A Former Affair Partner on Being the Other Woman: ‘You’re Not Special’
A former affair partner looks back in mortification and regret at what it’s like being the Other Woman. It’s not what you think.
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Hi Chump Lady,
I’m a long time lurker and I have a confession — I was the Other Woman. 13 years ago I had an 8-month affair with a man who had a girlfriend.
Though it’s been over a decade and I haven’t spoken to him since around 2014, I can still remember all the things I did. All the stupid choices I made. After reading some of the OW letters, and years of therapy and reflection on my actions, and visiting your site seeing the stories from chumps, I have an open letter to affair partners who come here.
Maybe they’ll listen, maybe I don’t have any room to speak. But I hope something of value can come from it.
Here’s four things I learned after my affair, the therapy I sat through, and the things I had to get real about. I hope others can gain from it:
1) You really are not special.
This is at the top because it’s the biggest thing to internalize. You’re not better than his wife. You’re not The One Who Really Understands. No. You’re the one who’s making themselves available. That’s what they care about. Maybe they really are unhappy in their marriage, but that’s actually none of your business. Someone who deals with marriage problems by cheating will deal with any problems with YOU by doing the same thing, because they’re not mature enough to work through it like an adult. Cheaters don’t like discomfort, they like gratification. Working through marital issues is uncomfortable, and if you buy into their flattery, all you are is gratification.
The man I slept with would tell me all these tales of woe about how he fought with his girlfriend about everything from his friends to what movies to watch. I thought I was so special to be his “shoulder to cry on” and his “peaceful space.” When we ended the affair guess what he did?
…started another one with a married woman.
I wasn’t special, I was just available. Everything about how much he “really” cared was bs and disappeared the moment he thought he was about to get caught. And once he felt sure he wouldn’t, he went for someone else. I felt stupid, used, humiliated. I deserved every moment of those feelings. Which brings me to the next point…
2) You will look like an absolute fool.
There is no amount of inane Dan Savage articles that can make this untrue. You look like a vapid idiot going on about how someone else’s spouse is into you. This is part of the embarrassment. It should be embarrassing to you to think another woman’s spouse is your soulmate. It should absolutely cringe you to the core to talk about a married man like you’re teenagers passing notes in high school. I think back on all the things I said about the man I was sleeping with and my skin crawls at my own words.
Nobody thinks you sound eloquent. They think you’re a floozy. Anyone who doesn’t think you sound like a floozy is probably going to enable you and not someone you should be friends with. Hang out with people who check you on your shit. Don’t hang out with people who think it’s cool for you to be sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend.
3) They won’t leave their spouse, and if they do, they’ll become your problem.
The fantasy shatters pretty easily once they stop trying to charm you, and every bad behavior and annoyance they brought to their marriage (which they probably lied about) will make its way into your life. The nasty socks he left on the wife or girlfriend’s bathroom floor will now be left on your floor. The hair in her sink is now clogging your drain.
The lies he told you about her will become the lies he tells the next one about you.
This ties back into my first point (and another reason why it’s number one) that you’re not special. Someone who has been maintaining trash habits throughout their marriage will not transform into Mr./Ms. Responsible for you. Why would they? Again, cheaters don’t like being uncomfortable, and improving yourself is uncomfortable, long, and requires insight. They don’t want that, they just want someone new to f*ck and then clean up their mess for them.
Are you a person or a mop?
4) They suck, but you do too.
Lurking on Chump Lady I picked up “trust that they suck.” The mantra for chumps having trouble moving past the destruction of the lives they thought they had, with the partner they believed loved them. A lot of betrayed chumps will feel dizzy with the fear of “what if they’re better for the AP?” (Per point number 3…they’re not.)
“Trust that they suck” is true. A cheating spouse sucks, and they deserve the ire of chump lady. I’ve noticed chump lady also is trying to shift the blame off the shoulders of betrayed spouses and put the responsibility on the cheaters where it belongs. But…(again, see point number 1) that mantra of “trust they suck” applies to you too.
If you sleep with a married person (or someone in a monogamous relationship) you suck. If you didn’t know, you deserve some leeway but if you don’t stop when you find out, you still suck.
You’re being selfish at best, abusive at worst. What the betrayed chump doesn’t know can, and is, still hurting them. Lies, possible STDs, pregnancy, all these things are hurtful and destabilizing to an established relationship. Don’t trick yourself into thinking it’s a victimless crime if you’re never caught. Admit you’re making terrible decisions at the cost of someone who doesn’t even know you’re taking from them.
