Who Else Did You Lose in the Breakup?
When you lost a cheater, who else did you lose in the breakup? This is the topic of an upcoming podcast and today’s Friday Challenge.
People often think infidelity is just a private matter between a couple, and not a larger conspiracy, as it often turns out to be. In the end, you may lose “friends” who were affair partners, those who knew and didn’t tell you, and the Switzerland folks who don’t want to take sides.
In the forthcoming Tell Me How You’re Mighty podcast, Sarah and I discuss a letter from a woman who suspects that her unsupportive friend may have been one of her husband’s affair partners.
An excerpt:
My so-called BFF was a really shit friend. She didn’t want to hear about the cheating, and actually minimised it and talked about her own cheating (which I had no idea about up to that point), and was really dismissive of my pain with regular comments such as “you’ve just got to get over it hon” and my favourite “I find your pain really triggering “, she always wanted to change the subject.
I found her lack of support unnerving and painful. I didn’t get it! I’d been there with tissues and wine for the previous decade when she lost her mum and went through several failed IVF cycles being there for her. I was shocked at how shitty she was as a friend.
I continued contacting her and trying with her. My family and myself found her behaviour bizarre. She was in touch with me sporadically, refused to be there to support on a few things that were going on (like mediation) and absolutely did not want to see my ex under any circumstances.
I got a lot of creative BS – She said that she was psychic and was really affected by “bad energy “ and she was frightened for her own safety. She didn’t want to be in a possible dv situation and refused to help me when I was getting the family home ready for sale, and said she couldn’t be there when the cheater was present ..seems it’s was okay for me to potentially be in danger be just not her.
One day I decided to call her and try to calmly explain to my friend how her behaviour affected me, and her reaction was quite nuclear. She erupted and got quite personal and stated something that will always stay with me which was “I could destroy you”. Why, how I asked? I then decided to end the phone call cause she was being angry and horrible. We didn’t speak for about a month.
When I found my own place and got set up, she completely changed and pursued me to “get back to normal “ with me. Showing up at my Dj gigs, calling and interjecting into my world and making an effort to rekindle the friendship. It was all so bizarre.
So, CN, who did you lose in the breakup?
Was it a very great loss? Have you made new, better friends?
TGIF!
Literally everyone who had been in our circle.
They were all members of her church, I’m not a member of their denomination.
So they all huddled around, fawned over, and butt patted her while demonizing me.
Well, very well.
Many people have observed that women tend to be better at building and maintaining social relationships. Even leaving aside the church element in your case, it’s common for the mutual friend group to have a bias towards the wife (since she’s typically the driving force in those relationships) and for the husband to lose a disproportionate share of those mutual friends in a divorce. It’s pretty isolating for men in the best of cases, and it really sticks in your craw when the wife is the person who chose to wreck the marriage.
I am now dating a wonderful woman but I still find that I’m reluctant to commit too much to her friends (who are great people) because I am always aware that – at any moment – those people could vanish from my life. Not healthy, but there it is.
I’ve never been a social person much.
Didn’t make it hurt any less when everyone skated on me.
What I’ve noticed is that perpetrators of any gender are better at “playing victim” than actual victims. While real victims of real abuse tend to be jarring, upsetting and off-putting to bystanders (with their hollow-looking eyes, quaking voices and vague smell of stress hormones), perps in the throes of blameshifting know how to play it off more attractively.
So true. Quite a few people were very willing to believe that righteously angry EZ was violent to poor sad sausage FW. Would be almost comical really if it wasn’t happening in real life.
This is a really interesting observation. I agree (from the woman’s POV). One thing that made my divorce really difficult: my FW had settled into comfortable isolation with only a handful of close friends from his young, single years … all of whom now had wives and families of their own. I actually encouraged our mutual friends to remain friends with him, only because I knew it would smooth my own divorce. I do believe strongly that men need to learn how to invest in healthy and positive friendships. Everybody wins.
My kids lost all of their relatives on their father’s side (as did I). Why? Because he forbade them from having anything to do with us. My MIL was communicating with me until he blocked my number and basically told them they’d be dead to him if they talked to me or *the kids*.
I also lost my best friend because she was the wife of his best friend. That hurt. She just ghosted me right after my Dad died by not showing up to his funeral or communicating with me in any other way. (She had told me she’d be there.) Fun fact, he was with his Schmoopie when I called to tell him that my Dad had died (we were still married in “reconciliation mode”).
I lost my faith community because (not kidding) divorce is viewed as contagious and how dare I go to an attorney and not let the local religious negotiator settle things. (The local religious guy said basically “your husband is amazingly stubborn and toxic, do what you need to do”).
But we gained far more. The kids are their authentic selves and happy. I reset my career at over 50 after having been a SAHM for nearly 20 years and am doing well. I’ve gained new friends and new support.
Adding that this took about 4-5 years to happen. The first few years were hell, so don’t think that it was all great immediately after.
I lost close friends we’d had in our friend group before we were married. So for over 25 years. They said “We will always love the FW, even though we thought he sometimes infantalized you.” WTSF? They dropped me like a hot rock anyway.
I lost about half of FW’s family who took his side, but funnily enough he dropped his whole family and speaks to none of them. Ever.
I lost FW’s best friend, who was like an uncle to our daughter. He dropped my daughter and me and I have no idea if he’s still friends with the FW. I don’t care but it really hurt my daughter. My daughter says the FW never mentions him so who knows?
There are a couple of randos who took FW’s side for a while but then realized what a lying asshole he is and they dumped him eventually.
And no- I didn’t take them back as friends.
I eventually came to the conclusion that anyone that sided with the FW wasn’t worth breathing the same air as me and my daughter. Good riddance!
During the marriage, Fuckwit gradually was replacing his family members, heavy drinking buddies, and transitory work friends with my own long term friends, and our mutual friends. After the breakup and grand reveal of his deceptions, arrest, and life of lies, everything flipped back to my original friends which ultimately benefited my daughter. She really doesn’t need her politically extreme cousins, narc aunts who believe FW out of hand, or the drinking buddies who mysteriously vanished after news of his arrest came out. We are so much better off without that type of element. I’ve held to those old solid friends and some new ones who have proven to be genuine.
So my kids father wasn’t a cheater, he was a drunk and an abuser. When I left him I extended an olive branch to his parents and let them know they were welcome to see or speak to the kids any time.
They ignored me to “take their son’s side”. Not sure what that meant because I never asked them to take sides or do anything, I only offered access to their grandkids. But whatever, it just meant they only saw the kids when ex could bring them over and since he was military that wasn’t much.
