You Might Be a Chump If…
My husband thought up today’s post. In the vein of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s You Might Be a Redneck If … tell me how you might be a chump. What are the signs? (See clip for inspiration. If you’re a redneck chump — double bonus!)
Ever wonder what quirks are particular to chumps?
You might be a chump (YMBAC) if … instead of a happy marriage you have 80 perfectly tended rose bushes.
YMBAC if… you’ve bought the entire infidelity oeuvre on Amazon and underlined passages for your cheater, only to find them unread.
YMBAC if… you actually sort of believed he was sleeping in his car in Vermont in January.
YMBAC if… you received a tie-dyed license plate cover for Christmas… and that was the best present.
If your cheater has three cars, three motorcycles, four kayaks, and more boxes coming from eBay each day…. and his gift to you is a tie-dyed license plate cover? YMBAC.
If your children don’t really look anything like you… YMBAC.
YMBAC if… you book all your marriage counseling sessions… and pay for them.
Your turn chumps! I’m sure you’ve got material.
YMBAC if you have to schedule time off work for marriage counseling so she won’t have to miss tennis practice ( and her affair partner is her tennis coach!)
YMBAC if…you work full time, do 100% of the childcare/grocery shopping/laundry/bill-paying, etc., so he can work 80+ a week – and he accuses you of “holding him back” in his career.
Oh boy this one is me alright. Before we split I was working full time, doing all the housework, shopping meal making and 90% of the care of my step daughter. When I asked for some help or more time as a couple. Well I just didn’t understand how it was for him to be self employed
or in my case works a 30 hr work week and tells you – you know – someone around here has to work and bring home the bacon, when you ask him to help around the house a bit because you are exhausted from only sleeping 4 hours a night, due to all of the above and working a 40 hr work week too.
This is soooooo true!
YMBAC if you are told by a friend that she saw your husband at an open house for a beautiful mountain- top cottage with a young, petite, brunette and you immediately tell her she must have him confused with someone else. Even though she has known him for several years.
YMBAC if you find yourself genuinely worrying that the OW’s husband is going to beat your husband up when he finds out…
Yep – of course now I wish he had…
YMBAC if your husband, while on one of his many business trips, only calls you when he’s just about to go through a drive-thru, thus keeping such phone calls to five minutes, tops, and guaranteeing that any serious conversation you wanted to have will be interrupted by a scratchy voice asking if he’d like Satisfries with that. When you finally realize and point out the pattern, he acts surprised.
Wow, I think my ex did this, too. Never realized it until now.
…cause I was a chump!!! Sheesh.
Believe me, it took me several years before I saw the pattern. Cuz I was a chump, see…
Oh dear – so many of these…
YMBAC if you think it’s great that he’s finally taking some pride in his appearance, working out at the gym and buying new clothes…
…facepalms…
…Or when the XW suddenly has interest in buying new bras and panties after pretty much never doing anything of the sort during the entire course of the marriage.
I think facepalms are appropriate after pretty much every post on this thread. . . .
YMBAC if you read the posts with your palm continuously connected to your face!
ROTFLMBO!!!!! That would be me!
Forge on, YMBACer’s, Forge On!…..
LOL
Double lol
Face palms …. OMG..
I haven’t stopped snorting since I saw there was 346 posts. To YMBAC..
^^^This.
About two weeks before DDay, I saw an article online that read “10 Signs He’s Having an Affair.” XH scored 7 out of 10. Number 1 & 2 were working out and buying new clothes. Aaack!
YMBAC if it takes you twelve years to figure out what he meant when he said: “The reason I wasn’t at work when you called was because I had to take my ho-worker to get a new dipstick.”
YMBAC if he goes out every Sunday to play football with your 19 year old son. But tells son he can’t really play as he has to work overtime to save money so he can take Mum on a surprise holiday.
Again, just awful to do this to the children.
I really think cheaters who behave this way to kids belong in a special place….
I never thought he was capable of using them both in that way.
Yeah, mine is telling our 17 yo daughter to delete all texts between the two of them. Nevermind love bombing both our kids.
YMBAC if he takes 17 year old daughter shopping every week, but leaves her sat in the car while he calls into someones house to ‘arrange a surprise Xmas gift for Mum.’ (Which takes multiple visits to sort out apparently).
Shoot the messenger – even if it’s your own child. Wow. Speechless.
Daddy Monster Narcissist.
Wow. That’s an awful thing to do to your child.
Yes zyx321 it disgusts me when I think about it, see above what he did to son too. After DD and during FR he then ‘borrowed’ daughters phone to call OW. When OW calls back asking for him, daughter comes and asks me & STBX if we know who it is? This turns out to be the final straw for me & so STBX openly blames our daughter for our break up. He actually asked her why she was so stupid, why didn’t she think before she opened her mouth? Tells her its her fault.
Still mentions it to this day 10 months after DD. ‘if only daughter had thought before speaking we would still be together’ he says. Erm no, if only you’d kept it in your pants.
Absolute Scum of a husband & Father.. Glad your daughter refused to be sparkled by him and wants nothing to do with him. Hugs to you both & Bravo to you for showing your daughter that it is not OK to cheat!
Good lord! I hope she gets some therapy. Way to go to blameshift to the kids!
The daughter needs a real crash course in “you control only you” so she absolutely believes that daddy’s rage was all about him being a fucktard. Daddy clearly wanted both cake and kibbles.
yup, and he wonders why she is hot and cold about speaking to him….
Therapy underway.
What sick F$%#!
Ah, blame shifting to the kids. My exH blamed daughter for the fact that son did not go to his wedding to OWife. Explain why son could not go when he wanted to attend, just because daughter refuses to go?!
Daughter understandably did not want to go. she was 12 at the time, it was only 4 months post divorce finalization, kids had only met OW once, but her father had daughter keep the secret that they planned to move pregnant OW into the house against divorce agreement, pre divorce finalization … Shhhh, don’t tell your mom, she would be mad)
What an absolute piece of shit.
