The Banality of Workplace Affairs
The Friday Challenge is workplace affairs. Did your cheaters get it on in the copier room? Were there lawsuits?
***
If you’re gonna cheat, do it with all the romance of Human Resource violations. Maybe it’s those flattering overhead fluorescent lights, or the glow of the copier machine. Or maybe it’s the proximity to other dim-but-willing partners — workplace affairs are incredibly common.
If I had to mine all my chump data, Schmoopie meet-cutes at the office would far outweigh adult dating sites, or paid-by-the-hour companions. Hey, they’re there! Bonding over their progress reports. Looking winsome over widgets. Why not?
And the workplace is the perfect cover.
The most virtuous excuse is “I was working late.” Your hours are unaccounted for, a mystery timetable and you might even get your own work phone and email! Far away from those prying eyes. Heck, your employer might even unknowingly finance your affair. Win win!
So, CN, tell me about the workplace affairs you discovered and any fallout. Were there depositions? Lawsuits? Firings? Or worse, promotions?
Was there more than one workplace Schmoopie? What’s the water-cooler scuttlebutt?
This is also the topic of an upcoming podcast. You can leave us a voicemail here.
TGIF!
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Ha. Ex-husband was the general manager. She was his secretary.
I was probably about 6 months pregnant when the affair started.
When I asked if he was embarrassed at being such a cliche, his response was โsheโs not my secretary.โ
When he didnโt answer his phone, his calls were put through to her. (Ask me how I found that one out, two days after D-Day 1.) Thatโs close enough to being his secretary if you ask me, no matter what her job title might have been.
He eventually had to admit the affair and offer his resignation. Imagine his shock when they accepted it.
There’s a special place in hell for FWs who cheat on married spouses.
Love that they accepted his resignation.
Oops. I meant “FWs who cheat on pregnant spouses.”
Agreed! Mine started an affair (or at least tried to) when I was eight months pregnant with our second child. He chose a mom from our older child’s preschool. So classy.
My cheating ex and his affair partner are both teachers at a high school. They co-coached an extra curricular team for their school. Worst thing that happened to him was his affair partner getting to coach their team instead of him. Administration told them to stay apart and such, but the others in their cohort (Fellow teachers- all people I met and knew) helped them “Hang out” at work. I do not know any more of the fallout of their affair after that since I washed my hands of that circus.
I caught my then-disabled son’s second grade teacher guiding him around by the hood of his jacket like a dog. It solved the mystery of why I sent a pacifist marshmallow to school one day and got back a kicking, biting street fighter in less than two weeks. I called her on it and the look of utter disdain on her craggy, ravaged, Martha Stewart-wannabe face was… wow.
After talking with a special education attorney friend, I explained the situation to another close friend whose ancestors basically founded the township and who knows where all the skeletons are buried. She told me that, at age sixteen, this teacher had an affair with her own married, middle aged English teacher in the very same school system. The FW left his wife and children, moved the teenage schmoops right into his family home and then sponsored her BA in secondary ed. They taught side by side at the school for twenty years until he retired.
The fact that the whole district turned blind eyes to this sh*tshow turned out to be a dark foreshadowing for how the community would respond to headline news that the school had harbored a credibly alleged child molester on staff for more than a decade: everyone buried their heads in the sand and some even reflexively defended the predator. Nothing changed in the school’s staff vetting process.
Meanwhile just the clues about how this district treated disabled students was enough for us and this friend and I yanked all our respective kids out of the system a few weeks before the child molestation scandal even hit the papers.
Anyway, when I think of that look of disdain on that teacher’s ugly mug, I now interpret it as, “Look, I s*cked wrinkled old d*ck as a child. Why’s your kid so special that he gets to pass through childhood without scars and trauma?”
I also learned that one of the factors that allowed child predators to burrow into the school (another was outed in the wake of this news) was all the extramarital rumpy pumpy going on among staff members. I had to conclude that environments like that are the perfect hiding place for child abusers since everyone’s operating on a secret-guarding system due to “MAD” dynamics (mutually assured destruction). So I suspect that where you find the one, you will certainly find the other.
After what I went through with the ex nothing you wrote surprises me. Our school system allows too much to go on in their building if the teachers have a good enough pass rate for their classes. Before they were covering for my ex’s infidelity they were making excuses for other teachers’ abysmal behavior. One teacher who constantly provoked students was recently fired for drug charges. A few years ago my Ex’s affair partner tried to help an underage student run away from his family’s home to live at his girlfriend’s house instead. It’s just nuts.
What you’re describing is what happens when a community literally lets their junk captain the ship.
Also, in case you’re into gallows humor… have you noticed how all these cheating provincial horndogs (male and female) typically look like blobs of nondescript mashed potatoes rolled in barber shop clippings? I could go into poetic rhapsodies about the boring, dumpy fugliness of community FWs.
Wow! That is appalling. What a story!
That’s the condensed, edited version of weirdness lol.
I hate this so much, Obviously, at the age of 16, this teacher had been a victim herself. However, instead of protecting her and punishing her abuser, they basically rewarded her for staying captor-bonded and harming other vulnerable people (like your son). How many other kids (including other underage girls) did this man victimize while she looked the other way (in addition to committing abuse herself)? One can only guess, I think. Almost makes me lose faith in humanity (thankfully, I still believe that better people exist).
Better people certainly do exist. I managed to forge lifelong friendships from the ashes of that scandal because we all got a solid look at who the others really were when push came (literally) to shove.
damn that was a look under a particularly slimy rock
That’s atrocious! I am glad you pulled your kids out.
Oh it gets worse but then thankfully it gets better. After this local friend and I reached out to the adult accusers in the news reports of the scandal and spoke to the press about staff vetting and child safety policies at the school, the school retaliated by making false reports of educational neglect against us to the state which happens to frown on homeschooling. But I didn’t really have a choice since the kids’ pediatrician and a therapist thought homeschooling was necessary for a while because the kids were seriously traumatized.
Things got even darker and, at one point, cops and social workers were circling our house. But because my SPED attorney friend is the terror of her county and a national advocate against institutional abuse of the disabled, I’d been warned ahead of time that the school would sic the state against us as a censorship tactic so I’d already whisked the kids to another state with far more liberal homeschooling laws.
Then, despite not being a church type, I joined some international homeschooling legal defense organization with a scarily well-funded hyper-evangelical agenda and unleashed the dogs on the school. Within a day, the district withdrew their complaint, the state withdrew the investigation and the rabid administrator who’d engineered the retaliation (a bald little FW who was later suspected of grooming little girls and quietly driven out) stayed home with a tummy ache.
I felt a little like this: https://share.google/dvK3g1JgmJcktjqb1
Now my kids affectionately joke that their memories of a fun and fantastic childhood came at the price of mom’s war flashbacks. But hey, parents are basically the Secret Service at the inaugural ball. We’re not there to party but just to keep the VIPs safe and happy.
Ex-Mrs LFTT and her AP affair V1.0 (he was married but she wasnโt) was a workplace affair that occurred before I met her. Their workplace found out and shut it down โฆ.. but Cheaters will always find a way to cheat some more.
I married her not knowing that sheโd ever been involved with a married man and she never mentioned him once during 25 years of marriage.
