the fallout this entails in terms of student well-being, mental health and behavioral manifestations of same. What remains are the “team players” and go-along-to-get-along types which, when you’re playing for a really shitty team, isn’t a great character appraisal.
One of the big problems in history is that those who are entrenched in any particular toxic system don’t necessarily have a clear overview of what’s wrong with the system. Corrupt systems will typically blame their own collateral for institutional failings and those dependent on the system for salary and/or who lack firm ethical principles will typically parrot the blameshifting.
Methinks the asshole doth protests just a bit too much.
i can’t read the review as it’s behind the paywall. i’ll try later.
i guess parul has yet to be objectified and used (sexually/financially/emotionally) by a partner. devalued when she cuts her hair and spends less time/$$ on her appearance because she’s too busy with the baby, let alone if she’s gained weight in the process (your ass is the biggest i’ve ever seen it). listened to her partner’s comments on her maternal appearance (why do you new mothers always have to cut your hair?), and snide comments on other women in the community, older ones, who push back at entitled men (that clerk is a real bitch). gradually, insidiously minimized the women, because women exist to please men.
my biggest response to the excerpt you’ve included Tracy is that parul assumes i’m dealing with a person who has the capacity to explore reasons behind a great many things, and i’m not. narcissists don’t have empathy and cannot be intimate, and a serious conversation requires capacity for intimacy.
i’m dealing with, at best, a 12 year old boy who openly sneers when confronted with his own bad behaviour. who, when the mask falls, hates women and that includes me, and his own daughter.
once you see the hatred, you cannot unsee it, and, looking back, you track the devaluation and discard cycle. things become clear. it’s a real process.
reading LIARS, a well-written novel, helped me place my own experience into perspective.
Damn, this is it. My FW is so juvenile. No capacity for self reflection. No capacity for selfless love.
More likely she has been and is desperate to believe it’s not abuse.
There are millions like her.
Yes my FW thought he was a champion of women! He hated his mom. Had sex with a female colleague after emotional affair, and had emotional affair (wtfks if they were physical) with another colleague who he was mentoring who was about 14 yrs younger. Then was entitled to have sex once sometimes twice a day with me. They hate women, resent women. They may not even be aware.
Chumpolicious, yup, I have a mommy hater too, actually I think he’s resentful he can’t sleep with her and seeks out partners that look like a younger her. He puts the partner on a pedestal then resents them when they don’t give him the adoration he deserves (like a mother to a child). I wish I had kept more detailed journals because from what I can recall the cycle of abuse of me was tied to him being condescending and even verbally abusive to his mother.
He thinks he loves women, but he doesn’t. They exist to support him, the main character.
Same with my FW. He preys on the vulnerable younger women that he employs. Young women who are grieving or have mental health issues.
When I finally called him out on how he takes advantage of vulnerable women, he told me that he is the vulnerable one because Schmoopie wouldn’t leave him alone.
I hate that guy so much.
faux feminists. “i support women” followed by “all the women get the opportunities in this company”. this from an executive VP, AN EXECUTIVE VP of a rather large company. mine once let slip that he hated his mom, too. but she coddled him and favoured him over his sister and created the narcissist in him.
oh, and reading chumplady helps me place my own experience with perspective, with snark and laughs.
I thought it was a good way to introduce readers to a different narrative. If I read the article, and didnt know, I would be intrigued and look up the blog.
So I want to thank her for not only reviewing the book, but mentioning all CN info. By writing about CL and not endorsing it, it flew under editors radar, so they more likely to publish it. Brings it to peoples attention! So thanks Parul! Much appreciated.
I think this Parul girl is either guilty or envious and/or idolizes Ester Perel.
She did not qualify a single criticism with a “because”, essential for criticism to be legitimate.
Calling “… an affair partner a schmoopie is incredulous BECAUSE….” Just because I said so? Now THAT is abusive to the authors she reviews.
If cheating is not abuse and not taking unfair advantage of a human being, then neither is slavery, as Tracy always reminds us
Parul says she is married, but she must be very boring.
Who in the Crap is this Parul Sehgal person?
Never heard of them, had to look them up and was SHOCKED to find out it was a woman! I thought it was a dude, because it sounds like a cheater dude talking (although there are women cheaters too, so they can also sound like this. I must acknowledge). She sounds like a whiny cheater who wants to complain about how unfairly THEY are being treated, how THEY were abused by the chump. It’s not what the cheater and abuser does, it’s your reaction to it! Stop reacting like that and everything will be fine. Bitch…please!
The only thing I want to say is ” She needs to shut the FUCK up. She is talking out of her ass because her mouth KNOWS better.”