So the kids never really knew them. Now ex is retired from the military and living in the same city as us, and his parents are old and living with him. Our sons are young men and still live with me while they work and go to school. They see their dad sometimes, and I know his mother (father has alzheimers and doesn’t recognize anyone) doesn’t understand why they don’t feel compelled to see her much. But that’s what happens when you write your grandkids off to stick it to their mother for leaving your son.
I lost nothing…..she lost a lot. Ironically ex and I made peace over the years and are cordial now so her being a bitch served no purpose at all.
Second hb was a cheater fuckwit, but since he was really careful to keep me separate from his life I lost nothing when I left him.
I had some people that I thought were friends – including my best friend from my mid twenties to mid forties – turn out not to be friends at all. I “lost” all of them, although none of them constitute a loss when you think about it in any depth. On the upside, some people that I barely knew turned out to be the most wonderful friends and very much on “Team LFTT and Kids.”
Most significantly, the kids and I lost (or is that got rid of) the toxic influence who had been undermining us, manipulating us and sabotaging our aspirations for years. Getting Ex-Mrs LFTT out of the “debit column” meant that the kids and I could get on and achieve something wonderful with our lives.
LFTT
Absolutely, I feel like after the bushfire we sprout new leaves & it’s so nice to start fresh without the toxic person in your life.
I got off pretty light in that department. She’s kind of a shit friend, so she drove off most of her hometown friends due to some pettiness or another and ran off a lot of our common friends as well(it was telling when I lamented that we stopped getting invited to one particular function and years down the line she was like “oh yeah, I told them we weren’t interested.”)
Biggest loss was my in-laws. By and at large I liked them and never had a cross word with them-always felt the feeling was mutual. Hindsight being 20/20 she was probably keeping us isolated from each other to keep her hand close to her chest. I have flirted with the idea of reaching out (there was never a proper goodbye)-but it’s been a year and they know how to find me, too. Ah well.
And for a long time? SHE was my best friend. Until she betrayed me.
I can’t say I’ve made any new friends since she has been gone. The loss cycle has shown me who my real friends are, that’s for certain. Some people only seem to have much to say to me when I am handling my baggage better, I suppose.
Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!
“oh yeah, I told them we weren’t interested.”
Isolation. Isolation. Isolation. I bet that was the tip of the iceberg. I had the same experience.
It’s hard for me to say because we had just moved (for XW’s job) a few weeks before. So I lost my job, my hometown, my circle of friends and colleagues in the old town and proximity to my family, but it wasn’t because of the affair per se – all these losses just happened to coincide with the affair.
There have been plenty of other stories here of people uprooting their lives shortly before the cheater nukes the marriage, so it’s not as uncommon as you’d think. I guess it’s kind of like FEMA prepositioning assets before a hurricane hits, except that to us – since only the cheater is aware of the incoming storm – it seems bizarre that a major life rearrangement would coincide so closely with DDay. (This obviously applies only to cheaters who are executing a long-term plan to destroy the marriage, not the ones who get unexpectedly caught in the act)
Great Katrina analogy.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence at all. My ex did the same thing. I firmly believe it is in the Official Abusers’ Handbook to gradually isolate you and remove you from support networks, often masquerading it as a romantic or cosmic adventure. Isolation techniques can be geographical, or they can be psychological (i.e., badmouthing your family, or refusing to participate in activities with your friends). Once you are removed from your support, then they can drain you at their leisure.
In both iterations of my ex’s infidelity, it was in the wake of major geographical moves to new places (both on her initiative) where my support networks then became very removed.
Combine “isolation” with a cheater’s other great trait – superficial charm – and you have a very potent cocktail for abusive control. I am very introverted and I take a long time to make new friends, but my ex can build a friend network in a new place very quickly. After move Number 1, we stayed for 8 years, and just as I had started to build my own new network of good friends, it was time to move again. Then, I suddenly found myself living in a small town for her new job, she made friends quickly while I have taken years. Add a few little kids in the mix, and making new friends in a small town is very, very hard.
Since then, I have been very suspicious and attuned to isolation techniques. It is my number 1 red flag in any relationship.
If you’re in/near Atlanta let me know and I’ll add you to my monthly “guys’ poker night” list.
Sadly I am not near Atlanta, but otherwise totally would.
My FW tried so hard to move the family overseas. I suspect now that I was getting too “uppity” and he needed to make me more dependent. Our baby had grown and I was demanding some freedom. He also encouraged me to quit my job and study full time just weeks before he abandoned us. I could never have left him if I quit my job. That shithead is pure evil.
Right!? I’m generally not convinced by the “It was a whirlwind romance that I was powerless to resist, that just unfortunately happened to occur while I was married to someone else” argument, but when you see that they’ve been scheming and planning for months (or years?) – maneuvering to make you most isolated and vulnerable so they have the upper hand when they trigger the destruction of the marriage – it’s a whole new level of betrayal.
I’m stuck coparenting for another half-dozen years, and it’s really hard to do with zero trust in the other person.
This is so well stated IG👏
It was clearly years of planning, scheming, positioning themselves to gain maximum advantage. They achieve this in large part due to the smear campaigning, which in my case went far, wide and deep — and even international. It was intentional and malicious harm. The cheater devastated hundreds of relationships not just our marriage. I defy anyone to say that is not sociopathic.
My X cutoff everyone including his mother and siblings in the breakup. Only when his mother got ill did he reconnect to go see her after being guilted. He took his new wife with him and that was the first time they met her in 3 years. I was still connected to a brother of his family came to my house every summer after the breakup with their kids until I found out they were to go on vacation with x and his new family. I told him since X was not seeing his own kids I could not be connected any longer with them if they were going to enable x with vacationing with her and her adult kids while he ignored his own kids and grandchildren of 30 years.
That was my only major loss. Never cared for his mother or other brother much. He had no friends. He kept us pretty isolated. My kids have lost their father and all his family now and that is tragic, but my nice X became a not so nice man. I don’t know how they live with themselves, but life is a lot more peaceful now without trying to keep all the relationships together.
I lost everyone on my ex’s side. I pretty much knew that would happen. Theologically, they took the “no divorce ever” stance, and when my STBX took off to another state, I knew that they would blame me and eventually turn on me. I made a break there just before my ex kicked off the divorce from his “rebel wife.” But, of course, he was playing it, so they weren’t asking too many questions about his choices during separation. For many reasons, including my safety, I will hold the line there until he is gone. Reportedly, my ex has paired up again, and they are very unhappy about that.
