UBT: Why Some Women Cheat to Stay

Universal Bullshit Translator

The UBT digests Alicia Walker’s Psychology Today article: “The Infidelity Workaround: Why Some Women Cheat to Stay.” An idiotic defense of cake-eating, disguised as feminism.

***

This isn’t the first time some misguided quack has tried to argue that women should fuck around with as much impunity and disregard for their partners as men do. (Patriarchy for Everyone! Tastes great! Less filling!) But the Universal Bullshit Translator needs feeding, so this steaming heap of crap will do. Thank you to the alert chump who sent it in.

Alicia M. Walker Ph.D., and obvious Esther Perel acolyte/wannabe, is the author of The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife: Power, Pragmatism, and Pleasure in Women’s Infidelity — yours for only $110.00 per copy. (I’m sure it’s flying off the shelves. You can download the audio book for the bargain price of $48.) Walker spoke to unfaithful married women and you’ll be shocked to learn that they don’t want to be divorced.

Nope, as oppressive constructs go, heteronormative marriage is FINE. Were you bellyaching about unequal division of household chores, emotional labor or childcare? No. Monogamy’s the problem. Why can’t women be sexually entitled fuckwits too? Why should men have all the double lives? Can’t women have corrupt facades of respectability too? Get on Ashley Madison, ladies! Strike back!

You’re not doing cheating to end your marriage, but to preserve it.

Women cheat to stay!

Infidelity is almost always framed as a betrayal—a dagger to the heart of a marriage. But what if, for some women, cheating is actually the thing keeping their marriage together?

What if terminating voting rights is really preserving democracy? What if dumping raw sewage into streams really improves water quality? How many shitty things are glossed as noble to disguise a selfish or malevolent agenda which would preserve special interests? This mindfuck is as old as time. But look at me, Alice M. Walker, Ph.D trying to pass myself off as an original thinker.

My research on women who cheat flips the script on everything we assume about affairs. 

I AM a maverick! A script flipper! Look at me Esther!

A caveat

But let’s be clear: This is not an endorsement of infidelity. Cheating is a messy, imperfect solution, a desperate workaround.

I would never endorse cheating. I just applaud it as powerful, pragmatic, and pleasurable. Sometimes you have to let your husband believe that child is his. Or explain Chlamydia. But what’s a little messiness when you’re desperate to workaround a chump’s inadequacies?

These women aren’t celebrating their affairs. They are making the best of a bad situation, often landing in sexless marriages where conversations about their needs had gone nowhere.

Except to a therapist or divorce attorney. These women have unmet needs! So instead of having a conversation like “If you won’t have sex with me, are you okay if I have it with someone else?” just move directly toward unilaterally deciding for him.

His dick may not work, but his paycheck does. I think he’s worth keeping awhile longer. #workaround

No way out except to blow your boss.

The women I interviewed weren’t looking for a way out. They loved their spouses, valued their families, and had no interest in blowing up their lives. But they were trapped—feeling frustrated, unfulfilled, and out of options.

Out of options except the aforementioned honest conversations, therapists and divorce lawyers. Out of ALL options? Beyond the laws of physics?

The UBT is wondering if feeling unfulfilled works for other unethical behavior.

Mugger: I really had no interest in blowing up your life when I pistol whipped you and stole your wallet. I was broke and feeling unfulfilled.

Mug-ee: Oh well okay then. Here, take my watch too.

The infidelity workaround

Rather than torching their marriages, they found a workaround. They avoided a messy, heartbreaking divorce by engaging in a carefully managed, highly strategic affair to meet their needs without losing what they valued most. I call it the “infidelity workaround” because for them, that’s exactly what it was: A way to stay.

Fucking other people was highly strategic, like a NATO airstrike. To keep world peace. And isn’t preserving my right to fuck around preferable to divorce? Actually, I’m not asking you that question, I’m deciding it for you, Little Man. Now look pretty and go make some dinner.

Why Monogamy Feels Impossible for Some Women

We like to think of monogamy as the gold standard, the default setting for fulfilling relationships. But for many women, it slowly suffocates their sexual desire. Or leaves them in marriages where sex disappears altogether, whether they want it to or not.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was some way to have sex with as many people as you want to unencumbered? Imagine if women could be SINGLE. Brazenly, unabashedly uncoupled! No, no perish the thought. Alice M. Walker Ph.D. is an original thinker, but even she must concede that Women Must Be Coupled. How could these women ever suffer the fate of messy divorce? Or the pariah status of the Single Mother? No, no. Much better to cuckold your husband.

The assumption has always been that men have the higher sex drive, but research tells a different story. Studies show that in long-term relationships, it is women’s sexual desire that tanks the hardest, but not because their libidos are naturally lowerFamiliarity, routinethe mental load of managing a household, and shifting dynamics all squeeze the air out of their sexual desire.

So don’t put your energy in the women’s movement or progressive change for family caregiving leave. Put your energy into dating profiles, ladies.

Sometimes women end up in sexless marriages they never signed up for. They want change, but despite their efforts, nothing shifts. So, after years of rejection or unmet needs, they start looking for alternatives.

And sometimes resentment and the sheer exhaustion of carrying the mental and emotional load of a household smothers that flame entirely.

Stop letting men have the dead bedroom excuse. You can use it too! And he doesn’t understand you either.

Women can be transactional too.

And so, they start looking for alternatives. But let’s be clear. This wasn’t about romance. They weren’t daydreaming about falling in love with some starry-eyed Romeo. No one was writing love letters or whispering sweet nothings.

They weren’t looking for connection. They were looking for climaxes.

Wham, bam, thank you Sam.

Not validation. Not butterflies. Not someone to gaze into their eyes and tell them they were beautiful. Just orgasms. Full stop.

Because their vibrators were all out of batteries. #alloutofoptions

They weren’t searching for Prince Charming. They already had one at home. What they needed was someone to meet a specific, unmet need—nothing more, nothing less.

And they weren’t naïve either. As one woman put it, “Look, this guy gives me orgasms, but he’s not even in the same league as my husband. If my husband didn’t have ED, these guys wouldn’t stand a chance.”

My husband’s dick doesn’t work, but apparently it’s spread to his tongue and fingers. I have to fuck other men to get an orgasm from their dicks. Because that’s how women have orgasms — only when men penetrate them.

The UBT needs to pause now from this stupidity.

Cheating to Stay in a Marriage?

For these women, an affair wasn’t about replacing their spouse. It was about filling a gap.

The double entendres write themselves.

They had tried to communicate their needs, but nothing changed. Rather than stewing in frustration or resentment, they found that an affair allowed them to meet their needs elsewhere, easing tension at home and helping them stay in their marriages. Instead of growing distant or bitter, they felt more patient, engaged, and even affectionate in their day-to-day lives.

They weren’t looking for The One. They were looking for “Mr. Now and Then.” Love? Feelings? Emotional entanglements? Absolutely not.

