Mandy Karolkiewicz Wasn’t Safe
Mandy Karolkiewicz and her six children were un-alived by her husband. A cheater. She reconciled for the children and shared her struggles online.
***
Another cheater offed his wife and kids.
Just like Chris Watts. Scott Peterson. Christian Longo. Neil Entwistle.
Is there a pattern here?
We’d have to have researchers who see infidelity as a form of abuse first. We’re not there yet. No one is linking infidelity with domestic violence. So I can’t tell you with scientific certainty if sexual entitlement can turn lethal. I can’t point to a study that correlates malignant f*ckwittery with cheating and family annihilation.
But I can tell you with certainty that Mandy Karolkiewicz wasn’t safe.
Before she died, Mandy was on Reddit reconciliation boards looking for support.
A Michigan mother who wasย killed by her husbandย before he died by (un-aliving) previously shared on Reddit that she feared leaving him after his affair.
Amanda โMandyโ Karolkiewicz, 39, and her six children โ ages 5 to 15 โ were fatally shot by 47-year-old Kristopher โKrisโ Karolkiewicz at the familyโs Grand Haven Township home on July 24, authorities and family members have said.
Following the tragedy, Reddit posts shared by Mandy under the username โMandyK1179โ have surfaced, detailing the struggles she described within the marriage. Mandyโs posts were first reported by The Detroit News and The Holland Sentinel, which independently verified that the account belonged to her.
I wish she’d found Chump Nation.
I wish she could’ve met women who had big families and left. And made it. Even though they struggle, and it’s hard.
She wrote that she was “terrified” of being a single parent. She had every right to be terrified. There’s post-separation abuse with FWs. They don’t pay support. The system doesn’t enforce it. It’s not safe. But it’s less NOT not safe than staying.
โWe have six kids, so the idea of leaving is insanely terrifying,โ she wrote in the post. โHeโs always had major red flags that I ignored due to my own trauma and anxious attachment. He was raised in a toxic family dynamic that encouraged lying about everything.โ
There’s Mandy untangling the skein.
We’ve all done it. Come up with the FOO issues why they’re this way. Trying to manage their chaos, fueled by the Reconciliation Industrial Complex that this is a noble pursuit, and possible! And What’s Best for the Children.
You don’t want to be one of those pitiful Single Mothers do you?
So they sell the illusion of safety. And the status of the Intact Family.
If you don’t think misogyny is real, look at how People magazine led with this damn story. NOT with the victims. But with Kristopher Karolkiewiczโs CV. The poor sausage lost his job!
Shortly before he killed his wife and six children in anย apparent (un-aliving), Kristopher Karolkiewiczโs employment with the American Heart Association had ended, according to a statement from the organization.
โThe American Heart Association national headquarters is aware that one of its former staff members was among those who perished under tragic circumstances Friday in a western Michigan home,โ the organization said in a statement shared with PEOPLE on Tuesday, July 28.
Karolkiewicz worked remotely for the American Heart Association from September 2023 until July 2026, when his โemployment ended,โ the statement read.
He served as the organizationโs national vice president of sales and marketing, supporting the division of the Heart Association responsible for CPR and first aid training and products, according to the statement.
Kristopher Karolkiewicz extinguished his family. He is NOT “among” those who “perished under tragic circumstances.” He IS the INSTIGATOR of the tragedy. His sales and marketing bonafides are absolutely beside the point.
Can you imagine a person of color getting this write up? Or a woman? Would we lead with their white collar careers?
As if this is somehow understandable and not utterly indefensible.
Mandy Karolkiewicz wasn’t safe because this is the world she lived in. Himpathy for her abuser. The centering of him would’ve been true if she’d stayed or had left.
But I really wish she had left.
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What a tragedy.
And that subreddit, r/AsOneAfterInfidelity, is such a nasty placeโfull of hopium dealers and stories about how chumps found true love and happiness with their cheaters through forgiveness.
P.S. You’ll get instantly banned just for mentioning Chump Lady’s book there.
As a reader of both AOAI and chump lady, I see chump lady’s book mentioned there positively all the time.
This was one of the first subreddits I came across post D-day and it definitely made me feel very confused on what to do with my marriage to my soon-to-be ex-wife. Practically no one there ever successfully ‘reconciled’ from what I saw yet there was a genuine push to stay after their partner’s cheated because ‘that is the hard courageous path’ which I think is absolutely bonkers. There were constant posts about people reconciling for years and still struggling. This story echoes so much of what I’ve learned from CL here that reconciliation at best is a long shot and one that can have deadly consequences.
I truly wish Mandy would have been able to get away with her kids. Her and her children did not deserve this fate.
I bet that AOAI won’t mention this tragedy in any way, so as not to cast a shadow on their questionable values.
Further validation for Chump Lady. She’s right, so they’re scared.
I’m proud to be a subversive influence.
Tracy, you stand in that power and never stop beating that drum ๐ฅ. Too many of us have been buried and no one knew the truth..no one except the now silent one. Which is why I believe in that front seat in Hell you speak so well of…and a peaceful reward for the lost ones. Justice must prevail in the end
Also a former workplace creep, apparently. According to the media, they met at work when she was about 21 and an intern and he was about 29 (and divorced). Later on, he cheated on her with another young intern, according to news reports. Maybe his job loss pushed him “over the edge” because he wasn’t able to prey on young interns anymore. Scary and horrifying.
What do you want to bet he was let go from his job due to either his previous affair with the intern, or a new affair / sexual harassment?
Or he did something else wrong. He was well versed in lying and ignoring others rights and boundaries.
Maybe preying on interns is why he wasn’t working for the AHA anymore.
Oh my God, I saw that horrific news and itโs devastating to read. Understanding more deeply than ever the lack of character and integrity people who cheat have, itโs unfortunately not that surprising that a cheater does stuff like this.
And like you saying your book itโs not a gender thing, Itโs a character thing. Because female cheaters do this heinous shit as well. Itโs not a sensationalistic but names like Jennifer Gledhill, Marie Polling, Michelle Mills, Kelly Cochran, Kelli Lane paints a bleak picture of what someone who lacks any empathy, remorse, or character can do to another human being.
Itโs so important to understand the tactics and abuse that these people use on their victims as soon as possible after discovery.
When youโre a caring empathetic and loving human being that has character you know that thereโs evil in this world, but you never suspect that itโs sitting right next to you on the couch. And I think most of us have no clue whatโs in Store for us once we first discover.
If youโre new here after discovery and just reading through this stuff heed these warnings.
What terribly sad news.
Though, as others point out, domestic unaliving is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men, studies on the correlation between dark triad traits and cheaters and so-called “mate poachers” (side pieces) might argue that, if you’re looking for red flags for potential lethality, cheating/poaching is one of them. Then there’s another potential red flag in studies on a sort of female counterpart to “toxic masculinity” among women– something called “hyperfemininity” or “toxic femininity” showing that women who internalize rigid partriarchal gender roles (male sexual dominance and strength and female subordination and squishiness, etc.) are more likely to be coercive towards the opposite sex.