Please, articulate commenters, send some comments to the New Yorker in response to Parul’s piece (I won;’t call it a review), correct the errors, and direct them here. Educate the readers and the editors.
First of all, I would like to thank the New Yorker for shepherding more wayward souls our way. You all make lovely tote bags!
That said, I will dispense with anything resembling “Baby Talk” below(this is a Jeff response-hope you have hydration ready).
I feel like this Parul individual did not spend enough time glancing around here to get one of the implicit points of our community:
In my subjective experience of being in this community-I feel like Chumplady is the 201 level course on surviving infidelity. Like a lot of people, I came here from “The 180” and its ilk and the whole mentality of “this is partly your fault.” Permit me to fill in the blanks more explicitly from my own experience and practice.
The philosophy of “Trust that they suck” does not imply that we chumps “did nothing wrong” and that we should not examine our own behaviors or that we should not work to better ourselves. Far from it(more below).
The point that IS more explicit-that cheating IS abuse(it’s in the DSM!) and that victims of abuse do not ever deserve to be abused-full stop. Abuse and victimization is not invited. Abuse is not forced. Abuse is a decision by the abuser. Period. Nobody put a gun to your head-you were in full control of your actions. We were, too.
It honestly did take the high level betrayal and trauma that I experienced(almost at the year mark here) for me to appreciate how true that all is. Because we don’t talk about it. I will never again write off somebody going through anything like this as “bitter” or “sad sack”. You don’t know Hell until you realize you’ve been choking on Sulphur for a while.
And while we’re having these frank conversations about abuse, we should probably have some serious conversations about why it’s probably not OK to condescend to people that are clearly suffering in ANY situation, but that’s just me.
It sounds like “Liars” talks pretty frankly about that and ruffled some feathers. Mine would probably be ruffled too if I wasn’t ready to see my actions as potentially awful to somebody else.
Cheating is at its core predicated on a lack of consent and respect-and respect of the word “no.” I struggle to take at face value why those notions are extremely important everywhere else in our culture but apparently not for “side action.”
I am a mental health professional by trade and have been for almost 20 years now. Even before I joined the ranks here-I would tell you no therapist worth their salt would tell somebody to stay with somebody that is being abusive(there are plenty of bad, enabling, status-quo pushing therapists out there.) Or to keep themselves in a situation where they are likely to come to more harm, physical, mental, or otherwise.
Some situations simply cannot be saved. “The wisdom to know the difference.”
If there are people that are into polyamory and can make it work for them ethically and everybody is 100% onboard? Great! I accept that people are different from me and have different desires. I am not one of them. Nor have I ever met anybody that has pulled it off successfully. I HAVE seen plenty of divorces when it goes sideways. Perhaps I’m just a prude, but I personally tend to err on the side of caution when I have witnessed what scientists would empirically call a “0% success rate”.
When I started my relationship with my fuckwit(I did actually type FW there, but…well…screw it, “in for a penny”), I made it pretty clear that I was not into that. That was rather gleefully ignored. That was my one rule and it was broken. I do not understand why I should be expected to be OK with that. There is only one true Rule Breaker where I come from, and as I was reminded over the weekend-it is a Noble Phantasm from the Caster class(I hope my fellow weebs in the Chump Nation got a chuckle out of that.)
I accept that I was not the greatest partner. I can be very difficult to deal with and have not always taken the best care of myself-physically and emotionally. I now recognize that I was part of A problem that I probably should have extracted myself from. I probably did deserve to lose the relationship and to get bitch-slapped for my own stubbornness and self righteousness at times.
No. Not that way. Not like that. If I was making her THAT unhappy, if I was that toxic, simply leaving would have sent the message to me perfectly. She knew that. She had the means to leave and didn’t until after D-Day. I Trust That She Sucks because no amount of mental gymnastics I have done trying to defend her in my own mind and justify why it was all my fault has never solidly landed on the conclusion of “well, that’s something a non-awful person would do with a clear conscience.”.
I did not deserve to have my mind broken and wonder when I will be able to trust again. If ever I was “too much”, it was on her to maturely address the situation or to otherwise “find less” as the kids would say.
She made a choice to abuse. I made the choice to endure it. I now make the choice to say “no more.”
I have made the choice to remain No Contact. No new contact=no new trauma. She is now in a position where to do more harm remains a direct and deliberate act on her part as I do nothing to invite it, even in the world where you hold your breath long enough and that sort of thing makes sense. All of my obligations to her ended on D-Day. She was given the opportunity to fix things and salvage the friendship and she mocked me instead. Actions have consequences. If her choice to punish me for my mistakes was to betray me, the consequence is that she will have no more of me ever again.