When I stormed out of the house after the phone incident. He proceeded to scream at her, smashed his phone up & while she was crying picking all the broken pieces up from the floor, he was telling her how he was glad he had a son, as he no longer has a daughter & that she was now dead to him for ruining everything.
One of my biggest regrets is leaving her in the house with him that day. I phoned her shortly after and could tell in her voice something was seriously wrong, I came straight back to get her & by then he had left the house. I made him leave later that night, but I wish I had never left her to deal with that.
I’ve just now read this story, HEA. Holy smokes. I am so sorry your daughter had to go through that. How is she faring now? It’s a horrible way for her to have to wake up to your reality, but I’m sure the two of you will become all the closer for it. It sort of reminds me of when Alec Baldwin went off on his teenaged daughter and left all those vile messages on her voice mail. Anyway, any man who would put his own child in that situation and then make her the scapegoat when it blew up in his face is undeserving of the name “Dad.” Stay strong!
What an unspeakably terrible, terrible piece of shit he is. I can’t imagine how she must have felt, though the very faint – very – silver lining is that now she need never be confused over whether daddy is worth loving / running after / seeking approval from. It’s all been laid out clear as day.
When I think of my own wonderful dad and other awesome parents out there, and people who’d give anything to have kids but can’t… this guy… really… he deserves nothing but misery.
When he’s old, sick, and alone and looking for his children to be there for him, I hope they throw his nasty abuse back in his face and put him in a cheap state funded home.
Just awful. The only (slight?) silver lining is she saw her father’s real self, maybe? Horrible.
She didn’t talk to him for a long time, she just refused. He bombarded her with texts and my father ended up telling him to leave her alone. She has started speaking to him again now, but she thinks he’s an idiot. She told me recently she was glad we were not together anymore because I deserve better than him. So does she.
Not your fault. Everybody just does the best they can. 🙁
There’s a special place in Hell for him, wow.
He is just a worthless person. What a terrible thing to do to your own children.
YMBAC…..if all of those lovely little coffee mugs, coasters and photos from all those cool locations he had to fly to for work were really not to include you in his experience in a positive healthy way BUT to inflict weird emotional abuse on you without even knowing some of the shit was gifted by the fuckbuddy.
Sigh..ANC…mine would also bring me back t-shirts and little tokens from trips with his girlfriend(s). I also think there is a sick twisted emotional abuse aspect to it as well. Sick fucks!!
Oh Gee, I got nice little gifts from every place they traveled on business all over the world.
Except for one handbag, the gifts didn’t fit or weren’t my style and I chalked it up to his not knowing my taste or size (which he never did).
Found out after that she ‘helped’ pick the gifts out.
And the handbag, she got a much nicer one for herself!
I recently received an assortment of Olive Oils from California. Same place we went to just before D day over a year ago….I have not spoken to him since last October and this was in February. Do you think he’s trying to make a peace offering? I didn’t acknowledge receiving it. It sits in a drawer….I will be regifting in the future. Thanks for that….daughter was asked if she knew if I got it……OMG I can’t believe these idiots.
BTDT. I got a one pound bag of coffee as a “gift” after a weekend away with the fuckbuddy.
I got leftover dessert from “business dinner”
Hey! Me too!! Forgot that treat.
YMBAC if…He brings you back an ugly tea set from Vietnam where he had “work” and later you find out he flew his Russian whore to stay with him at an expensive beach resort.
I found a place for it on a hallway table because it was so ugly. It makes me nauseous to think of those four years it sat in our house.
OMgoodness, that is so tacky. CL, I think you could do another post solely on “Cheap Shit Cheaters Do”.
I’ve got one for your “Cheap Shit Cheaters Do”, WS brought home a bunch of singlets for newborn son, he said he’d bought them from the OP shop. I was thrilled as he never had (and still hasn’t) bought our son anything, not even nappies or anything, so I was soooooooooo proud of him for doing something for the family I lavished praise on him. Only to find out he hadn’t bought them at all. The OW gave him her son’s singlets from when he was a baby. I still feel really sick about it every time I think about it.
LUD — yes! That’s a future post for sure!
I got that one, easy. Last Christmas I got a pack of gum.
That beats mine!
I got carry out from the same place he took OW to. He said he was “too sick” to eat, but I knew something was wrong when he brought home only one dinner, and it was from a new place on the same side of the town closer to where OW lives.
Also, I can tell when he’s had breakfast dates with OW, since he brings home a pound of bacon, lol!
I got a package of pecans from Savannah when he took his whore there on a romantic trip.
“YMBAC if… you book all your marriage counseling sessions… and pay for them.”
Ouch. I did exactly that in the beginning.
Ok I have one.
YMBAC if you smell something “funny” when you go to kiss your WH when he comes home from work and you believe him when he say’s it’s the sandwich he had for lunch.
Ever see Treme? “That ain’t pussy. That’s barbecue!”
OMG! BBQ!!!!
Hey, Guys!!!
They were all telling the truth on the BBQ……Most BBQ is PIG!!!!!
Forge on……
“YMBAC if… you book all your marriage counseling sessions… and pay for them.”
bingo
and…
YMBAC if you smell something “funny” when you go to kiss your WH when he comes home from work and you believe him when he say’s it’s the sandwich he had for lunch.
Oh JHC! Now I know why my STBX turned away from kissing me! Said she had bad breath! Yeeah! It was bad all right!
YMBAC if his best friend’s wife avoids you because he said things (don’t know what) because, if you two become friends, the jig is up.
YMBAC if when he comes back from a business trip with necklaces for you and your daughter, and you ask him who the third one is for … and then supply the answer for him: it is for his sister (of which he has two).
Sheesh.
YMBAC if you’ve ever been told by a counselor “well at least he’s showing up every week” as evidence of his commitment to you and your marriage.