The latter findings actually surprised some of the authors of the earlier studies on the subject who approached the subject with a certainty that women who identified as feminist would show more aggressive tendencies towards partners but it was actually the reverse that turned out to be the case. But when I thought about it, it actually fits the organizational science and civil rights concept of “subordinate authoritarianism.” Basically subordinate authoritarians “stoop to conquer”– meaning that those who appear to accept, internalize and even enforce an artificial hierarchy despite being granted inherent lower status within that hierarchy are still attempting to gain higher status through enforcement against others rather than questioning the system that’s keeping them and people like them down.
This idea echoes Malcolm X’s criticisms of what he called the “house slave” mentality, a reference to the many narratives of how house slaves who were given paltry benefits such as sleeping in the master’s house and getting better food and fewer beatings were less likely to rebel than the more brutally treated field slaves and also often informed on field slaves who were planning rebellion.
But it still seems odd at first that women exhibiting so-called hyperfemininity would be more aggressive and coercive (for the studies, gaslighting and deceit were ranked as coercive behaviors) towards male partners if they view all men as “superior.” But I think the rub is that these women are highly critical of men who do not exhibit the proper domineering, knuckle dragging qualities that they’ve been conditioned to view as “true masculinity.” They might be more likely to view a nice guy/good dad/good husband type as weak and therefore undeserving of the honor or respect (or loyalty). So perhaps out of “fealty to the hierarchy” or a way of assuring themselves of higher status within it, women like this police against this “masculine failure” and punish accordingly. Women like this are also no friend to other women.
Anyway, food for thought. This type of aggression may not be that common among women but abuse is abuse and individual survivors of it suffer the same. I’m glad its being studied.
My old next door neighbors are like this. Very traditional gender roles. Very much against feminism. But she was actually the stronger personality of the two, and she more or less controlled her husband while appearing to support the idea that he was “the man of the house” and “in charge.” Soon after they moved in, I heard them arrive home quite late at night, obviously after having too much to drink, and I heard her say to him, in no uncertain terms, “Don’t you hit me.” He later lost his license, and she had to drive him to and from work, and although she dutifully did so, I’ll tell you what, he went around with his head hung low for the entire time.
(They are one of the main reasons I was so happy to sell my now-ex my half of the house and move away!)
Bear in mind that yesterday’s breathy cartoon trad dollies can turn into jaded, gravelly-voiced cynics in their elder years. And no wonder.
It’s apparently what happened to my WASPY maternal grandmother. By the time I met my grandmother (my mother didn’t have children until her forties), she was as dry, controlling and shark eyed as Queen Elizabeth (at least in negative biopic depictions of her). Her jadedness and coldness scared me as a little kid. But it seems this was a big turnaround from her younger self.
My mother, who had eidetic memory which seems to also involve cinematic memories going back to early infancy (she even remembered what she thought or felt or what was said around her by adults), wrote about a time when she was about three and a half when she felt deeply embarrassed watching her mother and her mother’s grown ass friends standing around in “little girl” postures (toes pointed in, making curated little girl fluttery gestures, wearing pastel poofery) and talking in artificially squeaky baby voices which was apparently the provincial mommy fashion at the time, probably something that trickled down from the movies.
Part of why my mother couldn’t stand seeing her mother putting on this act was that, even as a toddler, she knew her mother wasn’t that sweet behind the scenes but fanatically image-conscious and critical of my mother, who was apparently a huge disappointment for being dark-haired, freckled and both athletic and bookish, the worst combination in my grandmother’s view. But my mother said she saw through the trap her mother was in at a young age and went her own way because of it, refusing to join the Daughters of the Revolution or go to polo matches to meet the requisite douchey scion. She was far more influenced by her cheerful paternal Finnish grandmother who, though 4’11”, was made of wrought iron and never took any guff from anyone which seems not to have bothered her 6’4″ husband (he took her name when they married because she inherited more land than him).
I never assume any abuser is the “stronger personality” since the whole syndrome is about masking weakness. Saw a good column from Emma Katz about the shame strong, intelligent survivors feel because of the prevailing cultural myth that abusers only single out weak prey. It would be like assuming all hunters prefer hunting mice and bunnies. https://dremmakatz.substack.com/p/5-reasons-why-intelligent-people
My theory is that particular type of woman is actually quite contemptuous of all men and the hyperfeminine, pick me type behaviour is a pose to attract men to manipulate. They get a thrill out of manipulating them. It’s often not even done for an end goal, it is the goal itself.
I have an old nemesis who is exactly like that. She pretends to look up to men, but got caught betraying a misogynist she was flattering by spilling embarassing private info about him. She even tried her game out on a severely mentally ill misogynist who was making threats towards women. She wanted to manipulate him into believing she was the one woman he could trust. She had a stable of vile misogynists and she would get together with them to trash feminists.
I’m happy to say I exposed her game and got her shunned by every decent person she knew.
She tried to get the mentally ill misogynist to harm me, but he was a complete f***up so he failed. She faded away after that and wasn’t seen until her favorite misogynist died of a drug overdose. She contacted some of the old crowd about it, made it about herself by bragging that it had inspired her to become an addictions counsellor so she could save lives, and when she saw that nobody cared, she was never heard from again. She was as clearcut a narcissist as I’ve ever seen.
I think you’re talking about a very particular type of generally aggressive psycho I recognize from the media industry. But I think that’s different than the garden variety house slaves with curated twee traits (“male directed women”) I’ve encountered. The latter type are essentially groveling for amnesty from patriarchal brutality by competing to embody the cartoon feminine ideal of the toxic system while cruelly policing others’ compliance. But all these efforts are typically in vain because most are going to end up victimized anyway. In my experience, a lot end up as side pieces because they’re genuinely into cheating creeps. It probably equates to hybristophilia.
Yeah, I’m talking about the aggressive, hostile, highly narcissistic type rather than the cowardly suck up type. The former variety sucks up only as a means to manipulate.
We might never run out of creepy categories lol. But just for the sake of precision, I would argue that all bullies are gutless wonders underneath no matter how vicious and opportunistic they can be towards others. It takes strength to be kind and guts to have consistent character.
In my one and only chumpy experience, when I was a student living with an older man, his gaslighting eventually sent me into clinical depression. I had limited support; I was 800 miles away from home and had no friends of my own where I lived with him. I made no outside friends on campus because I had no time for a social life. I was either studying or earning money to prove to him that I was a go-getter. I was exhausted, demoralised and BORED by trying to fit into a life where I did not belong. The boredom was hardest to identify.