It didn’t mean anything! While it simultaneously improved our marriage! But it was so improving I couldn’t tell you about it! In fact it meant so little it slipped my mind. I don’t know why you’re so upset!

The Pragmatism of Women’s Infidelity

I found that these women designed their affairs with military precision: strict rules, clear boundaries, and zero risk of anyone catching feelings.

But let’s talk about another practical move these women made: not putting all their eggs in one basket. Many women maintained multiple affair partners at once. Not because they were greedy, but because they’d already learned from marriage that relying on just one man for everything was a risky bet. So, they kept a “roster” or “herd” of partners to ensure they always had options.

Let’s rebrand serial cheating as pragmatism.

One woman put it best: “Why would I expect one affair partner to meet all my needs when my husband couldn’t?”

It was a backup system, not a romance. They weren’t juggling relationships; they were managing logistics.

The UBT is trying to figure out how a fuck-age woman with a marriage and children, and resentments about that workload (which compel her to cheat), finds the time not only for multiple partners but LOGISTICS? Are there spreadsheets for this roster?

There is a lot more blah blah blah bullet point lists. The UBT is wearying and there is not enough Lebkuchen. Skipping ahead to…

Maybe women’s sexuality is a whole lot more complex—and pragmatic—than we’ve been led to believe.

Maybe women cheat. Let’s call it complexity. Thank you, that will be $110.00 for that insight.

These women weren’t looking to betray their husbands.

I have no idea who wrote that dating profile.

They were looking for a way to stay. But when years of unmet needs and unheard conversations pile up, they asked themselves, what realistic choices are left? And they found no real answers.

Cake is delicious. Rules for thee but not for me.

Instead of treating every episode of infidelity as a scandal or moral failing, maybe we should be asking a different question: How can marriages evolve to actually meet both partners’ needs before one or the other partner starts looking outside of it to meet their needs?

Men, figure out a way to never have ED. Or be less than stellar. Or be multiple men.

I, Alice M. Walker, Ph.D., am an average Reconciliation Industrial Complex quack. I believe in the dual accountability of affairs and unmet needs. Victim blaming is my stock and trade. Only I’ve dressed my misogyny up differently as divorce shame.

Yawn. The UBT needs a nap.

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Adelante
Adelante
7 months ago

Don’t you love how the only person considered is the cheater? Cheating works great for the wives who don’t want to divorce, says this disordered excuse of a therapist, but she never considers what the cheated-on husbands think of this strategy.

If one of these cheating wives came to therapy and laid out that miserable excuse–“I don’t want to divorce, but my marriage is stifling so I cheat on my husband, and that works for me”–wouldn’t it be the therapist’s job to say, “And what about your husband? Have you given any thought to your obligation to him?”

Last edited 7 months ago by Adelante
Should Know Better
Should Know Better
7 months ago
Reply to  Adelante

I’m pretty sure my ex’s therapist spends a lot of time telling her that she’s still a wonderful person and she has nothing to feel guilty for. I know she’s said that my near suicide and 4 day stay in an emergency psych facility were not her fault, but how I “chose” to react.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago

Lol, it’s sort of like domestic abuse is a Darwinian “survival of the shittiest” Thunderdome where advanced evolutionary human traits like long-term familial bonding, empathy and trust become liabilities and ensure failure while the knuckle-dragging asshole monkeys win.

Alas, we chumps tend to lose the “biggest creep” competition. But it’s kind of like losing the Madoff prize for embezzlement or “serial killer of the year” trophy.

Last edited 7 months ago by Hell of a Chump
OHFFS
OHFFS
7 months ago

What a sociopath!

Chumpcat
Chumpcat
7 months ago
Reply to  Adelante

From her perspective, would she ask the opinion of an appliance? They are supposed to take care of things in the background silently and dependably.

Bluewren
Bluewren
7 months ago
Reply to  Adelante

I’ll bet hardly any therapists consider the other partner.
It’s got to be someone else’s fault after all.

Chumpcat
Chumpcat
7 months ago
Reply to  Bluewren

It’s the fault of whoever is NOT buying her book. For $110 all of the cheater cliche’d excuses and rationalizations become profound insights.

thelongrun
thelongrun
7 months ago
Reply to  Chumpcat

Cue Charlie Brown telling Lucy-as-psychiatrist, “That’s it!,” with Lucy getting flipped over and wiped out by his passionate cry. That’s what I’m thinking of right now Chumpcat. You hit the nail on the head!😁

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago

First unsettling thing I noticed is that Walker looks like Esther Perel in a Chump Lady wig.

thelongrun
thelongrun
7 months ago
Reply to  Tracy Schorn

Besmirch! Heh. Good one, Tracy.😁

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  Tracy Schorn

Spooky shades of Single White Female… except her feminist lip service is about as fake and brittle as her overprocessed hair so no chance of confusing anyone.

chump2024
chump2024
7 months ago

It’s truly mind-boggling. I can’t help but wonder what their husbands—who are working tirelessly and staying loyal—would have to say about this. Their perspectives would be fascinating, especially given the effort and commitment they put into the relationship. What frustrates me the most is how these rationalizations completely ignore the emotional devastation caused to the betrayed spouse. Ultimately, cheating is a choice, not an accident or a coping mechanism. If a marriage is struggling, honesty and respect should come first, not betrayal disguised as self-preservation. What a completely tone-deaf article.

JeffWashington
JeffWashington
7 months ago
Reply to  chump2024

Sounds to me like the husbands already said “no.” And that is if the conversations ever really happened in the first place.

I am 100% with you on this one-completely tone deaf and ignorant of the consequences. I don’t imagine “I was told to do it in Psychology Today” is going to hold up really well in court. Sort of like how all of those issues of 2600 I got in the 90s would have been something called “evidence” if I ever did anything stupid with the contents.

I mean, this is what happened to me. She asked for an open relationship. I said no. She opened it up anyway and triggered the worst 9 months of my life (the 18 after are comparably more pleasant. but still pretty routinely awful). I got the whole “I wasn’t happy and needed more” rigamarole. I was supposed to take it better that she apparently needs an entire support crew to meet all of her needs (while she did “net nothing”, might I add.)

KatiePig
KatiePig
7 months ago

This is the logic that was used to abuse me. Because this is abuse, and it isn’t any less abuse when it’s a woman doing it. My ex had his entire secret life so he could bear to stay with me. So I’m supposed to be grateful. That’s what he told people.

I was not grateful. I pointed it out to a couple people that every major decision I made about my life over a 20 year period was made while prioritizing a fake marriage. Whereas he had all the information, so when he made decisions over that same 20 years, he could prioritize himself and his secret life. That put me at a serious disadvantage in life while it benefited him greatly. Nobody had anything to say to that.

SortofOverIt
SortofOverIt
7 months ago
Reply to  KatiePig

“Whereas he had all the information, so when he made decisions over that same 20 years, he could prioritize himself and his secret life.”