People at church who had been close slipped to the acquaintance level. They were supportive during the mess, but the social closeness never came back. I accepted that and looked to the broader community to find other friends and activities, and I’m good. I guess that being the “odd man out” is a problem to some, but whatever.
I have just a handful of relatives on my side, and they are all out of state and in poor health. So I really don’t have family to lean on. The college kids eventually sided with me. They were living at home and commuting to college when he left. They weren’t quite sure about me for quite awhile, and there were long stretches where they barely spoke to me, but they also weren’t in touch with their dad. Now we’re good though.
But yes, it took quite a while to sort out.
I lost my brother in law and sister in laws who I considered family. I lost neighbors who I thought were close friends. I babysat their children, hosted baby showers, helped when they were sick, took care of their pets when they were on vacation. Meanwhile ex ignored them until a couple of months before dday. He suddenly became overly friendly, waving as they drove by, running out to talk to them if they were outside. I was happy to see he was becoming more social, I hoped it would make him happier at home. What I didn’t know until later is ex was confiding in the neighbors about his concern for my mental well being, He told them I was never happy and refused to go to therapy. Dabbing tears from his eyes, he told them he loved me but wasn’t sure how much more he could take..Soon after he moved out. He and the neighbors socialized on weekends, he was meeting the wives in our neighbor hood for breakfast and coffee. These neighbor friends told me they had never seen ex so happy. Ex is happy why aren’t you? Why can’t you move on? said within a month of dday. These friends only checked on me to find out information for cheater. Forgetting to tele they were meeting him for coffee. Ex bought me a car for my birthday, in court he said I made him buy me this car. I didn’t want the car but he insisted onbuyting it for my birthday. Judge told me as long as I could get someone to verify it was bought for my birthday I wouldn’t need to repay ex for the car. I thought, that would be easy, everyone in the neighborhood knew ex had bought me this car. I called to ask them if they would verify the car was my birthday gift. Everyone had amnesia. Car? birthday? when is your birthday? Two of the neighbors have children born on the same day as my birthday. They had forgotten. They all denied knowing the car was a gift. I had to repay ex for my birthday gift I didn’t want.
This describes it well. The preparation they do to set their story about how much they love you but you’re crazy and they are suffering so much. My ex used to poke poke poke at me like a bullying middle schooler until I finally would say, “stop it.” Then he’d put on his sad face and look at the adult kids and say,”see? See how she treats me? All I’m doing is trying to love her.” And it worked perfectly. I thought all along my adult children knew the gig he was performing. It was so over the top “poor me, im so mistreated”all the while im cooking and cleaning and paying all the bills and conjoling him thru his pouts and moods because life was so unfair to only him. I thought my kids understood he was a pouty 7th grader but we loved him, we were a family so I let those things slide because thats what families do. Nope. They believed him all that time. They were so super excited when he brought in my replacement. Finally their poor dad was happy! They yelled at me, ” why can’t you just be happy for him?” Then they quit answering my calls. I was dragging negativity into their now perfect family.
Wow !!!!
I ghosted my toxic in laws. And lost a few friends who were cheater-apologists because they made me sick to listen to them.
I didn’t lose too many friends to be honest. I kept all our couple friends, they were fooled as much as I was.
There were quite a few people who tried to befriend me after FW walked out. They were all trying to get revenge on FW, so I gave them the info they wanted and have kept my distance since.
I kept all of our mutual friends, as well as my ‘former’ in-laws. I am blessed that everyone felt the same way about his cheating & abuse as I did. My former MIL is still a dear friend, who I truly love and respect. So are his older brother & his wife, who I dearly love. I know my situation is not typical, so I do not take it for granted! Love to all, as we continue to ForgeOn!
Lost:
one mother-in-law (I don’t blame her for sticking by her son–“love the sin, not the sinner,” she intoned in her holier-than-thou way. What I didn’t appreciate is that she SO quickly embraced the AP. Quite literally and demanded I forgive asap because…God.)
Lost:
half a sister-in-law. By “half” I mean that, although we still communicate and get together on occasion, those visits are more strained. There’s an elephant in the room (who bears a resemblance to FW). I’m careful what I say to her, lest she share, even though I’ve asked her to not share.
Gained:
family times with my adult kids and grandkids that are happy and anxiety free!!
Gained:
One new partner, someone who is trustworthy, stable, and respectful of me. LIke most chumps, I’m now vigilant for red flags. So far, so good!
In short, I got off easy and feel very lucky. Most people in my social circle stuck by me, and I’ve met so many wonderful new people who never knew my ex, which feels great. New beginnings!
You’ve reminded me of a favorite quote from the excellent book Out of the Fog by Dana Morningstar:
“I fully believe that those of us who have been through an abusive relationship of any kind become a lot more in touch with our intuition.”
Also: “The healthier you get, the less drama and dysfunction you will tolerate.”
I lost most friends. Family is about 2000 miles away. All of his ceased contact. While I was in shock and concussed (he assaulted me when I discovered financial abuse), he systematically sought out friends and took them out to eat, singly or as couples, to spin lies that I had become violent and was unsafe to be around. It took months before I found out, and then COVID hit.
Since I worked remotely since we transferred here for his job, we’d made most of our friends through his work, and I assume most of those people stuck with him–they didn’t reach out to me. I called a few friends who were willing to listen and look at the evidence including receipts of tens of thousands of dollars he’d sent the online AP within just two months of meeting. None of them live nearby, though. Socializing mostly ended with COVID and never resumed. The exception was Sunday Services–after I finally spoke up with our leaders, they viewed the evidence and disinvited him. Although it’s a very small and elderly congregation that cut back on services and still remains mostly Zoom, I value the community and continuity.
For a variety of reasons, most of my small social circle outside of him moved far away during COVID. It’s been hard to replace friends, and that’s a goal for me.
I built a temporary support group during separation, COVID and early divorce through an online divorce class and support group, but that ended after a year
For newbies, I highly recommend finding a divorce support program. The structure was designed to move us forward, based on a book, homework, and weekly discussions/exercises. We were a small group and could be very open with each other. Unfortunately, since people were all over the country, we stopped connecting.
With both people I knew and people I met, I initially felt awkward talking about him when discussing my life or things we’d done together. Now I don’t feel awkward, I simply don’t talk about him. If I talk about trips, experiences or purchases, I simply say that I went, I did, or I bought. I’ve erased “we” and “our,” in reference to him, and it’s much easier.
“You’ve got nothing to lose when you lose fake friends” – Joan Jett in the song “Fake Friends”
That’s how I feel about losing most of the so-called friends that I did after separation and divorce. For every person who reached to me from our rather large circles, there were at least 5 people who *didn’t*.