After a couple of years of this, spiralling, I dragged myself to the health centre and talked to a psychiatrist. (I am pleased to say that I never thought, “Maybe if I lost weight, or straightened my hair, or bought racy lingerie, or gave up the humanities and applied to business school, then our relationship would improve…”)
The psych. listened for a while before cutting through all my waffle with the comment, “Truly strong people do not need to control others.” It was liberating and I am still grateful 40 years later.
Just to clarify, I’m assuming the psychiatrist meant that your partner was controlling, not you?
Yup.
The second paragraph, where you detail subordinate authoritarianism, is very clearly on display in the TV show (and book, I suppose.. but the show carries on for much longer) The Handmaid’s Tale. The wives, though being considered “lesser than” in society, still attempt to conquer all those other women that are beneath them on the totem pole, while strictly adhering to the rules in their patriarchal society. Serena Joy is a great example of this.
Margaret Atwood really gets the divide and conquer/divided we fall/house slave vs. field slave dynamic. She exposes the same idea in The Penelopiad where women are pitted against each other by design within patriarchy.
I understand that female cheaters do heinous things, but I believe that males commit 80-90% of all “family annihilations.”
The late, great Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” is so shocking because you never expect a sane, loving woman to kill her children. One of the greatest and most searing books of my life. I will never forget it.
Sethe wasn’t sane. Chattel slavery traumatized her and pushed her to do something quite monstrous because the institution of Slavery is monstrous.
Beloved stayed in my system forever. It’s based on real stories but I don’t think escaped slaves killing children to spare them being snatched back into slavery is anything like modern western family annihilators.
Absolutely not — not my intended point at all. Sethe’s action was a ferocious act of love, not driven by ego.
Yes, I definitely got that from what you wrote. Fellow Morrison fan. Longtime members of CN tend to talk in shorthand but newbies and lurkers might not understand because of the context or because they hadn’t read the book.
I understand this is a devastating topic, and as a survivor of betrayal and abuse, it hits painfully close to home for me and Iโm sure many others.
Thank you for your post and sharing that disgusting statistic. To clarify, Iโm not debating, rationalizing or supporting anything about violence, gender, or abuse, especially since Iโm an abuse survivor myself. I also donโt know the research of domestic violence as it pertains to non-cheaters, I can only imagine the inexcusable lopsided nature of that.
My position and personal experience is that abuse from cheaters is almost identical no matter what the race, religion, gender, or sexual preference of the cheater themselves. My research has shown me that in todayโs social landscape, labeling one gender as evil and the other as caring has made some focus on something other than the core issue, that cheaters’ lack of character and empathy enables them to abuse their victimโs mentally, emotionally and many times physically in very much the same ways. The pathologies of these cheaters usually are exactly the same.
Physical abuse is never acceptable and anyone who resorts to that should be put in jail for a long time. In the same vein, I believe that anyone who resorts to emotional and psychological abuse should face severe consequences as well. The research shows that those types of abuse can be just as damaging, especially impacting long-term mental health, as a broken arm.
Bottom line, if people just found out about deception, lies and cheating from their partner, no matter what the cheating partner identifies as, expect ramped up abuse that could escalate to these levels
Yes, women can be cheaters and because they’re human, just like anyone else, they can be amoral. But there is a gender element to infidelity — a misogyny that men do not face. The societal scorn of “single mother”. The gender bias in family court. The risk of being un-alived. The tax women pay for being out of the workforce raising children, the economic vulnerability. It’s a much longer discussion. BOTH things can be true. Women are capable of abuse. And systemic misogyny is real.
Yes, all chumps should consider this in the realm of possibilities and act accordingly. And even if it isn’t the she-FW herself committing physical aggression, there’s the built-in risk– at least in the case of heterosexual female cheaters– of statistically high rates of psychopathy among the “mate poachers” they’re consorting with and the fact that male psychos are statistically more likely to be overtly violent.
Also some lethal acts don’t require direct aggression. Any male victim of cheating should think hard about what could happen if, say, he had an accident and ended up in a coma and his cheating partner held the POA to pull the plug on life support at the soonest opportunity.
Today’s blog I can’t even finish reading..the PTSD HITS me and I break down. My first Ex told me it was better for a man to leave his family then to ” kill them all”..This is what he said to me when my sisters husband left her for the pastors wife. Yes better to abandon than to murder. This first husband left me 2 years later, armed as well and i needed a protection order. The threats were there as he polished his gun in front of me during a visit to see our newborn…
My #2 Ex was armed to the teeth, guns all around our bedroom and carried a weapon on him at all times. This while furious at me for not saying YES at all times, having affairs at work plus basement activities. He was on meds and raging. I found CL right after my police protection order which is as my first husband reminded me, ‘just a piece paper”. This story could be me. Quietly buried and no one looking at the years of subtle and not so subtle demeaning abuse. What will it take?
I mean, who even thinks about that comparison? That lethal violence should even be in the discussion about spouse and children?
Tracy, I am so glad you wrote about this today. The employer’s ‘slant’ was horrendous. He perished under tragic circumstances??? Seems like the Heart Association has a lump of ice for a heart. Wow.
I don’t understand why modern journalists use such fluffy, flowery language. I’m almost old and remember when writers used the “M” word to describe what this man did to his wife and children.
Excessive politeness? To be afraid of using accurate language to tell information or facts, is to ignore the entire point of journalism and non-fiction writing. Don’t just dial M, write the word!
Today itโs an algorithm thing, if people write the m or s (un alive oneself) the search engines or socials flag it and could block it and your website too. Itโs crazy I know, but unfortunately the reality today. I think most would rather say the real words, but fear the impact from some bot algorithm.
“Both sides”-ism in action, symptom of a wholesale inability to acknowledge reality, especially when the perp is a professional white male. See also: “Thoughts and prayers.”
yes, language matters.
It took me years to see it, but I’ve come to understand you don’t stay for the children, you leave for the children.
We are not studying this because we as a society don’t want to know. There was a study once where they looked at 300 women who’d filed restraining orders against their partners over X period of time, and followed them. 11% were eventually killed by their partners. And that is only those who were killed. I suspect that 2-3 times more were beaten, physically abused, stabbed or shot…and survived, at least physically.
11% mur der ed is an indictment of the system. You wouldn’t get on a plane with an 11% chance of crashing. You’d never in a million years put your kids on that plane and would be rightly outraged if anyone suggested it. And yet we, as a socity, accept this for our most vulnerable, year after mur der ous year.
And it doesn’t include any data on those who were further abused by the court system. It’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t, but in terms of giving your children a life worth living…and in some cases, a life at all…you have to leave.
I used to tell my husband’s sex addiction therapist I wasn’t safe and didn’t feel safe. He blandly assured me I would eventually. Then my husband started threatening my life, in the high-pitched female voice of the femme persona he’d hidden from me. The judge gave me a restraining order but the police refused to do anything. Even though I have proof. I expect he will kill me one day.
I tell all women that if they don’t feel safe, they aren’t safe.
It sounds as if you have not left…?
