What Lasted Longer Than Your Relationship with a Cheater?
This funny post appeared on the private Chump Nation Facebook page this week, which spurred a discussion about what lasted longer than your relationship with a cheater?
A Friday Challenge was born.
Some relationships with cheaters endure, others end quickly like an explosion of food poisoning. Extremely unpleasant, but finite. What has outlasted your cheater? What keeps going and remains faithful? Who lives on when fuckwits expire?
A trusty appliance like this carving knife? Your vacuum cleaner? A trusted friend? Mold scum in your bathroom?
Cheaters can’t go the distance, but other things do. Today we celebrate those things!
What outlasted your relationship with a cheater?
TGIF! (And happy Black Friday to those who celebrate).
My mom’s dryer purchased in the 80’s.
ExFW and I moved it into the basement of our first marital home, turned rental property. I give my finger a little kiss before pressing the start button and say “thank you”.
I seem to frequently be the first to comment. This chump is awake at 5:30 EST.
I also get up at 5:30. We have a similar washer dryer at work. Faithfully doing my work laundry and some of my patients for over a decade .
And, yes, my mom had that exact electric knife.
Can confirm that my mom also had that exact electric knife, although with a different colourway
I have a Corning Ware casserole dish with exactly that same floral design. Probably from about that same time.
I think everyone’s mom had that knife!
I’m old enough to have owned that knife!
I’ve still for the Fender Stratocaster that I bought when I was 19 (black, maple neck and single-ply scratchplate for those that care about things like this as much as I do) and I play it pretty much every day. That instrument has carried me through all sorts of lows and delivered some fantastic highs. My youngest daughter is an occasional player and played it a lot during lockdown; at one point, she had that guitar (I have a number of others) and my old valve amp in her bedroom and I’d often hear her plunking away late at night.
On the domestic front, I still have the Dualit 4 slot toaster that Ex-Mrs LFTT treated ourselves to about a year after we got married. It must be 30+ years old now and still going strong, compared to a marriage that only lasted 25 years.
LFTT
Fender Jazz Bass she smashed up when she realized I had moved on. Early 90s USA built deluxe active. A bit of an odd duck with 22 frets where the standard J has only 20. All she managed to do was bust the pick guard and the neck pickup (completely in half which is some job). For less effort she could have broken the neck and completey ruined it. Instead I played it like that for years, then when I felt like it I got it fixed no problem. She told everyone who would listen she was an “artist.” I, on the other hand, was square because I practiced and read music. In fact she was a poseur who didn’t know anything about making music or instruments, which is what wound up saving my favorite axe.
My love for the 2 children I made with my cheater…one baby he made while he was with his mistress, so he had both of us. That was the unknown pick- me – dance when he picked 2.
Even though we were estranged for 12 years due to my second cheaters awful behavior, today Nov 2024 my daughter calls me, allows visits and i get to play with her 3 children under 4. So both my cheaters seemed to win, but they still lost. My son lives 10 min down the highway and I still have him and 2 grandchildren plus his wife, that love me in spite of cheater#1 bullying. So I am eternally grateful 🙏 for cheaters babies that outlasted both cheaters(I declined to have babies with #2 cheater so there is that) happy day after Thanksgiving to all my beloved chumps.
My 1988 Honda Civic. The gas tank finally rusted beyond reasonable repair in 2016, so I had to retire my economical, dependable car. I got married in 1990, and after I realized FW kept forgetting to shift into fifth gear despite my reminding him that the engine was screaming, the car outlasted him by three years. He was barred from driving it after late 1990, which prolonged its life, I’m sure. I loved that car.
Omg 🤣. I burst out laughing when I read your comment. The Honda civic was an amazing car. Far superior to any FW.
So you may remember that my Cheater died when I was in an ill-advised, multiyear wreckonsillyation where I was still in the dark about most of his treachery.
During that time, I was expected to support his plans to become a business tycoon. He did have some sporadic success but just before he died, it looked like he would have to return to being an employee. I didnt see this as a failure but he did.
Anyhoo…in about 2008, I was being very thrifty trying to help his plan work and show my support. I needed a new hairbrush so I got one at the dollar store. I told myself that by the time the brush wore out, his business would be a grand success and I would get a fancy brush.
