The Chump Lady Survival Guide to Infidelity: How to Regain Your Sanity After You've Been Cheated On

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Which is why “neutrality” after being chumped is so infuriating. What chumps desire most is for loved ones to validate their experience of injustice. Why should chumps care which side of the fence people come down on? Because cheaters have been deliberately driving chumps insane with lies. To gaslight someone is to deny his or her reality. Oh, that thing you fear? It’s a figment of your imagination. It’s not happening. You’re crazy!” Infidelity is a choice. People cheat because they feel entitled to cheat. That’s it. That’s my simple answer to the painful question of why. I don’t believe people cheat because they’re broken, or they have family of origin issues, or because of the staggering powers of Facebook crushes. I don’t believe people cheat because of midlife crises, which descend on former church deacons like a toxic cloud of musk cologne. I don’t believe people cheat because of perimenopause.” 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) Let me repeat what Tracy said, “SHARED HISTORY ISN’T SHARED VALUES.” Just because you met somebody when you were a child and you liked them then, doesn’t mean you have ever had anything in common except for randomly being in the same class at school.

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. If your cheater is on the fence about your marriage after discovery, shut that down. Ever hear the expression, “Don’t make someone a priority who only makes you an option”? You are not an option. You are their spouse. This is not a contest. They made a commitment to you. They don’t get to renegotiate the terms. Stalling for time, acting all vague about how they intend to make this right, talking a good game and never coming through on the particulars—these are all ploys to keep them in the affair.” The line for me is knowing for sure and not telling. My fw told me of quite a few guys during our years together who were cheating. I never told because I didn’t see it. Thank God I didn’t because turned out he was the cheating asshole and likely lying about someif not most of them. Hang in there Toni. During my first marriage my ex was weirdly enthusiastic about us buying a very expensive RV, knowing that I would use it to go on camping trips without her to a location 500 miles away. Of course, I learned after D-day that she liked to use these opportunities when I was gone to hook up with her affair partners.No real remorse from my XH, either. He said he was, “An old man flattered by the attentions of a beautiful young woman.” So flattered, in fact, that he left me for her. I saw a bunch of those “friends” at my stbx’s funeral (we never did get divorced, as he died before our trial). They all acted friendly toward me just as they had all along. I behaved with dignity and composure, and was civil to everyone, but I would never willingly be closely involved with any of them again. Infidelity is the theft of your reality. You can’t cheat on someone without gaslighting them. It’s an insidious, intimate form of abuse. One that drove S to blow his brains out. L denied S’s reality. This man who was so devoted to her, she would not treat ethically. If you feel like this divorce was forced on you, that you didn’t want it, that there is something to miss—get over that. You can’t be with your cheater because you aren’t a good match. You don’t share the same ideas about love, family, and relationships. To be with that person would be squelching a fundamental part of yourself—the person who demands reciprocity, honesty, and fidelity in marriage. In a way, it’s nothing personal. You are just two people who have nothing in common except shared history.” I think this about my ex FW, MightyWarrior, they would dearly have loved me to disappear and for them to reap the benefits of my demise

The same tragic ending may have occurred but you would at least know you did what you could to minimize him getting abused. As it is, you did nothing to support him and effectively supported her abuse of him. Perhaps her other friends and parents can support her. There can be little doubt that mental health and emotional state play into death by suicide. You don’t know what went on in her marriage. All very sad. All true. But her reaction was to treat him as Plan B, and cheat on him. One doesn’t have to lead to the other. This is part of changing the narrative in our culture. Instead of these chumps drifting away mysteriously……we need to be telling their stories.” My, my. For someone who grew up in an upper-middle-class environment and who continues to enjoy expensive taste, it sure is hilarious to see that he’s 100% Genuine Imitation Naugahyde. The only thing he did right, if you can call it that, are parts of number six, but I only think he did it because his parents expected him to do right by me. I have to wonder how much more he would have tried to screw me over if he wasn’t worried about their opinions. Nwrain – I had another academic wife tell me that universities were one of the few “good old boy” institutions left where women willing dropped trou to get ahead.Spooky. We had the same arguments in the last five years of the marriage. I kept asking if maybe separating would be a better option as he clearly couldn’t stand to even be in the same room with me. Then he would cry and apologize and say, “Of course I want to married to you – where do you come up with this stuff?” This is while actively planning my discard… It looks like he already had my replacement lined up during this time. But we can also flip this another way. Some years ago, a person I knew attempted suicide with over the counter painkillers. Her idea was to go to bed and never wake up again. 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. As for your ex and his students – unbelievable! Nothing like leaving your village, coming to America, and being seduced by your professor. Gives a whole new meaning to the term, “Ugly American.” Sheesh!