May you survive him and live out your days in peace.
I now read of these horrific events and recognize the shared characteristics with every cheater. The sense of entitlement, the expectation of secret keeping, the blame shifting, the capability to abandon a spouse or parenting responsibilities.
All of this is rampant in a society which “minds their own business” and denies safe options.
“The capability to abandon a spouse or parenting responsibilities,” ain’t that the truth?
The Center for Domestic Peace is my local domestic violence prevention organization. Thankfully they do teach that affairs are abuse.
Tragically this is not accepted conventional wisdom.
In looking up this case, I found some words that Mandy wrote in her blog that have helped me today, sadly after her death:
โAfter about a year of self-loathing, I remember crying and looking at myself in the mirror and realizing how (expletive) it was that I was the one who was living so miserably because of what he did. I finally realized that I had been the only person who has ever showed up for myself my whole entire life.”
– Mandy Karolkewicz
Years ago on the Chump Nation Facebook page, (which is NOT a page that belongs to Tracy but was created and managed by a couple of readers here), one of the administrators came after me for posting about a case like this involving someone I went to high school with. โCheating doesnโt cause m*rder!โ Evidently she thought it was irresponsible and harmful of me to post such a thing.
Yes it does.
I will NEVER EVER advocate staying with someone who engages in deceptive sexual behavior. Cheating is the emotional and psychological equivalent of beating the sh*t out of someone with a lead pipe.
There is nothing to save. There is no love there.
Please leave.
โฅ๏ธ
Well said Velvet. There is growing research demonstrating a link between infidelity and un-aliving and other extreme violence.
๐
PSโฆ
Over a year after the divorce was finalized, my mechanic found an active tracking device on my car. The data recording service confirmed it was linked to Traitor Exโs cell phone.
The DA was not going to bring charges and was very apologetic. He needed the records for the tracking device as evidence, and it was up to local PD to get a search warrant and obtain them. The local PD could not get a search warrant for the records because it was only a misdemeanor, and they could only get a search warrant for a felony.
Can you say LOOPHOLE?
One of the officers I talked to said I SHOULD JUST PUT MY CAR IN MY GARAGE?!!!
1) Why is this on ME?!
2) a TRACKING DEVICE means he knows where I am at all times and can find the car to swap batteries anywhere any time.
3) I have three cars and there was evidence he had tracking devices on two of them.
3) I only have a one-car garage that is not possible to park a car in.
I know enough to know that someone who is tracking me, and POST DIVORCE tracking me, is capable of anything.
And this is the behavior of the so-called man and fake husband who left me and our daughter because he was โunhappy for yearsโ and found his โsole-mateโโฆ..
I spoke with a high-level professional security expert who I was referred to by my friend who was an FBI Special Agent for 28 years.
He said the only available accurate devices that can detect tracking devices are the ones they use in the field and cost 35-40K. Other than that, all I can do is regular manual inspection of my cars.
Trust that people cheaters and side pieces have serious deep issues. Donโt bother with a house that has a damaged foundation. Wait for a house with a solid foundation or be by yourself.
This is on LinkedIn and has a couple of screenshots of Mandyโs blog entries:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tevin-thompson-a804221b8_wife-killed-alongside-her-six-children-ugcPost-7488146619473764352-HMTe/?utm_source=social_share_send&utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAADU-vNMBOjRWEvQ6U52VJMNCA8guJ47s3dM&utm_campaign=copy_link
I think so many more women die at the hands of cheaters than we will ever know. Some men yes, but I do believe it happens to women way more; and most of it is never proven and in many cases not even suspected.
I think you have it exactly right..that in many cases, it’s not even suspected.
I think the overwhelming stat is that while not all cheaters go on to battery, nearly all batterers are also cheaters. I forget where I read that stat. Maybe it was here, from HellofaChump, or maybe in Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That?
Not even mentioning the woman that take their own lives slowly, by neglect of themselves or quickly..after being devalued and abused behind closed doors. The numbers…. even years later could be staggering.
โThe woman that takes their own life slowly by neglect of themselvesโ I called it suicide on the installment plan.
Ooof. I can relate to that.
My timeline was D-Day, then 3 years later I finally got him to move out, then a year of pretending to be the most amicable co-parents who ever lived- while the lack of boundaries and the continued contact delayed real, meaningful healing for me. After that year I finally started with boundaries/low contact. It took another year for the divorce to finalize. Once it did, it was an entire year of slowly feeling better before I got off the suicide installment plan. Started taking care of myself again.
TL/DR it took me SIX years to go from D-Day to actually prioritizing myself again. That “installment plan” is no joke.
Yes. Two in my social circle within a few years of each other, hundreds of miles apart.
Friend of a friend, on the verge of finalizing divorce with her controlling, cheating, high-powered husband. She had moved out already. About a week before they were meant to sign the financial settlement, she was beaten to death in her apartment, almost certainly by a professional hired by her husband: no clues, no perp, no charges. Her husband tried to persuade the police that she went to bars and picked up random men. Every one of her friends told the police otherwise. But he got away with it. They had two adolescent boys.
A different woman hundreds of miles away, one of my oldest childhood friends, was taken out into the woods one night and shot by the cheating scum she had become engaged to. She put his name on her life insurance policy, and signed her own death warrant. Again, no proof, no charges. As a career criminal, he probably knew exactly how to pass it off as suicide.
I just did a quick AI search to see if there are any statistics on how many abusive women kill children and partners rather than accept divorce and shared custody. Instead it came back with a list of articles from NGOs on domestic violence, including a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which opens with a statement that 47,000 women and girls were killed by a partner or family member worldwide in 2020. The same report notes that gender-related killing of women and girls decreased by 13% across Europe in the last decade, whereas it’s increased by 9% in the US in the same time frame (quelle surprise).
This is such a sad story, for her and especially the children.
We had a case where a woman I worked with was strangled by her husband when she was in the process of leaving him. He then killed himself, leaving behind two teenage kids.
Another woman who worked at another office of my company had brought her adult sons with her to move out of her boyfriendโs house. He shot her right in front of them.
These both were smart, educated women who had taken safety precautions.
I was so blindsided and devastated by my supposedly loving husbandโs sudden declaration that he wanted a divorce that I spent much of the next few weeks when I wasnโt at work or pick me dancing sleeping, from shock and depression, I think as much to protect my mind as to rest my body.
He had become increasingly nasty about how much money he wanted and whether he could make me move out of the house. One Sunday afternoon I woke up from a sleep to find him kneeling by the bed, watching me. Trust that he was not watching me because I looked so adorable in my sleep.
Luckily he just stood up and left without a word, and finally moved out shortly after that. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if he thought he could get away with getting rid of me, taking all the money he thought he was entitled to without me to interfere.
Please be careful out there.
Cheater ex did so many things that were inconceivable, not because they were out of character, but because I I believed his image management and couldn’t–or wouldn’t– see his true character.