THIS is one of the aspects of cheating that non-chumps will never understand. You’re married and you aren’t privy to all the information re your marriage. That leads to so many issues for chumps.

The FW in my story was abusive emotionally, verbally and mentally. I have no idea what his diagnosis would be, but he is definitely heavily disordered. That had been the case long before D-Day. I stayed anyway. I was caught in the cycle and didn’t understand it WAS a cycle.

The cheating was in some ways my get our of jail free card. I had normalized the other abuse, but the cheating was the straw that broke the camel’s back, finally.

He revealed the affair when it had been going on for 3 years. We’d been together decades, and after finding CL/CN I realize, that was probably not the first time he cheated, not by a long shot, that was just the one he actually wanted to stick with and leave me for. But regardless, for 3 years, I was clueless, doing his laundry, running his house, grocery shopping, cleaning, sleeping with him. But more importantly, I was doing all that while putting up with his moods and his cold spells and his scary outbursts. All while he was involved with someone else. If I knew ablout the affair, I wouldn’t have chosen to stay.

I have mentioned this before, but while he was having his affair but before I knew? He was actively encouraging me to leave my job and take something for less pay. My job can be stressful, he would say that I could go find something easier, where I wasn’t a supervisor, because HE made really good money and we could easily function if my salary was significantly lower. He pushed that idea a few times. I didn’t bite. But I think about it in hindsight, and I think he WANTED me less financially secure because he knew he was going to want to move forward with AP, and he wanted me as vulnerable as possible when that time came.

But regardless of his motives, the pointis, I could have made a decision that poorly affected my employment and hence, my finances that he urged while HE had “all the information” and I did not.

This is how chunmps end up in another country away from family/friends, or end up having more kids with a cheater or move cross country thinking it is for their spouse’s promotion but actually that’s where the AP lives.

JeffWashington
JeffWashington
7 months ago
Reply to  KatiePig

I have something to say to that: he sucks, I’m glad you’re rid of him, and I hear you 100%.

Brizzler
Brizzler
7 months ago
Reply to  KatiePig

I realise I’ve been in a similar position. A complete sham of a marriage. He’s pushing the narrative that I’m a financial abuser. In reality, he’d put me under so much financial pressure, I could never keep up with his fantasy sky high mortgage and golden child at private school. All the while I’m scratching around for money and he’s been leading double lives with five other women. When asked why he didn’t just leave me then if I was so bad, he didn’t know what to say. He’s a disordered monster.

Brizzler
Brizzler
7 months ago
Reply to  Brizzler

Plus I’ve been working full time through our marriage and two children. He thinks that me earning £15k more a year will absolve him from his cheating and I’ll be worthy of him again. Complete madness, which I see now.

Bluewren
Bluewren
7 months ago
Reply to  KatiePig

Yes… people don’t like being whacked with the reality stick- and having to think about what trash they’re listening to and supporting.

OutButNotDown
OutButNotDown
7 months ago

Alicia Walker: “And sometimes resentment and the sheer exhaustion of carrying the mental and emotional load of a household smothers that flame entirely.”

So how about, instead of this drivel, PhDs instead advocate for mutuality in marriages, where one person (usually the woman) doesn’t carry much mental and emotional load?!!

New research from Keith and Sheila Gregoire, where they studied matched pairs, showed that the sex is more fulfilling and overall marital satisfaction is higher when the mental and emotional burden of the household isn’t so lopsided. The findings are in their new book “The Marriage You Want”, and their Bare Marriage podcast.

Not talking about root causes of resentment in marriages and factors like character disorders, but instead putting noble sounding words out to justify why some women stray is classic RIC crap.

Thank you, Tracy, for skewering it, and for continuing to challenge the RIC narrative!

Bluewren
Bluewren
7 months ago

I had all those things she’s bleating about in both my fairytale marriages- But I did not cheat.

Hurting people, medicating with other people and bringing others into the marriage uninvited by the partner never turns out as well as people think it will.

FWs concerned with kibbles and cake expect everything to be like the movies- centrality for them as the main character and others come in as the script they’ve written allows- until the chump calls CUT .

Encouraging other people to jettison all self respect, integrity and moral courage as a ‘professional ’ is a great way to lose all credibility- and that book sounds like very expensive toilet paper.

SortofOverIt
SortofOverIt
7 months ago
Reply to  Bluewren

“and that book sounds like very expensive toilet paper.”

LOL. Indeed. I know the point of this article isn’t about how pricey the book is, but I can’t help but be taken aback. Who the hell is paying that for essentially a self help book? Nevermind that it is a TERRIBLE premise for a book, and terrible advice. But $110?? That price point is for large, fancy art books and top of the line text books. You know who is paying that? Shitty cheating women looking for justification.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago

It’s funny that Walker seems to be trying to create a Frankenstein amalgamation between two things– feminism and abusive sexual behavior– that aren’t naturally aligned according to a series of studies I dug up on the correlation between sexual coercion by women against men and something called “hyperfemininity”– a counterpart to “toxic masculinity” in terms of exaggerated gender role identification coupled with “hostile/ambivalent sexism” and also “rape myth acceptance.”

I posted this stuff before but it seems like a good time to repost. Basically the studies taken together identify common red flags for both men and women in terms of avoiding abusive partners: beware cartoonishly gendered sexuality which may underlie someone’s lip service to modern values (i.e., men or women who think women should be subordinate and squishy and that men to be sexually dominant and knuckle-dragging).

Since lying, manipulation and deception to obtain sex are included among coercive strategies so cheating and “mate poaching” could both fit within the definition of coercion. https://www.academia.edu/16623685/Sexual_Coercion_in_Men_and_Women_Similar_Behaviors_Different_Predictors?email_work_card=thumbnail

Russell and Oswald (2001) found that a ludic lovestyle, described as an emotionally uninvolved and manipulative approach to intimate relationships, predicted sexual coercion in their sample of college women. Contrary to their hypotheses, highly feminine attitudes, captured by descriptors such as ‘‘emotional,’’ ‘‘gentle,’’ and ‘‘aware of feelings of others,’’ best characterized sexually coercive women, whereas highly masculine attitudes, captured by descriptors such as ‘‘independent,’’ ‘‘competitive,’’ and ‘‘superior,’’ best characterized non-coercive women. Also, although Shea (1998) found that coercive women were aroused by the idea of dominating a man in a hypothetical rape scenario, coercive women in Russell and Oswald’s sample were not found to be higher in social dominance than non-coercive women.