Ex-Mrs LFTT and her AP V2.0 Redux/The Directorโs Cut (same AP, but now she was married to me and he was by then twice divorced with โ allegedly โ a girlfriend) happened after she reached out to him via Social Media (such a clichรฉ) and started meeting up with him when she was supposed to be going to Choir Practise (more cliches).
The rest is history.
I guess he was always โthe oneโ and that I was the placeholder as far as she was concerned, and that the kids were just collateral damage on her path to the happiness that she believes that she was entitled to.
He is welcome to her, because she is a terrible person.
LFTT
I don’t understand why these people even get married, considering how little they value it.
You’re an amazing writer, by the way.
Cam,
Thank you.
LFTT
My 4 children were just collateral damage as well. Very sad.
They are all cliches. FW helped hire a woman to a small online education company. She was junior to himโฆ of course. Within a few months they were taking โbusiness trips togetherโโฆ he never had business trips for this company before. He was suddenly leaving after dinner and needing to be over her house to make โinternational calls late in the evening.โ In the end, I figured it out (just a few months into their affair). And it turned out he had already been fired from the company and was given a few weeks to tie up loose ends. I contacted his bosses (the whole place was only about 12 people in a fancy office in a high rise). The next morning AP and FW had to sign with the corporate attorneys that they wouldnโt sue over anything. Oh yesโฆ and AP also served as HR (no shock there). FW had targeted a semi single mom (she was separated from her husbandโฆ a German citizen who moved back to Germany.) I got to read their boring emails and texts. Such romance as AP: โI got my nails doneโ and FWโs โI see.โ (This in the middle of a conference room meeting with everyone from the company). Their s*exy talk was mostly โyour backโโฆ โyouโre so tall.โ I guess thatโs what happens when FWs write their own scripts lol
Yes, he had numerous work- related betrayal objects, though he also had numerous that had no relationship to work, but still handy, easily available (key attractants). A number of betrayal objects he first encountered at work were also married, though certainly not all. Handy and available were always key. He knew some of their spouses/partners. Some were single/divorced and sought out married men for the ease and lack of any need to pretend they were anything other than transactions. His workplaces were uninterested in his personal life at the time. He used the corporate credit card to purchase their time and favors, and then the family card/cash when that wasn’t enough to cover the encounter. This was a decades-long set of behaviors, all over North America. Later, a few managers told me they had concerns, but stood down. They didn’t want to cause a fuss, they said, and as he was a (a Midwest born and raised) minority, they feared it might be seen as discrimination, even though in his industry he wasn’t a minority. There were no lawsuits, though I wondered later on about his being terminated from one employer and his departure from another…I found out later there were concerns that weren’t acted on. He typically stretched out work trips, ripping off an employer to cheat, taking long road trips, extra hotel nights, bats and restaurants, boat rides, etc. (Loved taking betrayal objects to eat lobster in Maine )Things like movies, entertainment, shopping, liquor stores were not typically on the corporate card. I spent decades on the road for work, all over US and Canada. Never cheated. Never had time. If I had a few unscheduled hours, I would sleep, take a long bath or give myself a facial mask and read . How different!
My cheater and his mistress work for the federal government (think labor law) in cities 2000 miles apart – he in the midwest and she on the west coast. They met and f*cked at a seminar. Part 2 of the seminar was a month later – he went days after I had back surgery despite me begging him to skip the seminar to take care of our 4 children and the house. He refused and I, of course, had no idea of the affair. I discovered the affair 11 months after it started. I found substantial proof that they used work resources to conduct the affair and spent hundreds, now thousands, of hours texting, calling, and hooking up on “business trips”. The mistress even stalked me using government time and her government phone (but that’s a whole other story). She filed for divorce 4 months after the affair started, thinking my ex was going to leave his family for her. I reported her to the Inspector General for using work resources to stalk me and sent hundreds of pages of proof of the affair and the stalking. No action was ever taken. Instead, they both received multiple promotions and the cheater is now running the entire region of his federal agency and she is second in line in her region. I left a long time ago and they are still engaged in their long distance affair, no doubt still cheating the federal government on work time and resources.
Your post reminds me of when CNN president, Jeff Zucker, was having an affair with Allison Gollust. He hired and brought her to CNN with him. When the affair was revealed, it seemed that most the comments were focusing on โtwo consenting adultsโ, in other words, whatโs the problem.
How many talented, worthy CNN employees were passed up for promotions because he brought his AP along with him.
There is always a cost and another narrative (two consenting adults) that needs to change.
In Jeffโs defense, he is so terribly ugly, why else would anyone sleep with him?
Holy shite. Thatโs awful, topshelf. I hope youโre closer to meh at this point. But Iโll understand if youโre not anywhere close, yet.๐ซค
Similar experience here and it was in person cheating on a daily basis because they worked in the same office. It was two hour “lunches” together when they were only allowed 30 minutes, extra long breaks together, using the work email system to plan trysts and to flirt, texting during work hours, etc.) all on the taxpayer’s dollar for many years. Everybody who worked closely with them knew, including their direct supervisor. Nothing was ever done about it.
Stalking is a whole other level though. She absolutely should have been fired and belongs in prison. Yet they promoted her. It must be a very toxic workplace in that department. It certainly was where my FW worked. In addition to rampant infidelity, a lot of the workers had substance abuse issues, including FW and OW. I find that disordered people are very willing to close ranks and cover for each other.
As a taxpayer, I am so mad!
Right?? It’s just another slap on the face.
Mine was director of a large London office. First he shagged a colleague on a Berlin work trip, then kept going to the Colchester office for โmeetingsโ. He then started early morning shagging one from his own office, on the board room table. Apparently at the Christmas party he shared one in the eve, and the other later. The latter ended up getting pregnant, when I was newly pregnant too. I lost my baby from the stress probably. She ended up aborting. What a mess these losers create.
Ohhh Elizabeth… that’s horrific. I’m so sorry for losing your baby ๐
Itโs a tough topic, but one Iโve lived through. For years, I was the supportive partner, never questioning the 3:00 or 4:00 AM work nights or the relentless โcorporate demandsโ that kept her phone and watch buzzing 24/7. I was proud of her climb, not realizing that for her, the office wasn’t just a place of business, it was a validation and conquest candy store.
I eventually discovered it was a revolving door of men: vendors, underlings, bosses, and leaders from across the organization. It was insane to see how she used her position, her corporate devices, and her access to build a network of betrayal that operated in the shadows for years. She wasnโt just climbing the ladder; she was connecting with a smorgasbord of extra partners.
Itโs maddening that she was never caught, despite using company tools to fuel her double life. Itโs terrifying how easily these people hide their affairs in plain sight, even for decades. She even used the name of an HR employee as a cover to explain her whereabouts (why would I question that right?), which is just the tip of the iceberg of how deep the deception went. Itโs an incredible lesson in how easily these people lie, and how easy it was for me to fall for it.
I was married to a male version of your FW. Lies big and small are still surfacing post divorce and I just found out a whopper last week. They lie as they breathe and it still shocks me that I was so clueless. I couldn’t imagine living like he does.
Stone cold sociopath.
Iโm so sorry you had to go through that, I hope youโre healing,
, and have found your Tuesday.
Oh my god I hear you about the things found out after the divorce, i didnโt think it could get any crazier, but, yup, it did.