After I discovered some of his financial thefts and he assaulted me and then-tween, who tried to intervene and protect me, traitor “friends” called to help us pressured me not to call police or even get medical care. Some friends; they were protecting him, not me and tween. He started calling and threatening tween secretly in attempts to get the new codes to the locks and security system. Tween, terrified, eventually disclosed his threats to kills us and the family pets, and his regret that he didn’t throw me down the stairs when he assaulted me. I thought it was “just” threats to get the security codes. I didn’t fully register the wish to have thrown me down the stairs while I was unconscious from his beating, because I didn’t believe he was in his right mind. My immediate thought was “Brain tumor!” because I thought he’d never been physically aggressive before. Until I remembered multiple times when I was asleep and he kicked me so hard, “in his sleep,” that I had trouble walking for a year at a time. Or how he’d kicked out at tween for walking by his chair and blocking his view of the TV for a second. (I HAD gotten family counseling because of that.) Or how now-adult son had claimed, when he went to college, that cheater had physically abused him, claims ex had said were fabricated to fit in at college. Now I wonder why a relative took back guns he had given cheater, and if he knew, suspected or feared something years earlier.
It didn’t even connect when I discovered multiple things he had done before leaving to sabotage the house and disable smoke detectors, and the further sabotage he carried out while supervised during court-ordered visits to inventory house contents and pick up specific items. Fortunately, other people put the actions together and realized he made multiple deliberate attempts to cause fires, electrical shocks and gas leaks that would have killed me and tween. There was no way to prove he did these things, although nobody else had access, knowledge, ability or motive. Fortunately, his secret threats and other actions were enough to convince CPS, the Parental Responsibilities Evaluator, and ultimately the court to revoke custody and all contact with then tween, now a teen.
Several other chumps have come forward to state that their exes wanted, plotted or tried to kill them. Just as it’s initially hard to believe our exes cheated, it’s even harder to admit, even to ourselves, that the person we loved and trusted would do this. I think there are far more of us than we know.
I agree. We don’t want to admit to ourselves that they are capable of awful, awful things. But then one day, you face it.
I think the only reason my FW didn’t off me was he didn’t think he could get away with it. Once I found out about Schmoopie, I wasn’t quiet about it. I let everyone know what he did and why I had to have sheriff come pick me up so he couldn’t tag me with abandonment. I wouldn’t play his image management game anymore. He was furious! He is to this day furious. He is an abusive ba$tard.
It occurs to me that this is an argument for not being quiet about infidelity. If it’s known far and wide that the FW cheated, it gives him/her/them an obvious motive. Although I guess most of them would just assume they’d never be caught because they’re so special.
And actually, they might not be, but not because they’re special. I read somewhere the other day that about 50% of m*rders go unsolved every year in the US. I would guess though that most of those are of the stranger vs. stranger type. But not all.
I wish everyone caught up in infidelity talked about it. It’s good for the soul finding out while I wasn’t perfect I was damn close.
I was lucky I had the attorney I did. Got me to hire a private investigator to catch his sorry ass. FW didn’t think he would get caught and he did. I think he realized he wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was. For the first time in his life. Which is why he didn’t off me. Everyone was on to him.
Just remembered other likely early signs: repeated “accidental” injuries he attributed to awkwardness. That was no reason to step on my feet repeatedly when walking by, and even less likely that he’d repeatedly elbow me in my ear or face “by accident.”
It was odd how he kept breaking MY special possessions, and kids’ things, but never his own.
Even stranger that he managed to completely alienate three of my close female friends over three decades to the point they stopped speaking to me. By the time it occurred to me to ask, two had died. The third told me that at the birthday party she hosted for her child, then in elementary school, Ex’s offensive actions included punishing HER child, the birthday boy, for being loud and excited, and she thought I knew.
There are doubtless more if I think about it.
Also, above, I meant to write Some”friends” It was one couple, who claimed, on arrival, to be neutral like Switzerland; instead, they looked at my blood, bruises and lump on my head, and chose to protect him. Their actions showed that they were NOT my friends.
I cannot comprehend how a man offs his wife and children and the writer of the article leads with “he probably haz a sadz because he lost his job”. Seriously??? It’s enraging. Looking at that photo of that innocent woman and her babies and then picturing the scene of what it must have looked and felt like as he did what he did…it makes me sick. But it makes me even sicker that people actively look for a way to excuse it.
Though it’s been said before, I just have to note again that, in our current age of #MeToo backlash, it doesn’t seem accidental that algospeak filters are making it so awkward to discuss DV because we have to put condoms on all the correct terminology. All power to CL for muscling through it and refusing to be silenced in spite of the Orwellian absurdity and attacks on clear language.
Anyway, I agree with the main point here that, in an age when science often grounds laws and policies, nothing is going to change until the science exists supporting what most of us already know: that coercive control is a typical manner that adulterous abusers use to enforce one-sided monogamy, aka “cheating.” But even that may not have mattered for victims like Shannan Watts, Lacy Peterson, Rachel Entwistle and Mary Ann Longo and their respective children without the criminalization of coercive control in the US (where all were unalived) which, aside from giving the state the power to imprison perpetrators and give victims safe cover to escape, would afford victims the same structural and financial supports available to victims of physical abuse.
But I disagree that leaving alone is always the perfect remedy because the science already exists showing that coercive control– with or without histories of physical assault– is the “golden thread” in forensic science best predicting eventual domestic unaliving and the science already exists showing that leaving increases risks for victims by more than 800%.
I also wish that Mandy had found this forum first if just because, along with the validation that cheating is abuse, she also would have gotten a heads up about the fact that her husband’s coercively controlling tactics (she explicitly feared financial abuse if she left and financial abuse, as a recognized component of coercive control, is present in 51% of domestic unaliving cases) were potential harbingers of doom. It might have put a more specific name to her fears of leaving which, in turn, might have given her a narrow window to more safely plan her and her children’s extraction and escape. But the fact remains that, because coercive control is not yet criminalized in the US and custody laws would have still made the family accessible to her abuser, not to mention the woeful state of child support enforcement or social safety nets, it might have made no difference either. I still wish she’d been given that validation and slim chance.
In response to bystanders saying of unalived domestic abuse victims “If she’d left ten years ago, she’d still be alive,” the director of the organization I worked for twenty years ago (before “coercive control” was even a legal concept) used to drily respond, “Or if she left ten years ago she might have been dead ten years ago.” Point being that, in domestic abuse situations, whatever worst things that happened in the final analyses were the very things we must assume that victims sensed all along in their guts (and from their singular day to day, front lines perspectives that no mere bystander could understand) and the specter of which likely kept them entrapped.