Living on a budget and forgoing luxury was something I didnt mind doing. I wanted love, not things.
When he was planning to leave for Susan of Seattle, he had bought a life insurance policy on himself as part of his divorce prep work. That sounds good, I know most cheaters leave financial devastation in their wake but he forced me to give up the opportunity of a military spouse life insurance policy that would have been better, so he was looking for a cheaper way to punch his ticket but he did a proper thing nonetheless.
So Cheater did die unexpectedly thus gaining me the funds to tend all the things I needed to. I later married a man who is not only financially comfortable, he is also responsible and doesnt spend goofy like husband 1.0. The end game is that I dont need to work and we have enough to last us even if we live a long time and we go to Europe twice a year, so that whole aspect is going well.
And I still have the dollar store brush. It has lost a whole row of bristles, but as soon as I hit send, I will be using it to get ready for the day…dang thing outlasted almost everything about my earlier life.
Wow–an amazing, faithful hairbrush!
That was funny. We had an electric knife that we got as a wedding present. I had never used one, but his family was obsessed. Nearly every time we ate at his parents’ or a sibling’s house, out came the electric knife. When we were getting ready to sell the house, I packed most of his stuff, and friends came and helped with the rest. It happened over a week because I was trying to get out before he arrived with his moving van, so it was bit chaotic. I never did see that electric knife again, and I don’t know if he got it earlier on one of his trips back or if he ended up with it somehow. I know I don’t have it.
My oldest is older than the length of the marriage. Truly they were the best thing that came out of that union, as disordered as it was. I have them both home for Thanksgiving, and my heart is full!
My cheap little toaster. It”s so old I can’t even remember when I got it. I brought it into the marriage and it’s still going strong over 7 years post divorce.
I have my slipcased editions of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” bought on store discount when I was working in a bookstore in the late 1970s (my ex and I married in 1982, and were divorced in 2018). I started reading Tolkien when I was in junior high school, in 1969. As a girl who lived in a troubled family (possessive father) and grew up on the back of a horse riding freely through the Colorado mountains, I identified strongly with Eowyn. I read the whole trilogy once a year for the first thirteen years after I discovered Tolkien, from age 13 to 26, by that later age admiring the erudition of the made-up languages, histories, and geography. These are my ur-texts, so to speak.
My ex was also a professor of literature (modernism), and his sister a professor of history (Old Irish). Some years ago my ex’s sister, with whom he was unnaturally close–long story involving dysfunctional family and my ex’s autogynephilia–(I always said he should have married her), my sister-in-law got into Tolkien and wrote a series of lectures for her university, and after years of pooh-poohing my interest in Tolkien, my ex became a fan. You would have thought he’d been a lifelong Tolkien fan. He glommed onto my slipcased editions–the sob broke the spine of LOTR–and I’m sure he believed he should have them, but I packed them up in my first pass through the house when I moved out, because I wanted to make sure he didn’t get them.
I spent my life in books. I read them (first book read alone: “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back”), I studied them (through a PhD), I sold them (retail), I bought them (wholesale distributer), I taught them (as a professor), and I wrote them (one was a finalist for a national prize). I’m now a retired professor of literature. I haven’t read Tolkien in a long time, but I think I’m about due for a re-read, as a way to reclaim Tolkien.
I have tons of books that predate El Puerco. I am just unpacking them after four years of divorce, buying a new house, and getting a book nook put in. I got a little teary the other day, pulling those old friends out of boxes after so long.
I negotiated with Fuckwit to give him all the furnishings. I wanted no reminders of our marriage (other than the kids) so it was a shock awhile back when I saw a spoon from our wedding set amongst the cutlery I have now. I almost tossed it out, but then I thought the poor thing escaped just like I did so now we’re lone survivors of FW, me and the spoon.
Speaking of things: FW has kept all our things in our old house. He puts up all our holiday decorations apparently & doesn’t let Schmoopie change a thing. I literally don’t understand why a Schmoopie would go along with living with another woman’s stuff and in the same house too. Has the woman no ounce of pride? Ick. No wonder she hates me (feeling’s mutual) having to live with me as a reminder everyday.
