‘Cheating Has Affected My Entire Life’

A chump writes in to reflect on all the ways cheating has affected her life. From her parent’s marriage, to her sibling relationships, and to her own marriage.

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Dear Chump Lady,

I have been reading your column for many years. Your book saved my sanity having been to several family and marital councilors while still married to the cheater.

My story begins with my mother who was married young and had a child shortly after her first of five marriages. Her husband would not accept the baby as his and they divorced. Soon after my mother met my father and they married and he adopted her fist born.

This sibling would hold resentment toward me and my other brothers due to his feelings that he had been treated differently. My mother claimed my father was possessive and divorced him due to this and his alcohol habit.

But was he possessive for good reason?

She moved us to the city far away from our father and the country life we knew and loved. My oldest brother joined the navy, my middle brother got married, and my brother six years older than myself enlisted in the Army with my mother’s consent. 

This enlisted brother had been going with a girl and had given her an engagement ring. One day my other brother saw her cheating with another man and told him. Distraught from the news, he signed up for a voluntary mission to be a helicopter door gunner. This was during the Vietnam war. On this mission he was shot. He survived but not without lifelong disability and horrific scaring.

My other brother would feel lifelong regret for divulging the cheating.

I’ve since learned that the volunteer missions were common with the men who learned they had been cheated on.

My mother had many boyfriends. I was an intuitive child and warned her of many of them. To her surprise, finding that I was correct in my concerns.

My mother began having an affair with a married man when I was 13.

He was Catholic. He treated me well; helped me to get my first horse and was kind to me. We would fly to various destinations in his private plane. He convinced my mother to move to Phoenix, Arizona. I blended right in with the friendly people there, did well in the school system, and began riding horses at a horse rental company. I made several good friends and was feeling secure.

When she finally decided that her married boyfriend was not going to divorce his wife who also had an adopted daughter my age, she broke up. I was allowed to stay for a short while with strange men coming to our apartment door because she had joined a singles club to meet men. It was a scary thing for me.

Mother had always left me alone while she went out on dates.

Soon after she shipped me to my father’s on a bus. She neglected to tell my father, however, and I arrived at around midnight and the bus station closed. I was set out alone at age 14, in a large city bus depot to await my uncle who had to drive two hours to collect me. My father by this time was badly affected by alcoholism and his rule was to not let me go anywhere or have activities away from our very isolated home.

I rebelled and ran away.

My attempt to get him to quit drinking failed. After returning, he sent me to live with my brother and his wife. By then I was 16 years old. I caught my brother’s wife making out with the neighbor, cheating on my brother when he was at work, working hard to support his wife children and me.

I told him about the cheating. His wife got grabbed me and tore hair from my head, but I escaped her. They divorced. My brother raised his children.

I married young.

When I was single, I purchased my first home at age 22, but married to please the parents. Soon I discovered how abusive this man was and divorced him after 10 years. I was very underweight and had developed a debilitating auto immune disorder due to chronic stress. I was married a second time for over 20 years until I discovered his cheating.

Not wanting to give up a long-term marriage and one with many good years, I stayed for four more years until once again discovering another affair, and ended the marriage.

The worst was the harm from him abandoning the daughter he raised from my first marriage. He ripped the family apart and married the girlfriend younger than the daughters he raised.

 It has been a long tumultuous road to recovery.

And perhaps I may never feel fully recovered because cheating has affected so many aspects of my life and those I love. In my opinion cheating should be in divorce law as abuse and there should be consequences. As well the “alienation of affection” laws should be applicable. Many women do not get adequate representation, me included. 

Thank you for all you do and the help you have brought to others.

One Chump’s Story

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Dear One Chump,

You’re mighty for surviving all that. While I was reading about your mother, I kept thinking what danger you were in around all those strange suitors coming to the door when you were a young teen. I’m glad you weren’t assaulted.

Your story highlights how infidelity is never just between two people in a marriage, or presumably committed relationship. It has ripple effects. Willing and unwilling conspirators. Traumatized children. Dangerous risks taken from losing your mind out of heartbreak.

The story of your brother blaming himself for telling is tragic.

He was put in the position of unwilling conspirator and he refused the role, out of loyalty and a sense of justice. The person who set that heartbreak in motion was his unfaithful fiancee. I wonder if she racks herself with guilt. I doubt it. Instead, it’s the people who really love your brother who hurt.

Many FWs have ripped your family apart, as you write. But remember you’re still a family, just minus the FW. You’re a show-up person holding the family together. And that matters, to your daughters and brothers. All we can do is live life by our own values.

I don’t know what cheaters get in the end. Your mother got five bad marriages and a host of disappointing boyfriends by the sound of it. Your ex got a younger girlfriend, but lost his family. They’re idiots, really. Damaging, selfish idiots.

Thanks for sharing your story. Big ((hugs)).