This isn’t just an assumption. As Evan Stark demonstrated over his half century of ground-breaking research and advocacy, victims of domestic abuse are remarkably accurate in guessing the severity of consequences for any act of independence. These guesses tend to be very specific in cases of overt physical assault. But for all the deftness of their intuition, most victims of coercive control don’t even have the precedent of violence to foreshadow unaliving so don’t have crystal balls to gauge precisely what the catastrophic consequences of leaving would be, only a gut sense that it will be very, very bad. It could take the form of severe financial abuse and legislative abuse that puts children at dire risk. It could be direct violence against the victim or against children or it could be family annihilation. Or maybe they know but just can’t prove it to law enforcement.
That’s the diabolical nature of coercive control in the absence of previous assault. Adulterer and domestic unaliver Fotis Dulos is another example of an abuser who wasn’t “sufficiently violent” to be legally contained. Jennifer’s Law in Connecticut– which added coercive control to existing legal definitions of domestic violence– is named for Dulos’s victim and former wife, Jennifer Dulos, and Jennifer Magnano, who was also killed by her adulterous husband.
The takeway is that the above victims had already left their abusers and the killings represented post-separation escalation. Neither were afforded permanent restraining orders much less having their abusers imprisoned because they could not prove their abusers were physically abusive, thus the new legislation and why these two women are cautionary tales of what happens when women leave coercive controllers without adequate cover and protection..
The same may have been true in the Watts case, which also had no reported precedent of assault but seemed to show hints of coercive behavior leading up to the family being extinguished. Because Shannan Watts had discovered the affair the very day she was unalived, I’ve always suspected that it was her threats to leave and divorce that night that set off Watt’s frenzy, not– as he claimed– the fact that she was an obstacle to his affair. Watt’s threatened “right to cheat” could also have been a motivation but the statistical pattern is that the threat of “abandonment” or actual escape by the victim is almost always the true triggering event.
Another “category” of family extinguisher are abusers driven to self-unaliving by dire financial straits who pretend to themselves that they are “saving” their partners and children from destitution by taking out their families as they off themselves. But since when are abusers’ rationales ever genuine reflections of their own MOs? The reason reason that financially cratering abusers with self-unaliving motives take out their entire families when they off themselves is far more likely to be because they secretly fear their partners will thrive after they’re gone and that their children will eventually be calling other men “daddy.”
From what I’ve witnessed and read, I know that victims are usually overtaken by a sudden compulsion to leave the second they can see an actually safe path to do so. While working in advocacy, we used to quote the Johnny Nash song I Can See Clearly Now when survivors would get that sudden 180 shift from paralysis to sudden escape impetus:
I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind…
Victims don’t leave and may not even have a concrete, decisive impulse to do so until they can pinpoint the obstacles, conceive viable ways to clear them and see the path. Or they don’t leave until the danger of staying clearly exceeds the already substantial danger of leaving– though the latter is mostly in situations of overt physical abuse where the risk of being unalived has already been amply illustrated. That’s why I think getting legislative “cover” in place– whether it’s restraining orders, imprisoning coercive controllers or just granting victims custody and thus breaking the access and lever of control that many abusers wield– is the main thing that will increase rates of safe extraction.
Maybe she subconsciously knew anything could trigger this horrible violence in him. Apparently, in this case it was the job loss (and the resulting damage to his ego, the loss of opportunities to prey on vulnerable coworkers and/or – as you wrote – his fear that she may leave him as a consequence). I guess leaving him outright might have looked even more dangerous than that. Sadly, she wasn’t able to save herself or the kids anyway.
Maybe she should have tried leaving him while his career was flourishing and he was busy wooing some schmoopie. However, even this may not have saved her (and the kids!) from his destructiveness.
Statistically, it isn’t just “anything” that can trigger this type of violence. Lots of things might trigger someone to unalive themselves. But his final act categorized him as a domestic abuser and the main impetus for domestic self-unaliving/family-unaliving is more specific.
If he’d never been violent before (there were no prior police reports), she still would have sensed that something awful was looming but wouldn’t have had concrete validation of it which is why her fears may have centered on the one consequence she was sure of: catastrophic post-separation financial abuse that could (as statistics show) viably threaten her children’s futures or even their lives. Evidence that she was fiercely devoted to her children is that she published a book several years prior for her children titled Magical Mantra: A Tiny Book About Self Talk in which she encourages her children to recognize their inner beauty and decency.
The consistent evidence is that, even in abusers who go to great lengths to mask this (such as by cheating and general “who needs that bitch” bravura), blinding fear of abandonment is a built-in, self generated pathology in domestic abusers that exists long before there’s any indication victims are planning to escape. This is why abusers subtly entrap from the get-go and why their initial acts of abuse inexplicably appear to be some sort of “revenge” even before victims have done anything that could possibly be construed or misconstrued as offense. This certainty that victims will abandon them is partly that abusers know they’re eventually going to do something that would make any normal person run for the hills and partly because batterers are overgrown petrified infants and pathologically dependent.
So, given his final act, according to forensic research, this guy always feared his victim would leave him and take the kids. This fear only grew as he began doing things that would make any normal person bolt. He always envisioned her finding love again and his children eventually calling another man “Dad.”
It’s somehow the flip side of this patriarchal idea that only the man should be the “provider”, that a woman shouldn’t earn any meaningful income of her own etc. (or have access to any financial assets he cannot control). Once the man loses his ability to fulfill this role, it may be “game over” according to that logic (sadly, often for the woman and the children).
I grew up steeped in this ideology, and it always cr*ped me out for some reason. Maybe it is because (as I mentioned earlier) my grandmother died under mysterious circumstances when my mother (who became very narcissistic and abusive later on) was still a toddler. Today I wonder whether my (very patriarchal) grandfather had a hand in my grandmother’s death somehow (he married a much younger close relative of his soon afterwards). This seemingly “benign” praise for “happy” families in which the men were the sole providers while their wives were completely dependent (all women in my family were stay at home wives) always had a dark undertone to me.
Yes, the patriarchy. Thankfully, I finally felt the push to shake it up and refused reconcilation after he left even though that meant potential financial ruin. My ex got to claim that he “had” to divorce his “rebel wife,” thus becoming a hero to his religious family.
I certainly was in danger though from what my husband said both before and after he left for separation #2. He had a suicide attempt between #1 and #2, which was another factor.
Then he foolishly told his own attorney of what he thought to be “the solution,” and his attorney called mine. Of course, he did. Officers of the court have that responsibility. Mine sent me to a domestic violence professional who did a formal risk assessment, and we weighed what to do next.
Ultimately, we got the divorce done with the prayer that would dial down the drama. Sorta, but at least my ex stayed put in his state, from what I know. My attorney made me promise to never engage with my ex unless it involved a legal matter and not to reveal anything personal. He said he would be “wrecked” if something happened to me. I stuck to that.