Yes the objects they have with a new partner is so weird! My ex didn’t want much except a beautiful print we purchased at a gallery from a romantic weekend away and he wanted a lovely lamp that was used for romance in the bedroom. Yuck!
My sweet husband was carrying residual pain from the division of stuff in his first marriage and we did some therapeutic shopping (lamp and coffee grinder of all obscure things) until he was free of those feelings of loss.
If his divorce had been recent when we started dating, I might have somewhat avoided her stuff but they had been divorced a long time when we started dating so I dont have negative feelings about stuff his former wife bought that ended up his. A stunning antique European armoire made its way to my home and I dont care who it belonged to before me. From what I can discern, she had good taste with regard to home decor; relationship issues, not so much.
It’s something I’ll never understand nor relate to– why sociopaths actually like reminders of betrayed relationships and have an instinct to impinge, infringe, obtrude, impose and trespass on perceived victims/opponents/rivals. For instance, the AP in my situation apparently tried every different angle to get into my family home when the kids and I were out of town, even offering to clean it lol. There were other creepy encroachments like insisting on going to our family dentist, etc.
Meanwhile, after D-day and after seeing the “secret credit card” charges showing where the affair had been conducted, I couldn’t even drive through through those parts of town as if I could contract syphilis from proximity. Fortunately this was all in sketchy, seedy bar zones so it wasn’t hard to avoid but even passing exit signs on the freeway for those areas made me hold my breath and cross myself (and I’m not even Catholic). Since she was a big Disney fanatic, I could also never thereafter take the kids to anything Disney related though again this wasn’t a big loss since I was never a fan.
Anyway, what gives with victims “avoiding like the plague” and perpetrators moving towards associated things and places and activities? The only reference I have to comprehend it is that it must be similar to how serial killers compulsively return to the scenes of their crimes or the old practice of cannibalizing enemies to gain their courage or as the ultimate act of dominance.
My beloved gray tabby Augustus McCrae (known as “Gus the Bus” to the staff at my vet’s office due to his weighing in above 20 lbs) turned 8 last month.
The Lying Cheating Loser and I adopted him as a kitten after we moved to a rental in a neighborhood with a substantial rat population.
Walking into the shelter, I had two asks: not a male, and not a tabby.
We walked out with Gus, because the LCL felt they “bonded.”
Gus, being a smart kitty, quickly clocked the contents of the LCL’s character and switched his allegiance to me. (It might have had something to do with the LCL throwing shoes at him in the middle of the night when Gus would meow at the back door to be let out so he could go to his job as a rat hunter).
A year after we got Gus, the LCL just had to have a German Shepherd puppy, so Luna joined the family. To no one’s surprise, the care, feeding, walking, and training of Luna quickly defaulted to me.
When I dumped the LCL at long last, he took Luna and decamped to his mother’s house in another part of the state. I took Gus, and we moved into a smaller rental. The first two weeks after my move, I was cleaning and painting the little 500 sqft back cottage that was our new home. I had put all my furniture in storage, save for a small sofa and a few necessities, until I finished the work.
Gus slept with me on that narrow little couch and rarely left my side. He saved my sanity and healed my heart.
A few short months later, I bought my dream house outright (at auction) and Gus and I moved 100 miles away from the town that held all the bad memories of the LCL.
In the years since, I’ve built him a catio and myself a charmed life in a house where the walls sing.
We’ve added a longhaired calico (Miss Jean Louise Finch, aka Scout) to the family, and no one is throwing shoes or engaging in fw behavior.
The LCL, to no one’s surprise, offloaded Luna on a string of Schmoopies, but she was eventually adopted by a nice, dog-loving woman and moved out of state.
I often say that Gus is the only good thing that came out of my four years with the LCL.
Also, fw’s make shitty pet parents.
My love for German Shorthaired Pointer dogs.
Our first was more trouble than we expected, but the kids loved him. FW was constantly complaining, which I realized later was just another part of the discard phase as she was already cheating. It came to a head when she said “It’s me our the dog!” Talk about foreshadowing! In an effort to save my marriage I found breed specific rescue group that would take him. When I told her, she responded “That would just make me the bad guy!” I knew something else was going on.
A few years later was DD and divorce.