I hear you about the lies. I sadly learned my FW could lie about anything at anytime. Iโm also glad u will never live like them.
Happy healing and sorry youโre here.
My friend and I used to joke that my husband and his work ho must have been plotting to take over TSA or whatever career ambitions their middle aged minds could stir up. She had got some award from DC and he loved the little power trip from his management position. She filed for divorce as soon as ours was finalized. Karma bus hit her hard. About 6 months after her divorce was finalized, my Ex unexpectedly died. Best revenge is living well. Iโve retired early and sheโs 11 years older than me and probably still at her daily job of reviewing Excel spreadsheets.
Hope you inherited everything; 401(k), life insurance, etc.!
Yep. My FW’s affair was with his boss.
We lived a couple of hours drive from his office and his company would pay for up to three nights a week to stay in a hotel to reduce travel. Chumpy old me thought those nights staying over was to reduce his stress. I actually encouraged him to stay over two nights every week because I was worried about him driving tired, FFS!
This staged the perfect setting for an affair of course and is why he got away with it for so long. I didn’t think to question what he was doing those nights away. Took 1.5 years for me to find out.
Apparently they bonded over how impressive each were at their jobs. Classic ego-massaging (and no, they’re not heart surgeons or human rights lawyers, just bog-standard office workers!). She’s a borderline alcoholic (FW’s words, not mine) with a cocaine habit, who likes to get very messy on a night out. But she’s “good fun”. According to her ex-husband, she’s also a classic narcissist who emptied their kids’ university savings accounts to pay for a boob job.
I’d have loved nothing more than to destroy their careers, but no/less income for him would mean no/less child maintenance for me and my children, so that wasn’t an option. Turns out their company knew anyway. All the usual office gossip about them and some staff even raising complaints to HR. But nothing happened. The company obviously didn’t give a sh*t as long as the work was getting done.
She’s now progressed to a bigger and better job at a different company. I sometimes wonder if FW is worried about her new office “friendships”. I mean, surely you would be?!
New chump here. I have recently discovered an interest in the traits of APโs. I just really wonder what kind of human becomes an available and willing participant in destroying lives. I mean, Iโm assuming youโre not an alcoholic-cocaine-snorting type person and yet thatโs who your FW chose for himself. I donโt know much about my FWโs AP. But, from their texts she doesnโt come off particularly intelligent. She also called him โsirโ in all her texts which makes me suspect that FW was over her at some point, managerially speaking. Haha. Itโs just astonishing to me what little it takes to stroke a FWโs ego.
Welcome to the club that nobody wants to be a member of. I’m sorry for your recent betrayal. I’m coming up to a year post D-Day and it does get better. One day at a time, and eventually we’ll be at Tuesday (I think I’m almost there).
FW’s AP was also married with two young children. So that’s two families destroyed – two sane parents and four children aged 7-12 left in the devastation of betrayal. Those children have to spend the rest of their lives knowing one of their parents chose a sordid office affair over them.
I think they both got off on the delicious excitement of living a double life. All that secrecy, lying, stealing etc… it made them feel “alive”. They did class A drugs together and went to raves trying to pretend that they weren’t chubby, part-balding and middle-aged. Because having a loyal and loving partner and two wonderful, happy kids, a nice house, regular trips abroad, that life wasn’t enough for either of them and ultimately, they felt like they deserved more and their families deserved a whole lot less.
(In case you are tempted) don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to the AP. They are all vile people and they’re welcome to each other. That’s all you need to know.
((Hugs))
Not sure about actual coworkers being shmoopies, but I know for sure that eX used the work- trip resort hotels as “meet, greet, dinner date and then fucque” locations for the prostitutes he ordered up on the dial- a – fuque websites. I guess these websites are like door dash but for “buy a woman’s body for the hour”. Honestly, I think he resorted to this because he could find no coworkers who would actually want to schtuppp with him.
He confessed to paid for secks during his work trips abroad. I went on a trip with him once and remember we were walking after dinner and he pointed out a prostitute to me. In hindsight he was probably well aware because of his usage – hell, he could have known that one personally. I know heโs one of those that likely got a sick thrill knowing something I didnโt. He often would lump some of his own skeezy behaviors onto others, so he could talk about it in the third person and watch how Iโd react. It makes me dry heave thinking about how he risked my health and the health of our unborn child.
Yep, mine definitely got up to something on one of his work trips. He came home with freshly shaved genitals (that weren’t shaved when he left) that he kept hiding because he had a sudden case of modesty when showering. I noticed. But chumpy me wasn’t ready to confront that detail and behavior yet. It meant running full blast into the wall of pain and we were a month or two into couple’s counseling over his constant lying (about other things), and I wasn’t ready to face the reality of the mirage I actually had vs. clinging to the hope of one day having the marriage I wanted. It wasn’t a d-day then, but it should have been. I didn’t piece together the reality of the emotional (and with that evidence, likely physical) affair until after our divorce was under way. It’s amazing what the brain can ignore when it doesn’t want the heart to process that pain. Really, why didn’t I throw a fit and call him out in the therapists office that week?
I can’t help thinking he shaved because he caught crabs. ๐คฎ
!!!
Yes my ex started an affair with a woman on a more junior role in his office that started an eight year double life affair. I spoke to her a few times after dday – he dumped her as well for a new workplace affair at the same time as my dday – and even though she felt he singled her out for special attention from the first day he met her, and was probably similarly grooming other victims, he was in such a powerful role that she believed he was untouchable and never brought any hr action against him to my knowlege. She quit and gave up her career to avoid having to be around him. The karma bus knocked him down a bit when he was voluntold to retire a few months later, so word may have gotten around, but there was no formal outting of his sexual harassment.
My ex was the welding foreman for a crew, she was a crew member on another crew (same company). She flattered him and said talked about how much she could learn from a boss like him and that she would love to be on his crew. Well shortly after D-day, she was suddenly on his crew (there were openings because he other male crew member lost respect for him once they found out what he did). So now he’s her boss, and all his old crew members left, both his old foremen called me saying they cant believe it. So now they travel, work and live together fulltime and I hope they spend every miserable second of it together forever. Could I have called and told his HR person (that loved me) about the affair…yes, but then I would be ‘that’ ex wife. I would rather them discover how miserable it is on their own. But yeah, proximity and flattery was all it took, he wasnt around any other women, but the 1 time he was…
“She flattered him and said talked about how much she could learn from a boss like him…”
Oh how familiar does THIS sound?!!! ๐คฎ
Cheaty McLiarface was the boss. He always had female favorites, infatuations, and eventually a work wife. If an employee complained they were dismissed. After all, he was the boss and entitled to show favoritism.
He found his affair a block away working at a public business. But Cheaty had boundaries. She wasn’t an employee and if he never touched her, she was just a really good friend… for eight years… that I know of.
When I was young and baby-trapped, I got ExFW a job at the place where I worked, and my dad wrote him a referral letter. None of my coworkers knew until they found out when I went into false labor, and we both had to leave so he could drive me to the hospital. ExFW was really flirty with the older women (potential sugar mamas). I remember a few of the ones closer to our age thought he was creepy. ExFW tried to convince my female coworkers to go for a car ride to listen to his sound system (I cringe at that entire sentence, knowing that was my life at one point). Then, when my coworkers found out, a few of the older ladies really pushed me to consider not getting married to him just because I was pregnant. Thankfully, I listened.