Unfortunately, that totally describes my ex. It is narcissism and sociopathic behavior to abuse and disregard. My favorite coworker’s husband had a secret family and their son (now an adult) never fully recovered. Drug abuse, DUI’s and the latest is she’s probably going to have to have him committed. I can’t disagree with what you wrote about how this writer characterizes herself in relation to the deceased husband in the equation. It’s hard to stomach this idea that she loved him yet let him live in this world of gaslighting that clearly damaged him, when she could have provided clarity that might have improved his life. But, to be sure, the choice for someone to ultimately kill themselves is a personal one. Sometimes intervention can prevent the suicide. Sometimes it can’t. Sometimes it simply postpones it. I’ve seen all three scenarios play out.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.” It’s sad to me that there are genuine chumps out there looking for support and this letter writer gets to take up valuable space in one of the very few spaces available to Chumps. When I busted her, my XW actually told me that she found “older, successful men irresistable”. Mind you, I’m 5 years older than her and was a partner in a pretty successful ad agency. So…that made me chopped liver, I guess. And stop saying you loved her husband. Slap that lie out of your mouth. If you loved him you wouldn’t have just sat and watched him be abused to the point he killed himself. This is the shit my disgusting “friends” tried to say about me. That’s not love. If that’s love to you, then you’re a monster who isn’t capable of love and can’t even understand what love is. So which is it? Are you a liar or a monster? Because it’s one of those things. Don’t disrespect the dead man even more by pretending you gave a shit about him. You did not. Really? Because you seem pretty clear that such betrayal is abuse when it happened to you. Why would you want to be supportive of someone abusing their partner?

Part of me wants to admonish you for not reaching out to your fellow chump who was suffering. But he may have pulled that trigger anyway and you’d have felt even worse, as if you were a catalyst. I don’t know how much it would have helped without collective effort from several people prepared to take on L and openly dispel the lies. i finally knew I was in a false reconciliation of the naugahyde type when I looked at our bedside tables: about 10 ‘how to heal from an affair’ books on my side. Your friend has surrounded herself with ‘yes’ people and has proven time and time again that she has no conscience. She is not a friend to you, she’s barely human. You need to extricate yourself from this horror FOR YOUR SAFETY. The writer seems to be getting something out of being close to this tragic situation. Maybe she is replaying her own trauma of being left be buddying up with the cheater this time, hoping to replay this situation and be the powerful one. Only this story took a tragic end and S died, while she covertly participated in the abuse by being L’s emotional support. Enabler may be a better term.

When I told my husband, and asked him to get tested as soon as possible, it actually took him a couple weeks. He was just so busy traveling, you see. And it’s not like you can get tested just ANYWHERE. Ass. That was weeks of me having to wait and worry. Just one more injury to add to the long list. If the situation was reversed, if you were having the affair, would HE be okay with you working with OM? Absolutely not! He’d probably do what Richard Gere did in “Unfaithful”– kill OM and hide the body. I know I toyed with the idea more than once… I’ve heard once that in an abusive relationship it’s impossible to reconcile unless you take care of the hidden shame and guilt held by the abuser (cheater). After they are abusive they feel shame and guilt, but cannot own them. Instead they feel threatened and uneasy. Not knowing how to process these emotions – other than denial they become angry with the person, who elicits these emotions – their victim. Feeling angry they feel validated to hurt again. It’s a vicious cycle and without a good therapist very hard to unravel.