(Please disregard the lying, blame shifting and evading going on in the actual session, dear client.)
Well who does it profit that he’s showing up every week (and making zero progress)?
The therapist.
OMG! That happened to me! I so want to send this post to that one-celled moron that was our therapist!
This makes me so angry. We expect our cheaters to act like assholes but not our therapists. There job is to help us through one of the most traumatic times of our lives. I hope you fired his/her ass.
“their job” (doh!)
YMBAC if you’ve ever heard “oh, um, I just fell asleep on [insert any male name here]’s couch. of COURSE you can call him”.
So you’re telling me he didn’t just fall asleep after “playing cards all night at Kyle’s”? Crap. IMBAC.
Last one!
YMBAC if you’ve ever had your spouse pretend they didn’t hear your calls trying to ring through on their cell.
“Oh my, does the phone make a sound when another call is coming in? Who knew!? Gosh darn, isn’t technology confusing?” (says the Sr. IT Director)
YMBAC if he tells you not to call his work phone because he doesn’t answer that after hours and don’t call his cell phone either because it is running low on batteries. Even though he is plugging it in now and charging it – still don’t call. WTF?
YMBAC if, after 15 years as his colleague, you have never met OW, now wife. And he says, after revealing her (3 months after leaving) “Really? You’ve never met each other? I’m surprised.” And you have met all the other colleagues over a 38 year marriage. And we have never met, why? Hmmmmm.
You’re not alone! During MC, two months after the declaration there is no other woman, it’s just us….he’s in love with this work colleague whom he never mentioned?!
No, she had nothing to do with the end of the marriage (snort)
The people they’re fucking never have anything to do with the end of the marriage. Same old, same old. I’d say every woman ex fucked had something to do with the end of the marriage.
YMBAC if you caught your husband kissing a colleague in your home when you woke up to prepare a bottle for your baby and then believed him when he said that she had forced him to kiss her, and that it was only that one night…
YMBAC if for seven years after the “stolen kiss” you don´t suspect anything from those female colleagues who “work” with your husband on Friday nights and come to your husband´s home office to “review” their “work”
YMBAC if your husband prefers to go directly to work on his computer when he comes home, rather than to talk, eat or sleep with you—
(OMG! I am such a huge chump!!!!)
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! FacePalm…….such hard workers they are!
OMG! I had the same thing where my ex would come home and go immediately on his computer (either to work or browse Craigslist), then immediately to bed. Even when I tried to initiate a conversation (or get intimate), he would just yell at me that he was too “busy” for me. (And yet not too busy to have an affair with his ho-worker!)
YMBAC if you see he received a text from someone saved as “Terry” and you believe him when it says it was a text from his friend “Brian” (whom you’ve never met)
YMBAC if you believe him when he says he stayed in a hotel room “alone” because he needed some “space”
YMBAC if you caught him lying to you multiple times and yet you believe him when he says you have “trust issues” (Gee, I wonder why!?)
YMBAC if he says he needs to get away and get some sleep and you believe him. Then proceeds to choose a hotel in a city 1.5 hours from home, not tell you which hotel, pay cash, and use work as his home address at check in and you still kinda believe him.
Oh, I had trust issues too. A week before he left, he told me I had trust issues and now when I look back I wonder what was going on every other time he told me ai had trust issues.
I was told I have trust issues quite recently. Because I don’t trust him. Imagine that I wouldn’t trust a man who had multiple affairs, left me financially devastated and has lied about pretty much everything, big and small, for years. I don’t have trust issues. I simply don’t trust him. At all.
Hear hear! When we look back, we see all the gas lighting they did to us. We didn’t have trust issues – our guts were just telling us to GTFO, but our hearts didn’t want to believe someone would be capable of so much BAD! Instead of seeing the evidence “as is” we gave them a chance to “explain” it away (and of course the explanation they always gave was “You have trust issues.” *eyeroll*
My ex was getting texts from someone labelled “CNST” on his contact list. The text I found:
:)gn
When I asked him who CNST was, he said……”Consultant.” Duh.
Facepalmfacepalmfacepalmfacepalm……
Mine labeled his ‘Q’.
Perhaps he was alluding to the fact she was as evil as the character ‘Q’ on “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Because she certainly is evil……
Forge on……
YMBAC if you arrange for the whole family to “kidnap” him the day he gets back from a business trip and drive him blindfolded to the site where he gets to skydive for his 40th bday, THE GREATEST DAY EVER, and then you discover he was fucking his secretary in Boca Raton.
OMG! I’d have to hurt someone…
Does anyone here secretly wish they would reinstate the Scarlet Letters and Public Stockades?
I wish that, and it’s not a secret.
YES. YES. YES.
Scarlet letter would be perfect.
I have been dreaming of that since DDay!
That would be AWESOME Happily!!!!!
I’d make stbxh’s myself!
Yes, yes, a THOUSAND times yes! A Jeff Foxworthy “stupid” stamp AND a scarlet letter. What a time saver!
Me!!!! Tattooing a large ornate “A” on the forehead would be fine too.
And, tattooing it on ‘other parts’, as well…..
I love this post, CL and Nation! I have to gather my thoughts so I can add a true “YMBAC if……” to this fabulous list.
All of your comments are amazing!!!
Forge on………
Sounds like he got a lot of Cake for his birthday.
OMG. Too bad his parachute worked.
YMBAC if your spouse suddenly wants to ditch the family plan and have “work” pay for his cell phone.
YMBAC if you suddenly notice new credit cards showing up in the mail after agreeing to stop using credit entirely.
YMBAC if you remove the key logger from your home machine because you KNOW you’re going to find something. Woah Chumpiness.
Yep Rumblekitty, “work is now paying for my cell phone” (I’m sure they are since you’re f”ing around with your ho-worker, and I dared to question why you needed to talk to her 20x/day when you just “worked” 12 hours together…”. Blech.