When I didn’t return to the workforce after the birth of my eldest, he switched jobs to a lower-paying place. I was never able to prove workplace affairs, but I highly suspected it. I found a few alarming texts on his phone to his coworkers, and I remember one of them, I went off on him for me. He took my infant child from my arms and refused to give my baby back. I remember my infant projectile vomited all over him, probably from the stress and yelling, and ExFW threw my baby at me in disgust. After that incident, I kept a mental file of the others and kept chipping away at my safety escape plan.
I know it feels good, but don’t do it. I have zero regrets about this, even though it’s petty. ExFW had a warrant out for his arrest because he missed a criminal court hearing. EXFW was making excuses about missing it to me, who was trying to convince him that he needed to go deal with his consequences so he could be involved in his kids’ lives (we were broken up, and I was trying to bend over backward so he could be a co-parent).
Instead, ExFW bragged about taking the former coworker I was originally suspicious of out on a date. I remember telling my coworkers, who were amazed by his stupidity, and encouraged me to call the police about his warrant, and I did. I told them ExFW’s work schedule, and the police wound up arresting him at work in the morning, the day of the big date. It was a holiday weekend, so he sat in jail, going through withdrawals that entire weekend.
My parents were F*ckwits. My mom would become so obsessed with her male coworkers that she was fired from multiple jobs and volunteer positions. My dad it was heavily suspected and a few things came out shortly after his funeral that didn’t surprise me. My mom asked us to spy on him by having my brother and I stay home from school without my dad knowing and told us to hide when he came home for lunch; we heard everything and I told my mother in tears and she said she would handle it then they acted like nothing happened. I remember there was one female coworker I met in particular that raised the alarm but I was told that I was over reacting and I remember there was one when I was younger I remember hearing about, but don’t remember.
Oh yes! My #2 cheater was under HR review when I dragged out a confession after a long talk. He was having sex in empty patient rooms (. Maintainance guy with keys)with a cafeteria gal who made his eggs just right. I called his boss and they ended up transferring her and letting my now- ex take a one day off penalty. it was a double standard and I actually felt sorry for the lady because sex with my husband with ED and pill support, was likely a HUGE disappointment. It was the end of our marriage right there and also.the Tip of the iceberg.
FW was a physician in his early 60s who had an affair with one of the much-younger married nurses. He said, “We bonded over taking care of sick patients.”
So, you see, they weren’t just sleeping together; they were healing the sick together, which is a strange euphemism for sex. Their love was forged in service of the sick. Guess he thought it was almost holy. #Jesuscheater #clichรฉ.
Of course, being a physician, he had the perfect excuse to go into work early, late, and at odd hours. I felt bad for him–the poor, suffering doctor. I would often get up early so that I could make the coffee and/or his breakfast to speed him along his way to “heal the sick.” Or at the other end, I would hold dinner for him, sometimes waiting until after 9pm. I still kick myself for missing the signs, but I was just an unsuspecting, trusting spouse.
Also, not one to accept blame, he blamed the AP for flirting with him. He was the victim of a temptress. He was powerless…for 3 years.
No doubt he threw other excuses at the fridge, including that our marriage was basically over. I think he didn’t bother trying that excuse on me because we’d just done our financial plan, had a fairly robust sex life, and were talking about retiring to our newly renovated lake house. The lie was too big even for him, which is saying a lot. But I bet he tried it on others.
By the way, when I asked him how it felt to be a clichรฉ [I mean, doctor/nurse affair!], he blurted out that he wasn’t one. Self-awareness was never his strong suit.
P.S. We were married 35 years. They got married one year after he disclosed the affair, saying he thought “he’d be happier with her.” He also said that he still loved me: “I think you can love two people at once.” Lying and betraying is a heckuva way to show love. ๐คฆ๐ปโโ๏ธ
Wow! Just wow. My FW is not a doctor but is a manager for a clinic within the hospital so he is constantly surrounded by nurses and medical assistants most of whom are women. I honestly trusted my husband implicitly until D-day, even when there were blatant signs telling me otherwise. I must say that the save-the-world-humanitarian-of-the-year facade is exceptionally powerful for chumps like me. โSure, honey. All good that you have to go to work at 5 am even though your clinic doesnโt open until 7:30am. Saving lives through excel spreadsheets!โ โOh, a scheduling template emergency at 8pm at night and youโre the only one that knows how to fix it?โ โOkayโ supportive wife says. I know, it sounds terribly naive looking back on FWs lame excuses, but as stated I had so much faith. I have now come to understand that a good percentage of people in healthcare volunteer themselves for just such a cess pool in the name of love and long hours away from the ones they โreally โ care about. I also work in healthcare and inter office gossip thrives on FWโs like this. I am seriously disillusioned right now.
Oh, and yup, married 34 years, and he wanted to stay married to me and keep his โgirlfriends,โ plural, who were really strippers he was paying huge sums of money to. Smart enough to make it thru medical school, but such an idiot in so many other ways.
FW narcopath not a doc but made surgeon level money, and basically wanted the same deal. Fake purchased flattery from strip mall escorts was apparently more important than spouse or kids.
Friends were in shock as I’m a conventionally attractive highly educated professional. I’m certain FW also had workplace affairs.
Water seeks its own level
Mine is also a doctor. He also used the famously long doctorsโ hours as a cover, and I didnโt see it. I worried over his long, stress-filled hours too and tried to be as supportive of him as I could. I even suggested him cutting back his hours. Some of his partners, women with young children, did that. Oh no, he said selflessly, there are sick patients to take care of. Yeesh.
At the place I worked almost 30 years ago, we all received an email across the company saying, โAs of this morning, Mitch and Tammy no longer work here. If you need assistanceโฆblah, blah, blah.โ Apparently the vice president and head of HR got caught in the company fitness room. They were both married.
Well, I guess that’s a type of workout!
My SIL (husband’s sister) and her now-husband started a blatant affair at their workplace. Both married at the time, and he’s 20 or so years older than she is; not sure if he was a direct supervisor or not. Not only were they not fired, despite throwing their “true love” in everyone’s face, but they both ended up with promotions (!) and continued to work together until he retired.
My husband excuses it by saying that she “was in a bad marriage at the time” – so what? I had the world’s worst marriage with FW #2 but it would never have even occurred to me to cheat. I did have a f*ckbuddy at the time but we had an unspoken agreement never to get together if either of us was in a relationship. And we honored that agreement.
For SIL, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, as her current husband (former AP) is a controlling, misogynistic jerk with anger issues (and a house full of guns, but that’s another story entirely) who thinks that women should be seen and not heard. That doesn’t go over very well with me, but SIL seems to be resigned to her fate.
X had a number of dodgy workplace relationships in that he tended to hire people he could control. take, for instance, his final PA, a very nice but highly dysfunctional woman with a troubled personal life that he knew all about. “i could get her to leave her husband just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.
there were always subordinate women in the workplace that X took for coffee to counsel on their careers, helped to get them special training in California, family troubles, etc. etc. the were all kind of fucked up–bad divorces, difficult FOO issues, kids giving them trouble. he like the saviour role for his kibbles.