***
I cut off the cheater and spent time in therapy trying to figure out what made me do something like that.
I’ve been trying over the last decade to be a better human being and put these actions as far behind me as I can.
I see other APs writing in and making the same cringy excuses as I did.
I leave every AP thinking “Well, my story is different” with this:
Stop. Don’t keep fooling yourselves.
Walk away from this before there’s STDs, secret children, disgusted friends and family and spouses with utterly shattered lives. My affair lasted 8 months, and that was 8 months too long.
If I could go back in time I would have told him off and warned his girlfriend and maybe I could have gained a friend instead of 8 months with a lying a-hole and a lot of shameful regrets. She hates me and had every right to. (I have left her alone for the last 13 years. I hope she’s doing well and is with someone who loves her and is loyal.) Maybe I’d have gotten into therapy sooner to deal with my depression instead of trying to bandage it with something stupid like that. The solution to loneliness is not found in a taken man’s (or woman’s) genitals. Walk away and make better choices.
Being a Better Person
***
Dear Being a Better Person,
As the saying goes, “Don’t be sorry, be different.” You’re different now. It sounds like you did the hard, painful work to change and reflect. I appreciate you sharing your hard-won insights, because chumps spend a lot of time glamorizing affairs. And so do the people in them.
After all, without creating an air of being All That, who would fall for it? Who would willingly be the hypotenuse in the triangle unless they thought they would win a prize? The realization for affair partners is the same as it is for chumps:
There is no prize.
There’s just a crappy person at the end of the rainbow.
That isn’t to say the losses and pain are equivalent — they aren’t. Chumps are unknowing and conspired against. Affair partners know they’re competing. But the competition was always pointless. Anyone worth having would NEVER goad you into a humiliating contest for their attention. (The pick me dance.) But we confuse our investment with prizes. We think our time and our emotions matter, that they register with FWs. But it’s all just fuel for their ego.
I’m sure you’ve given some solace to chumps today. And maybe even a few lurking affair partners, current and former out there. Thank you.
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Can we PLEASE get this pinned to the front page? I think this could prevent a lot of future F-wittery if prospective Traitors read this.
You know, there is that part of me that still wants a letter like this from my Traitor (not that it would change anything). If I got this in my inbox? It wouldn’t fix anything, they would not have atoned. But I’d get just another little quantum of solace with how much growth had happened.
Amen! Add something like a side door icon to the homepage labelled ‘Are you an Affair Partner? Click HERE’.
I’m glad Being a Better Person figured it out.
Over the years, I worked with directly various people who were convinced that their secret lover at work would eventually divorce the spouse and be with them. To a person, none of them did that. Most stayed married, or divorced and found yet someone else.
In one very public situation at a former job, a very high-level manager had an affair with another high-level manager, even reportedly booking conference rooms for their “meetings.” He divorced his wife and married her. Everybody talked about it. Awkward. Then someone else caught his eye, and he reportedly undermined his wife’s career until she was let go. She left the area, and they got divorced. Yes, the woman in these situations often pays.
Don’t do it.
“The lies he told you about her will become the lies he tells the next one about you” doesn’t just apply to affair partners but also to spouses. If he gets someone new, Cheating Bastard is likely giving the same reasons he left me, Spouse #2, that he had for leaving Spouse #1. He set me up nicely to fit his template. But no longer my circus, no longer my clown.
This is sooo true and I never thought of it!!! My #2 ExhC was cheated on by his 1st wife. A verified fact. However, he complained to me about wife #1 in the exact way he complained about me to my whole church family at the end ….as he was trying to sanitized his multiple affairs. He complained wife #1 was too busy for him, didn’t want sex, locked him out at the end and was irrational. He told our friends and family the same things about me( though the lock out was true). I forgave all the smack talk about his first wife, but lo and behold, he used the same tactics of blame towards both of us. I guess we chumps need to just pay attention, even if your new love didn’t cheat ( that you know of). Still watch for the patterns
Nobody’s special to a narc except him/herself. Not even their children unless a “golden child” is particularly useful to the narc FW.
FW first OW was a PhD student and I drove myself crazy wondering if she was better than me somehow. His subsequent known OW were low-life strip mall hook*rs. I am certain in between were coworkers of various ages. Now I realize there is no need to compare.
FW hop from AP to AP because to them each is simply a kibble dispenser with available genitals.
Yes this is it!
Today’s post was great. It’s so different from the usual AP junk that they write here!