I remarried four years later and my new wife loved my GSP and had a dog of her own. The two dogs really hit it off together. Over time we cycled through four more, mostly rescue dogs. Addie is our fifth. She was a Covid puppy the helped us stay sane during that dark time. I cannot imagine life without one now.
I still have and wear my fuzzy green bathrobe which I purchased in 1990, 3 years before I met FW. I practically lived in it for 6 months early on in our separation, with all the moping I did and not bothering to dress (since I work from home). It has given me more warmth and comfort than him, that’s for sure.
OutButNotDown, my mother also had a favorite bathrobe that was slightly tattered but well-loved. She was wearing it when she died (while holding my hand and listening to her favorite music), and so she went off to the crematorium looking exactly as she had for years, fuzzy slippers and all. I wouldn’t have known what to do with that bathrobe if it had remained here without her.
What lasted longer than my 35 year marriage is my low “self-things”, aka self-esteem, self-love and so on. I say this because those things pre-dated my stupid, stupid marriage by a couple of decades, explaining why I married the jackass in the first place. Thankfully, and because of what I have been through since D-Day, I can say that my low self-things are higher than they have ever been in my life. And that is the #1 reason why I say betrayal and divorce was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me. Without the cheating I would still be limping along in a neglectful marriage, believing that I was “not worth coming home to” (yep, he said that to me and I stayed) none the wiser about how awesome both I and life could be. When God, Fate and the Universe takes a dump on your head, you get to decide whether it is shit or fertilizer. You may quote me.
Damn I feel good! Thank you XFW and Mrs. Bendover too!!
My 1994 Honda Accord. I bought it brand new in college in 1993. The ex serial cheater used and abused that car (all the dents were because of him). The ex and I were married 23 years and just like my car we were used and abused but we survived. That car trusty reliable car is still in my driveway and is still working.
Yup, FW was responsible for the only dings on my 88 Civic, which is another reason he was banned from driving it. His forgetting to shift into fifth gear was bad enough, but when he punctured the ceiling of the car while trying to force something into the back seat, that clinched it for me. I had to look at that ragged tear for another few decades, and it never got easier. I resented every single chip and ding he inflicted on my car … shows how much care he took to preserve just about everything in his life.
Two pairs of Robert Clergerie loafers– one brown, one black– that I bought with my first solid paycheck because my mother was of the “fewer but better” school and my dad said the worst health mistake he ever made aside from smoking in college was getting “stylish” but bad shoes when he got his first job. He said he’d believe the salesmen when they claimed new shoes were always painful and had to be “broken in” but he soon learned the cheap crap never did and could leave you with permanent injuries.
Really obvious metaphors there. 😉
The retail price of the shoes I got made me flinch– about $275 per pair back in the mid-nineties. But they’re handmade using traditional techniques developed back when people would own the same shoes for life. Similar “sturdy” shoes from the same company now cost about $575 new or can be gotten gently pre-owned on Ebay for about $150. That is if I wanted to replace them but why bother? After walking across three continents and eight countries, not even the leather linings have cracked. I thought I’d have to retire them after having kids but my feet went back to pre-pregnancy size after starting the keto diet for sports injuries.
The heels have been recapped a few times and the leather is a bit scuffed in places but nothing a little polish can’t cover. Plus they’re more comfortable than ever and still look fab. Sort of like character is more enduring than mere personality, things that were never really the rage also never get dated. The whole trend of “sustainable” and “forever” fashion is hardly new since my mother was an early practitioner of “repair over replacement.” But she knew this only applies to genuine quality. Some flaws are built in and can’t be fixed.
My nineteen-year-old dog. ❤️
❤️
The couch I bought after graduating from college — but not the cushions!
I bought one of this This End Up crate-style couches more than three decades ago. It’s sturdy but that sucker is heavy, so it’s kind of a wonder that I’ve schlepped it around this long. Anyway, it is in the basement and is where my FW’s AP slept when she came to visit us the weekend I discover the affair. (Also saw gross texts suggesting something hapoened down there while I was asleep. Eww.)
Despite this, the couch survives because I demanded that the AP give me $786.42 to replace the cushions she sullied. Someone told me it was petty of me. I took it as a compliment.
