How Could Someone I Love Cheat on Me?

As she looks back on her story, the hardest part is how could someone she loved so deeply, cheat on her? Especially when they have a young family? Today her life is so much better, in ways she never could’ve imagined.

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Dear Chump Lady,

As I was texting with a friend tonight who is going through a divorce, I found myself comforting her and giving her so much of the advice I learned five years ago from reading your book. It made me stop and think about how much your words helped me get to where I am today, and I felt like I needed to find you and say thank you.

Five years ago, I was lying on an OB-GYN table crying, legs spread open, while being swabbed and tested for STDs. The day before, I had discovered that my husband of 18 years had spent nearly $300,000 on high-end escorts. He had drained our money, had secret bank accounts, and had taken out loans.

He had been the love of my life and the only man I had ever been with romantically or s*xually. We had two little boys, just 7 and 4. Within days of finding out, I secretly met with a lawyer and began planning my divorce. I had always told myself that no matter how much I loved someone, cheating was the one thing that would make me leave. When that hypothetical suddenly became my life, I followed through.

Filing for divorce wasn’t even the hardest part.

The hardest part was trying to wrap my brain around how someone I loved so deeply could do this to me and to our boys.

I questioned everything about myself. I had a great career as a school principal, I took care of myself, I worked out every day, I did my hair and nails, dressed well, loved our family, and had stood beside this man through everything. Even when he lost jobs or behaved badly, I made excuses for him and helped build him back up. So I kept coming back to the same question:

How could he do this to me?

Then I read Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life. Your book was invigorating. I went back and reread chapters over and over. I took notes on my phone. My gynecologist was actually the person who recommended it to me because she had also been cheated on and told me how much your book had helped her.

And now, five years later, I’m on the other side. Like you, I somehow ended up finding myself a wonderful lawyer I met n Bumble, and I married him. I love this man immensely. He has given my boys and me the most beautiful life, and sometimes I wonder whether reading about your own happy ending with your “super lawyer” planted a little seed in my head that there really could be something wonderful waiting for me on the other side of all that devastation.

Tonight, while talking with this other mom and trying to help her through a place I know all too well, I found myself reflecting on how I got from that OB-GYN table, completely shattered, to the life I have now. And I realized that I owe a meaningful part of that journey to you. So I looked you up tonight on Facebook because I wanted you to know that somewhere out there is a woman whose life your words genuinely touched. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I left a cheater. I didn’t turn back.

And I gained a life better than anything I could have imagined. 

Thank you for lifting me out of a dark place.

Sincerely, 

A Former Chump

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Dear Former Chump,

Thank you for this beautiful letter. I know you meant it as a private thank you, but I’m publishing it because I know you’ll give hope to the newly chumped, that there is a good life on the other side.

And thanks too to your OBGYN. Those doctors are on the frontlines of infidelity. They can tell you there is nothing glamorous about cheating when you’re explaining Chlamydia to an expectant mother or an abnormal Pap smear to a woman who presumed years of monogamy. Somehow Esther Perel always glosses over that part in her rhapsodies of affairs as “exuberant acts of defiance.”

What a wonderful new life you’ve built for yourself.

Not every new life has to result in being coupled up again, of course. But there is the benefit of realizing that you don’t suck at relationships. You don’t have a loser magnet. You just had the wrong partner. Whatever you did or didn’t do, you don’t control the FW side of the equation. Sadly, being chumped is a very common condition. But it’s not permanent. It’s not a stain on your character the way being a cheater is.

I’m glad you didn’t spend too long on the question of “How could he cheat on me?” and moved directly on to divorce. You’ve modeled such mightiness to your sons. I cannot overstate this — to see their mother react to the misogyny of a paid girlfriend habit with the immediate severing of the relationship is MIGHTY. In a moment of the Cornell 7, where women are Other, playthings to defile and discard — you are a mother who demonstrated to her sons that hurting women has consequences. We don’t remain family with such men.

How could he cheat on you?

Because he could. Because he’s not that deep. And he did the cost-benefit analysis of your welfare versus his dick and decided his dick wins.

Because entitlement. A man who feels entitled to spend $300K on seggs is not a man who should be trusted to water a plant, let alone care for a family.

When you’re going through it, this question feels very important, but it’s really not important. Who gives a flip what makes him tick? What matters is the harm he has inflicted on innocents. You, your children, and probably the poor women he purchased by the hour.

The world gets so caught up in centering the cheater (waving madly at Esther…. hi!) REFUSE TO DO IT.

REFUSE TO CENTER FWs.

As you demonstrated, you dumped the “How could he?!” question when you dumped him.

I’m so glad my book helped you get there. But all the mightiness belongs to you.