I’m a bit stunned and confused. This sounds genuine and from her heart. It goes directly against the grain of the narcissitic excuses/rationalizations most FW’s spew. What confuses me is that I had no idea such former cheaters existed…
Too many APs aren’t firmly rooted in reality they are mostly bunny boilers who think because they can do the mental gymnastics like it’s Cirque Du Solei that they are the star attraction. Even the ones who look like they “won” usually rely on the smoke and mirrors and are some of the truest believers of FW ringleaders.
For an AP to be recast or fired from the freak show, go to therapy an leave an.annoymous bad review about FW online isn’t that impressive, heck it’s what most of us chumps commiserate about.
An AP who takes full accountability for their actions and attempts to clean up the aftermath of their destruction while respecting a chumps wishes is doing the bare minimum yet is significantly less common.
An AP or FW being so ashamed of themselves they hit some sort of rock bottom find their moral compass and decide to fundamentally change who they are as person is what makes it like coming across a unicorn in the wild.
I really appreciate this AP’s honesty, especially her admission that APs suck too.
After betrayal it’s so easy to picture your ex and the affair partner living some magical, soft-focus life together. Sunsets. Wine. Puppies!
Nope. They both suck! But it took me an embarrassingly long time to believe that.
I’m confident my ex is exactly who he always was. Still can’t manage his moods. Still stomping around. Still entitled. Still the victim. Still gaslighting. And I’m guessing the porn addiction is chugging right along, which, no doubt, he now blames on her. That’s a special kind of mental triple salchow.
And her? She flirted with a married man and hopped into another couple’s marital bed. She conspired in my abuse…for three years. I don’t need to know anything more about her. So yeah. She sucks too.
They married one year after D-Day. Six years now. A marriage to legitimize an affair is just lipstick on a pig. I don’t know how they trust each other. They both know exactly what the other one is capable of.
They are stuck with each other. I’m free!
To be honest, after 2 men cheated on me all I can say is..the APs CAN HAVE THEM. Whatever the regrets, whatever the sorry that comes years later..it DOES NOT MATTER. The ink of history is dry. These 2 men were horrible once I saw under the mask. I took out the trash and there is no coming back. Their rejection was Gods protection. An affair (s) is the smoke alarm to a raging basement fire. I am the most grateful that these 2+ APs dragged the body away from me. I would not be as thrilled and healthy as I am today without them. They also can keep the treasure of a dementia porn addled brain and unusable hydraulics all to themselves..and you’re welcomed.
“mental triple salchow” is genius! And perfect for my ex, who was a figure skater in his youth.
OMG, I also have a figure skating FW! Is that where they learn to spin (the lies)?
“Someone who deals with marriage problems by cheating will deal with any problems with YOU by doing the same thing, because they’re not mature enough to work through it like an adult. Cheaters don’t like discomfort, they like gratification. Working through marital issues is uncomfortable, and if you buy into their flattery, all you are is gratification.”
In a 23 year marriage we did some form of marriage therapy four times. She backed out of them all. I found couples counseling liberating. She found it suffocating.
This passage jumped out at me too. Yes, this avoidance of difficult work and cowardice will always end up in acting out. Per my children’s comments here and there, OW is very picky and negative. I can easily imagine the meter of FW’s resentment steadily building until he resorts to secretly evening the score in the best way he knows how. Distance has given me perspective.
In the words of my ex-FW: “Why should I go to therapy just because everybody has a problem with me?” 🙂
The best definition I ever heard of Narcissistic Personality Disorder was “the only illness where the patient feels fine but everyone else around them has to get treated.”
Oh, that’s classic!
😄 Classic SSCS.
They can never accept that they are the common denominator, which means they are the problem.
Just watched a documentary on PBS called “Flood”. It is about a woman trying to re-establish a relationship with her stubbornly conservative Evangelical father. At one point he says, “Something I’ll never understand is that everyone at my job and all my associates like and respect me, but you all at home treat me like poison.” It never dawned on him to ask why?
Wowwww. That’s one for Stupid Shit Cheaters Say.
“Why should I go to therapy just because everyone has a problem with me?”
The answer is in the question, Boopsie!
When a person shows you who they are BELIEVE THEM
Wow, just…wow!
My first instinct was to print this and I’m going to. I am going to print a copy for myself (I often print posts that really speak to me to put into a binder that I keep of Chump Lady’s Greatest Hits) but if I hear of a cheater and their AP, I am going to print this for the AP, hand it to them and walk away. Finally, a shitty AP that gets it, but also fixed their own sh*t! We will take all the small miracles that we can. And if we could get this posted in The New York Times and other major journalism outlets, that would be great as well!