Like I said-I was part of A problem. I was not THE problem. We do make it pretty explicit around here that there is an ethical opportunity to do “right” that is passed upon in favor of villainy.
And I am learning from what happened. I am healing. I am growing. I am learning to be a better partner again(hopefully someday…) More importantly-I’m learning to be a better person for nobody else but me. Less co-dependence, more openness. I take full accountability for what I did wrong. That does not mean I deserved to get cheated on. Nobody deserves the horrors visited upon them. Period.
My failures are mine. Life isn’t fair and the world is full of horrors. All that being said, I don’t deserve abuse and neither do you. Which is why that is who I am growing for-me.
Absolutely! I, too, consider myself as “part of the problems” in my marriage but I was certainly not THE problem. But I suffered for years after my divorce, thinking that it was my inadequacies that led to his cheating and lying. I don’t think that any more. I only wish I had achieved this level of understanding at the time. I could have saved myself a lot of anguish.
“I accept that I was not the greatest partner.” and “I probably did deserve to lose the relationship”
These statements are true for myself and also for my ex-FW. One of the things I used to struggle with was the idea that despite the betrayal and all that goes with it (no need to describe to CN) my ex-FW was not a cartoon character of evil. I have read on this site about the truly evil people (CL’s scary ex-FW among them) that made the same choice as my ex, but in my case I can still see the good parts of mine. If he were more disordered than he actually was I never would have stayed for 37 years. As for myself I did not deserve to be cheated on the same as he did not deserve to cheat. I, too, am not a cartoon character of a termagant wife, and actually my character was/is quite sound. My conclusion is that I bear 50% responsibility for a bad marriage, and 0% responsibility for his betrayal.
Thanks Jeff. This is particularly powerful as you’re a mental health professional. Wow.
The effort to minimize,DARVO, push back, argue details, blame the victims, add more shame on top of the pile of manure we already experienced as chumps is just a ploy for attention. Tracy has already addressed every game in the book of cheaters and those who apologize, support and idolize those who cheat. The Swiss people who dont know and dont want to know. The shallow swimmers who cant think beyond their own lack of experience. The ignorance is deep and wide. But I was ignorant too of the tactics of abuse and believed it was normal and necessary to stay within the jaws of intimate abuse. Tracy raised my blinders and set me free. It is a gift that CN and CL are being noticed. The word will get out to more chumps who need to escape the Hell of abuse they have grown used to. The crumbs they are eating while the cheater gobbles cake with frosting. No more for me. Let the word get out through push backs and ignorant people, but let the word get out. Yayee for all of us and for those who write the books to bring up the secrets of the abusive tactics we think are normal. Yayee to us!!
I wonder if she’d be interested in joining me for some of my doctor’s visits. We can have some nice chats about how relatable and interesting it is to wonder *why* somebody else’s cheating endangered my health and why I’m such an indoctrinated baby about it.
Indeed. Perhaps she should have also been there to hold my hand at the hospital when I was having a cervical growth removed (HPV from cheater of course) and again as I sat by the phone waiting to find out if it was cancer.
She’s kind of unintentionally identified one of the core themes of the chump experience — the sense of disbelief, and “this can’t possibly be real” that the chump goes through when they hit the point of unpacking all of the things they’d forgiven, minimized, overlooked, in the interests of being a loving and non-henpecking spouse… only to have their efforts rewarded by being discarded like trash. It’s like Parul’s read the passage but doesn’t have access to the cipher that would have allowed her to correctly interpret it.
fwiw, Parul, I’m glad that you don’t get it. I’m glad that you’ve lived such a privileged life that you can’t even conceive of what it’s like to have to unintentionally uncover, one piece at a time, the covert abuse you’ve been subjected to by the person you’d devoted yourself to and trusted for 5, 10, 20, 30 years. Good for you. I hope you never understand it.
Parul is on Twitter conceding her review was “grouchy” if you care to weigh in. https://x.com/parul_sehgal/status/1820826052882731422
I couldn’t help replying to her tweet.
What a self absorbed pompous ass. I suffered through blame&shame game of the RIC. I was told it was obviously my shortcomings that led to the never ending sexting and phone sex. The “I love you’s” to scumbags and mocking I received in those messages, was all on me. The loss of income when my spouse lost her job from texting at work was no big deal, and the panic attacks? Just a product of my closed mind. Maybe if I could pick me dance harder I would get my life and mind back. Chump nation gave me the truth, hope, and others like me. My story is far from the worst I have read here, and it was bad enough for me to think “Is this one high enough?” every time I drove over a bridge. In short, thank you Tracy and my fellow chumps…..and screw you Parul.
