Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Unfortunately, that totally describes my ex. It is narcissism and sociopathic behavior to abuse and disregard. Thanks, Jennifer — this is so well put. I’ve been thinking about these concepts as they relate to my STBX, and I don’t think they are just related to the affair. His FOO seems to struggle a lot with shame — which is likely a function of growing up in an alcoholic household and with a mother who drilled the perspective that they weren’t as good as other people into their developing brains. I think the shame led to rage: rage that I somehow didn’t see or absolve his shame, rage that he didn’t like himself while I had sufficient self esteem, rage that he couldn’t stop doing things (e.g., porn addiction) that made him feel even more shame. I think some of the sexual acting out was a passive aggressive way of expressing that rage, which led to guilt, which led to more shame because he couldn’t absolve the guilt.
It’s a good wake-up call for those of us still intermittently addicted to Hopium, and what I need to read on days when I’m feeling down in the dumps about him. I think my ex had the same plan. People called me paranoid for it but it just made sense. My ex slipped up and revealed he’d been actively planning to divorce me for at least the last six years of our 20 year marriage. That’s part of why I got alimony for ten years. During that six years, I quit a job that could support me and provided me with insurance because he didn’t want to help out at home and wanted a housewife. A couple years before the discard (right before I quit my job) I talked to him seriously worrying he wasn’t happy. I offered him an easy divorce if that’s what he wanted because I felt like he wasn’t happy and didn’t want to be around me. He sobbed, begged, pleaded, took time off work to spend time with me. All to reassure me he was all in and loved me.AE – my XH wouldn’t get rid of his “awesome” grad student, either. He told me she only had “three more years.” My God – 5 more MINUTES was untenable, let alone three more years! Why don’t they see that? Cheaters make unilateral decisions about their victim’s health, welfare, and finances. And they act in secret, because chumps have value to them—value they want to continue extracting. Chumps can waste years in a marriage not knowing the truth about being defrauded. And so much of our culture wants us to think these costs are frivolous. Infidelity is the jolly subject of romantic comedies or women’s magazine articles about the naughty fun of being a mistress. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Victimless crime!” Ownership. See Humility. Real remorse wears the shame. Real remorse takes responsibility for the fallout. Real remorse is okay if you tell people, because you need the support. GINR wants you to protect its image. GINR blame shifts and says “we all brought issues to this marriage that led me to cheat.” GINR minimizes and obfuscates. Yes, poor S! This is heartbreaking. He’s gone, and for what? He accidentally married a total skank.
Be an enigma. Don’t show them your vulnerability. Don’t try to plead or reason with them, or tell them you care. That’s power to a cheater. I know you don’t see it that way, but you’re not empathy- and character-deficient the way they are. This person has just demonstrated to you in the most intimate and humiliating way how little respect they have for your feelings. So it stands to reason that they cannot be trusted with more of your feelings.” Well S finally found the truth by breaking into L’s phone and finding the evidence he needed. He told the wife of the AP and after which the mechanic broke things off with L. Three weeks later in late January 2022, when L & S were fighting, he put a gun to his head. After she managed to get out of the house, he pulled the trigger and killed himself. If you're here, it's because you are surviving, or have survived, infidelity in a relationship that you thought was life-long. This is a support sub, a safe place to ask for advice and guidance. Regardless of your decision to stay in your relationship or to go, we are here to support you on your path to recovery.In my opinion your dignity is in tact. You are just having a hard time seeing it. You put your family first, you tried to make things better that were probably fine to begin with, you did the work, you were in the family. Chump Nation saved you and you tried to be supportive of a friend who was cheating on her husband?! Whom you claim to have loved?!! Red, it was interesting to hear your story and got me riled up again. You’d think college professors would “get it” that the old grad student infatuated with the professor is a cliche and a joke. How many movies have there been where it doesn’t end well? And how many sexual ethics talks has he heard from HR? But these type think they are so special, don’t they?