My sister is/was an AP (the wife finally had the good sense to die and get out of my sister’s way so she could have her FW sparkling turd prize all to herself!) and I so am giving this to her. She will probably never speak to me again, but that’s okay, she’s not the person I thought she was and is not special. I really only speak to her about our elderly Dad and his care, so no real loss.
But this was such a wonderful letter to read. So glad this person pulled their head out and got therapy and saw the light.
If only FW’s could do that too!
I’m sorry, this is too little too late. But thank you to both(all) my 2x husband’s APs who now have obesity, mental illness, rage, selfishness, untreated porn addiction, woman haters, hydraulics that no longer function though they insist on trying, dementia, and a host of other ailments I would have stayed for. Just in the nick of time, they showed their true colors and I for one am grateful for the woman who dragged their bodies out of the horrors of the basement dumpster fire and into the dark hovel of a new home to destroy. New people to steal the sunshine from..if there ever was sunshine in the APs life. And at the chance this was TWULOVE, I’m happy they found each other because who wants to be a side dish or fooled every time you give your life blood for this man and continue to sleep with.him. May they live in joy while I have the freedom the AP will never ever know. Peace of mind and body. Forever. Amen
Being a Better Person,
This will probably get me a lot of hate on here but I want to match your candor. When I remember myself over a decade ago as a teenager/early twenty something I am still mortified at the choices I made. No amount of justification will ever absolve me of my personal responsibility from my dysfunctional thoughts and toxic actions that harmed others. A few examples come to mind:
The first boy I ever kissed in highschool was a notorious player. I thought I could change him and he would break up with me when bored or frustrated when I wouldn’t put out and he move onto the next one roughly each semester when our schedules changed. He would insult me while trying to impress others and didnt care about my distress if I told him no, it as like he got off on it. Shortly after we graduated he DMd me and I knew he had an exchange student gf but I thought in my messed up twisted mind that he was “mine” first so I met up with him and tried in every way to win him back I never felt lower in my entire life especially after it was all over and he wanted me to be quiet when he called her back after missing her call. He wanted me to give him money so he could go visit her overseas to visit her after he hung up and went on and on about how much he both missed her but needed me and I just remember being so disgusted at myself but also at him for the audacity. I remember back then FB did those challenges where if you liked someone’s status about asking someone what they truly thought about you. He liked mine and I was a messy b*tch about it but I went off on him being a cheater with attached proof tagged her. Idk what he said or did I just remember I had him blocked on my phone and how my notifications kept going off and I ignored them. I heard shortly after through mutuals she moved back to the states and they got married at the same location the cheating took place. She saw me one time when I was working and gave me the evil eye years later and I knew I deserved it and I still regret it to this day.
The second was when I went to a house party a few months later shortly after ExFW and I started officially dating and he didn’t want to go told me to have fun because he didn’t like who was going to be there and when I was there a really good looking drunk guy kissed me and I got upset and I left immediately after to go back to ExFW and I felt absolutely like human garbage because I didn’t tell him anything I just knew that’s not who I was. The drunk guy somehow got my number from one of the people at the party and he texted me and I remember I was on the verge of breaking up with ExFw jus because of incompatibility at that point and I remember being like screw it after getting fed up ExFW ignoring me because all he wanted to do was smoke weed, play video games when we would hang out when I wasn’t working and I left him while he was mid game to meet up with the drunk guy from the party to go on a walking date. He was nice and respectful but I remember being upset at myself. ExFW noticed it was missing several hours later when the walking date winding down and I remember telling him he was nice but I wouldn’t see him anymore because I had a boyfriend and left to go back to ExFW.
There were plenty of opportunities to cheat, I was asked out pretty frequently in my late teens early 20’s multiple times when I was working or if I was out running errands alone and and once was in front of him by an old classmate he told me to go and have fun and I left and I told him every detail of the lunch date in full transparency and I always told him if someone asked me out later that day. The only person ExFW seemed to care about and ever got physically aggressive with me about about was my now husband. I remained loyal to ExFW even after discovering his multiple infidelities, porn addiction, dealing with his unmedicated diagnosed bipolar, chronic unemployment, substance abuse, and domestic abuse. After a few years of insane break up make up cycles my friends really wanted me to be down with ExFW and kept pushing me towards now husband. I also told my friends no and even said I was to messed up to even go out with him immediately after breaking up with ExFW. When I finally found the courage to leave for good ExFW I was weak and went back to the right thing and went over so we could have the closure talk. He took my keys, phone blocked the door and I was baby trapped. It took several years to safely leave after that but I remained loyal that entire time even though ExFW didn’t. I focused on healing and my kid and my career and only serendipitously reconnected with my husband at my friends sisters wedding years later.