The abstract of the Russell and Oswald study cited above:
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-12296-007

Tests whether theoretical constructs typically associated with male perpetrators of sexual coercion are predictive of women who perpetrate sexual coercion. A questionnaire that contained measures of sexual experience, social dominance, ambivalent sexism, sex roles, attitudes toward sexual harassment, and attitudes toward intimate relationships using J. A. Lee’s (1973) typology of lovestyles was administered to a sample of heterosexual female undergraduates. 18% of women reported engaging in sexually coercive behaviors. Coercive women exhibited higher tolerance of sexual harassment, and were significantly higher in femininity than noncoercive women. Coercive women were also found to embrace a ludic lovestyle (i.e., a manipulative, game-playing approach toward love) significantly more than noncoercive women, while pragma (a logical approach toward love) was negatively associated with coercion. Lastly, a significant difference was found between coercive and noncoercive women and self-reported victimization; 81% of women who reported using coercive strategies in their relationships also reported having been sexually victimized. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

In that sense, it looks like the “hypergender” theory correlating rape myth acceptence to sexual coercion among both men with “hypermasculine” identitification and women with “hyperfeminine” identification can potentially explain cheaters and poachers of both genders. Also apparently women like this are lousy to other women:

Women can hold mistaken beliefs [i.e. hyperfeminine identified women] regarding the behavior and responsibility of other women.Cowen (2000) noted that women who are generally hostile to other women are more likely to blame female victims of rape and have more tolerant views of interpersonal violence.

Last edited 7 months ago by Hell of a Chump
Velvet Hammer
Velvet Hammer
7 months ago

As I mentioned yesterday, the mindfuck weeds are tall and thick when using terms like “cheating” or “affair”. Or getting into discussions and debates about motives.

The muddy water clears up for me instantly when I call it what it is: lying, deceiving, defrauding. Which all adds up to ABUSING.

“Use is Abuse” is one of the discernment slogans I learned from my local intimate partner violence prevention organization.

Is the individual LYING, DECEIVING, DEFRAUDING? Then they are depriving their partners of informed consent, effectively HOLDING THEM HOSTAGE. It’s not a marriage. It’s a hostage situation. They are USING the unsuspecting partner.

It is indefensible.

If they are conducting a secret sexual double
life, if they are a complicit partner in someone’s secret sexual double life, they are the cause of grievous major league harm, trauma, abuse of the unsuspecting partner and any involved children. This applies to both voluntary side pieces and the hired variety.

From Dr Frank Pittman, whose writing on the subject of infidelity I have a deep appreciation for:

“In lying, one is identifying the other as one’s opponent, even one’s enemy. In marriage intimacy is developed through confessions, explanations, and soul searchings. But of course intimacy involves equality, and people who are telling lies are not seeking any aspect of intimacy, especially equality. Liars are hoping for advantage, which will be produced by disorienting and distracting the other person. The liar is stepping outside the relationship. The lie may be a greater betrayal of the relationship than the misdeed being lied about. It takes very little misinformation to disorient and destroy a relationship. I often point out to people that if I gave them detailed instructions on how to go from Atlanta to New York City, and threw in only one left turn that was a lie, they would end up in Oklahoma.”
-Dr. Frank Pittman
Private Lies
(p. 59)

Last edited 7 months ago by Velvet Hammer
Velvet Hammer
Velvet Hammer
7 months ago
Reply to  Velvet Hammer

The “unmet needs” of the cheater and the side piece are the need to fuck around with whomever they want and not experience any consequences for doing so, the need to exert power and control over all the people involved, and the need to get off by engaging in deceptive sexuality.

SortofOverIt
SortofOverIt
7 months ago
Reply to  Velvet Hammer

“The “unmet needs” of the cheater and the side piece are the need to fuck around with whomever they want and not experience any consequences for doing so”

YES! There is all this talk of unmet needs, and I think frequently people see that as code for the chump is frigid*. Yet, we see SO many Chumps here saying that wasn’t the case. It certainly wasn’t in my case.

The “unmet needs” in my marriage were him wanting all that excitement of a new relationship, and the extra validation of new women being attracted to him. So, sure, I couldn’t give that to him.

*And even if your spouse IS frigid, that doesn’t validate cheating. You can work on the marriage to change trhat if possible,m you can AGREE topen the marriage, or you can leave. Cheating isn’t a justifiable response.

AdmiralChump
AdmiralChump
7 months ago

my employer was not meeting my needs but i didn’t want to quit and find another job and hurt everyone involved, so i just started taking money out of the register each night. now everyone is satisified.

2xchump
2xchump
7 months ago

This sounds like an extra foot of buttercream on the cake. CLs bottom line continues to hold like a steel wire. Go ahead and open up the ” marriage ” put your cards on the table, full disclosure and then make humane choices in that the whole family and community knows. That saves on advertising for additional players and both sides can follow whatever rules there are. Or break them all. It is just crazy to think that deception saves relationships. Just another lie, it saves cake for 1.

SortofOverIt
SortofOverIt
7 months ago
Reply to  2xchump

“It is just crazy to think that deception saves relationships.”

Obviously, deception is not ok. Ever. I’ll never buy into this moron’s take that it’s ok to cheat if the alternative would be leaving. (I am biased in that mine cheated for 3 years before I was aware, and once I was aware it took nearly FIVE years to get out. In my case, him staying just prolonged my abuse. Staying was no prize for me)

But the premise of this book leaves out the most obvious fact, most affairs don’t remain a secret. When the husband finds out? He is not likely to say “oh yay, you found someone to bang and that made staying married to me tolerable, THANK YOU and Thank HIM for me too!” They are going to go through all the bad emotions that come with betrayal, and the marriage will likely now end anyway, except now it will be guaranteed to be on bad terms. And if you have kids? Well co-parenting smoothly with a FW that betrayed you is a lot harder than if the marriage ended in a more honest way.

I mean, seriously, hand this book to 1000 married women who have the type of character to cheat, they read it, they cheat. How many manage to cheat and never have the chump find out?

Out of 1000?
A few are giving their spouse an STD
A few are getting pregnant with AP’s baby
A lot more than a few are getting caught in the more common ways, phone messages left visible, getting caught in a lie, family member sees them canoodling in public and tells chump, the AP’s spouse catches AP and tells Chump etc
A good amount are also deciding they want to be with AP and admitting to the affair

Cheating isn’t going to save your marriage.

2xchump
2xchump
7 months ago
Reply to  SortofOverIt

Sortofoverit, you could put your comments in a book!!! Well written. I had a thought that an affair(s) and finding out about it, is like a homicidal man shooting his gun in the air and yelling,..hey Chump , I could have shot you but I still love you so let’s try this again and now YOU Be Nicer to me or I could shoot again! It’s now a hostages situation.

2xchump
2xchump
7 months ago
Reply to  2xchump

I love CL HAIR!! I tried but can’t get those gorgeous curls…plus I’m way old..but it is so cute!!

moroncommunicator
moroncommunicator
7 months ago

As always, thanks for digesting this BS, dear UBT.

It’s too bad the partners never seem to get interviewed by these authors. Maybe they might hear a story like mine. Complete devotion. Sex any time she wanted it. Rearranging my whole life around hers. Breaking my back every day for the never ending needs and wants she put on me. And I did it with a smile, because…Love. But then a shift: suddenly everything was my fault. I needed to do more. Every problem was because of me. Oh, and how do I feel about swinging? Months of daily complaints, nagging, and blaming me for the worlds ills, without a single nice word to offset the scales.