X rose to VP in a big oil and gas company, and his final relationship was a full fledged affair with his direct subordinate. i don’t know how long it had gone on, i don’t want to know, but the whole office knew about it. this drives me nuts.
when i found the “smoking text message”, the whole thing came to a head at home, the divorce was on, and X was shifted out of his position to a new position created for him. yes, the company created a new VP role to accommodate their employees facking. and, yes, AP was promoted to a director level, as suggested by X.
one year later the X was “let go” and when i asked what happened, he said, “nothing to see here” which we all know means there was something to see there. at least he wasn’t let go with cause because that would’ve been financially disastrous for me and my kids.
X has not found a new job because his reputation is so poor in the industry, and he is over 60 which is too old for an executive job (ageism). so, he downsized and moved into a retirement community. he’s spent most of his money because he’s an addict and has little to no money sense in his old age. he’s still dating his AP but they do not live together and there are no moves to get married–she has teen kids and 100% custody, and i suspect they’re giving X attitude.
it’s likely X had a series of affairs at work. i mean, on the balance of probabilities?
the marriage was a mirage was a manipulationship. gah.
Yep my cheater had a workplace affair that SO should’ve had him fired, but he got away with it and is still working for the same organization in the same senior position. ๐ก
His AP was a young single mom who was recently divorced (and her friendship with my ex began when she relied on HIS emotional support through her divorce – all kinds of wrong with that). She was a local in the developing part of the world we were living in, and was engaged to someone else and then married the whole length of the affair with my husband. There were serious power imbalances, which my ex found delightful I’m sure.
He completely manipulated things so that she was his underling. When he was asked to head up a huge new pilot project, he asked her to quit her job and be his project manager. Her doing so meant she was entirely in his grip.
Mostly I didn’t think anything of their long hours on video calls together (we both worked from home) or their frequent travels together, because a) I trusted him completely, and b) I thought she was unattractive. She lived at a distance and they mostly worked together from a distance.
But then when I agreed to host her overnight – twice! – my skin crawled because they were inappropriately close and I felt like a 3rd wheel in my own home. Still, I stuffed my suspicions down…he would *never* be unfaithful!
My D Day #1 was on a Saturday when he claimed to have a “work meeting”, but not in our home office. In our bedroom!
I didn’t leave until after D Day #2 more than 1 year later. At first I honored his request to keep our separation and the reason for it from our organization leaders. After all, it was my livelihood, too, at stake. But I soon grew tired of his clear avoidance of all consequences and gave an ultimatum that he tell his boss or I would.
At that point HR got involved, and they met with him a couple of times and me only once. Imho HR totally dropped the ball, and soon let him resume his work as normal. They didn’t care about me, about the AP’s chump, about the clear abuse of power in the 3+ year affair. They only cared about keeping the scandal hidden to protect the organization’s reputation. “Nothing to see here, folks.”
The minute I could, I resigned from the toxic organization. Good riddance!
I could write so much about my experience with this, but just one part of the story will suffice. My FW was doing at least two other coworkers and I suspect another in her school district. Post divorce I met a friend of my brother who worked in the district office where my EX was employed as a Second Grade teacher. She relayed to me that FW was a Jonah there and was frequently reassigned because principals and other teachers didn’t want to work with her. But they kept renewing her contract because she was highly contentious and they knew it would result in an expensive lawsuit. We now have two adult sons and three grandchildren between us, but I stay as No Contact as possible. I remarried four years post D-Day to another chump who also had a work FW. We are loving our retirement in NorCal wine country, both FW FREE!
Over the years my ex had subordinate women who would look at him with adoring admiration but would not look me in the eye whenever I met them at social functions. I trusted him 100% so it is only in retrospect that I think something must have been going on.
Fast forward to more recent times and he started a new job working for a woman who was married with small children. She was in awe of him (as most people were) and the narcissist in him loved that he could teach her things about management she didnโt know. Frankly he talked about her like she was dumb and inexperiencedโhe loved being in a position of authority, and it must have been gratifying to have that even with his boss.
At home he was texting his boss nonstop and whenever I asked about it, he insisted he had to do whatever it took to succeed in his new job. He wouldnโt allow me to see what they were texting because they worked on classified projects. He โworkedโ on the companyโs days off, came home late, etc. I found out later that he would drop his phone off in the office and then drive off with her. That way if I ever checked his location it would show him at work. If I couldnโt reach him all day, he would say he was working in a SCIF (a location where cell phones are not allowed). His building was secure so there was no way for me to ever show up to see him. The only time he ever took me to the office was when his boss was out of town. To this day I have never met her. My kids did when they went to โTake Your Daughters To Work Day.โ I had no job because we moved so often for his career and my role was to support him and raise the kids. Yet he talked glowingly about his boss and how she was a great role model to the kids because she had a successful career. It was a slap in my face after all that I had sacrificed.
When I found out about the affair my ex said he couldnโt tell me about it because heโget thisโ couldnโt trust me! He thought I would report him and make him lose his job. I never did because it was not in my financial interest for him to get fired. A year or two after our divorce they both left that company at the same time. I suspect someone found out what they were up to. He blew up his career all on his own.
He owned a restaurant/bar. Perfect excuse to be out late. He loved to sleep with his employees. He even had a secret child with one.
OMG. FFS.
Sorry HH.
Hugs to you x
D-day happened about two months ago when I found texts (sexts) to OW on FW’s smart watch. He states they’d only been “communicating” for two weeks although he admitted to knowing her for much longer. In one of the texts he says “I miss our morning meets.” Upon confrontation, FW suddenly couldn’t remember if she lived in our state, where she worked, what she looked like, etc. And although they had planned a time and date to hook up he claims he was never going to actually go through with it. Poor sad sausage, I have been wrongly accusing him even though the texts (of which I have pictures) prove otherwise. I have managed to piece together that they worked in the same hospital sometime over the last three years and possibly in the same department. FW would go into work EXTRA early so that no one would bother him and he could “get his work done in peace.” Interestingly, I tested positive for HPV a full two years before D-day with absolutely no clear explanation for suddenly having an STI in a committed and monogamous relationship with FW (or so I thought). OW now works for a different hospital organization, the same one I now work for (lucky me) hence their texts “I miss you”, “I miss our morning meets.” FW has since removed the ability to see texts on his smart watch. Sad sausage deserves privacy. Most mornings I am still waking up in disbelief and yet the signs have been bright neon and flashing for longer than I have allowed myself to see. I am working on buying my one-way ticket out of Chumptown.
Dear NewlyChumped2026. They are both FWs! You on the otherhand are Mighty – you are coherent and forward looking a mere two months after D-Day. Mighty As.
Yup. Schmoopie was FWโs trainee. According to him, she finagled her way to being his trainee instead of someone elseโs. Who knows. She was married too, but was unhappy. She claimed her ex was abusive, but honestly I think she might have been the abusive one based on what I observed of her (and the few times I met him). Oh, thatโs right. I ALSO worked at the same place. How fun.
For the longest time, in spite of my gut feeling, I couldnโt believe he was having an affair because he was always with me. But it ended up being the old โI have to work lateโ ruse. I was so trusting I never compared the paychecks with the OT he claimed to be working.