I am not sad about losing many of my ex’s family, but I am sad about losing some church friends, colleagues, and most especially a couple that we were once BOTH close to who I considered to be family.
Now they are only still close with him and recently welcomed my ex’s girlfriend (whom he started dating just a couple of weeks after our divorce) into their home. Their home and friendship used to be such a safe space for me. It’s terrible to think they, too, were fake friends.
The good news is that people who have known me the longest plus some solid friends I gained during the marriage have cut him off and are GREAT friends to me. I have also made WONDERFUL new friends in my new city.
It’s a road I never expected to be on and boy is it illuminating to see the true character of folks in our long-developed network. I now know who is silver and gold and who is dross.
I lost my sister-in-law and brother-in-law (my ex’s sister and her husband), about which I have both relief and regret.
I cut off relations with a couple of friends who reflexively sided with my ex. I don’t miss them at all.
I wanted to reiterate a concept that I mentioned in a reply to Involuntary Georgian. The prevalence of Switzerland friends during divorce is often the result of the efforts of the FW to control your environment, and not an accident. It’s a feature, not a bug.
Two common and potent tools of narcissists in their efforts to maintain abusive control are isolation and superficial charm.
How many Chumps can affirm that they found themselves moving far away from friends and family for the benefit of the FW? A narcissist FW will gradually isolate you and remove you from support networks, both geographically and psychologically, often masquerading it as a romantic or cosmic adventure – “let’s move to Paris!!” They remove you from the people who will support you, and then have free rein to control and manipulate your reality. In addition, a narcissist’s other great trait, superficial charm, allows them to create and establish asymmetrical friend networks around them in short order.
Accordingly, it seems to be a common theme that some Chumps find their “friend” networks depleted, unsupportive, or absent when the divorce finally occurs.
If I really examine the totality of my marriage – not just the cheating – I see the FW spending years and years isolating me from those who would support me, while simultaneously surrounding me with a network of people who either have shallow connections, or who support my ex without qualification. This. Was. Not. An. Accident.
Absolutely. Looking back, I can see how my ex tried to get me further and further away from my support network.
You are right, it was an organized campaign that went back years and I was unaware.This deliberate removal of my network happened to me and it is so painful to me I can’t bring myself to write about it even here.
I absolutely agree with you. For years I would ask FW to look after the kid so I could see friends. And even when he agreed, he would often cancel at the last minute because he had to “work late”. I told him that I wasn’t even getting invites anymore because I canceled plans so often. He acted so concerned but didn’t change his behaviour. I know now that’s in the gamebook. And not an accident.
I realized very late in my marriage that he used a Hail Mary move consistently whenever my friends were going to actually get me to go out with them. His move was to invite all of them to our house and he was going to cook on the grill and why wouldn’t we all want to come to the beautiful little country home and hang out while he waited on us? It wasn’t until the final couple of years in my 40 year marriage that this was his shift into high drive to keep control of the few friends I still had. And then he could charm them while monitoring every conversation. He desperately needed them to be his friends before he could let them have limited access to me. No one ever had full access to me without him in the mix.
instant loss of sister-in-law and brother-in-law, but that’s a relief. they are dislikable and my X SIL is an alcoholic, so there’s no more chaos. my brother disappeared because he “doesn’t like messy things” so there’s that–i’ve given up on him TBH.
our friends disappeared, some to my X’s side, but i suspect that was temporary. my X lost his executive job and power associated with it, so we all know how that goes for people who are hooked on status. they disappear.
there were a few switzerland friends that i ignore.
i have a few good friends and that’s great. i think i’ve righted my emotional ship, so i’m back to being a good friend to them, too. i mean, i was in a state for a year or two, so i was a lot of work. but i’m trying to be a good friend to myself these days.
i’ve also made a few mistakes with new friends, falling into friendships with narcissists. so, i’ve fixed that problem. habits are hard to break.
my kids and i soldier on. life is much easier in so many ways, it’s kind of amazing.
I lost everybody.
Ex denied the domestic violence and told his family, our social circle and church community that I was a lying bitch. I suppose it was more comfortable to believe him then reach out to me because I was 100% ghosted by everyone I knew. At 50 years old, I was left with my kids, parents and sister. The injustice still burns in my soul ten years later.
My only salvation was that our three young adult kids went absolute and permanent No Contact with the above-mentioned flying monkeys, as well as their father. They were furious that our decades-long, lived experience was dismissed as fabricated, a “tactic to screw him over in court.”
Now, the kids and I are super tight. Ex stalks them on social media and leaves pitiful voice messages on their work phones, which they ignore. None of them went to his mother’s (KlanMa!) local funeral, which caused quite the stir. I’ve made one or two new friends, although verrrrrry cautiously. So, for us, freedom had a very high cost.
Such a similar story! My ex has a large extended family, and they were 100% on his side, as far as I could tell. It is a very patriarchal family, so maybe a few women and young people grasped the truth. Who knows.
My college kids went no contact when I did during the divorce and have remained so. He also stalked them on LinkedIn and other places, but thankfully he eventually gave up on them. We haven’t heard from him in a couple of years now.
i am over 6 years from the divorce. It is really interesting to read that most women get a whole support network when they get cheated on. My ex wife went around and told everyone (seriously, she even called every single one of my friends) that I was an abuser and an addict. When I eventually remarried, she went around telling people how bad my wife and I are.Lost so many friends, even my best friend who believed that women can’t be abusers. My in laws told me to divorce her because “she is very selfish”. Yet,I was cut off after being in their lives for 24 years. My wife’s aunt stayed friends with me, yet she cut me off because she was threatened with being kicked out of the family. Losing friends was almost as painful as being cheated on. On a side note, I have had a lot of people approach my wife and I and tell us how bitter and ugly she is. That I married up with my current wife. Years later, I am slowly making new friends again.
Definitely NOT my experience and nor the experience of many women here as posted.
I lost my whole network due to the cheater’s smear campaign. Ghosted. Ignored in public. Reputational damage… I would say this is irreparable. Worst part of the betrayal by far and having no support network has made my recovery both extremely painful and slow.
“Losing friends was almost as painful as being cheated on.” Agreed.
hello, read the comments again, they are not saying they get a whole support network, they are saying the opposite, dude!