Again, the want for nuance. But maybe the work of fiction is the catharsis needed to heal and it is the work of the author and hers alone. When we create, we owe nothing to no one except ourselves, everyone else can take what they would like should they engage.
When someone trumpets they are a ‘literary critic’ as their favourite label, you know it’s going to be an epic dumpster fire.
I was not disappointed.
What folk like this don’t know, they make up to justify their own ignorance or squash it all into an acceptable shape-much like the good old Switzerland Friend.
Word salad does not make one smarter than the average bear.
Being ignorant of the harm does not alter the facts- it’s all abuse .
I feel like there was an era of journalism starting around 2000ish that was almost purely “just take what you think you read/watched/listened to/experienced and take a dump on it to be ‘edgy’.” Or, “here are the thing’s worst qualities-back into your bubble with your reality shows with you! Can’t have anybody thinking actually critically now!”
Honestly between these two reviews I get absolutely no sense on if the book is coherent or good-just that both reviewers took philosophical issue with the content.
“I accept that I was not the greatest partner.” and “I probably did deserve to lose the relationship”
These statements are true for myself and also for my ex-FW. One of the things I used to struggle with was the idea that despite the betrayal and all that goes with it (no need to describe to CN) my ex-FW was not a cartoon character of evil. I have read on this site about the truly evil people (CL’s scary ex-FW among them) that made the same choice as my ex, but in my case I can still see the good parts of mine. If he were more disordered than he actually was I never would have stayed for 37 years. As for myself I did not deserve to be cheated on the same as he did not deserve to cheat. I, too, am not a cartoon character of a termagant wife, and actually my character was/is quite sound. My conclusion is that I bear 50% responsibility for a bad marriage, and 0% responsibility for his betrayal.
Oh – sorry – this was in response to JeffWashington. I’ll repost
I certainly cannot untangle Parul Sehgal’s skein laid out in her review. Here’s what I know: I have a trauma response and I have to be intentional about healing every day (d-day was 10/31/21; divorced 7/9/24 : ) I regularly have bad dreams about the FW’s cheating, blame shifting, and hostility towards me. My nervous system goes into overdrive when I have to engage with him because I don’t know if I’ll be dealing with calm, reasonable guy or angry, irrational guy. Tracey, Chump Nation, and my therapist have kept me moving forward as I navigated the hardest and bravest thing I have ever done–I left a cheater and I am gaining a life. So, Tracey, I say double down on the “baby talk”, cartoons, and snark. I bought Sarah’s book and looking forward to reading it.
Does anyone remember when the New York Times’ star reviewer, the late and overrated Michiko Kakutani, panned Susan Faludi’s Backlash as a “tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned work that gives feminism a bad name”? Congrats to Tracy and Sarah Mancuso for getting in the Times’ crosshairs and getting “the treatment.” They’re joining the often shining ranks of other targets such as Faludi who ignored the flak and kept at it until even the Times was grudgingly forced to acknowledge the impact these upstarts made.
But until those various upstarts became harder targets, the flak machine worked overtime. Which brings up the first rule of media shilling: traitors make the best attack dogs. So it follows that, when the unspoken agenda of a press attack is ultimately misogynistic, in come the she-shills.
I think the Times made a mistake in first sending a male reviewer to trash Sarah Mancuso’s book so the New Yorker corrected this and sent in the pseudo-feminist-Kakutani-wannabe (Sehgal also reviews for the Times) cavalry to stomp on another unapproved manifestation of the current coercive control movement and the movement to more sharply define sexual consent in a legal sense which, in essence, are a few of the “trees” that both Sarah and Tracy bark up.
Just be warned that there’s a secondary “DARVO” trap to using she-shills as sock puppets for patriarchal malarkey: any comment that’s even in the ballpark of gender-based criticism of Sehgal will later be used as a stick to beat CL and CN by reversing the onus of “internalized misogyny” onto this forum or any related forum. Those (probably decontextualized) quotes will come up every time in the future when Tracy or Sarah irk Times or New Yorker editors.
I could ramble on and on about all the politically analogous reasons why certain media and news publications would be threatened by the movements to criminalize coercive control and make all legal definitions of consent align with existing legal definitions of financial consent but, speaking of Times’ past targets, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman already covered that ground many times over. In short, rather than being an actually progressive publications, the Times and, to a similar degree (plus vapid poetry), The New Yorker simply use a liberal guise and occasional “brave coverage” of liberal issues the better to gate-keep and set limits on progressive discourse that might upset corporate, institutional and .01% sponsors– in effect saying, as Chomsky put it, “this far and no further” and defining anything beyond that point as crazy, dangerous radicalism.