Yes!
YMBAC if you really believe your husband needs to text his co-workers at 3am, and then needs to meet shortly thereafter about ‘work’.
YMBAC if you believe that he’s really answering work emails from China on the weekends at 3am.
Yup. Years ago i went to bed later than H and told him he had an email message from grad school school colleague (we checked for one another, but i had never read any of his messages). He got up out of bed to read it, which seemed odd. That’s when I got suspicious and started reading his messages. Confronted him (no, not an affair, just infatuation, we went to MC, etc). 13 yrs later…yup, it was an affair
We can be so trusting and naive.
But, I refuse to regret those years due to my wonderful children.
YMBAC if you believed nothing was going on after finding love poetry email messages to another woman….in French.
(And when dating/post wedding you never received poetry of any kind from said significant other).
YMBAC if you’re truly worried he might fuck the babysitter.
Or the babysitter’s mom…
Guilty. And to this day I still believe he did.
Ha ha ha ha! I can relate.
YMBAC if after finding a few hundred dollars hidden in your husband’s car which he first lies about and then confesses that it is for going to strip clubs and then he is mad at you and says he “doesn’t know if he can live like this with all this snooping” and you break down hysterically crying because what other reaction is there? (Really? You are hiding hundreds in cash in your car for strip clubs (this is after dday of a year long affair with a family “friend”) and I am the bad person for snooping?)
YMBAC if you sit through your “romantic” birthday dinner and the entire conversation is a veiled attempt to get you to be more and act more like OW and you know it but just keep smiling and shaking your head.
Yes! During reconciliation when I was still doing the pick-me dance, I used to draw these hot bubble baths for us, hoping we could reconnect. He would spend the whole time in there trying to get me to tell him about my sexual secrets. I found out later that this is what he liked to talk about with the OW. (He was really annoyed that I had nothing to tell him—-I’ve been with him since I was 17 and he was my first and only.)
Oh Flora, mine tried to get me to talk about sexual fantasies too. He also wanted me to go buy toys and try anal stuff. (I was with mine from 16 so same scenario). I’m not a prude or anything, but it was such an out of character thing for him that it raised flags. He was quite insistent too that I “must have some type of fantasy. The girls at work talked about what they liked all the time”.
His OW is the manager where he worked.
Yes, Trying, my husband became so obsessed with my fantasies that I used to make them up just to please him. He also wanted me to buy stuff at the sex stores. It was all about pleasing him. He made me feel totally inadequate in bed because I didn’t measure up to his fantasy life with his co-worker OW or the porn he watched on his computer. And all this went on AFTER I found out about the affair–why did I let him anywhere near me??? What a chump!!!
Yes! Ex took me on a surprise date two months before DDay. He was acting weird, and now I see he was trying to get me to act more like the OW.
YMBAC if you and the kids start jokingly referring to his beloved new car as ‘the other woman’ because he spends so much time taking it out for long drives. And then you discover that yes, he was actually out driving the other woman.
YMBAC if you spent a decade+ living in a sexless marriage while working in earnest to solve THAT riddle . . .
I spent 20 years in a largely sexless marriage earnestly trying to make it work and figure out why he was so uninterested. Well, turns out he was having plenty of sex, just not with me.
Oh my God! My marriage was sexless for the last couple of years! I really beat myself up about that – ‘I should lose weight, make more effort, shave my legs more often’ – nothing worked. He had ED & poor hygiene issues during his frequent bouts of heavy drinking. After I kicked him out I found viagra purchases on his credit card bill. I never saw the benefit. To this day I have no idea if OW knows he needed blue pills to get it up for her!
Sigh, it’s ok. Mine wasn’t sexless, but not great sex, and I was always the one who initiated, etc. (YMBAC right there!)
Post DDay while in counseling (though he still swore no OW). I like xx before sex, you do not do that, etc. Uh, huh, and every time I asked “anything in particular you want to do….”
Well as he packed I asked him about that, thinking at the time, with my limited information, that maybe he was gay and that would explain his lack of interest, his lack of initiation and, well, his lack of talent. Oh no, it was all my fault, he was raised not to
Believe in sex before marriage and so he chose to punish me for 18 years of marriage. Pity he was raised not to get little 22 year olds pregnant while he was married and still living in the familiy home!
Hahah! STBX was never great in the sack, and I quickly found out after we were married that it was sex on his schedule, as when I initiated, he was always too tired or busy. Guess I was YMBAC right there, even though I thought it was weird that a straight guy in his 30s would actually say “no” to sex. Maybe he was having affairs then, but I think he had performance anxiety which he compensated for by saying how great he was…
Wow!!! This sounds like my STBX, always bragging about how big he is to anyone who will listen, sadly it was all just talk!!!
Whoa – is it a cheater thing to expect the chumpy partner to always initiate (and put in most of the effort from there) sex? Definitely my situation.
OMG, Every time I read this blog I find out something new. Was he cheating on me for years before? He would complain I didn’t initiate enough, saying he didn’t feel like I wanted him and pouted by refusing to have sex until I “convinced” him… During the relationship (while i was still a factor) with the woman he left me for, my/our family friend, there was no convincing him… OMG I guess I MBAC! FUCK MY FORMER LIFE!!
Wow…the same thing happened to me…I thought he had a health problem (he needed viagra), was depressed. After seven years of this I finally came up with the theory that he was gay ! Now I know from his emails and Skype chats that he had no problem at all with OWs, the problem was with me! He got the last OW an anal vibrator for Christmas while I got a chocolate bar!
Dollars to donuts SAChump, he got that anal vibrator for the OW to really use on him! The few playthings my cheater would buy, always ended up in service to his thrills, excitement, and erection! Wouldn’t have minded if there was some RECIPROCATION!