Believe or not I am currently not speaking to my mother or my sister and my relationship with my closest and oldest relative (aunt) has been compromised. All 3 of these women IMO felt like it was more important to maintain a friendship with my self admitted cheating husband instead of supporting me. I ended up on antidepressants and in the ER over the events of my marriage breakdown. And I am currently fighting to maintain my home and my a 4th of my retirement account after a 4 year marriage. I am flabbergasted an amazed over their actions.
Oh and I lost all my in-laws. At 1st I thought his mom was gonna be a friend -but I soon realized that was not the case. All his sisters and brothers pretty much stopped all contact or I blocked them on all medias.
I have realized that people’s (including family’s)grievances towards you will come to the forefront when you’re down & out. Not sure that’s what’s going on with your family, but mine took some pot shots at me when I was at a low point. Very passive-aggressive.
There are a couple of “friendships” that I lost in the mix.
One was with someone who I had known for over a decade and had helped in providing space for my engagement plans to ex. She successfully turned him against me to the point that he viewed me as equally wrong (and never retracted that statement after the cheating came out).
Another “friend” called me names in what I assume was his twisted version of “tough love.” He was a pastor “friend” from seminary who was successfully triangulated by my ex who played damsel in distress. He, too, behaved as if nothing changed once cheating was discovered. I had a mentor snap me out of thinking he was friend by saying, “David, that is not a friend.”
Chumpy me wish I could reconcile these relationships. However, mature me understands that they are lost as neither have apologize or likely ever will.
They proved that their values are just too different from yours to be a friend. It’s hard when that happens when you’re also dealing with the loss of a marriage/mirage, like being kicked when you’re down.
If my friend acted like the letter writers’, I would suspect she had been up to something with my husband. I hope she dumped that friend forever. Of course, I lost the in-laws. They immediately went cold & silent on me. Occasionally I run into xFIL, who engages in social pleasantries. My xMIL runs away when she sees me. It’s delightful & disgusting at the same time. Some friends were a big disappointment who treated me like a single woman out to mantrap their husbands now. They disincluded me to their parties & bbqs. Even though FW & Schmoopie weren’t there. FW dumped all of our friends. New wife, new life I guess was his motto. My life was cratered especially since my family are far away. Thank god I disregarded FW’s offer to be a SAHM, because without my job to keep me anchored & upright, I would’ve had an even tougher time to bounce back for my kids.
I lost all of our “couples” friends. He left for a friend we always fought about (wasn’t comfortable with their lack of boundaries and her disrespect of our relationship), that was having problems in her own marriage. We had met her through these other “friends.” It stung to have these people shut me down and “not want to take sides,” even though by supporting them they were still taking a side. I’ve since realized I had very little in common with most of these people anyways, so I’ve moved on, building new friendships with people that I have more in common with. Still had my own friends from before we got married.
Lost the FIL I could never stand, so that was a win! Still friendly with some of the former in-laws, which has really helped. I don’t expect them not to see their brother / cousin, but they make an effort to see me and my daughter. I know they’re disappointed in the choices he’s made, which is validating.
I was closer with MIL, but a couple of years ago she made a glowing post on Mother’s Day shouting out the AP/Stepmother so I had to take a big step back. I know my MIL has complained to others about the lack of care my daughter’s received over at my ex’s place (ratty clothes, poorly groomed hair), so that post really, really hurt. It took all of my self control not to lash out. I still send her birthday & Christmas cards, and she sends gifts for my daughter to my house, but things won’t ever be the same.
Not directly related to the divorce, but did lose one close friend a couple years after. I think I grew in a different direction post divorce, and set firmer boundaries as she was moving in a different direction. I haven’t heard from her since. That loss felt very bittersweet to me for a long time, but her flakiness and rejection were hurting too much, so I had to make myself less available for my own well being. She was a very dear friend once upon a time though, and I do hope she’s well and in a good place these days.
I lost all my friends and everyone else in my network, except one person. (Jerkwad peppered the field with rumours about me…) I left my job when my heinous boss and her town-wide coterie started sharing unfounded rumors about me. I lost my house, which was really important to me. I would say in broad strokes, I lost everything except my kid, who was a young adult, and moved overseas where she has lived for the last 10+ years.
So my answer is pretty much, “All of them, Katie”. It was hella traumatic, and without the help of a couple really good therapists (EMDR rocks), I don’t know what would have happened to me. I am mostly OK now, but like a china cup that’s been broken and somewhat repaired, I’m not all here. Also my serious health issues got really bad just after the divorce.
Everyone who was in our current friends circle. It was a world I just had to withdraw from. First of all because I had to go to work at a second job, and continue college classes, there was no time for that world anymore.
Second because I was humiliated and just withdrew. I think it was actually better for me to do it that way. In short time I had changed to a new facility for my job, started meeting folks as a single person. Made it easier to rebuild.
I was very fortunate in this regard, in a certain sense. My ex was so often in his own world – he left me to run the house and manage the kids and, because I listened to the sage advise of an older colleague, keep my foot in the door with my part-time job. It ran me ragged initially, but, in the end, it also meant I had work colleagues and neighborhood friends who were wholly my friends and not his. It also made for a relatively smooth transition into higher paying work, when I needed it most. They all sided with me, being completely beyond his ability to reach. It’s a good point of reference for younger parents who might be considering staying home full time.
My other good move: I resisted his incessant attempts to move me to Georgia to be close to his family. Involuntary Georgian – I regularly thank my lucky stars I did not join you in Atlanta.
Lost friends, so many friends. Lost the church where I raised my children.
I lost most of the people I considered to be family in my last break-up.
When I left my Jesus-cheater and abusive husband immediately after he nearly succeeded in strangling me to death, I lost all of our mutual friends back home in the Midwest, his parents, and his three brothers and their families and all of the people we knew through the military. We had moved two thousand miles from home to his duty station in the northwest. I also lost my parents, who sided with my abusive husband even after I told them about the abuse and the attempted murder of their daughter. “We love him like a son,” they said. “You should take him back because you are never going to find anyone better.” I decided NOT to move back to the Midwest after that, and went low contact with my parents and sister. Instead, I moved to Seattle where, over a decade later I married my third and final husband.
The Cheating Abusive Douche (CAD) and I were together for 23 years, married for 18 when I realized that he wasn’t merely an “emotional guy” as he claimed, but an increasingly abusive man. I was getting my ducks in a row to leave him when a hurricane savaged the area. It was as the hurricane battered eastern Florida that I discovered that, like most abusive men, he was cheating. I lost all of the people I considered family — his sisters, “our” nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles and our mutual friends. My lovely step daughter is still in my life, though, and for that I am grateful. My parents were gone and I had already gone no contact with my sister (because she slept with my ex-husbands while we were still together). I moved to the Midwest to live with my best friend, whose husband had recently died and who didn’t want to live in their 4000 square foot home without him.