Yes, I had a bad picker but I was also a coward for wanting to avoid hard conversations early and self sabotaged my future.
—
BaBP thirteen plus years of reflection has resulted in humility, a moral compass, boundaries, changed behavior and now bravery for sharing your hard earned wisdom with the very people who experienced the exact harm you inflicted is a mighty thing indeed you should be immensely proud of your growth as a human being.
I think you should forgive yourself for stupid stuff you did as a teen. Your brain was literally not fully formed yet. As long as you aren’t doing things like that as a grown*ss adult, it’s not your character.
Besides, your ex FW was abusive. I give abused people leeway to cheat away to their heart’s content because the abuser already broke the terms of the relationship, meaning they no longer apply. But you didn’t even cheat anyway. You just went for a walk with a dude and dated somebody right after you broke up with the pig FW. So what?
So no hate from me, in fact I think your scumbag FW deserved to be cheated on and I kind of wish you had. I know other chumps think that cheating is wrong in any circumstances, even abuse, but I don’t agree. I believe that when you can’t get justice, revenge can sometimes suffice. The briefly being an OW is more of a problem, but like I said, you were just a teen and did a silly thing. Don’t stress about it.
I think we have all heard of people who were in such terrible relationships that we simply don’t care when the person who is abused cheats on their abusive partner, so I understand where you’re coming from and I held this mindset for a long time.
However, after having been cheated on, I find it extremely problematic, and it is because FWs use this as an excuse. They _know_ it is the only excuse that will make cheating acceptable, so it is the excuse FW used against me, and what he told his family and all his friends. He even told me, he said “You’re like Bob” (Bob being Schmoopie’s ex-partner, who she said was abusive to her, so we believed her). I looked at him, crying my eyes out, and said “I have many faults, but I’m not an abuser”, and then FW said “No, you’re not”. He was just fishing to see if I would agree! To this day I berate myself for not leaving him then and there – if he thinks I’m abusive, why is he with me?
So FW went and told anyone who would listen that I was controlling and jealous. Sure, I started being controlling and jealous when he shared a bed with Schmoopie on a trip to save money. I sure was controlling and jealous when he left me hanging with a warm dinner because he spontaneously decided to have dinner with her, and I told him in the most neutral tone I could find that I didn’t like he’d done that. I’m awful.
As one of FW’s ex-friends later put it, “Anyone would have felt jealous in the position you were put in”. And it is only thanks to this friend, who basically lived at my house and truly saw that I was actually taking care of him when he needed it, that some people realised eventually it was all just a lie.
To this day, there is a long list of friends and family who honestly believe I abused FW. I did the exact opposite and I even have his own testimony in therapy to prove it (plus him trying to manipulate me is also recorded in front of the therapist, who called him out).
After telling everybody that he was abused, because I went full no contact and so he had no ammunition to keep hurling at me, he went from “Pink_Nora_Rose is abusive” to “It’s not Pink_Nora_Rose, it’s me, for I have changed, and it kills me that she won’t speak to me”. This happened in the span of four months.
I could have forgiven another woman. I will never, ever forgive the above. And the more I read here, the more I realise that simply the existence of a third person 98% of the time implies the above, and usually much worse.
So even if someone’s abused, I can’t defend it. If someone is that bad, you can leave.
💕
I really appreciate the kind words, it’s something I don’t tell anyone about including my husband or my therapist because I am one of those types of people who do believe that cheating is wrong in any circumstances and it just feels nice to get it off my chest. But also like I can relate to BaBP and that if I didn’t make different choices when I did I would have easily wound up justifying my choices as becoming a trashy mate poaching bunny boiler.
The wisdom of the letter writer registers for me as sincere and hard-earned. It makes me wonder if AP awakening is less of a unicorn than FW’s. After all, some APs fall for the same elaborate and practiced lies that chumps do and, if chumps can learn to see through them, so can APs. But it would take the courage of facing APs own role in it and the resulting harm. That would be rare enough but FWs do not seem to possess. The amount of harm caused by an FW is also a taller mountain and harder to face.
I agree that there is probably more hope for APs than FWs. Some of them are just silly, messed up people who don’t understand the gravity of what they’re doing.