He eventually left our company and got a new job (because he hated every job he ever had but he was sure the NEXT one would be better). AP followed him. He lied about that too, claiming she wasnโt working there (even though we all got the โcongratulate X on her new jobโ email at work), then that she wasnโt working but in a different building. When I pointed out that there was only one building, he said it was a different department. It wasnโt. I told him it was a terrible idea because if we wanted our marriage to work he just screwed that up (I realize now his desire to reconcile wasnโt genuine, he just wanted to keep me on the back burner), and that AP was a volatile person and could screw this up for him.
They also didnโt disclose their relationship to HR and pretended theyโd gotten together afterโฆHE hired her (he was on the panel when she interviewed). I never made a stink about it because I didnโt want him unemployed (meaning I would pay child support).
It indeed blew up in his face when AP dumped him, quit the job as a no call no show, and then later contacted his employer and said he abused her. He probably did.
They thought their love story was so special, written in the stars. But it was yet another banal workplace affair.
One of the many many affair partners was a coworker. I found out cheater ex got couples massages with her and acted like it was no big deal. I brought up that a couple’s massage at bare minimum means the two undressing in front of one another. Cheater ex gaslighted me by saying that’s not something to get upset over as coworkers change in front of one another all the time…
What TF job is that where coworkers change in front of one another all the time??
Never happened in all my years of working in different types of jobs in different industries.
In a way, they were all workplace affairs in that he was using the company we started just after we got married as his alibi.
He said he was on site day to day (my contributions were as an executive). He was letting me think he was there working all day and coming home at 5:30 every evening. In reality, he was taking off during the day to hook up with God knows who for who knows how long.
One good definition of rage is finding out that he was taking f**kbuddies along on business trips for the company I helped build while denying my efforts to go with. I never one time went on a single business trip for my own MF company. I have never felt rage like I felt when I found out he had been taking side pieces.
Me:
โHey, we (me and our daughter) should all go to XXX!โ
Him:
โNoooo, I donโt know what youโd do. Iโll be at the trade shows all day.โ
For those who are new, Iโd like to report that though itโs been a long walk over hot coals, I am getting the last and very loud laugh. Hang in there! Keep your side of the street clean. Start by removing the trash you were in a so-called relationship with. You will prevail.
โฅ๏ธ
Understand that rage.
FW narcopath did the same thing for years about work trips. Near verbatim what yours said. He was taking strip mall escorts or else sampling the local ones on the trip while I was left behind working and caring for the kids.
Ohh hand up high here lol.
Many strange I’ve got to work late blah, blah, blah…..
FW referred to his ho worker as a ‘distraction’ from the issues in our mirage (thanks VH). I wasn’t aware of any issues, I was aware that FW like other women. So after this little revelation I was DONE.
Newbies, don’t be me. 1st slam dunk get the hell out. It’s idyllic on the other side.
My ex was a registered nurse โ once we divorced, people started tripping all over themselves to tell me stories about him cheating with his coworkers, my co-workers, the spouses of co-workers, the spouses of patients, a patient, EMTs and paramedics, his boss and random other women he met at work. We worked in a large inner city teaching hospital. There were on-call room encounters, back of the ambulance encounters, late-night conference room hi-jinks and at least one episode on the helipad. The security guards were showing the helipad video around the ICU one night when I had just returned to work from a six month medical leave. Greyโs Anatomy had nothing on my ex-husband.
I’m so sorry not one of them could have taken you aside and told you. Especially as they could have evidence to back it up. They probably all told themselves you “must have known”… people who don’t understand.
My ex was a registered nurse โ once we divorced, people started tripping all over themselves to tell me stories about him cheating with his coworkers, my co-workers, the spouses of co-workers, the spouses of patients, a patient, EMTs and paramedics, his boss and random other women he met at work. We worked in a large inner city teaching hospital. There were on-call room encounters, back of the ambulance encounters, late-night conference room hi-jinks and at least one episode on the helipad. The security guards were showing the helipad video around the ICU one night when I had just returned to work from a six month medical leave. Greyโs Anatomy had nothing on my ex-husband.
๏ปฟSomehow I managed to work 45 years as an RN in the same hospitals and NOT cheat. Imagine that.
RN here! Was an RN my entire marriage (10+ years).. had a few coworkers aggressively pursue me and I NEVER gave them the time of day and was always very communicative with my ex wife about coworkers I felt were trying to cross a line. Then she joined the work force when I went back to grad school. It took her less than 1 year to hook up with a co worker (a cop, she was a police dispatcher)
Iโm also an RN and have never had a desire to join the hospital hookup club. But I totally believe all the shenanigans you describe. Itโs rampant. Iโm sad that no one said anything until you were divorced. I wonder if itโll be the same for me? FW works in a large teaching hospital as well and thatโs where I presume he found OW. I wonder who else knew?
Oh yes, my ex-wife was/is a police dispatcher. Naturally, she started hooking up with a cop. He was/is a senior officer (both in rank and in age.. being that he is 20 years older than her). Iโm sure they spent many a lunch break or โC7sโ, as they call them on the force, snuggled up in the front of his squad car.
As far as drama goes, there really was none for me. I didnโt try to blow up her work life or go after the guy at all. I left her the moment I found out and have been since no contact (as much as one can be while raising young ones). As for her Prince Charming, he is/was married but Iโm sure his wife found out as it was not a very well kept secret once I caught my ex.
As far as I know, the happy couple still works together. Although I couldnโt tell you if they are happy or even a couple anymore, last I heard my ex broke up with him on account that he didnโt follow through on the divorce he promised her.. but who knows.
It began in the most pathetically hackneyed of circumstances- a work conference. Most of the cheating was done during work hours (every lunch and all breaks for years on end) so there weren’t unexplained absences to tip me off.
No fallout whatsoever, everybody in the office knew and nobody said anything, though FW did mention after DDay that he and schmoopie got some dirty looks and snickers from time to time when they were particularly blatant about it. They did nothing to try to hide the fact that they spent every lunch and break together, so apparently sometimes when they were leaving together people would sneer at them, even people who didn’t know them personally, so there must have been gossip about it throughout the workplace. I certainly don’t blame people for sneering. The nerve of them for forcing everybody in that office to look at their degeneracy and dishonesty every single day. But of course cheaters don’t care how their behavior affects others. Possibly if I had known any of them well enough that they felt loyalty towards me I might have been told. I’d like to think so anyway. But more than likely they wouldn’t have told me regardless.
So brazen! Yikes.
My FW and his AP went the sneaking-around route. Guess it would’ve gotten too messy for a patient, colleagues, or friends to see them in the wild together.
On d-day, when FW decided the jig was up and he would confess, he had the gall to complain to me, his wife of 35 years, that during their 3-year affair, he and schmoopie were never able go out to a proper restaurant for fear of being caught. What the f**k! And he was telling me this for what reason? To feel sorry for them? Geezus. In that moment, I was practically curled up in a frickin’ fetal position. The insensitivity, cruelty, and cluelessness boggles the mind.
He was probably complaining to you because according to him, it was your fault. If you didn’t exist, he wouldn’t have had to sneak around. That’s how sick and depraved they are. Their cruelty is appalling, isn’t it. F**k that guy!