Even though I had been retired for four years, I got a job and I thought I would make new friends. Then COVID. Since I was “essential staff” as an ICU nurse, I worked more, not less. My co-workers were young enough to be my grandchildren and my neighbors weren’t eager to rub shoulders with someone who came home every morning as they were leaving for work, dressed in scrubs and covered with “cooties.” I retired at the end of the pandemic, but I’m having a slow start at making new friends, probably mostly due to my being an introvert. I am able to see my best friend more frequently than I did during the pandemic, though, and have maintained old friendships, although my friends are scattered from sea to shining sea. When my geriatric dog is no longer in the picture, I’ll be able to travel more to visit old friends in fun places like Seattle,
I agree with the letter writer CL refers to above that this woman was likely cheating with LW’s husband. The extreme reaction would indicate that to me.
I did not lose friends or relatives over my experiences – the first one just up and left – a run away and that was that, and I’ve reconciled with the second as it was online bullshit and nothing further happened. And I’m stuck by life circumstances. Oh well.
But I do see how people tend to form flocks, like animals, and circle around the one they perceive to be most closely aligned to their flock or herd. I use the animal analogy because I think this is animal level, biological based kind of thinking. I’m probably not expressing that well, but I think it’s an instinctive way of circling the wagons around the one you REALLY think is part of your group, good or bad, and the one who isn’t. Blood is thicker than water, and people are TRIBAL. We can’t get away from that no matter how sophisticated we think we are, the tribal elements always come out. When they pick one person over another, I think that is the one they see as a member of the tribe. That’s different from just avoiding both partners or having limited contact, which I think is more a fear of divorce contagion (and there is some truth to divorce contagion as it might put the idea in other people’s heads that this indeed is possible….or that a now alone spouse may poach….and that does happen too, people are cautious) than tribal behavior.
As much as this hurts, I think we have to recognize that sometimes we are abandoned by the tribe and sometimes we need to abandon them, and go forth and form a new one with people who are more like us. The rejecting tribe is usually not much like us or vice versa.
Trust that they suck too.
Ya know….the worst thing that can happen to any human is not sickness or even death….it’s abandonment. That is the most primal fear….even back to Eden when Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden and God’s presence. And when Cain slew Abel he had to abandon his family and was forced to move far far away. Abandonment, physical or psychological, is so often at the root of many childhood stories and “fairy tales”. No one wants to be left in the woods with the bears. But the bears may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.
I’ve told the story before of how, as an intern fresh out of college, I “polled” the flying monkeys and Swiss idiot coworkers who ganged up on me after I prosecuted a violent workplace stalker. I basically plied them with questions about their childhoods and backgrounds. No big surprise that, as it turned out, they were all raised in extremely abusive families.
The interesting thing is that this was also true of the two people who acted as my staunchest allies in the same situation. It struck me that the big difference was that the former hadn’t actually “survived” their childhoods in an emotional sense while the latter had. In other words, not all victims are survivors just because they’re still breathing. Some are what I call “trauma zombies.”
Since then I’ve never believed that the bystanders who “go Swiss” or act as enablers in reaction to any kind of abuse dynamics are simply naive or inexperienced and merely need to be educated. In my experience, they’re plenty “educated” but in all the wrong ways. They learned that might makes right, that evil always wins and, when it does, will turn its aggression to anyone who didn’t fanatically enable it so you’d better grovel for amnesty by punishing any victim who speaks out otherwise you’ll be next.
Oh, by the way, I read what seems to be a perfect illustration of how “trauma zombie” bystanders behave in a case that was recently in the news about a discrimination suit filed by an Iranian-American scientist at the University of Alabama, Fariba Moeinpour. https://apnews.com/article/iranian-scientist-discrimination-university-of-alabama-e09086c0ab7601af1a0cd5083b5128d4
The relevant part of the story is not the long campaign of harassment, abuse and threats of violence by staff member Mary Jo Cagle who reportedly did every predictable thing that racist “Karens” do. The key bit was how the supposedly neutral Swiss bystander, lab director Clinton Grubbs, behaved in trying to prevent the plaintiff from reporting the abuse. I think the story is a heads up that, in every “Swiss” bystander, there may lurk an enabler or even larval abuser which can suddenly manifest in the case victims don’t take the hint and keep their mouths shut:
Lawyers for Moeinpour provided the jury with documentation of Moeinpour’s repeated attempts to flag her harassment with human resources over the years.
The lawsuit said the harassment culminated in 2020 when Moeinpour told the head of the lab, Clinton Grubbs, that she was going to report Cagle to the department chair.
In his office, Grubbs implored Moeinpour not to report Cagle again, according to the suit, and told her that “Cagle was dangerous and that he feared for his own life if he were to have her fired.”
The lawsuit said that Grubbs physically restrained Moeinpour and “to get him off of her, Ms. Moeinpour slapped him.” Grubbs then called the police, who arrested Moeinpour and detained her overnight, according to Moeinpour and the complaint. Five days later, Moeinpour was terminated.
I lost everyone who didn’t bother to check on me and find out the actual facts- and there were a few of those.
I lost his entire family which by and large is no great loss- again no one bothered to check in.
I had a couple of people message me – one being his first wife – to try and get information out of me for their own purposes rather than out of any concern for me- that was weird but pretty obvious.
Real friends will want to know what’s happened and will be righteously angry for you- they won’t be on any damned fence .
100% in or fuck 100% off, I say.
Loyalty and integrity never went out of fashion for me.
I have been finding out who my real friends are, and that I don’t need that many.
Seeing true colors is painful but it’s ultimately a gift.
Excusing a cheater or a side piece and minimizing infidelity is taking a turn with the knife stabbing the victims (intimate partner and involved children) in the back.
Imagine having a friend whose house was burned down and saying about the arsonist, “We love both of you. What was your part in it? Everybody makes mistakes! He’s/ she’s a good person! Well, no one is perfect! Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Judge not lest he be judged. They’ve never done anything to me….” etc.
In case anyone here needs to know what a real friend is, here’s a post from one of our fellow chumps which I saved as a reference. The names have been omitted to protect the privacy of our Chump Nation member:
I posted this in a reply to another thread. Thought I would post here. It does feel good when a friend has your back. I know not everyone is that lucky. But I wanted to share to the group what it looks like when a friend does have your back!