Others are evil, they do know the gravity of it and it’s a feature, not a bug. They often have a lot of hostility for members of the sex who is the chump and for humanity in general. My FWs OW was a serial cheater, so firmly on the evil side. She hated women and thought herself special and above others of her sex because she felt that being a player, OW and cheater made her a winner, while other women were losers for being loyal. It’s part of a cynical attitude towards humanity that I think most FWs and APs have. They believe in the notion that you either prey on others or you get preyed on, to be a predator makes you strong and the prey are weaklings. Total BS that they tell themselves to justify their depraved behavior.
Ooof, that’s like internalized misogyny of the worst incel variety.
Yes, it seems like in the letter writer’s case and in my own story, there was an element of predation by FW on the vulnerable AP. So these cases may be different. I also think that, as in my case, where the AP doesn’t know the chump and children and is only fed stories by FW, the mental gymnastics and cruelty required to compartmentalize and justify the harm are different and require a lower grade deviousness than for FW, who knows the truth and the impact full well and still chooses selfishness.
I have always assumed that many affair partners were told lies by the FW, who is a genius liar. My ex’s affair partners never met me, so how would they know? After all, he fooled me. I see them as fellow suckers.
This is fantastic. I am going to link to this wherever I see an AP bleating about how their case is different, the FW is their soulmate, bla bla bla.
It probably won’t wake them up but you never know, there might be the odd one who gets it.
Thanks so much for this, BABP. This goes towards making amends for what you did because you’re trying to stop other people from being APs. The chump in your case might not feel the same way and that’s her decision to make, but I’m talking about amends to all chumps rather than specific to her.
My only question would be why it took a ton of therapy for you to understand how f***ed up what you did was? Maybe I’m privileged this way, but my moral compass seems to be innate. My mother cheated on my father and I knew how messed up it was as a child. So I know from personal experience that our sense of morality is not entirely environmental. Nobody taught me it was wrong, I just knew. As I said, maybe I got lucky. I know my FW knew it was wrong too. He just didn’t care about doing wrong because his d**k is his number one priority.
I was actually just watching a neuroscientist speak about how all personality/character traits are hereditary to some degree. They just don’t know to what degree. Maybe that partially explains why you did what you did? I don’t know. Anyway, you did good here.
Letter writer here. That’s a fair question. I’m not sure if I have a satisfactory answer. You’re not wrong, there are people who would find themselves in my situation and choose not to do what I did from the jump. And I’d grown up with the message that it was wrong.
I needed therapy for more than just this though. I was not in a good place in my life at that time. I had just moved to a new state and had very little support and a very small social circle. I was severely depressed. There were days when I couldn’t leave my apartment because of the depression. I missed some appointments and a job interview because I couldn’t get myself to get up and get dressed, and when I missed the appointments I’d just cry and start the whole cycle of depression over again.
Getting attention from someone who told me I mattered overshadowed everything. It felt like I was being given a feast (which was really just crumbs, if that makes sense.) If he was looking for an easy target, I had a huge one on my forehead. (That is absolutely not to say I was any kind of a victim here. I’m not. But if I had any kind of self-respect during that time, I wouldn’t have been that desperate for attention.)
I really did need therapy anyway, and the affair was put front and center in my sessions. My therapist (for lack of a better word) grilled me about why I thought this guy was going to be the solution to my depression. I didn’t really know what to say. She all but asked me why I hated myself that much and why couldn’t I find companionship with someone who was actually available? …she was a good therapist.
I can’t speak for other APs, I’m speaking for myself only about my “why.” I can understand if you would still think it shouldn’t have taken a lot of therapy to know how messed up this was, that’s fair. I won’t argue with that.
Confession time: I am a wifetress. I was young and dumb, single, partying, had several boyfriends, never intended for anything to be serious. I was also an intensely competitive person with low self esteem. I fell for a married guy. I knew he had a thing for me before he even got married. It made me feel special to be pursued. He divorced his wife 3 months into the affair. Of course I felt like I had won! Even as I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue anything with him (“I kinda chose you because there wouldn’t be any long-term expectations.”) But that was a lie I was telling myself. He was kind (lol, right?!) funny, hawwwwt, sexy AF. I was smitten.
We moved in, he knocked me up and convinced me to keep it. We had a shotgun wedding.
Spoiler Alert: I was not then or now, special.
We’ve been married 22 years now, together for 25. We’ve had 6, 7? D-Days, as recently as 2.5 yrs ago when I found out he’d been sexting someone for months (while I was recovering from cancer treatments, but still bringing home ALL the bacon,) then flew half-way across the country (with my financial and emotional/planning help) to fck a married “mediOake” woman with 4 kids under the guise of visiting his brother.