Oh, what’s that? We DID have a conversation about it? We both said “maybe under the right circumstances but at the very least we want to be involved in the decision.” And then she STILL acted unilaterally, behind my back. And then she did the classic DARVO. And she missed her period that month. Did she care about my concerns that maybe I was going to be trapped in a marriage with a kid that wasn’t mine? No. All she asked was whether I was into “cuckold stuff”. And blamed me some more. And still I tried to keep the marriage together. It was only when she refused to eliminate fuckface from her life that I broke.

Like some formerly living thing was desiccated by a vampire, and then pulverized in a mortar and pestle. Just leftover dust. And how quickly she moved on even from fuckface to some new beau.

She is not the person I thought I married.
I am slowly reconstituting this dried out powder of human remains into a man again. But if she had put 1 ounce of effort in to match the metric tons I put in, I would have moved mountains for that woman until I died of old age.

Velvet Hammer
Velvet Hammer
7 months ago

If you want to send Alice some feedback, here’s her Instagram account:

https://www.instagram.com/aliciamwalkerphd?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

JeffWashington
JeffWashington
7 months ago

(this one set me off. Coffee ready? What are y’all snacking on?)

See, this is the sort of thing that made me drop my Psychology Today sub years ago, even before I entered Chump-dom. Are people seriously paying money to find out about this?

This is the sort of article I would read even before being betrayed(which is what it was-full stop-my fuckwit even used that word to describe her own behaviors if we need more evidence of that here.)

I’d like to repeat a favorite thing I learned about space travel recently:

SpaceX has a term for a particular event that occurs that results in a launch failure-the “unplanned midair disassembly”. It means “the shit blew up.” It turns out that a design flaw converted the multimillion dollar launch vehicle into a bomb. Whoops! At least they get to feel better about it if they have a cute name for it.

I love the reframe as a therapy tool. When used right it is an incredible weapon against depression and anxiety and trauma. When used correctly it takes all of the added meaning we used to feel worse about something off and cooks it down to its essence. Hell, we do it here daily. We’re not “victims” here. We’re survivors. We’re Mighty (some of us are at least-I’m getting there.)

That being said, when it gets co-opted into abusive behaviors I have a significant problem with it and face palm on behalf of all of the real healers in the world that have to work even harder to shrug off the stigma of this sort of ham-handed dip-shittery.

I have strong ethical concerns for anybody in practice in my field that actively promotes harmful behavior. It’s one thing to tell somebody it’s ok to leave their spouse because they aren’t happy as heartbreak is incoming. It’s another to tell them it’s ok to shatter their reality with lies, deceit, and STDs because they aren’t getting their jollies, “and if they get hurt that’s on them because you had an adult conversation with them, they said ‘no’, and you went and did it anyway.”

Do no harm. It underlies everything we are supposed to be doing.

So here’s a question for Dr. Walker here-if illicit sex is the only thing keeping your marriage together…why are you even still married? The way this argument is framed seems to indicate for the target demographic for that article is more interested in getting laid than things like their financial wellbeing, emotional security, social standing, etc. (all the little explicit values of “monogamy”-I know I’ve missed a great many but you get the idea.) The presented framework here is less “there’s a fundamental deficit”(sex) and “I like everything else about the marriage but I should have everything I want.”

Where I’m getting stuck as a healer here? It sounds like there was an attempt at discourse that did not get the desired results. Communication was attempted (and I hope there was a genuine sit-down-thinking outside of my clinical mode for a second, I genuinely hope the conversation was more than a few veiled statements hoping they would “get it”, which does not actually count for communication, healthy or otherwise). The answer was “no.” If the marriage is sexless because they are cheating…leave! Handle your business, get your life together, and get it from somebody that’s willing to meet you where you are after you work on yourself! (I hear there’s a wonderful book and website about leaving cheaters and gaining lives…)

Again, I’m a chump-I apparently missed a great many memos about monogamy and relationships and was by no means the perfect partner. One of the ones that I did get was “love entails sacrifice”. Also: “pick which hills you die on.” There were things I wanted out of my “marriage” that I did not get. I elected to work through the non-loss for a non-thing that I never had. I loved that idiot more than the things I desired when I “wanted more.” If respecting established boundaries of somebody you love(or anybody, really) is wrong I am happy to not be right.

Maybe I’m not the best clinician or healer, I don’t know. Maybe it’s all of the time I’ve spent dealing with disordered people(celebrating 18.5 years!) When somebody is explaining away what is a clearly negative, harmful, destructive behavior, and I hear the phrases, “But I…” or “It’s just that I…”, or “but other people…” I get very, very twitchy and concerned-because 99% of the time I’m about to hear why something horrific is actually completely OK to this person.

If “the marriage is the most important thing to them”, help me out here…why do “strategic”(another bad reframe for “harmful”) things to keep it together in secret that might actually ruin it if discovered? That’s not strategy. That’s gambling (hey look, we’re covering one potentially harmful behavior with another!)

Stay Mighty!

SortofOverIt
SortofOverIt
7 months ago
Reply to  JeffWashington

“There were things I wanted out of my “marriage” that I did not get. I elected to work through the non-loss for a non-thing that I never had. I loved that idiot more than the things I desired when I “wanted more.” ”

This is one of the aspects that I was MOST upset by, more so than being discarded for someone else. I certainly didnt want a marriage where my husband was volatile and angry a lot of the time, making me feel unsafe in my own home. But I put up with it because I loved him and I thought I was “accepting him flaws and all”. Now I realize that his behaviour was abusive and either I should have insisted he work on it, or I should have left. But tregardless if ,my staying was the right thing for me, I did it. I didn’t go cheat because my needs weren’t being met.

In the meantime HIS unmet needs were “I need the attention of more than just my wife to feel validated”.

JeffWashington
JeffWashington
7 months ago
Reply to  SortofOverIt

It’s amazing how lopsided these things are, isn’t it? We make all the sacrifices including letting them break promises. They get everything they want and more. Glad I’m free from that. I’m sorry he did that to you, though. Believe me, I know that pain all too well.

Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!

Velvet Hammer
Velvet Hammer
7 months ago
Reply to  JeffWashington

Can I get an AMEN? Much aloha and a big mahalo to you, Jeff.

❤️

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  JeffWashington

Good point on ethics. If social science ever rises above the monkey politics and starts to clearly correlate infidelity with abuse and if sexual consent is ever legally defined in the same way that financial consent currently is, these idiots could one day risk losing their licenses for trying to whitewash coercive control and rape by deception and trying to reconcile victims with abusers. Which is probably exactly why the science remains fuzzy.

FYI_
FYI_
7 months ago

ONE HUNDRED AND TEN DOLLARS?!?!!? To hear her say “unmet needs” in a dozen different ways? It’s not even well-written. Hard pass.