Anyway, who knew that issues related to interpersonal betrayal were such linchpins for more macro forms of exploitation, coercion, gaslighting, betrayal and abuse? Obviously the Times and New Yorker do. And clearly Sarah Mancuso and Tracy went “further” than allowed on the subject which isn’t hard since coverage of, for instance, mainstream coverage of coercive control has so far been proportionately scant and tends to cite only the most extreme and blatant examples. But if the plebes go around being more surgical about the personal, they might start to recognize the same dynamics in the political and the gig would be up for propagandists who rely on broad and shallow representations of humanitarian issues to grub fake progressive creds while, in reality, serving reverse agendas.
Manufacturing Consent.
That book explains so much of what we’re currently dealing with politically, including the likelihood that this shill didn’t even need to asked or pressured to play attack dog. According to Chomsky’s “five filters of the media” model, she probably wouldn’t have made it through grad school if she hadn’t been programmed since birth to naturally parrot and service the dominant paradigm.
“Anyway, who knew that issues related to interpersonal betrayal were such linchpins for more macro forms of exploitation, coercion, gaslighting, betrayal and abuse?”
HOAC would! You draw those links every day.
But wow, Mancuso and Tracy really made something at NYT and New Yorker snap. I really am left to wonder what it was about this book that really got under the skin of their contributors? I can’t fathom the NYT editorial board allowing the publication of an article asking a rape victim out loud “but what did you do to contribute to your rape”? But when one person dares to write a book from the perspective of a victim of infidelity, out comes a parade of cudgel-wielding book reviewers to beat that author into submission.
I mean, I really am trying to connect point A to point B, and I have my theories, but no facts to base them upon. My brain doesn’t work that way, and I don’t feel I need to burden myself with that task. If cheaters want to defend their actions, they can do it alone in a corner and leave me out it. I have better things to do. Also, what “facts” can you bring to an argument that centers around the subjective feelings of cheaters? “My dear, what offense have I committed today that made you sleep with the babysitter?”
Tracy doesn’t recommend that Chumps spend too much time unraveling the skein, but Parul obviously thinks we have a duty. I’ll pass. I don’t have the academic degrees or, apparently, personal enlightenment to predict, let alone manage, the mercurial emotions of a cheater. Perhaps she can enlighten us, and give a public, full-throated defense of the institution of infidelity, and why the “so-called” victims of it should be asked to submit to it. I would get out my popcorn and smile at her attempts to lend an academic sheen to “I slept with your best friend because you were spending too much time with out children.”
Pray, Parul, do enlighten us feeble folk.
I do love to chase those unified theories of everything and figure how things are connected. But as you can see from the big pile up on Mancuso’s straightforward autobiographical book by two of the most powerful publications on the planet, the issue of cheating and what constitutes domestic abuse have been politicized because neither publishing giant would waste their time on anything that wasn’t. It suggests bundled agendas are at stake whether these are financial or ideological and it appears some power cluster or other doesn’t want rascally plebes yanking on the strings or poking around too much.
It’s anyone’s guess whether the contention that cheating is abuse seems like a threatening extension of the #MeToo wave that cost the media industry umpty zillions. Or whether it effects the legal definition of consent in ways that discomfit media sponsors for legal reasons beyond cheating, harassment or sexual assault. Or if adultery is necessary for market growth for the porn and dating app behemoths that every media conglomerate is current invested in. Maybe the cheating-as-abuse model simply threatens pervy corporate honchos. Maybe the backlash relates to the evolutionary theory of primatologist Richard Wrangham that coercive sexual control is the root of all hegemony and war.
Beats me but I do know that, when something is politicized to this degree, it’s no longer the exclusive territory of lofty fields of specialized research because politicized issues might not only impact public opinion but actual policy and law. In my opinion, when that happens, people don’t need specialized degrees to investigate the agenda behind wag-the-dog spin or weigh the stakes involved, just a voter id.
Oops, typos. But I had to offer something for detractors to pick at, right?
“She split an infinitive! She must be wrong about the nature of abuse!”
I committed worse errors than that so do I get public flogging?
Quoting from a recent column by Parull Sehgal : One of my favorite things about reading/ writing criticism is how it can enable coolness and clarity of thought “.I like to suggest that she is talking out of we fundamental orifice, and until she has experienced the shock and trauma of betrayal she cannot begin to understand the way it destroys you, depletes your trust in any and everybody and leaves you shell shocked and a total wreck.