I left my long-term church denomination. Ironically, my former church viewed me as innocent in the divorce because my ex filed. I felt like they were viewing me as powerless in the whole thing, as if he tossed me by the side of the road and broke me. They also viewed me as inept at times, unable to handle complex decisions. I chose to handle the details myself and also got trauma therapy and saw a life transitions coach, which they said were unnecessary. The church would handle whatever I needed. Bluntly, they were clueless.
But life on the other side is wonderful. Both young adults are coming for dinner this week. My mama heart is singing. We’re also planning for another special celebration dinner in August. I’ve active in my new church and am enjoying everything about it. So, so good!
Might be interesting to note that according to the media reports, Kristopher Karolkiewicz was divorced as well when Mandy met him. I’m wondering about his first wife’s side of the story. I hope at least she was able to come out ahead, much like you did. Even so, it must be awful to realize that an ex was capable of doing such a horrible thing (whether it was just hypothetical, like in your case, or something that actually happened, like here).
Yes, I wondered about the first marriage as well. Why did it end? Were there red flags waving that the first wife refused to tolerate that the second wife tolerated?
I know very little about the women in my ex’s life, but if he wanted to unalive me, they would be at risk as well. My trauma therapist observed that the desire for the power-over dynamic will remain an undercurrent of their relationships. The leopard doesn’t change its spots, ya know…
I also wondered about the first wife. My guess is her reason for leaving might relate to something Evan Stark warned regarding how domestic batterers often learn through trial and error that overt violence has blowback, particularly as laws and enforcement against domestic assault have become stronger. Consequently, many abusers “adapt” (mutate like viruses) by adopting “subviolent” psychological, emotional and financial methods of hobbling their prey. But, as Stark proved through statistical research, this doesn’t entirely reduce the risk of eventual domestic unaliving since coercive control– not necessarily a history of violent assault– is the best predictor of eventual spouse-unaliving.
In other words, he might have been more routinely violent when younger and on his first marriage, giving his first wife a concrete reason to bolt. If that was the case, he may have learned to take his abuse underground for his second marriage.
His second wife clearly felt entrapped. She was mincing a lot about his “anger” in her online messages but she didn’t mince when she said she was “terrified.” But, like many victims of coercive control, she appeared terribly confused about what exactly she was terrified of. There’s a heartbreaking video circulating online that the victim made only a few days before being unalived in which she talks about being unable to sleep all night due to anxiety and feeling exhausted. But the explanation for the cause of her anxiety– which she rambles out in a slightly confused way– sounds as if her mind was trying desperately to cobble together a logical reason for it other than the unthinkable, lizard brain intuition that her husband was about to kill her and all their children.
Though not on the same terrifying level, I’ve experienced this kind of nameless anxiety and also remember how my brain searched for logical reasons for it because I simply could not conceive of what was really happening at the time behind the curtain. If you want an example of what gaslighting does to the human brain and emotional stability, find that video.
Yes, this is all such a horror. I remember lying awake at night, wondering if my then-husband hated me enough to actually unalive me. He talked at times about my death, saying that God Himself would one day orchestrate my end because of my many sins against my husband. Saying that was just giving it an stamp of approval. No surprise, he later claimed that he “had” to divorce his “rebel wife.” God approved of it.
But here we are. I refused reconcilation, he kicked off the divorce that had to be, and the attorneys got it despite all of my ex’s games. I kept it all business during closeout, and he eventually let go because he got into a long-term relationship. The kids were older, so no custody.
But yes, I know my replacement isn’t safe. His fundamental beliefs about women and relationships remain.
I think the reason people like this become intractable/incurable is simply that the mountain of their ill deeds becomes too big to climb back over in order to truly redeem themselves. It’s easier to keep throwing good money after bad and maintain (and probably double down on) their system of victim-blaming and rationalizations. It guarantees that they’ll continue to repeat the same patterns because changing their ways would be a tacit admission they were wrong to begin with, which in turn suggests their victims didn’t deserve it, etc.That’s an intolerable revelation to people with that much dirt on their hands.
So it’s a given that future partners won’t be spared, though I’ve noticed that some abusers eventually meet their matches and end up getting out-sharked by worse predators. I guess it’s the poetic irony of seeking company that mirrors and validates their rationales.
Yes, I understood over time that being a runner meant that my ex didn’t have to confront the past. He could just reinvent himself and work out a story about us that worked for him. His oldest brother fed that lie, saying that we just needed a startover as a couple in a new place. So his very religious family believed that I was a rebel for refusing his wonderfulness. He had them on his side for awhile. His attorney also believed the story at first.
Well, I refused reconcilation, and his attorney figured out who-was-who. It helped that his attorney very much liked and respected mine, even telling mine some months in that he knew I wasn’t the pushover my STBX said I was because of the attorney I chose. In time, his family reportedly figured it out.
So he got to be who he thought he was, not who he really was. And thankfully, I didn’t have to keep up the charade with him.
Thank you for posting this. I’m a chump who stayed after DDay #1 nearly 30 years ago.
Well FW proceeded with decades long secret life and asset theft culminating in considering (planning?) a fatal accident for me. One of his calls was to a known gun enthusiast trained sniper.
I know now had I stayed after DDay #2, 3,4,5,6 happened in 2023 chances are I would have become a statistic.
Hope newbies reading are quitting the hopium. RUN
I actually feel quite lucky to be alive. My father, who was mentally ill, paranoid, a cheater, violent and abusive to my mother and siblings, and in addition sexually abused me, exhibited a number of the traits of those who are family annihilators, and routinely throughout my parents’ marriage threatened or attempted to un-alive himself (he finally did un-alive himself at age 72, with a handgun). My mother chose numerous times to stay with my father, even after I once intervened when he had her down on the floor with his hands around her throat. Once she hid from him in a closet, then opened a window and climbed out to go down the street to the neighbors, leaving my brother and me in the house (the sounds in the house that night still give me nightmares 65 years later).
I was 25 and out of the house when my mother, after 30 years of marriage and at the age of 52 did leave and divorce him, when he claimed those who were after him also threatened his family, and concocted a scene to prove it, complete with a knife through a photograph of my sister, who at 15 was still living at home. I say I feel lucky to be alive, but I feel even luckier that I didn’t lose my mother and sister.
Oh, and I forgot this one: the night when I was twelve years old and my mother came to me in my room and told me I had to go up the hill to the haybarn because “Daddy is up there with a gun threatening to [un-alive] himself, and you’re the only one who can stop him. He loves you enough to put the gun down.” I refused to go, but only as an adult did it occur to me that there was as much a chance that he would shoot me as that he would put the gun down. Yeah, I feel very lucky to be alive.
Your 12-year-old self was not only smart; she must have had an angel nearby (in place of a mother).
OMG. I’m so glad you didn’t go. What happened to you would break most people beyond repair. You’re mighty AF to get through all that and keep your sanity.
This story gives each of us here an opportunity to be thankful that we are alive. There is a woman who posted here in the past (and might pop in every once in a while) whose son was m-worded by the cheating dad. It is probs better that I didnt know the extent of my Cheaters undertakings when he was alive because I might have threatened to broadcast all and I dont know if he would have let me live to tell the tale.