******
I recently had a friend get an email from my ex. The cheater who had a 4 1/2 year affair. She was fairly close to this friend and is our daughter’s godmother. My friend replied to that email. I was overjoyed. The response was great. We have been divorced for 2 1/2 years now. I know I was lucky to have a friend like her, I wish you did too. You have us here in the group! Hugs.
Here are the emails:
Hi Friend,
Haven’t heard from you in a long time, not sure if that is because you just haven’t reached out or if it is because you have chosen Chump. I have just hunkered down these past two and a half years to weather out the storm. I hope you and Husband and the boys are doing well. Have a very blessed and happy New Year.
Cheater
————
Hi Cheater,
I haven’t reached out because you are selfish, self-centered, heartless, and certainly not the person I thought you were. You ripped your family apart and never once looked back. You’re right, we are on Chump’s side. We’re also on the side of your three Involved Children. You are an abusive narcissist who has hurt them terribly by your selfish actions and won’t even take responsibility for your actions. You place the blame everywhere but where it squarely belongs…ON YOU. What a horrible parent and person you are! Your children deserve a much better mother than they got. I hope the piece of ass was worth what you did to your family. Sorry, but I don’t consider your actions to be hunkering down to weather out the storm you created. What a piece of bullshit. I wasn’t born yesterday, Cheater. I know exactly what you are. You are evil incarnate, and I want nothing to do with you. I truly hope this piece of ass you’re with does to you what you did to your family. It’s what you deserve. Happy New Year.
Former Friend
I am SO glad I lost cheater’s friend group. My god what a horrible group of humans. All the racial slurs and rape jokes. No thank you. I hated every minute I was around them.
Yep, FW had a white friend that loved to use the N-word, made me so uncomfortable.
My precious step children, my step grandchildren…5 of them. I was married to their dad for 32 years and had the step son since age 4 the other was 9. I think the protection order and locking their dad put until I could move shocked them both. One tried to be supportive but it’s been very difficult to connect again. My step son sided with his dad. The pulling away of that whole family has hurt the most. Our couple friends were next. They felt they had to stay in Switzerland. My XHCheater was the outgoing one. I was quieter and slip away to find peace. He was out pressing the flesh and moving the story of his unmet needs. I pulled away from friend that did not get it but they did not protest my distance. This was my second Divorce so the devastation that I had envisioned came to pass. But seeing my XHC for he he truly was, was the biggest reality loss and a hit I am still trying to heal from.
Hi CN, after 30 years of being really close to my in laws I lost my mother in law, father in law, my husbands group of friends, but I can’t tell you how many beautiful people have replaced the Switzerland crowd. I also got to keep my friends who were amazingly supportive when I walked out on him. My adult children tolerate him, but I’ve been no contact for almost 2 years.
I lost no one who mattered. and I gained a bunch of wonderful new people. Like a dear woman, who asked me, in her beautiful accent, “Why is this man alive? I can help you.” The sentiment was loving, even if the suggestion was wrong.” She told me in her community, a man who did this would have to answer to the males in the Chump’s family. And it wouldn’t be pretty. I let her know that I appreciated her concerm, but no, that was not how this was going to play out. Nature, Karma, whatever did just fine. He got a nice Foley catheter that the aides take care of where he lives now. The Switzerland friends and relatives of his were not missed, even in the beginning. His sisters, brothers, nephews and nieces, all those cousins? Eh. All his golfing and drinking buds? Ick. The people we used to ski with? Ugh. I really lost no one who mattered, but did lose time and money, and that I do mourn. People? Nope.
I lost them all – my narc mother suddenly became bff with my FW and OWhore and turned viciously against me to shame me, smear me, belittle me for my failure to keep a man and disgracing her among her friends… I’m basically estranged from my entire FOO. Plus all my old friends. My daughter took her dad’s side and chose to minimize ties with me in part to be accepted as the legit new family. My son chose me, partly of necessity but I love and appreciate him. I made a handful new friends one of whom has been my rock having also suffered what I did. But generally I became a loner and I’m content.
The ex that brought me here was part of a family I had known since high school… so at that time for 30 years. He was the oldest male in the family and I had been a part of the friends group with his middle brother. I had even been at his first wedding which ended up being the mother of his 3 kids. We reconnected and ended up in a relationship. I had much trauma to unwind and still wasn’t healed so never saw the signs. We all believed his ex was the crazy one along with wife #2… they both ended up alcoholic.. any guesses as to whether I did too?? I ended up in intensive therapy and once I began to heal myself… the veil fell and I couldn’t unsee things.
But I was enmeshed in this family by then. His youngest son had a child at 16 and I entered the picture just as the grandchild turned a year old. To back up, this man had gotten custody of all 3 kids and I had believed he was soooo good of a man to step up like that. But he worked hard 12-16 hour days as a truck driver and was rarely home.
So of course I stepped right in to be the help-mate. The son called me “Mom” initially bc his own mother was still struggling and in/out of jail. The grandson was like the grandkid I know I’ll never have. We were best buds. My ex’s middle child, female, was struggling to unwind her own trauma and while she initially resisted our relationship, she saw me doing the work and we ended up bonding as she navigated her relationship with her own mother (I had an alcoholic narc mother). She had 3 kids of her own and I was Nana to all of these kids. For 13 years.
The son and grandchild who had lived with us, went on to college with our support and my intervention. He moved on and up and ended up with a lovely young lady with 2 kids of her own. She also had trauma and by now I was in therapy and I suspected all wasn’t well but by then was working on my own exit plan. We never got too close. The last Christmas I was in the home, I had just secured my own place so knew I was on my way out. Mind you this all without his knowledge bc that would have been extremely dangerous to me. But I have to insert this little piece. I bowed out of that family dinner due to “health issues” but when the ex was extremely late getting home from that I heard that the step-sons’ gf had left him at the party after he reamed her for bringing the wrong shoes… in front of the whole family. I cheered for her internally but kept my head down as my life depended on it.
So I lost EVERYone. That whole family structure was gone. I knew it would and I stayed way longer than I should have because of those relationships with the kids and grandkids. I lost one of my dearest friends from high school even though a mere year earlier he had confronted me because he knew something was wrong and vowed to stick by me cuz he knew was an @$$hat his bro is… HA!
But to end on a weirdly happy note… I moved a couple of towns over and just packed up and left one day while the ex was at work. Remained NC and hoped I never saw him ever again. A little over a year ago a new clerk came to a local store that is a national chain. I’m in there at least 2x a week. She seemed familiar but couldn’t place and she never acted like she knew me. Asking her about an ad one day I finally busted out “Do we know each other?” She very delicately said it was the son’s gf. She had had a baby and looked different but as soon as she said her name I recognized her. She assured me she hadn’t told anyone she knew where I was. She knew how I left and the aftermath they suffered.