I am a fairly tough guy and even my service in Vietnam never prepared.me for the pain, self doubt, feeling of total loss of direction and purpose in my life after discovering my fuckwit wife’s serial infidelities. Try seeking coolness and clarity of thought MS Sehgal after discovering your spouse/ partner has been fucking strange pussy, fallen in love with the AP or given you the lovely.gift of secrecy, deception, lies, gas lighting and a persistent or untreatable STD.
Do you ever sense an expectation from some people that your service in Vietnam should have charred out your soul to the point that personal betrayal wouldn’t bother you? As if that’s somehow a proper and reassuring model of masculinity?
What you wrote just made me realize that, at least in the eyes of some, sociopathy may the ideal model for human beings. And then everyone wonders why narcissism seems “epidemic.”
I just want to say thank you fellow Chumps and Tracy. You’re the best. Never change. I love you all.
Chump Nation cautions against posing too many questions about why someone cheats.
Don’t worry, Parul, many of us withstood decades of having our ex-FWs explain to us daily why they cheated (hint: it’s always the Chump’s fault). And sometimes it’s not just the cheating – it’s the STD they brought home, or the co-worker or student they f**ked, or the marital funds they spent on sex workers, or the beatings they delivered, or the death threats they made. It’s all our fault! We made them do it! What an amazing super power we have.
So, from me and many other Chumps, in response to your recommendation: we’re good, thanks.
In the words of the Notorious B.I.G., if you don’t know, now you know.
I think this is where I should point out that the only thing people enjoy about The New Yorker is the cartoons.
Hah, so true. I have one framed that my mother saved ages ago– a sketch of an English bull terrier glowering at a cat.
Baby-talk?
Tracy’s comedy is curative.
The commonality is curative.
ChumpNation’s collective kindness is curative.
Like so many of us, my cheater was financially abusive, mentally abusive, emotionally abusive, he tried to blackmail me, he lied in court. I had to go to the police. I was on a special call list, with a three minute police response time, in case he turned up.
He beat up one of my animals.
He repeatedly maligned me.
And this NYT reviewer thinks we deal in ‘Babytalk?’
My cheater amused himself one night by threatening me with a loaded gun, with the safety catch off for 3 and a 1/2 hours, in our bedroom while I was naked in bed.
I now realise – thanks to Chumpnation – that he was just having a little fun, a little power trip, a little ‘you’re not the boss of me’ issue. He probably wanted to see if he could make me cry. Luckily for me, he eventually got bored and put the gun away.
My husband was living his best, secret double life. Then he abandoned me out of the blue, in true cheater style just after a holiday and an anniversary. I screamed in my sleep for three and a half months after he left. It was here I learnt that other chumps have had this too. That screaming in our sleep is a ‘normal’ trauma response to our situation. That is goes away. That its ok.
Babytalk? There’s no babytalk here, unless its about the evil cheaters who cheat on and/or abandon their pregnant chumps, or their nursing chumps, or chumps with their tiny babies and toddlers.
There’s no cute babytalk to be had about any of our cheaters I don’t think. There was nothing cute about mine.
Mine enjoyed cheating on me, duping me, ripping me off, frightening me, ignoring me, maligning me – I would call all that quite abusive. Maybe this NYT reviewer has a different name for it?
I wish the compassion, kindness, humour and understanding found here for anyone who’s been chumped.
I’m better because of Tracy and Chumpnation. I think we’re all so thankful to her and the many chumps who stay around and pass it forward.
I love how Tracy and Chumpnation have been supporting Sarah and her brilliant book Liars.
I really enjoyed the podcast episode with Sarah.
I love how well Sarah’s book is doing on Amazon and I hope it goes from strength to strength.
I hope lots of new chumps-in-need find us from the acknowledgments, so we can provide the much needed laughter, commonality, kindness and wisdom that is ChumpNation.
Tracy’s comedy is so, so curative. And everything else you said!
Decades after my marriage imploded, Tracy & Chump Nation helped me finally achieve something resembling a clear-eyed understanding of the effects of infidelity and the implosion of my marriage because of it. Parul Seghal is full of it.
Seghal’s pronouncement about finding Manguso’s comment (“We are impelled to make this bad choice,” Manguso added. “The entire civilization is screaming it at us . . . from the cradle.”) “strange, if not obscene” in comparison to Seghal’s being “the product of generations of arranged marriages, a number of them coerced” is idiotic.
It’s not a contest, Seghal!
The argument of “I was the victim of abuse and no one helped me so you can’t seek relief from your abuse” does one thing: protect abusers.
We see this line of argument in politics all the time and it’s rhetorical BS.