Which leads to my IMBAC if I believed his succession of hot sports cars, hair grafting, viagra usuage (which didn’t seem to work – I think he claimed to take them but was hoarding them for OW), and sexy underwear, had anything to do with looking good for his younger wife (me.)
On that subject, YMBAC if, out of the blue, your husband shows a great interest in a specific kind of anal play, which he’d never mentioned in 20 years of marriage, and when you ask him where he got the idea, he says a girlfriend did it to him once in college and he’d always wanted to try it with you. And you buy it. Then you discover the existence of his mistress, and his new trick suddenly makes sense.
Oh good Lord…….THAT explains that……..
“He got the last OW an anal vibrator for Christmas while I got a chocolate bar!”
LOL. There are jokes here, but I can’t bring myself to write them.
Me, too.
Yeah… I’m struggling to stay PG on that one. Better pass. **snicker**
Yep, YMBAC if you are cut off from sex and believe it’s ED so you search your soul after 5 years of no sex and decide to stay for love – then find out he’s got an OW
YMBAC if you get completely cut off from sex believing it’s a medical problem and put up with it for 4 years, you convince yourself to stay for love and the kids, but then you find out he’s had multiple OW and your whole life has been a big fat lie for 14 years…
YMBAC if his sexual performance is SO PATHETIC you’re just sure he’d never humiliate himself with the performance anxiety he surely would have when trying to impress a hot babe 20 years his junior. I never did find the viagra prescription, but I did find the cardiologist appointment for a stress test.
I guess he’s lucky he’s from the chemical generation. When we were first married he worked for a man who was doing his secretary with a penile implant. Feeling like a young stud again is important enough to mutilate yourself for. Can’t even imagine. That relationship didn’t last, of course, but nobody learned a lesson from the example.
YMBAC if you find a receipt for an $1100.00 ladies watch (with diamonds) in his wallet that you did NOT open on Christmas morning!!!! BTW……I was really excited about getting that fucking watch too!!!!
Oh Kimmy – I feel your pain! Nothing like waiting for a present that never comes… 🙁
YMBAC if you see him furiously texting a female Realtor *while* on a date with you (in a dark movie theater), and you believe it’s simply about refinancing your family home.
YMBAC if despite finding months of convos back and for with your husband’s ho-worker (thanks to a keylogger) where they discuss how hot they are to get their hands on each other, how great kissing feels, even the “L” word – said husband swears he never actually had sex with her AND it was my fault anyway for forcing him to get his needs met elsewhere. And I felt like a bad wife.
Hahaha..Angie, I too believed ex when he said he hadn’t had sex with final OW…yet. Then a friend pointed out that it would be a rare day indeed if a man was saying I love you and the OW was sending nude pictures if they weren’t having sex.
He had to get HIS needs met. Yours are totally inconsequential. Argh!
Wow! Same here. He actually called it ” having a slice” …… Of what???? Oh yeah (wack myself over the head with a log)- a Slice of Cake! Because having a fuckbuddy was not enough…
Yep. Mine told me “I had to have sex with someone” despite also telling me “I know we had sex 3-5 times a week I just never felt like you were into it”
It was never enough. Nothing I did was ever enough.
And of course, when he was thinking you weren’t ‘that into it’, did he EVER ask if you were OK? Did he EVER ask if the two of you were OK? Did he EVER try to improve that experience for YOU? Did he EVER ask if there was something he could do to improve it?
Yeah, I thought not ….
(Not that I’ve been THERE, of course 😉 )
Right there with you Helen. Of course he said the same thing. But all I wanted was him to be home with the kids and I. It was the one thing he would never give me.
Because he’s too needy. But if you told him HE wasn’t enough, he’d be furious. It’s ALWAYS so one sided.
So what “needs” did you force him to meet? The need to kiss someone?
YMBAC if suddenly and without explanation after 16 years together your husband shaves off all of his pubic hair! And despite “sleeping on the couch in his office”, many late nights, unanswered calls, unexplained credit card charges, a new sports car, a new wardrobe, a sudden pedicure and facial habit (need I go on?), etc… You actually tell a concerned friend, “oh no, he’s not having an affair. There are NO RED FLAGS!!”
Hahahahaha! Where was my head?!?
Mine actually started growing facial hair.
YMBAC if, after hearing your husband boast of his clean-shaven appearance for years, he grows a mustache and goatee that not only makes him look 10 years older, but also suspiciously like every single one of OW’s ex-husbands AND you accept his explanation that he feels like doing something different with his hair.
How about after 16 years together and never complaining about his little bit of back hair, he asks you to come shave it for him while he showers. Mind you he’s been sleeping on the couch for the month prior. When you ask him why he suddenly cares about his back hair, he says it’s unattractive. “To who” you ask, “I’ve never complained about it” and you shave his fucking back anyway! How can they be so fucking heartless. I wish we could put them all on an island together and watch them play the pick me dance among themselves.
I completely understand this. My ex made me cook for the OW and her family after she had a baby (they started cheating when she was pregnant with her husbands child) The worst part is a feeling of being an actor in your own destruction and humiliation. Never again.
Chumperstein, please don’t be hard on yourself. He deceived you in the most despicable way. What a sadistic piece of shit. My story pales in comparison but I understand the feeling of having aided in one’s own demise. From my current perspective, I see that what I actually did was release myself from hell. It will get better!
That is so abusive and cruel! His balls should be tasered!
My cheater had an old GF with whom he had admitted he once had a three-some and he claimed she was really gay and had no sexual interest in him. However, when we would go out socially, I always got a vibe that they had unfinished business and together they were cataloging my short-comings. He was always attentive to her but acted detached toward me, unless he was putting on a show, like he wanted to make her jealous of his relationship.
I would tell him my feelings about it, but of course I got the “you’re just too sensitive or not hip, or imaging things…” However, he would always hide his phone calls from/to her, claiming he couldn’t take my “over-reaction.”