I have deserved every D-Day. I stay because I love my kids (22f, 18m) more than anything and I’m waiting for FW’s bad choices to catch up to him. He sucks with money – I finance EVERYTHING. If we divorce, I will get slaughtered financially and probably have to pay that lazy POS for the rest of his life (until he finds another sugar momma.) And my kids’ inheritance will suffer for it.
He says I “scared him straight” after the last DDay when I kicked him out (for not nearly long enough, like – forever?) I highly doubt it. I’m done playing marriage police, but I know there will be a next time.
TL;DR – APs suck. We are not special. We’re usually broken in fundamental ways (my 2 sets of parents consisted of 2 pedos, 3 serial cheaters, 2 alcoholics, 1 BPD and 1 dark narc.) Even if we dance till we drop, our prize is a sparkly turd, and Karma has a wicked sense of humor.
You have certainly paid for what you did in spades. Have you done anything to make amends? Posting here is a start, but is there any way you can contact the person you helped to chump and apologize? Maybe it would just bring it all back and upset her, I’m just going by how I would feel. I would get some satisfaction from a sincere apology. I got one from the OW that was not at all sincere. She did it because the lying FW had convinced her I was dangerous and she was afraid of me.
Other things you could do; offer your support to chumps here and elsewhere and telling your story other places. I think if you make amends you will feel better. Try to put the focus on that instead of agonizing about the FW. You’re free of him now so go as low contact with him as you can and don’t ever go back.
He will never change. He has not had an epiphany and been “scared straight.” If you stop talking to him he can’t manipulate you with BS like that.
I don’t agree that most APs are broken people with a lot of trauma. I think many of them are fundamentally amoral people who are critically low in empathy, just like cheaters are. Your background sounds particularly horrible, so I can buy that it broke you. Unfortunately, empathy cannot be learned. You either have it or you don’t, so there is no hope for a lot of APs IMO.
I agree there. Too often now, trauma and FOO issues are bandied about by narcs and their ilk as a shield for bad behavior. They hijack therapy speak to cover up their BS.
Plenty of chumps here grew up in traumatic FOO environments yet they did not become Mate poachers or FW.
Dr. Ramani spoke of the true prevalence of NPD being far higher than previously believed, something like 11% of the population. That’s a scary amount of bad people. My own anecdotal observation of our family and social circles post divorce is 11% is spot on.
She’s not free of the FW. They’re still married. “We’ve been married 22 years now …” “If we divorce …”
In my case the OW was also cheating on her husband with my ex, which I assume is a common pattern. I can’t imagine doing something like that although I know it’s all around me. I think my ex abused his power over her at work to get her hooked in, but honestly is that really an excuse for cheating on your husband with someone else’s husband, no matter what bs he feeds you about his wife and how separated they are (not)?
Yes, same case for me. Both cheating on their spouses. Same self absorption and same entitlement. Neither can be excused for their behaviour. Both rewrote the history of their long marriages to portray themselves as innocent ‘it just happened’ ‘bigger than both of us’ ‘kismet’ claptrap. Such bs. They are not together. The fantasy died.
I’m pretty jaundiced towards anyone who’d hook up with a “taken” person no matter how compelling the latter’s tale of woe sounded. But I did agree with the OP’s idea that, by saying no to some cheating crap artist, you might have a chance to make a friend or ally. That exact thing happened to me. When I was a young turnip interning in the media industry, I was momentarily dazzled by a charming nepo “auteur” type who was reputed to be a “creative genius” (psychopaths are excellent at self-promotion). But then I saw him out with the longtime girlfriend no one knew he had, instantly had sympathy for her and instantly stopped responding to his flirting, becoming all business from then on.
When the same asshole tried to assault me during a project a few years later and I reported it, guess who wrote a letter to the DA in support of my case by describing an assault she endured at his hands which she regretted not prosecuting? His former girlfriend, the same one I locked eyes with when we first met. She had intuited everything in one glance– that her then-partner was grooming “another one.” But she also intuited that I instantly regrouped upon learning he had a partner and appreciated it enough that, when she heard her ex had attacked yet another woman, she reached out through mutual contacts and offered to validate my testimony. He had to plead NOLO and the experience apparently shook him to the core. I don’t know if he was “scared straight” but he was clearly careful not to get arrested again. And I made not just one friend but secured several others through this test of character.