Mine had the gall to whine
to me about schmoopie losing interest in sex with him over the course of their long affair. I took pleasure in telling him he had become so bad in bed (due to porn addiction) that any woman would lose interest. I added that the size of his member was nothing to get excited about either. “Most women prefer more than 5 and a half inches fully erect. I’m one of the few who prefers smaller than average, so you’ve stupidly thrown something special away. Good luck finding another small d**k fancier.” I said, deadpan, but LMAO inside my head. That had to hurt and he fully deserved it. ๐
In Aug. 2021, the bomb was dropped out of no where. I felt weird a few weeks before. So much ‘working late’ and such. Turns out – after trying to make me think this was all because FW didn’t want to be married anymore. Kind of a pattern for him as he ditched his first wife ‘out of the blue’ also. Only I hadn’t known that until it happened to me. The kids heard him say he didn’t want to be married anymore which was awful. Fast forward to when the charade was up and when I figured out there was another woman and they had met on Zoom…. planning covid vaccine clinics…. and twu wuv was born. This was Feb. They met in person in May (it’s a small town… not sure what is true or not) and FW just started confiding in AP about how hard done by he was and he was leaving me. Except that I had NO idea. And how noble of her to support him as he leaves and destroy a wonderful happy family. Turns out she realized this this was the man of her dreams and she was going to leave her husband and break up her family too… you know… you can really tell that the person is the one as they sneak around after hours and during work with you. Sounds pretty solid! Anyhoo… he abused his power as deputy chief and I don’t think he worked that whole year just spending all day and night with her. There were no repercussions… only promotions. But it is cleat in his organization that the men at the top protect each other. People lack so much integrity and decency, it is baffling.
I’m amazed at the number of organizations that enable affairs by looking the other way or actually facilitating cheating by their employees.
My FW was a commercial airline pilot and the schmoopies I know about were in other cities. He wasn’t the only one of his colleagues to be cheating – many of them thought it was the ideal opportunity. Nice hotels and generous meal allowances all paid for by the company. I know that not all of them were cheating but a clichรฉ exists for a reason.
After D-Day #1 my GP insisted I be screened for STDs and I chose to go through the private system instead of the free public system (Canada). When I gave him the bill to claim through his insurance he told me I needn’t have bothered as he was tested every six months at his MOT physicals. It turns out the company doctor was also furnishing him with plenty of Viagra samples and condoms. Seems she had no concern for any of his partners.
This unfolded shortly before he retired so I thought he wouldn’t have an opportunity once he wasn’t flying. Of course it just meant that he had to be more careful. He thought I would never leave but you should have seen the look on his face the day I told him I wanted a divorce. It took way too long and way too much money but as of last Monday I’m FW free – hurray!!!
Congratulations to you and your new found freedom!
FW narcopath also thought I would never dare to leave him. I believed it too until I realized that I would die by his hand some day if I stayed.
That company doctor was probably an OW/FW herself, how despicable.
Itโs hard to say how many workplace affairs my husband had over the 25 years. I live in a small enough city and have an unusual enough last name that people still ask me if I am related to him. As time goes on and things still come out of the woodwork 7 years later, women tell me, โOh yeah I knew him at x company and he hit on my friendโ or โHe was creepy and terrible at his job.โ This has happened now at least 10 times. Meanwhile I thought he was smart and successful but having bad luck with bosses and kept changing jobs because of it.
Yes, the final schmoopie that caused our split was from work- from MY workplace where I had also hired FW (his career was flailing). Schmoops was on a client team of mine- she was young, weird and looked like a junkie. She made my staff uncomfortable and they complained about having to work with her. But my ex FW decided she was going to be his side piece and stay married to me. They had a dom/sub thing going and they liked the idea of her being a little plaything in between our marriage.
You canโt make this $h1t up.
No, you can’t! I love that he thought he would singlehandedly dictate new terms for your marriage. SMDH!
My ex-husband was the โproperty managerโ to a family run pharmacy (he also did house remodeling for the family). Their love affair blossomed in the pharmacy basement ๐ค and our 32 years of marriage was nothing compared to that love story ๐คฆ๐ผโโ๏ธ๐
The pharmacy basement…wow. Such a romantic setting! What an ambience!
Words fail me.
My FW and her idiot met in the back of the egg fridge at the grocery store they worked at. Such romance!
!!!
This happened at my workplace, but not to me directly. I worked at a shelter for battered women. My (married) boss was friends with one of her direct reports (also married) – family hangouts, vacations, the whole deal. Boss inherited money from family and started doing cocaine. She started an affair with her friend’s husband, and got him hooked as well. Husband left co-worker for the boss, and blew up our whole workplace, along with two families with little kids.
It also came out that the director of the agency knew this was going on all along. Knew about the drug use, knew boss was taking work time to be with her boyfriend. Because director was a social worker, without any management training, she felt she could “fix” it through counseling. She also strangely thought that just separating boss and co-worker would be a solution, as if all the rest of us hadn’t had our trust betrayed as well. That didn’t last long, shockingly.
When boss finally left, I stepped into a more supervisory role. Ironically, it took the director a long, long time to trust me in that role, even though I wasn’t involved it any of it. As a social worker myself, I understood it was really her own judgement she didn’t trust anymore. ๐
My FW worked at a mine in Alaska – letโs call it โGreen Moose.โ The workforce was mostly men, and they lived on campus for 2 weeks on, then fly home for 1 week off.
We werenโt from Alaska, so he enjoyed regaling me with tales about the culture – including the tendency of men there to take on a โGreen Moose Wife.โ This was your work wife that you hooked up with for 2 weeks, and you still got to go home to your real wife on your week off. I never asked, but it was heavily implied that everyone kept each otherโs secrets and that management turned a blind eye. I never asked, but I assume you feel like a big man on campus when you bed someone at work, since there are so few women there.
I never worried, assuming I was married to a solid dude. Besides, why tell me about it if youโre going to try to have a work wife? Also also, I never saw any woman working there who was attractive.
And I still havenโt. This trollop he eventually fell in love with is dead eyed and quite homely. According to our kids, heโs always bragging about how much she works out and how it keeps her looking 19, and I just have to agree to disagree.
When the affair came to light, I was friends with quite a few Green Moose wives – the real ones, of course, not the campus bicycles. And I came to learn that they all knew, because their honorable, non-cheating husbands had told them. That โthe wife is the last to knowโ cliche hurts just as much as any of the other cliches he engaged in. That betrayal lasts for a long time.
Itโs been 12 years since D-day, and Iโm remarried and have 2 kids with my new husband. When I look back, itโs like that person wasnโt even me. I feel about as disconnected and dispassionate as if it were just a really emotional series finale that I saw on TV.
I hear you on the “work wife” BS. A “work wife/husband” was a fairly common practice where my FW worked too. He actually tried to defend himself by saying schmoopie was his work wife and other people were doing it too. The thing is, a work wife/husband is not supposed to be somebody you have s*x with or a romantic relationship with. It is defined as a close but *platonic* colleague, usually (but not always) of the opposite s*x, basically your best friend at work. When I told him that he insisted I was wrong, so I showed him this; https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/work-wife
You should have seen his face.