KattheBat
KattheBat
7 months ago

If cheating is the only thing keeping your marriage together, then you don’t have a marriage.

This is utterly ridiculous. The “cheating workaround” my muscular ass.

I can believe there are women feeling desperate under the weight of uneven division of labor, household work, and maybe even bad sex. I can believe their attempts to discuss it with their partners falls on deaf ears.

But if that’s the case then try therapy or call a divorce lawyer. Cheating to preserve a supposedly shitty marriage solves…what exactly??

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  KattheBat

Well there must not be that much labor if they’ve got time to bonk a “herd.”

But, pretending Walker didn’t simply write this book as a followup to her apologism for male cheating so she can’t be accused of internalized misogyny and patriarchal dick-sucking, then it would seem that Walker– if interview subjects were even real people or not just guys pretending to be women on Ashley Madison– limited her survey mostly to the .1% who’ve got people to cook, clean their houses and round the clock childcare for younger kids. Or else they have no kids or they neglect teen kids or maybe they’re older with adult children in which case their aging shenanigans are hardly glamorous.

Speaking of things that don’t make cheating seem glam and normalized which Walker would likely prefer to leave out… because, statistically, there are more battered women in existence (estimated 30%) than women who cheat (13%) and because battered women have a slightly elevated tendency to “monkey branch” if just to have bodyguards on hand to make their perilous escapes (500-fold increased risk of being killed when attempting to leave), I’m curious why Walker didn’t interview any domestic violence victims. Considering the danger, I’m sure some of them try but fail to break free of abuse (on average, it takes battered women seven tries before succeeding) and therefore remain stuck and having to “make the best of it.”

Victims of that caliber seem perfect for Walker’s arguments since they’re the one possible exception to the rule that all cheaters have personality disorders and it would certainly illustrate the “inequality alibi.” But– nah– what Walker would discover by barking up that particular tree wouldn’t be a great selling point for adultery. For one, given the far higher rate of STD infections among battered women as well as observations by front lines advocates, it appears batterers cheat at much higher rates than average so battered women would simultaneously be reporting from the very darkest end of the “chump” perspective. Furthermore, even when someone is driven to cheat by genuine life or death desperation, battered women who monkey branch face a 50 fold risk of simply ending up with another abuser.

Nothing sexy about those facts but they’re still relevant facts and any scientific researcher worth their salt would not ignore them. So Walker is just another “STEMbo” like Perel– sciency shill/bimbo/whore pandering for publishing deals and air time.

Actually because these shills are doing this at the expense of victims– some of whom, again, are in quite serious straits and may not survive the experience– they’re basically trampling over corpses for a buck which makes them more like sciency fascists in my estimation.

FYI_
FYI_
7 months ago

Yes, I don’t believe for a second that any of these interview subjects are real.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  FYI_

If I hadn’t lived and worked in some of the major urban capitals of greed, vice and selfishness, I might think they were all fake too. But I’ve actually met women like this. Granted they’re demented freaks but they exist, So I’m guessing a few of the interviews were real and the rest scams and fabricated.

Best Thing
Best Thing
7 months ago
Reply to  KattheBat

“my muscular ass”

HHAAAAAA!!!!!!

MollyWobbles
MollyWobbles
7 months ago

I remember that little rush of hope when, during wreckonciliation, our couple’s therapist said that FW’s cheating “might turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me”. That flicker of hope was instantly snuffed out by RAGE. I was incensed that she would dare try to tell me that he cheated on me for the betterment of our marriage. The therapist kept droning on about how I “needed to take ownership in my part of his cheating” and saying that “As long as I could get my anger out in a safe and healthy way, our marriage would be stronger in the long run.” She then handed me a foam bat and told me to hit a pillow on her couch. I am honestly surprised she didn’t see the steam coming out of my ears at this point. I took that bat and I whacked the pillow and couch so hard that the pillow was jettisoned off the couch and the couch cushion split, foam began spilling out. On my last hit, the bat cracked in half. I tossed the broken bat on the floor, told the therapist to go fuck herself and walked out. I slammed the door so hard on my way out that the building shook. There is no universe in which someone cheating in a relationship is good for that relationship. And no amount of gaslighting will make it true.

Last edited 7 months ago by MollyWobbles
Best Thing
Best Thing
7 months ago
Reply to  MollyWobbles

Yes MollyWobbles! She’s lucky you didn’t take the bat to her head! That being said, my identity here is “the best thing that ever happened to me”, because it absolutely was. I would still be in that suffocating plastic bag of a marriage if it wasn’t for the straw that broke the camel’s back. Can you look back now and think that any good came out of your FW experience?

MollyWobbles
MollyWobbles
7 months ago
Reply to  Best Thing

No, sorry I can’t. Thirty years of being cheated on isn’t anything good. Though I will say that if I had to do it all over again I would, only because of my children. They are the best things in my life. I’m glad you’re able to spin the narrative in your favor though! If it works for you then I’m happy for you.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  MollyWobbles

Anything little bit of good that comes out of abuse is all in spite of abusers and only due to the metal and grit of survivors and their supporters.

OHFFS
OHFFS
7 months ago
Reply to  MollyWobbles

Love it! I salute you.

Divorce Minister
Divorce Minister
7 months ago

Notice how it is all is reduced to what the Cheater gets out of the relationship. Men aren’t people but rather vehicles or objects of utility for the Cheater. This is just objectifying from female to male direction. Neither direction is healthy or good. It is sick when people treat others as objects and NOT people with feelings, too.

Chumpcat
Chumpcat
7 months ago

Wow, just wow. This author is like tone of the doctors cigarette companies used to hire. Her “research” – talking to cheaters and using their excuses for being lying narcissists to justify lying and narcissism. I propose this: since this is just a practical means to an end, and it really just benefits everyone, have the cheaters explain the logic and practicality of what they are doing with full disclosure. Follow up with the husband’s completing emotional health and life satisfaction rating scales. I am sure they will reflect high scores due to the wonderful benefits of finding they were in a time share marriage.

This clueless witch literally has a chapter referring to it as “subcontracting

Best Thing
Best Thing
7 months ago
Reply to  Chumpcat

As well as follow up with the husbands emotional health and life satisfaction, how about follow up with the cheaters to see if the husbands they love and wouldn’t ever leave found out about their betrayals and kicked their arses to the curb.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  Chumpcat

Spot-on comparison. It’s what’s pejoratively called “Tobacco science” by consumer watchdogs and is used as an analogy in environmental advocacy circles for any type of ghost-written junk science sponsored by corrupt industries in defense of toxic and dangerous products.

Best Thing
Best Thing
7 months ago

I wonder what feminist Alice M. Walker, Ph.D. thinks about men cheating on their loyal, loving, hardworking yet aging-by-the-day wives. Not curious enough to google it, but anyway….