After your own experience with a cheater, aren’t you tied of being told what you NEED to do by people who don’t have your emotional and psychological best interests in mind? When L told me about the affair I did my best to be supportive, but I saw all the signs of abuse and trauma S was experiencing. She had stopped having sex with him and started getting caught in lies about her naughty communication with other guys. L was gaslighting S to the point of him acting irrational and in her eyes “controlling” (insert eye roll). She became so spiteful and hateful of him and I begged her to leave him. Geeezzz… if they could do all of those necessary steps towards forgiveness, (and its a great list!) they wouldn’t have cheated in the first place. They would’ve understood that WHEN we would find out that we would be absolutely devastated and traumatized to the nth degree… at least that’s what I thought, every time I felt an attraction to another man. all I could see in my mind, was the look of horror on my dear husband’s face and I COULD NOT DO THAT TO HIM! (this was before D-day #1 when afterwards, everything ran amok) But I refuse to be upset with myself. On the one hand, yes, I could have been with someone who truly cared about it, and all my love would not have been wasted. To be fair, though, I have many faults, and I have heard them all listed repeatedly as a way to explain why I too was at fault for my ex’s cheating.I am being told by her parents and even a close friend of mine that I need to be supportive of her and let her make her decisions.” Patience. Real remorse understands that repairing a relationship after infidelity is a long haul with dubious prospects. GINR wants to you to “get over it” already because hey, it said it was sorry. My ex was a professional. If he could find one person to enable him, he would continue living any lie. I did some research and found that sociopaths are vindictive if they are exposed. The one I married was.
Most people (and I think most cheaters ~ even serial ones) are capable of feeling Guilt and Shame, but their tolerance for this type of unpleasant emotion is so very low as to be almost non-existent. Where the rest of us would simply feel lousy and work through it, they find the feelings brought on by Guilt and Shame simply unbearable.” Personally, I’m ok with reading the details even though I at one point had a suicide plan that shared these details. I think the specifics have more value when they are relatable to my story, and I’m not triggered by it. In my darkest moment, I sat on my bed with a gun in my mouth because I just wanted the pain the stop. The only thing that stopped me was my son, he would have found me. So I sat there and tried to come up with ways I could kill myself that would be easier on him. I thought of driving the car somewhere and shooting myself in the car but a woman who owned a local restaurant by us actually did that and they didn’t find her for a month in the summertime in Las Vegas and it was horrifying when they did. (Her family was looking for her, they just couldn’t find her.) So I thought, I need them to find me and I want him to be able to have my car. So I thought of a spot where I could park the car, get out, call 911 and tell them where to find me, and then shoot myself. Example: my spouse said he didn’t betray our marriage because we weren’t married. 2 priests, 180 guests and my grandma wearing pink chiffon witnessed our wedding. We were legally married – it was objective truth. From this day, until the day I die, I will exist only to honor my angel. She deserves better than the garbage I fed her for 8 years. Even if she moves on and remarries, I will continue to honor her. She deserves to be happy. She deserves to be honored and respected. SHE EARNED IT! I expect nothing from her. It is Father God’s job to forgive me. Not my angel’s. I am reformed in Christ and will stop at nothing to educate cheaters as to the depth of the damage we do in our cheating.If I was aware someone was being abused by another, I would absolutely share that information with that spouse. He had a right to know. (I sure would have wanted some brave person with a moral compass to tell me, would have given me hope for the world.) If anyone out there is in such despair from this to consider suicide… please use the resources listed earlier and know it really does get better!!! As the daughter of a father who killed himself by shooting himself in the head I also disagree that CL should change the wording to “died by suicide.” Initiative. Real remorse books its own shrink appointments. Real remorse does the homework. Real remorse does not need to be cajoled, wheedled, or dragged by its ear. Real remorse buys the books and reads the books. GINR waits for you to do it, and then finds a very good reason to be too busy. Over on Ask Amy, on washingtonpost.com, I am one of the few who is telling a “friend” to SPEAK UP about cheating she blatantly witnessed. It’s a real Switzerland over there, and so awful.
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