SO IMBAC to not trust my gut about “old” GFs and supposedly “past” history because he never stopped contacting her especially on the sly (saw phone records or overheard conversations ) until she got married to another guy.
The past is prologue.
My did the exact same thing- because they were bright ginger and he hated them, well they never bother me for 18 yrs, and when I look back over the years he had the odd hairless flirtation a couple of times before the actual D DAY. 🙁
I was no naive I believed him…..
Oh, and he suddenly started wearing a MANBAG, this was a guy who couldn’t choose a t-shirt without taking 1-2 hrs procrastinating about whether it went with this sneakers or not.
Last time I ever saw him he was wearing a fitted trendy check shirt – he obviously started shopping in different stores after I left then.
Protein shakes and a GYROSCOPE ? WTF must have been needing to improve his wrist action.
My ex switched his look after he left me. He doesn’t shop on his own, so I guess the OW decided to remodel him.
Mine started dyeing his mustache
spellcheck! Mine …bothered
Mine left his gray pubes in the toilet for me to flush. Just shaved them all off right into the toilet, and left them there.
I really think he was resentful that I was so chumpy. In retrospect, it was SO OBVIOUS he was having an affair, and I just never caught on. But his behavior and mannerisms throughout were SO REVOLTING (acting like a girl, acting like an ugly, old adolescent male, being begrudging, whining all the time about his health, etc.) that, frankly, I’d had it with him, anyway.
YMBAC if your husband works SOOOOOOOO much overtime, but doesn’t bring home a bigger paycheck. YMBAC if your husband books last-minute trips to Hawaii, or to Yosemite in the snow, feebly asks if you want to try to get time off from work, and the kids? Oh, them? Wul…. And you believe him that he’s doing this because work has been SO STRESSFUL, and he just needs to clear his head.
YMBAC if your Christmas present is a last-minute chore, wherein he asks you to find that $100 purse you wanted on line, and he sits there in front of you, and puts in his credit card number to pay for it. That’s it!
YMBAC if on that same Christmas, he asks you to return EVERY SINGLE Christmas present you bought him.
YMBAC if you’ve been responsible throughout the years for buying everyone else’s holiday and birthday presents, including his mother’s. She threw me under the bus. Hope she likes the presents now, cuz I am no longer his secretary. Maybe OW has good taste. Not in men, apparently.
Yeah if your gift is a last minute kindle gift card he grabs while buying your son a video game and then leaves it in the bag for you to wrap. Then sends you and the kids to your mother’s house for Christmas because home is “so stressful” and encourages you to stay till after New Years. Then days after you come back he needs to “get away and sleep” and all he tells you is the city he’s going to which is 1.5 hours away. AND YOU ENCOURAGE HIM TO GO!
Laughing so hard!
What is it w/cheaters, shitting, and cell phones? My exH used to sit in the bathroom for like 40 MINUTES every morning! We had 2 toddlers, and that was his only “family time” around the kids before leaving for “work” and then not coming home until they were in bed. The kids have very few memories of him (he left when they were 2 and 5), but my daughter has said, when I ask her what she remembers about her dad, “I remember him sitting on the toilet for EVER and drinking coffee and talking on his phone.” What a meaningful legacy to pass to your children. Asshole.
“What a meaningful legacy to pass on to your children.”
His grandchildren won’t know who he his, and is great-grandchildren won’t even know his name. They will, however, know yours.
THANK you Red; you are awesome.
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/yhst-11870311283124/pooped-thumb.png
We’ve had this discussion about cheaters and shitting. Mine not only sits in the bathroom forever playing games on his phone, plans his activities around his bathroom schedule, and selects restaurants based on his scatalogical response, he also asked me whether I was going to shit when I headed to the bathroom. Ugh, I won’t miss that!
Grey pubes in the toilet? My ex shit his underwear and left them in the TUB! Shoulda took a photo and posted it online. She can HAVE that!
Yeah, I do laugh when I think how real life must be going for OW now that she got what she wanted and married him. At least mine was so embarrassed about leaking in his drawers he wrapped them up in a garbage bag and snuck them outside to the garbage can. That was pretty decent of him, come to think of it.
OMG Helen – the shaving thing! And he shaved his chest hair too! And told me it was because “he didn’t want to be sweaty…” So, the first 9 years of our marriage, sweaty was ok, and now it’s not? WTF. It was such a turn-off to me – he looked like a 12 year old boy or a plucked chicken. Ick. The OW can have that nasty.
OMG- my ex did that too!
“The OW can have that nasty.”
LMAO – thank you! 🙂
You’re welcome 🙂
OMG mine shaved off the pubes too and bought new underwear- forget the tidy whities, he had to have colored briefs. Yes, the OW can have all that nasty!! I read somewhere that they shave their pubes to make their dick look bigger.
Mine did this too. I called it ” the optical inch” . He didn’t like the term. It apparently helps make things all glidy and nice when porking his fat-assed hag up the ass. No joke. Yuck.
I’ll be laughing at this all day.
My ex switched to patterned boxers, apparently purchased by the OW
Wow! so that’s why mine did that…… He took great pride in his hairless balls. I think there might have been a little tea bagging going on….what do you think? ewwwwwwwwwwww!
OK, I finally had to look up teabagging in the urban dictionary. Ewwww. I’m not only a chump, I’m a prude.
Meg…I am laughing out loud. That explains a lot.
Mine shaved his pubes, too. Yuck.
Ditto
Helen – I am so with you on this one! 20 years married and he finally starts buying his own new clothes? The gym, the haircut, the special diet and extraordinarily expensive protein shakes and supplements! I thought it was great he was looking after himself!
Mine did the same! Got onto Zija weight loss and started working out compulsively. Claimed the stuff was so great he decided it sell it on the size. Turns out he was selling it for his married coworker
YMB even more of AC if your friends give you the side-eye about how much your lazy husband is spending on extra stuff for the beloved car and you acknowledge that yes, it is an expensive hobby but other men have affairs with their mid-life crisis – at least tinkering with the car keeps him out of trouble!