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago
Reply to  Best Thing

Her current bullshit is really just a followup to her apologism for cheating husbands, likely meant to keep her from looking explicitly like the misogynist, patriarchal dick-fluffer she is.

If it seems counterintuitive that a patriarchal dick-fluffer would encourage women to cheat on men, I suspect doing so is moot because it’s not much threat to patriarchal control and exploitation of women. Case in point is that the supposed 13% of women who cheat is the same stat from over 30 years ago. In other words, the tendency may have capped off and maxed out and is not increasing as those who try to tie the trend to modern feminism have frequently predicted it would.

Because this may partly relate to the fact that women have always faced vastly higher rates of violent or lethal retaliation for cheating than men, rates of female cheating may have maxed out just at a time when stronger enforcement against domestic violence had decreased rates of domestic murder in the US. That’s not to say that women should be whacked around to prevent us all from cheating all the time, just that those who were inherently prone to cheating were more likely to act on already existing impulses as the risk of doing so lowered.

By that argument, about the only way to test whether women’s rates of infidelity would ever match male rates would be to lower rates of male-on-female domestic violence and murder until they were the same as the relatively low rates of female-on-male DV and domestic murder. But I don’t think it would make any difference anyway to the degree that domestic violence may mostly be motivated by enforcement of one-sided monogamy.

And here’s the key thing: women’s rates of violent perpetration have remained stubbornly the same throughout history, not even budging with the advent of feminism. Despite manosphere junk science arguments that feminism is causing women to become more violence and criminal, about the only “crimes” that have increased since women got the vote, etc., are truancy and minors running away from home. To skew the gender disparity in DV, manosphere shills often conflate male-on-male domestic murder in the gay community with female perpetrated violence or else use the widely criticized Straus conflict tactic scale to make it seem like as many women are instigating DV when, in fact, most are reacting defensively.

So, to recap, on the increasingly evidenced theory that violence or the implication of violence is often geared to facilitate cheating, given the fact that female perpetration of DV has never changed throughout history even with the advent of modern feminism, it may be that women’s generally lower tendency to commit crimes of aggression may also relate to lower underlying motives for aggression.

Consequently, if that 13% represents the ultimate peak and will never increase and may even be decreasing as rates of domestic violence increase again as enforcement against it has become more lax in recent years, what’s the threat to the old boys club if a few shills give lip service to promoting she-FWittery just to fake egalitarian creds?

Besides, inegalitarian societies have never had a problem cracking a few “male eggs” to make a “misogynist omelette” if you consider just the fact that half the children harmed or killed in homes in which domestic violence takes place are male. Actually male children are at higher risk of murder within dangerous homes which some believe relates to boys having more of a tendency to try to protect the victim parent and others relate to the idea that toxically masculine male batterers see even their own sons as “sexual competition.” If the patriarchy is willing to sacrifice boys in order to maintain the status quo, what’s a few more male chumps now and then?

Not that these shills will ever refer to any of the above much less lobby to lower male DV perpetration rates since the link between domestic abuse and infidelity doesn’t make adultery seem sexy.

Should Know Better
Should Know Better
7 months ago

Damn, this sounds so much like the BS my ex gave me. About how she had tried to communicate with me…except somehow I was completely unaware of these attempts at communication. In fact she had told me years ago that she simply didn’t have any sex drive anymore. Apparently the signal that she was past that was her constantly being mad at me.

But the one that hits hardest is the cold, calculating part. According to her she decided that she was going to go out and get laid to “satisfy her unmet needs” and bolster her self esteem. And only after she started sexting the AP did she “fall in love” with him. (In some tiny bit of karma, turns out he was a narcissistic predator who was just using her; she fell for his love bombing and then couldn’t believe it when he dropped her like last week’s trash and called her crazy when everything came to light.) And yes, she used the line about how our marriage would be better because she would be happier. Which was shortly followed by an explanation of how actually she had been planning on divorcing me for years but never did because she was “afraid of change”. Read as “afraid of having to actually support herself” having never had a full time job in her entire life.

FYI_
FYI_
7 months ago

Sorry if this is a stereotype, but I have never (in my long life) met a woman who does this:

They were looking for “Mr. Now and Then.” Love? Feelings? Emotional entanglements? Absolutely not.

Should Know Better
Should Know Better
7 months ago

Let’s pull a page from CL and replace cheating with some other forms of abuse and see how absurd it sounds.

She had an unmet need for high end spas and luxury handbags, but her husband couldn’t or wouldn’t provide that because he was busy funding college savings and retirement accounts. So she found a “workaround” that kept everyone happy. She got a secret credit card in his name, ruined their credit, and stole money out of the rainy day fund and kids’ college savings to pay off just enough to keep it secret. Workaround!

He is a healthy, virile man, but his wife doesn’t give him enough sex. But he loves her, truly, and doesn’t want to blow up his marriage. So a few times a week he slips a little something into her wine and rapes her. She doesn’t have to be (consciously) subjected to sex she doesn’t want! Everybody wins! Plus she can’t call him out on his drinking problem because she’s always getting so drunk she passes out!

Infidelity is theft, abuse, and rape. F these people

SueB
SueB
7 months ago

My FW ran off with his married law partner. She stayed married. FW even dog-sat for her while she went to Hawaii with her hubby and son. AND he’s still with her 20 years later. And, yes, she’s still married! She and FW own a house that her hubby owns a percentage of. Why divorce when you can co-own lots of property with your legal spouse and have an FW as well? You can’t make this stuff up!

Layne Meyer
Layne Meyer
7 months ago

Not a shocking article. Women’s infidelity is clearly skyrocketing. My first wife got pregnant to another man, my second was having an affair with her male boss and her female best friend simulataneously, four out of my five childhood friends are divorced because their wives cheated, my bi sister has rampantly cheated on both her male and female partners for years. So much so that we no longer speak.

I wish I had it in front of me right now, but there’s plenty of recent data showing that women 35 and under are now cheating more often than men. Killing the patriarchy, one extramarital, family-destroying affair at a time!

OHFFS
OHFFS
7 months ago

“What if terminating voting rights is really preserving democracy? What if dumping raw sewage into streams really improves water quality? How many shitty things are glossed as noble to disguise a selfish or malevolent agenda which would preserve special interests? This mindfuck is as old as time. But look at me, Alice M. Walker, Ph.D trying to pass myself off as an original thinker.”

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was some way to have sex with as many people as you want to unencumbered? Imagine if women could be SINGLE. Brazenly, unabashedly uncoupled! No, no perish the thought. Alice M. Walker Ph.D. is an original thinker, but even she must concede that Women Must Be Coupled. How could these women ever suffer the fate of messy divorce? Or the pariah status of the Single Mother? No, no. Much better to cuckold your husband.”

👏👏👏
This is now my favourite UBT of all. Stellar work from our beloved cookie monster.