Yes, I remember the story about the son. Just horrific! I am indeed thankful to be alive with two offspring who are acing young adulthood, if I do say so.
My ex ran off to another state for separation #2, which my attorney called a “strong sign that he’s guilty as sin” (said with his Southern accent). That break was tough to process but was such a mercy in the end. After giving me h*ll legally for several years, he let go. Afterall, then he could control the narrative and live his way without an ex and grown children to contradict him.
Well, good luck with that.
Given todayโs fatally sad topic, I dedicate this post to my murdered cousin who assumed her husband was normal, because she was normal.
Let me explain..
Tracy and others (ex., Drs. Ramani, Pete Salerno) are educating people about the continuum of personality disorders (PDs). This is vital for those of us without PDs because another reason we may stay or reconcile despite red flags, FOO empathy, and fears of single parenting is because at our core, chumps are normal, *so we assume the cheater is normal.* They are not!
Please know this is NOT blaming chumpsโฆit is just another way to understand an unconscious part of the human condition summed up in the saying โwe see the world not as it is, but as we are.โ This is why education about the continuum of personality disorders is key to getting truly free from abusive relationships, i.e., what is not good for us and not normal.
I got out alive. Rest in peace sweet cousin, Kate. Mandy and children tooโฆ
I’m so sorry for your loss.
I was very blind to the grim possibilities too. My therapist, my attorney, and the domestic violence specialist he sent me too were all saying that the potential was there. I had to process that because I was so blind to it all, not believing he was capable. Yes, he was.
That’s why we need the professionals who can see the big picture of their disordered thinking. If had only listened to what my heart said, I might not be here.
This is a really important point. I couldn’t really see what cheater was doing, mainly because I couldn’t conceive of it. I couldn’t conceive that anyone would lie like that! I didn’t recognize the behavior (or the danger) at all, because I’d never been exposed to it before. My system didn’t warn me.
— until it did.
Exactly, FYI. We donโt know what we donโt knowโฆuntil we do.
My adult children have learned about personality disorders and can now better protect themselves in various relationships (romance, friends, work, etc).
Im an amateur genealogist and have learned of 2 wife killings in my father’s family. One of the husbands was arrested but he was so old they just let him go. In the other situation, the dude just walked.
As far as i know this is the only one in my family. My cousinโs father was a good man (loyal, stable, non-personality disordered). i have wondered if this also contributed to not recognizing what was behind some of her husbandโs red flags (?)
Oh no. ๐ฅ Not again. Reading her post about reconciling is heartbreaking. Baby chumps, please don’t do it. If this isn’t proof it’s potentially dangerous, then I don’t know what is.
Re untangling; most chumps do untangle and may see reasons why the FW behaves the way s/he does. I did too, but only because I need to know the why of everything, not in order to stay. So I don’t think untangling, in and of itself, is a bad idea. It’s just a bad idea to use FW “brokenness” as a reason to forgive and reconcile. Ultimately the reasons they are the way they are don’t matter. In fact, knowing they were raised in a toxic environment is a reason to leave because it’s further evidence that they aren’t going to change. If, for example, you discovered the reason was a brain tumor (almost never happens) that would be different, because medical intervention could fix it and the FW was deprived of rational choice. Being raised in a toxic home doesn’t remove your ability to make rational choices. It either makes you toxic yourself or it messes you up, but not in a harmful way and therapy can help. But therapy, even if it’s the best therapy possible and specifically designed for abusers, doesn’t change them, as domestic abuse expert Lundy Bancroft attests to.
That’s within driving distance of our home.
That poor woman. Those poor kids.
RIP Mandy and your six precious precious babies. You did what you could. You did not deserve this. With so much love for you all โฅ๏ธโฅ๏ธโฅ๏ธโฅ๏ธโฅ๏ธโฅ๏ธโฅ๏ธ๐
To even out the situation a little in terms of gender equality, I’ll remind you of an equally horrific case that was mentioned on Reddit ะฐ few years ago, where an unfaithful wife killed her two children after her husband discovered her affair with a neighbor and began actively preparing for a divorce.
Unfortunately, I’ve lost the link to these materials, but what struck me the most was that her parents organized a social media campaign in her support and even started a fundraising!
Cheaters are from a different world, capable of anything…
Plan to read all the comments and discussions over the weekend, but in the meantime, I want to say that this story makes me feel very angry (and a bit fearful…or is that a feeling of disempowerment?). What can we do to help prevent this?
That’s why I do a lot of volunteer work with struggling women in religious circles.
Cutting to the point, I tell them that they shouldn’t tolerate cr*p and that they are worthy individuals. God didn’t create you to be treated like this.
One woman at a time.
Another reason why I’m grateful for CN and CL…. infidelity and FW-ittery are incredibly risky, hurtful, reckless, abusive behaviors…. which produce disastrous and tragic outcomes. This place is one of the only voices that I have found that is brave enough to name the abuse for what it is and to robustly critique the peddlers of the notion of reconciliation. I was lucky in my story, but with some imagination I can easily dream of horrific results if the relationship continued. My heart goes out to the families and children and spouses who have had their lives irreversibly altered by the cruelty of cheating. I got lucky and got out early, but many do not.
โCan you imagine a person of color getting this write up? Or a woman? Would we lead with their white collar careers?โ
No. The opposite pattern is more common in mainstream coverage.
Corporate statements like the AHAโs are almost always written by lawyers and communications staff whose primary goals are liability avoidance and brand distance. They use the same detached phrasingโโformer employee,โ โtragic circumstances,โ job title for identificationโwhether the person is White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian. That instinct does not flip by race.
What does vary is how news outlets and commentators frame the story afterward:
โข When the perpetrator is White, coverage more readily leads with mental health, job stress, โfamily manโ background, or career details.
โข When the perpetrator is Black or Hispanic, race is less likely to be mentioned early (or at all), and the framing more often shifts toward systemic explanations, prior discrimination claims, or broader social context.
That is the documented skew in major-newspaper homicide coverage, not the reverse. ๏ฟผ
So the claim โespecially people of color get the soft treatmentโ does not match the data on institutional language or media practice. The AHA statement is standard corporate sanitization. The racial double-standard argument is being run in the wrong direction.
A systematic review of nearly 1,100 homicide articles from six major U.S. newspapers (2019โ2021) found:
โข Race of a White offender was mentioned in roughly 1 out of every 4 articles.
โข Race of a Black offender was mentioned in roughly 1 out of every 17 articles.
โข Race of a Hispanic offender was mentioned in roughly 1 out of every 33 articles.
White offendersโ race also appeared far earlier in the story. The gap widened after 2020. ๏ฟผ
When the offender is non-White, race is more often omitted or delayed. When the offender is White, race is more readily highlighted.