So now I am a baby thinker who speaks in baby talk.
I’d rather be a baby talking baby thinker than a condescending ignoramus with a pen and a fancy writing gig.
My local domestic violence organization, the Center For Domestic Peace, formerly Marin Abused Women’s Services, has classified affairs as a form of domestic violence/abuse for DECADES. It’s where I first heard that. In the EIGHTIES.
Lots of people thought Bernie Madoff was a financial genius and clamored to be accepted as an investor. Chris Watts has women writing to him with marriage proposals. To my knowledge, there has never been a shortage of Darwin Award winners, and I’m sure many of them can write.
Magazine interviews and covers galore and a trophy room of awards from the business community for a double dealing diva from San Diego who was busy bilking everyone around her while neck deep in community service commitments to disguise her nefarious activities.
Write in to the editor of the New Yorker.
Let’s send Ms Seghal a copy of Dr Omar Minwalla’s white paper, The Secret Sexual Basement, and please include my congratulations for evidently never discovering her life was a lie.
I’m guessing she’s criticizing from the comfort of her bleacher seats and not had the experiences which brought the rest of us here?
I doubt she’d accept, but an invitation to put her money where her mouth is and meet Tracy and Sarah on the podcast to explain her POV would be awesome.
Yes, I’m asking.
You don’t need to dive deep into case files to find cheating as a sadly all too often motive for homicide and suicide. There are stats to back that, and I’d be very interested to hear Parul’s thoughts on that.
I am hoping her article brings those who need help here who might otherwise become one of those statistics.
You’re right it’s probably free publicity.
You know the activist slogan, “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds”? It was apparently borrowed from the work of 20th century Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos in reaction to censorship and attacks from the literary community. And now he’s sort of a cult figure and the line is on every protest banner around the world, hah.
Seconded
Healing generational and cultural trauma is no small thing, can come at a steep price and isn’t for the faint of heart. My father ultimately had to cut off his entire Irish clan but it’s what it took for him to break, once and for all, all the maladaptive behavior patterns and beliefs his family accrued and internalized over centuries of colonized fuckery and I’m very glad he did. He was a very early practitioner of “NC.”
Thank you for the kind thoughts. RIP dad. The curious thing about him was how, despite being an outlier and ahead of his time in many ways, he’d always insist he was a “regular guy” and nothing special. But did you ever notice how the humble “Everyman” characters in novels in films are actually pretty rare in real life?
For what it’s worth, I’ll take terms like Chump and Schmoopie over the typical “journey to understanding and healing” drivel that most self-help books use.
And unlike most self-help books, LACGAL is actually helpful.
Rare for me. I couldn’t read the twaddle so skipped the UBT explanation. Therefore I know nothing about what I am commenting on.
I have just sent some random disrespect to someone called Parul which I don’t think I will apologise for because I know best.
Stupid people should not be book reviewers in what purports to be a respectable American Magazine.
Wait til he reads the bit where HOAC segues from cheaters to Ted Bundy. Those are my favourite posts.
It’s a pretty effortless segue. I think the parallels in MO and psychology are just there to be seen even if the offenses differ. I swear any fully initiated chump who read something like Denying the Darkness: Exploring the Discourses of Neutralization of Bundy, Gacy, and Dahmer would have acid flashbacks. And anyone who’s faced an abuser who seemed utterly and totally spellbound by their own blame reversing nonsense, radical history rewrites and trash alibis would read about the BTK serial killer and “cubing” and say “Aha.”
It’s a good thing the social scientists applying some of these concepts to serial killers didn’t have qualms in borrowing them from forensic studies of lesser crimes or the reverse– borrowing observations or concepts from studies of serial killers and applying them to lesser serial offenses. If the shoe fits as they say. Meanwhile survivors are always under pressure not to hyperbolize or catastrophize by pointing out when shoes fit.
But what if all lesser forms of sadistic and sexually abusive behavior are simply fractals of the most extreme? There’s one weird little indy film– Clay Pigeons– that I think illustrates this idea. I don’t want to spoil it but if you see it, the key moment is when Vince Vaugn’s character explains why he singled out and messed with Joachim Phoenix’s character– because he recognized a kindred capacity.
I shall watch it.
Off topic – I am experiencing some weird goings on at my house at the moment – objects turning up at my house when I am away, someone in my car just last night moving things around but nothing stolen, and how did they get in.
My colleague is adamant there is only one explanation – the FW is back at it. (Or I am sleep walking).
Ah the joys of being gaslit (either there is a logical explanation and I am paranoid, or I am being gaslit)
Time to get cameras installed.