ChumpInSunlight
ChumpInSunlight
7 months ago

OMG – it is not profound insight that people having affairs aren’t looking to end their marriage. Duh. Thats why they’re having affairs and not doing the get divorced and be single and have sex thing.

They’re still extracting value from their marriage and their spouse and of course they don’t want that to end. 🙄

Ex tried to tell me that his affair was good for our marriage and sent me garbage articles explaining why. It’s all justification for his entitlement. Period.

Dontfeellikedancin
Dontfeellikedancin
7 months ago

They probably THINK they’re treating their spouse well while cheating, but it’s got to be like 5% or less of Chumps that report this is true. Just goes to show cheaters are so outrageously self-centered and believe their mere presence is a gift to all. Their main character syndrome borders on actual delusion. I don’t know of a single cheating woman that treated her Chump well. Not AP, not MiL, not the boyfriend’s ex wife. They were all dismissive and absent at best and cruel at worst, especially publicly (as was my cheating ex husband).

Matt in Middletown
Matt in Middletown
7 months ago

A lot of that drek was near word for word the BS my ex was quoting from her therapist.
Just add in there “therapist replaced her personality with fangirling over celebrities” and “drawing false parallels between the client life and their celebrity fancrush”.

Plus a healthy dose of my ex declaring she wanted a sexless marriage because it was “so holy” while complaining about same lack of sex life.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago

Wow, Jedi level mindfucking. Yet she didn’t succeed because your brain obviously still functions– cohesive paragraphs, snarky wit and all.

What kind of low rent therapist actually encourages parasocial relationships?

Matt in Middletown
Matt in Middletown
7 months ago

I have yet to come up with a good snark description of the therapist.
But she was provided to my ex via her health insurance.
Make of that what you will.

Somewhere in there is an object lesson on “perverse incentive” to keep the patient messed up as then you get more money from them/their insurance.
Especially if you double bill like certain blood diagnostics companies try to do at times.
Not naming names but rhymes with west.

Hell of a Chump
Hell of a Chump
7 months ago

“Perverse incentive” is a great term for it. I think a lot of therapy operates like disaster capitalism. Halliburton might not have directly caused the levees to break or the oil well to explode but– oops, ka-ching!– they certainly mopped up the profits after the fact. Keeping patients sick and dependent or making them moreso pays the bills. But there can be other perverse incentives at play beyond financial.

In the case of abuse survivors, victim-blaming therapeutic response is credited for causing the “second injury” of domestic abuse. In your case it was indirectly done by coddling the perp and turbo-charging her blameshifting alibis and, from your description of that therapist’s behavior, offering your ex what are called “palliative comparisons” (in clinical literature, abusers apparently love to compare themselves and their conduct to that of celebrities or historical heroes). But when it’s the victim being (mis)treated directly, it’s really the same thing because crap quacks damage survivors by echoing the classic perpetrator blameshifting narrative– that the victim had some preexisting flaw that “caused” the abuser to behave abusively, blah blah blah. Either way, it’s abuser-coddling.

I used to think the dynamic was entirely misogynistic “pimps up/hos down” stuff. But now I realize that, even if a lot of the junk theories in victimology cut their teeth on pathologizing and discrediting female victims, it’s really more about backing the perceived “winner” of any fight and piling up on the perceived “loser” which can happen on all levels of society and in “macro” politics as well as interpersonally. Basically, in the twisted view of fucked up people, the “winner” is always the nastiest monkey in the room because that’s who always “won” in their horror show life experiences while victims always lost. So sick or weak-minded bystanders will make a great show of being on the side of the perpetrator simply because that’s who’s the most dangerous when crossed.

This occurred to me when I witnessed a few women fabricate harassment or assault charges against men as I’ve mentioned before. While the overwhelming majority of sexual harassment and assault victims aren’t prevaricating, it was so interesting how genuine victims would get almost no support from the social context and even intense blowback while the psycho fakers got wide coddling support.

Like what gives? If gender inequality was the sole driving force, that wouldn’t have happened. The fakers would have been subjected to the same contempt and incredulity as the real victims. But instead I think it was just slightly novel but not impossible circumstances where the women at the center of the fake scandals happened to be the most dangerous people involved while the targets were perceived as being less dangerous. Even if it’s generally the reverse, some super scary women exist.

Anyway, had you been the instigator in that relationship and the most creepy monkey in the standoff, I’m guessing the very same therapist would have kneejerkedly sided with you and her ideology would have instantly shifted in the other direction (from a cultish form of feminist lip service to rabid misogyny) because she never had any principles to begin with, only a twisted, opportunistic, animal instinct to cuddle up to the perceived “victor”– whoever was the most capable of committing evil.

The mindset is scarily common, a fact that always shocks individual survivors who are subjected to these kinds of blaming pileups and shocks the entire world in the wakes of mass atrocities. Holocaust survivor and historian Primo Levi spent the rest of his life trying to untangle the depressing revelations about bystanderism. In the intro to one of his books, he quoted a camp survivor who famously said, “Ten percent of people are always merciful; ten percent are always cruel and the remaining eighty percent can go either way.”

That quote always stayed with me and I find myself being less blown apart by negative bystanderism (including by supposed helping professionals) if I keep those percentages in mind, focus on surrounding myself and my kids with the “merciful ten percent,” and also view the “creep-cuddlers” as a species of lemmings or automatons who were simply trained from birth in sad sack circumstances to respond in this way. I simply won’t invest in people who could “go either way” when push comes to shove. My mother called the type “walking abortions.” Over time I’ve gotten better at identifying them because whatever virtue-signalling ideology they give lip service tends to be cultish (but that’s another long and windy spiel).

I also take it as a bit of a positive review if I was never quite evil enough to sway the peanut gallery in certain harrowing work situations where creeps got the vote. Because this was true even after I gained a reputation for fighting back and winning (because I mistakenly thought it was all about who actually “won”), it became clear to me that the dynamic is really driven by plain old evil. Some people are simply drawn to it in whatever form it comes. Talk about perverse.

JMac
JMac
7 months ago

I just posted this on her Facebook page:

What an absolute steaming pile of rationalized bullshit. At MINIMUM, the husband should be given the opportunity to decide whether he’d be willing to continue the marriage BEFORE the wife seeks outside sex. Sounds like most of these women are putting way more effort into their affairs than their marriages. They really don’t love or care about their husbands, they just want to use marriage as a framework for their infidelity. Also, I didn’t realize Walmart was handing out PhD’s – I can’t believe anyone would ever believe any of the behaviors listed in this article were even remotely okay under any circumstances. Don’t respond, you’re not worth my time or effort and I won’t be back. And don’t look now, your hypergamy is showing.

ChumpMaster
ChumpMaster
18 days ago

Wanna bet the PhD lady is a big time cheater herself?

My dear wife has similar wildest blameshiftings when it comes to her affair and lies.
When it comes to something I communicate – I am opressing her. LOL
But she still hasn’t left that ‘no good husband’ of hers. It’s “for the children”, of course. 😉