CL – this is so cathartic! I am actually laughing about it!! Good grief, what a chump I’ve been!
When you’re saddled with a s reaming infant and a son with learning disabilities in your one bedroom loft in your multi family in your sketchy part of town where gunshots, backfire or fireworks is a nightly guessing game (I got pretty good, they were mostly gunshots) and despite having plenty of money and assists and options to get the hell out, we linger on a six year house hunt that has been deemed “my job” by Grand Pubah twerp extrodinaire! When I find one that can’t be argued with, we make the big move and he starts sleeping with a married mom whose kids was in my struggling kid’s class within two months, maybe less. When I complain about kids daily exposure to paramour, I’m told I’m overreacting.
YMBAC if your husband refuses to go to marriage counseling, so you go by yourself assuming you can fix the marriage single handedly. Spackle! Spackle! Spackle!
The counseling didn’t fix my marriage, instead it opened my eyes to all the abuse I was subjected to, so I in turn filed for divorce. 3 years out, still not divorced because I’m married to a control freak! Life rolls on….
Margo – Yes! I did the counseling and read the books. Along those lines…
YMBAC if you were filled with hope while reading “How to Save Your Marriage – Alone” by M.D. Ed Wheat.
That is an actual book? The Reconciliation Industrial Complex is beyond parody.
Yes, that is an actual book. I have a friend who read and believed it. For awhile.
Ha ha! This is SO not funny.
One more:
Then H is spending a year in Washington, DC, on leave from work, to pursue his dream job because he is unhappy at work (this you encouraged, never would have happened otherwise given that he is Capt Passive). He comes home every 4-5 weeks to see you and the kids. 5 months in, he takes a cool work trip to Africa. He writes a long Facebook post about all the cool things he has seen and interesting people he has met…. And ends it with a comment about how he cannot wait to return to his DC family (work colleagues, housemate, etc) and share his experiences with them.
Um…. Your children? Your wife? Chumpish chump, that’s me.
I called him on it, but still did not put 2 and 2 together given our past history and past MC (trusted him to tell me what he was feeling/what he needed….)
YMBAC when you smell pussy on your husband’s dick and it aint yours. Sorry…..I know that is gross but it happened!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruef7aYCEbc
Love the song Rumblekitty!!!!
Drop the boxers… HA!!
I had that happened too. I got into the car after physical therapy following ACL repair. XH did a “run” while I was learning how to walk again. After my session, I get into the car with him and smelled the most God awful, foul stench. He laughed and said he has “high uric acid”. Seriously, I’ve been around him after he ran marathons and I never smelled THAT before. wwwwwww
I would let my ex borrow MY car because it was an hour on the bus or fifteen minutes by car. It STUNK! He would smoke both cigarettes and marijuana in MY CAR and then when I comment on the smell, he would feign ignorance! (Classic Gaslighting: Who would you believe? Me or your LYING NOSE!?)
Cleaning my car was very cathartic! Now it smells AMAZING! 🙂
My husbands car stunk all the time….I would ask him what the smell was. He would say….”what smell, I don’t smell anything!” It was moldy and sour….found out later he was hauling prostitutes around as well as homeless people. Said he was taking them to doctors appointments and such. He was being a good samaritan.
That’s a big FUCK YOU to you, of course. These assholes are so disgusting.
YMBAC if for Christmas you get a beautiful sapphire necklace, and he gives the matching earrings to the OW
Oh dear. I’m almost afraid to hear the story of how you discovered this…
YMBAC if… he tells you that actually, he hasn’t been wearing his wedding ring for a whole year, for “security reasons.” And he is a mailman.
YMBAC if… he buys a Mothers Day gift for his mom and your mom, but doesn’t even get you a card. And you are in the hospital.
YMBAC if… a “friend” lets him borrow a brand-new iPod, which he listens to for hours non-stop. And it is hot pink.
YMBAC if… you accompany him to the local bar, and all the waitresses run up to hug him the second you walk in.
YMBAC if… he invites you out to dinner, and then makes you pay.
YMBAC if… he calls his OW to fill her in, after every marriage counseling session.
YMBAC if your husband comes home from his month-long Christmas/NY trip to Europe to “visit his dying mother” (because Christmas with you two adorable pre-schoolers is definitely never fun or memorable) and he has a suitcase full of new underwear and pajamas. And they are nasty (little icky black briefs and BLACK VELOUR pajamas, I shit you not.) And so I say, “WTF are these?” and (ex)H tells me, “That’s what my mom got me for Christmas.”
(Now, my ex MIL is/was seriously crazy, but that was freaky. I put them all in the trash, but found them later in his car. He dug them out of the trash. So. Very. Nasty. He’s seriously planning on sleeping next to me wearing PJ’s from the OW? And having me take off his porn star undies gifted from the OW? That is some seriously warped shit.)
Seriously, shaggy black f’ing velour – the kind that leaves big chunks of black lint on the sheets and in the dryer. And it had a GOLD collar. He tried wearing it to bed ONCE. He was “well taken care of” in that regard, and I told him that if he ever wanted sex again, he better lose those jammies. I was still thinking it was his icky Freudianly-disturbed mother that was trying to ruin my fun….
I’ve given up trying to figure out if it was creepy MIL or OW with really bad taste – either way, so foul. And I’m sure that shit would have melted like butter. So that’s a nice visual to have – him wearing his skanky melting jammies in hell.
They come in all shapes and sizes, colors of the rainbow and fantasy shop horrors! OY!
Was it the polyester rayon kind of velour? I hear that shit is flammable.
I’m dying laughing! :’)
YMBAC if you find mix CDs in his car with the titles written in flouncy, girly writing where the letter “i”s have circles for the dots….and he says they’re just from “a friend”.