We were friendly-ish over the next year. But just a month ago she was so down and out I finally push the envelope after trying to give her space to work it out… she broke down and told me she kicked the @$$hat son out!!!!! I definitely cheered out loud that time!!! And he did all the same bat crap crazy shit his father…. my ex… did. Including accusing her of cheating and then bringing schoompie/ho-stress around to help him pack his shit .. can you hear my eyes roll???!!! The family ostracized her and are of course blaming her because you know… *she’s* the crazy one.
Side note.. the ex and the first wife are back together even tho the ex would detail what he would cheerfully do to her if he could get away with it.
So while it hurt a lot at first… because I’m *human* and loved authentically… I am forever grateful that I had to cut them all loose with grace and not be a part of that entire shit show ever again. It’s the most peace I’ve ever had in my life.
And me and the ex gf and all are riding off into the sunset to be our mighty-est!!!
Thank you Chump Nation… wouldn’t be here at all without all of you!!
I was very fortunate and almost all of our joint friends rallied behind me, unfriended him on social media and haven’t spoken with him since his affair came to light. The friends I lost were both more dedicated to the free love, sexual freedom agenda than they were to our friendship, despite both of them having been friends with me for over 30 years, predating my 21 year relationship with my ex. Both were in my wedding party. Neither of them could acknowledge that cheating was wrong, that the prioritization of kink and porn over family was wrong and criticized me for my anger at him immediately introducing the kids to his affair partner. We drifted apart and haven’t spoken since.They both now actively dislike me and, for some odd reason, have linked my traditional approach to monogamy as evidence that I am part of an extreme political group-using this as a justification for our break. I guess it’s a blessing that I am no longer wasting time on these two superficial friends.
I intentionally lost everyone who had merely just pretended to care about me and my kids, while failing to back it up with actions. So it wasn’t a real “loss” at all.
I’ve since made the best local friend, who is like my sister from another mister. We plan to have a Golden Girls living arrangement together someday. I’ve also deepened my other best friendship who has been a real and true friend to me since 1990.
Both my adult children which meant the grandchildren who spent their weekends piled up many weekends in my home are now only allowed one day, pre-approved few hours with me about twice a year. I lost many who I thought were friends and a few of those were females that after D-Day, they acted so weird it was obvious they were involved with him over the years. I stupidly had even used one of them as a professional reference for decades and only now, 4 years after D-Day did I uncover that she’s been warning every potential director I interviewed with that I’m not the person they want to hire even though my experience and resume is top notch. And that explained why I never got the job. For decades I watched as people with way less experience and education got the jobs I wanted. My adult children have been groomed since toddler years that I’m crazy, I’m to be pitied but allowed to be part of the family. Because they wouldn’t want to stomp on my life purpose of serving my family 24 hours a day, seven days a week without ever asking anything in return. But after 40 years of marriage, I was broken and FW needed to replace me with the latest Schmoopie who gave blow jobs in the closet at work. So my adult children immediately cut me out and welcomed her as my replacement. I am not exaggerating. This level of long term covert narcissism is like a cult. The cult leader decided to discard and replace. I now have to be shunned because I made him uncomfortable. So I can’t exist. And the rest of his family cult follows without question. They can’t risk being shunned too.
I lost folks in a church community, and I almost lost my entire faith. I had a bucketful of issues with that church’s theology (we were assigned there for FWs path to ordination rather than choose it), but I thought I had at least a few people that I had genuinely connected with. Alas, no. People I sat with in their hour of need turned their back on me at the earliest opportunity. They walk the other way when they see me out in the community. They “pray for me” from afar because, apparently, I have committed the unforgivable sin. I didn’t realize divorce was akin to blaspheming the holy spirit.
If FW didn’t still regularly take my 5yo to that church, I probably would have never walked into any spiritual community ever again. I knew FWs fundy church couldn’t be the only religious experience my kiddo ever had, so I hitched up my britches, worked though a lot of shit in therapy, took my panic meds, and walked into a gentle and inclusive community that has been a literal blessing to both me and my son.
Sending all my love to any spiritual community of any religion that welcomes, loves, and includes the outcast. A blessing on you and your community, in any way that you receive it.
I lost my entire social circle. Turns out they were all shallow people who hung around FW because they thought he could advance their careers. When he started bringing AP to social events rather than me, they embraced her with open arms. Several years later when they officially announced that they were a couple, the replies were along the lines of “what took you so long?”. NOT ONE PERSON ever checked on me, or asked for my side of the story (okay, there was one couple who was kind. But they’d had a falling out with FW several years before). Yet when they all showed up to FW’s funeral a few years later they all acted super friendly to my face (along with multiple people telling me how good I looked – I think from what he’d told them, they expected me to be a mess, and instead I looked like a million bucks). They all said things like “we need to get together soon!” and since then it has been absolute radio silence from all of them.
I deleted/unfriended/blocked every last one of them and made my own friends. My life has been significantly better since I cut those false friends out.
He had already spent a number of years crafting a narrative that painted me as controlling, unforgiving, bitter, mentally unstable, etc. Additionally, a “prophetess” at our church gave a public word stating that although he was caught in major sin, I wasn’t walking in the “way of the cross” (interpreted to mean “forgive and forget”) and as a result was causing many in the church to stumble, and even to die. I was chewed out by the pastor, and asked to submit to said prophetess who had already stated during “ministry time” that I should watch porn with him to see what he found so interesting about it, and that I ought to have more sex with him in order to not drive him into the arms of another woman (far too late for that, though no one believed it–he’s such a good guy, after all).
Needless to say I lost an entire church community, and most of our friends (yep, I realize I was better off without them). I was managing three young kids, a mortgage, and all the bills on my own while working full time, yet he was the one who got financial assistance from the church and invites to dinner with the kids when they were with him to “give him a break.” It was exceedingly painful. I made it through with the help of a good counselor, and some true-blue friends who were able to see what was what. The majority of those friends lived out of town, which made things challenging.
I have kept my friends, I lost myself, my beliefs and my family… pretty much it has been a rollercoaster of digging inside myself, the education I received and a huge disappointment on the people I loved the most… my parents have toxic dynamics between themselves… I used to have a good relationship with them and just realized how much surface it is… they expect me to forget and move on and couldn’t give what I needed the most, understanding and comprehension… then i realized they would be incapable of since their life revolves about appearances… in the end they have been hurting me double (without even realizing it) than the FW himself…