How terrifying. Maybe door and window alarms and cameras with night vision and audio that alert you when Fuckery is afoot? Your ex is heretofore to be known as Fuckery.
I know with certainty that Tracy’s labeling of cheating as emotional abuse saved me from suffering even more pain. It also galvanized me into action. I am forever grateful.
Parul Sehgal not intelligent enough to figure out that ALL of us had already tried the traditional path of figuring out why our partners cheated?? And when it got us NOWHERE but more pain…that we turned elsewhere for support…hence we found this blog. She’s very insulting to boot. I’m deeply suspicious she’s either a cheater or a Schmoopie, or both and hence the derision. Tired of listening to -editing to write hearing from instead- mediocre & uninspiring critics who push their own agendas.
I’m sorry Tracy that this critic attempted to reduce you to a cartoonist & a cult leader. You are much more than that & not that!! Way way more!!! You are a lifeline. Top that, you bitchy critic!!!
Ah, Puerile Parul…
Perhaps your ambitions to make a mark as a writer will surprise you…
In the same way that University faculties now use historical colonial or patriarchal writings from centuries ago to illustrate, through examination of primary sources, prevailing societal attitudes that were tone deaf to then existing systemic issues of suffering and harm – your little New Yorker puff piece might find its way on a curriculum somewhere in half a century or so: ‘Exploring the Retrograde Framing by the Media of Coercive Control in Relationships, circa 2024’.
Your piece is a profound disservice to victims who have suffered deep and real harm (suicidal ideation, asymmetric financial abuse, alienation from children, mental abuse through gaslighting, sexually transmitted disease). And note the absence of consent by the betrayed partner to any of these harms.
Your failure to try to comb through the material here in any meaningful way to locate the reportage of these harms means that you are a lazy writer.
Your failure to understand that the ‘baby’ language used on CN is a devised framework to lend a vocabulary to the otherwise unspeakable, means that you are a lax thinker.
Your demand to see ‘balance’ in Sarah M’s story, presumably through some form of self-flagellation by the author for her participation in abuse, means that you are an unsophisticated reader.
I would have expected better from The New Yorker.
When was the last time that magazine published anything really relevant and cutting edge? Nothing I’ve read in the past decade comes even close to your comment– which, if you’re as busy as most people, was probably written while pitting olives and with half an eye on a stock ticker.
I told my Reality Canary about this(as she is a subscriber-I was not kidding about the tote bags.) I dropped the name and her only response was “…who?” Seems they brought in an outside contractor as to not get any on them. It, of course, still passed editorial.
I’d never heard of Parul Sehgal before. Apparently she was part of a “team of critics” at the NY Times and wrote a bunch of reviews but it seems she never got out of the shadow of Michiko Kakutani until the latter stepped down (I actually thought she died, oops) and started trying to write books (or “pamphlets regurgitating mainstream headlines” according to some of the one and two star reviews on Amazon). Sehgal was named as a replacement seven years ago but yet remains relatively obscure. I imagine the attack on Mancuso and CL signals Sehgal has decided to go all-out to fill the dominant-paradigm-guarding-and-feminist-bashing-in-liberal-drag gap left by Kakutani.
So according to this Perel wannabe, we’re talking in the simplest terms possible for a human to understand, and yet she and those who agree with her still don’t get it. How funny 😆
Would be fun to have commenting on the podcast webpage, “Tell me how your’re mighty”. So we can record there, our great appreciation for this podcast. The show is so funny, so validating, always great for the therapy and healing of laughter; the humor is really great. “Stupid things cheaters say”– LOL! And the cartoon pic of that idiot look on fuckwit’s ignorant, devious, smiling face– so funny! Thanks Tracy and Sarah!
I know my eX is very sad sausage in that he does think we can still be friends……. uh no way..! ……….. and therefore I’m so mean! Poor, poor eX! He is so sad…….!
I saw the truth and reality and i don’t like it😢
As Sir William Osler, the physicist and philosopher stated:
“In science, it often happens that scientists have to fight their way to the truth, and it is not uncommon for an idea to be condemned as absurd at first, and then to become universally accepted after a period of time.”
So too with life, “ cheating is abuse” will one day be a universally accepted truth. Then maybe unconscious and unaware journalists who jump on their soap boxes touting how they have such intimate awareness of a subject they have zilch knowledge of, will be forced to acquiesce to a shocking truth. Cheating is most definitely abuse!!
We will get more chumps from such a dumb ass post.
Thank you for that, oh most ignorant but extremely opinionated Parul!
Thank you. Please tell me if she responds to your commentary. Did anyone write the editor? I’m so appalled that I almost canceled my New Yorker subscription.