This End Up was one of the first sets of furniture I bought after ousting the cheater. It was 1985. I moved the set to my townhouse in 1994. It went from the living room to the basement in 2009. In 2011 it moved to a condo. I sold the condo in 2022. This sucker was, as you’ve noted, very heavy. I held a ‘free for the taking’ and a family had just moved in next door with no furniture. Even just moving the stuff out 1 door and into another door took everyone in that family. It still had the original cushions, but they had been covered with new fabric in 2010.
I applaud getting back money for new cushions.
It seemed the least she could do. 😂
My wedding china. The china belongs to the bride. Always loved the pattern. Minton Bellemeade now discontinued. I moved across country. Gave Cheaterpants all the furniture, but divorce agreement stipulated that he would ship all my smaller personal items. Twelve place settings of china and serving pieces made it in good form. Only 1 bread and butter plate broke. Bone china is very resilient. It made it through Sunday and Holiday use for 35 years without a chip or break. And now across the country. I like to think I am resilient like the china.
Yea, me too. My wedding china from my marriage is displayed in a lovely cabinet that husband 2.0 bought me. It all made 6 cross country moves and I dont think a piece ever got broken.
My collection of slogan and oddball tee shirts, many of them being from the eighties, are still going strong.
I have a few pairs of shoes and boots from around the time FW and I were not yet married (we married in 1991) that are still in good condition. The FW himself, OTOH, looks like an old, worn out shoe that’s falling apart.
I have a gorgeous dark green glass fruit bowl. I bought it from a vintage shop in the early 2000s. I was a student, and I remember standing there looking at the beautiful emerald green glass for ages, trying to decide if I could actually afford to spend $15 on it. And whether I would be able to find anywhere in my shared apartment to put it!
It’s outlasted 2 cheating husbands and I hope it will outlast me!
My Maytag washer and dryer. When FW and I got married we bought Maytags that took all of our money but we loved them. The salesperson said they would last 30 years and we loved that idea. The machines are going strong. The marriage? Not so much. The Maytags turned 30 this year.
My Kenmore washer and drier lasted through two marriages and three cheaters. They don’t make them like they used to!
My black Goretex shell from Eddie Bauer — outlasted two cheaters. I wore it all over the Pacific Northwest for years, then in the DC area on rainy and snowy (with layers underneath) days, the two years I was voyaging on a sailboat and has been with me to Europe four times. It’s starting to look a little “used,” though. Still perfect for those early morning and late night trips outside with my dog.
omg my mother had that exact electric carving knife.
But for me, it is my vintage Rival crock pot that lasted longer. My crock pot is more faithful and trustworthy than my eX ever was.
I have a lot.
My entire collection of race tees, tanks and sweathshirts, and the accompanying medals. I was racing (foot, not bike) long before, during, and after I had him in my life, and in my 70s, am still at it. (He had a thing for large, slovenly drunks; fit and trim actually turned to to be a real negative for him).
Collections of Rosenthal vases and china, Oreffors vases, wonderful art boks, and so much more I obtained before I knew him.
A wonderful, educated and self-supporting adult child I see often and text with a few times a week.
But most of all, I have my sanity!! Priceless.
The Chili Recipe That Survived Two Brief Failed Marriages™
Sometime in the late 80s, my mother painted our bathroom light pink. She bought the requisite rugs and toilet seat cover and also a set of white towels with pink stripes from Kmart. When I moved out on my own in 2003, I took them with me. They are, right now, in the bathroom with not even a hole in them. I used to use them after dyeing my hair because I didn’t care about them but they never held a stain. They are still soft and absorbent. They outlasted my marriage.
Also, when I was in college, I bought a binder edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook. It has gotten a lot of use. The book abides; my marriage did not.
My kitchen bin! 24 years versus 21. And much more useful…. lol
My cheater was my second marriage and my second marriage only lasted 10 months after being engaged for 9 months and of course 3 months of dating before the engagement (just adding some perspective to this timeline). I don’t have a damn thing from that marriage. I threw away everything that even remotely reminded me of it and her, including the dust from the vaccuum cleaner that I brought into the marriage. I learned the value of good thrift stores too 🙂