You must have been in my stbxh’s car about 10 years ago LiningUpDucks! His newest is the I have no idea of her ordinal number other woman and her kids are having pizza and playing uno at his apartment with your kids. I hope his dick fall right the fuck off. Maybe I’ll buy him some of those velour jammies and a pack of smokes and hope for the best.
Trying, I am so sorry you are going through this RIGHT NOW and I hope your STBX’s karma bus is either a Mac Truck or a frigging tank! Your scenario is why I stayed with SpongeBob Cheaterpants for 13 more years…only to be discarded at 52 years old for a second affair. You are doing the right thing and his “parenting” is on him. You don’t want him to model his shabby treatment of you onto his kids.
Oh, and your anger is a lot better (and more constructive) than depression. Let the anger work *for* you. Run your credit report to see if there’s any hidden cards and document (copy) as much financial stuff as you can and store it off site. I hope you’re keeping a journal of his parenting time. (Hugs)
Yep, that shit happened here too!
Me, too.
Check! I got that one — I just remember the first song on it was the 80s hit “Micky.” Micky, Micky you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind — HEY MICKY!”
So yes, this coworker was like… 12.
CL, clearly your husband is awesome for this suggestions.
Are you sure he does not have an available brother or cousin? I am originally from Texas, if that helps in any way…. 😉
He is super awesome. 🙂 No available relatives that I’m aware of… sorry. But I think the state is full of great guys, so long as you stay away from the unemployed singer songwriters of Austin.
If you believe your cheater when they come home late and say “No, honey, *that* bar stays open later, didn’t you know?”….YMBAC.
YMBAC if you are ok with him going to the movies with your “BFF” and they choose movies that they know I will never want to see – Scary gory movies and then YMBAC if you actually believed that they went to the movies!
BFF yep, got that one too, I’m scoring pretty high on the YMBAC meter…
YMBAC if you agree (even encourage) that WH should go on a weekend trip to FL to learn a new hobby while you stay home juggling schedule of three kids who have to be in three different places at the same time because that is what makes him happy.
Then…YMBA bigger C when he tells you that he hates to travel without a companion and he has always had a “woman on his arm” since he was a teenager (this was as justification post dday. I should have known that?)
If over the course of two decades your spouse never gives you a single compliment about how you look, and you attribute it to a really healthy sense that they don’t consider looks all that important, YMBAC.
If during (false) reconciliation you declare it to have been a “hidden blessing” that you didn’t know about all those affairs over all those years because divorce would’ve meant less time with the kids during their formative years, YMBAC.
If even after you uncover an ongoing affair while in MC for another affair, and she moves out, you still go over to her house when it’s 95 degrees and mow her lawn because she’s never done that before and can’t really be expected to learn now, YMBAC.
XH always took pride in his lawn and spent *hours* working on it. After he moved out, I had to watch two YouTube videos to mow the lawn – one to find out how to start the lawn mower, the other on how to attach the grass catcher. I sang, “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!” the first time I mowed the lawn. I felt like an Amazon when I was done…. 🙂
Well done Red, I second your post.
But my stupid exH said he didn’t think I could do it! So I learnt how to and told him to shove the law mower up his crapper.
We can and will survive cos we are worth it..
“Law mower” We are all Freud!!!! Love it!
I told mine that I did not know how to start a lawnmower & that as soon as I knew how, I knew it would become my job! So I refused to learn. Now that I live by myself, I did learn, did it for awhile & then hired someone.
Nomar,
The lawn mowing thing is sweet. I once heard that men judge other men (to some degree) by how they take care of the lawn i.e. a guy that makes his wife cut the grass is a dick. So IMO that’s only marginally chumpy 🙂
I was a TOTAL CHUMP because my ex was always “too busy” to cut the grass – I was mowing grass in 90+ degree heat during a high risk pregnancy because “he was so tired from work”. Sigh.
Yep ReDefiningMe. And washing cars and pressure washing the drive way. I even painted one side of our house by myself. All in hopes that he would then have more time for the family.
Please tell me we will NEVER be so foolish again! Otherwise I’m hanging up the relationship/sex towel right now.
Oh, there was definitely some Yard Pride at work there. In a small town, everyone notices how your yard is kept and who is keeping it that way.
But looking back I am shocked that at some point while feeling the early onset symptoms of heat exhaustion I didn’t say to myself, “WTF? This is not MY job. She can do it herself, hire someone to do it, or ask one of her boyfriends do do it?”
I think chumps keep that voice wrapped inside a rug and locked in a trunk in the basement.
I hope the neighbors are thinking he’s a dick. He left the sprinklers broken so the lawn would die and he wouldn’t have to mow it any more.
Ooooh, I agree, nomar–that is HOT that you did that. It says a lot about YOUR character, not about what a whore she is.
I did all our yard work. ALL. OF. IT. ALL the time. He mowed the lawn a couple times. Now he lives in a shit hole, because OW is too entitled to get dirt on her fingers, and xH is a loser who doesn’t have me to do the yard work any more. And, you know? It DOES matter. My affection for xH was diminished by his laziness, and by his willingness to let be the man of the house WAY too often. Someone had to do it, though. I spackled SO hard throughout our marriage, and the yard thing was a big giant part of it. Actually, a LOT of the “man chores” was a big part of it–hauling the garbage cans, bringing the Christmas tree into and out of the house while he played video games on the computer, etc. Ick. Obviously, I CAN do all of that, but it sure is something else to look over and see Mr. Limpy totally oblivious–or worse–irritated with me for caring. Ugh!
Miss Sunshine,
I think I was married to your XH’s twin. I did all this stuff, too, while he played video games or was sleeping or just lurking about. One day while I was fighting with the lawn mower in the heat, I saw him a few feet away with his hands on his hips “grading me.” He would say, “You missed a spot over by the tree.” So yes, I was a chump! Should have pushed that lawn mower in his face and walked away right then.