Hmmm…as someone with a fairly recent DDay this letter offers some comfort in terms of helping me not to think that the OW is some wonderful, angelic, physically irresistible person. Believe me, I have tortured myself trying to figure out what levels of awesomeness she must possess that my husband would risk a pretty good marriage and wife that loved him and was truly devoted. But I realize she’s not any level of anything good. In the sexts that I found, FW and the OW actually referenced him being married as though it was some sort of turn on. To top that off she says that she can’t trust him because he’s cheating on her too. Like, wtf? The entitlement of both FW and the OW is beyond astounding to me. I appreciate that you wrote this letter and like I said it does offer some comfort. However, unless you’re the chump I don’t think it’s possible to truly understand the magnitude of pain and how infidelity messes with your head in the most severe ways. At least that’s been my experience. I’m no where near meh so maybe some of the intrusive thoughts will become way more quiet as time passes but this experience will forever leave a mark.
Dear NewlyChumped… I was going to reply a few times … but kept reading in your post what I would have replied anyway! You seem to have clarity and a sensible and wise take on it all, especially for a noobie 😉 Well done you.
I am 16 months out from D-Day, and for some reason this week I have been having thoughts like “If only I had been a better cook…”! But as you know, it’s no good to compare. It seems to me, in my case, it was about flattery and newness. He told me the therapist asked him if she was hot, and he said no! Haha. So that gave me some comfort. Anyway, I digress… I guess my point is, yes, the rawness and intensity eases. But the healing isn’t linear and we can find ourselves walking over mental and emotional ground we thought we had covered and left behind. So some days we can think we’re closer to Meh than we are. And not to be disappointed in that, but just to be realistic. I read it can take two to six years to heal… that also comforts me that I just might be on track after all. I think it sounds like you are too. X
I wish every chump had gotten the scoop and all the unvarnished details from a workplace whistleblower who actually knew and had humorously bored contempt for both parties. I can attest that it instantly kills any tendency to traumatically romanticize affairs or internalize FWs’ typical abusive comparison games (which they’d probably been conditioning their victims with all along). Especially learning the gross, funny nicknames that peers (and management, and local bistro servers, etc.) call these star-crossed office cheaters definitely cuts short any unnecessary suffering.
But then the bewildered angst is replaced by the bewildered embarrassment of having been married to a punchline with secret gutter predilections. So there are still things to be worked through no matter how you slice it but at least the process skips the initial deadly, isolating “hallucination of worthlessness” stage of this kind of abuse and violation of consent.
Glad to read this today. His AP was 14 yrs before caught. Onward.
Well, this is yet another confirmation of the truth that is obvious to reasonable people: there are no winners in the battles for the illusions that please our ego.
“Honesty is the best policy” – what could be more banal and boring than this moral postulate? But banalities are always vital and immortal, because there is no worthy alternative to them.
Being honest in real life is extremely difficult, honesty requires true courage. It is the most obvious indicator of our respect for concrete persons, and it is a test that hardly any of us have passed 100%.
I think Being a Better Person has earned the right to be called an honest human by the highest standards. I take my hat off to her.
Deeply grateful to you for this raw and honest insight – hard won with 10 years of introspection and accountability.
Means a great deal to me to read these words, thank you for putting this forward.
Your words feel almost like a message from a parallel universe where the impossible becomes possible and that deeply dysfunctional, hurtful, reckless, person takes a good long hard look in the mirror and sends something back through the time portal of the multiverse. Very brave of you. I honor that.
I will say, my husband is a sweet talker and I am thankful to the lady who texted me when she reslized he was married. She ended it with him. I needed that proof because he manipulated me for so many years. After the proof, he played the victim he was an alcoholic and ran to rehab for a month. I fell for the lies and tried to save our 28 yr marriage. He faked the wanting to repair, then lied again. He didnt even lie about something big, just something embarrassing. I got mad, he then started acting weird, going out of town to visit his dad and friends. For months every weekend gone (he’s retired). We filed divorce papers Mar ’26. My kids, his family and I knew deep down there was another woman, he denied it of course. April ’26 I had the pleasure of talking with her when I found proof of this affair. She asked questions, I confirmed details. Next day she messaged me, “Don’t let him lie to you and say that I didn’t mean anything to him. All he did was me tell all day every day how much he never loved anyone the way he loved me . He talked about our future all the time . Don’t let him try to minimize it. He knows what’s happening now.” I cant imagine saying this to another woman. She let him sweet talk her and she took him back. Then another message, “He’s still telling me every day that I’m his soulmate and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I’m freaking furious but thank you. I appreciate you.”
She isnt special, he avoids everything and anything emotional. They will crash and burn and he’ll find the next one to believe his act.