FW has never been right about anything we disagreed about in the entire time I’ve known him, and I could always prove him wrong if he challenged me. No wonder he had to cheat. Obviously it’s my fault he’s stupid. ๐
-Edited because my posts have been automatically going to moderation for approval. So I put the asterisk in s*x since that’s the only word the prudish algorithm might object to. ๐คท
Youโre better than me, OHFFS. I submitted, then wondered why it was delayed posting. It finally went through, and I reread it, and realized I accidentally threw an F bomb in there. Only one, I believe, but still enough to catch the algorithmโs attention, I guess. Doh!๐คฆโโ๏ธ
This was how I was chumped! The list of infractions, sneaky details, evil plots and associated gaslighting, doubts about his sexual orientation, and trips to the psychiatrist to get me diagnosed with OCD , would be too long to recount. But the cherry on top is that he ended up marrying and having children with someone from the workplace , after I was forbidden to even apply for a job there.
The female AP being c.20 years junior also seems a familiar cliche. She was was the adoring mentee, eager to soak up his knowledge, and in a so-called unhappy marriage. Her husband thought they had a great marriage and family though. I didn’t feel ours was “great” in the sense of fun and connection, but I thought it was solid, just both hard working, with other work commitments, but with integrity, in a busy time of our lives. Two families fracked.
Youโre describing my ex wife lol.. hooked up with a coworker who was 20 years older than her, he was also married with grown children that were practically her ageโฆ she bet the house on him.. too bad she didnโt win the pick me dance.. he never left his wife. I guess I should be thanking him for taking my ex off my hands lol
Oh, and easy to escape the office to do “field work”…sometimes overnight.
I remember telling a girlfriend how he seemed lighter in mood, not so stressed since they had gone in the field for three nights and nailed that bit of fieldwork that he’d been stressed they wouldn’t get done in time.
I just had no idea they had nailed each other as well.
“Field work.” SMDH.
It’s disgusting that they feel lighter and less stressed after engaging in the betrayal of a so-called loved one. It shows that they are disordered. A normal, pyschologically healthy person would not feel better after doing something terrible.
Hoo-boy. This is definitely in my wheelhouse.
FW XW was her rich, married, former bossโs (now partnerโs) Administrative Assistant. Essentially, his secretary.๐คทโโ๏ธ Classic cliche, which I told her it was on D-day, to which she said, โWell, we donโt see it that way.โ Or something else that matched that high level of intelligence/wittiness.๐๐คข๐คฎ
I was in a major depression from burning out as a pharmacist, had been for about four years. I know I wasnโt fun to be around. I also had early on in this depression progressed into full on Type II diabetes (undiagnosed at the time). I had little to no energy when at home. What little I had all got wiped out at work. I was not very helpful at home at this time. Thatโs on me.
The FW XW was strangely excited about her future AP when he came into the chancellorship. This was about two years after I left pharmacy. We had just downsized from our nice, newer colonial in a good part of town to a 1932, somewhat fixer-upper house, that the FW XW forced me into buying with her so she could maintain her local politician status.
She acted giddy when she talked about him. I was mentally not at the top of my game, so I didnโt connect the dots, and also because, silly me, I thought my wife would not step out on me.๐ The naivety was strong in me. The utter trust, too. But, I did think the FW XW was acting a little too happy about him. Though she did relate stories of his stupidity regarding technology and his utter cheapness. I guess that was to throw me off? It worked!๐คฌ
This was interspersed with things like telling me the new chancellorโs wife of 40 years (who I later gathered he had been fucking around on for about 15- 20 years already), had tried to enlist the FW XW in helping her police her marriage by keeping her informed of where her scumbag wasband was at all times, since the FW XW pretty much controlled his calendar as his admin asst.
How sad is it that the APโs wife was trying to enlist the woman who would later stab her in the back by engaging in an affair with her wasband, then running off with him? I never reached out to her, and she never reached out to me, so we never compared notes. Missed opportunity for both of us, I guess.๐
I donโt know that all of their (the FW XW and her AP boss) traveling together to the various colleges was necessary all the time. Iโll never know for sure. But every few months it seemed to happen. So, there was plenty of opportunity for them to seduce each other, over time. At their regular work, as well as on these trips. The trips just got them out of sight and sound of their spouses, as well.
During 2016, which was when according to the FW XW, the affair started, right before Christmas (happy holidays, honey!๐คฌ), the FW XW freaked out after insisting we get new iPhones for all of our family, from a subpar cell service provider in our state, and that I had cautioned against.
The setup was no longer working so well in allowing her to keep in contact with her then boss and AP. I canโt say I was sympathetic. I told her to tell him to authorize a work cell phone, like he did for all the other important staff. Ha ha.๐ก The idiot never did, I believe. Stupidly cheap to the end.
According to the FW XWโs account on D-day, she lied when she said she had to work extra on Saturdays to finish up three major projects she was responsible for. This was while I was also working, so our kids were on their own, with my youngest, my son, doing I donโt know what.
Because, thatโs what a good mother does, right? Abandons her kids to watch over each other, or ships them off to a friendโs house, or just leaves them alone for a few hours (work for her was 40 minutes away one-way). I, unfortunately, have no idea which was used for her, supposedly, four sex romps with her scummy AP/boss at the time, at his house!
I donโt know where his wife was while they supposedly did this, and I donโt even know if itโs true, because itโs coming from the FW XW. And, there is the story about the FW XW and her AP/boss from a friend of the FW XWโs (Switzerland friend) meeting them as a surprise much closer to our home, but not that close (in a supermarket that was slightly out of the way of our area), that makes me doubt the FW XWโs veracity (shocking, I know ๐).
It really hit home to me how perfect it is for a workplace affair to go unnoticed after D-day. Your FW is just working, or working extra, right? Totally understandable. Laudable, if you actually think theyโre working extra to get the job done, support the family, etc. You know, like many of us were trying to do?๐คฌ
All in all, a total effing mess created by the FW XW and her boss, now partner. But then, we all knew that would be the case, didnโt we?๐๐
Reading many of these other work affairs from my fellow chumps made me both sad and glad, Iโm afraid. Sad that so many other fellow chumps experienced this shiteshow, but slightly glad I wasnโt alone in this awful scenario by my cheater FW XW.
Wishing all my fellow chumps a better weekend, now that weโre FW free. And I donโt know about everyone else, but I am still amazed how cool the weather continues to be, this late in May.๐คทโโ๏ธ๐ซค I think weโre going to pay badly for it, with higher temperatures in the summer months.
Husband had a limerence for a female co-PhD-worker. It started before I got pregnant with my third son (daughters were 4 and 2 yo), he thought getting me pregnant would โhelp him outโ, DDay when I was 4 months pregnant after the relief of a diagnosis of all-ok after BTest gave 1over20 chance of Down syndrome.
Allegedly not physical, he helped her ohhh so much dealing with difficulties of PhD. She helped him sooo much getting his kibbles and feeling alive and having butterflies in the stomach since he never had them with me. Apparently, he gets butterflies only for OW who are not willing or not able to provide any emotional connection as they are more โf**kableโ than a good friend-turned-partner. So, coffee breaks, a couple of beers out of office hours, soooo much charming of research problems.
I got suicidal, but he thought โI would get over itโ and never took a step to stop with cake. Poor colleague โshe would get hurtโ if he broke the friendship. He broke instead the only condition I put (obviously I took the blame for not being attractive enough), transparency: after she left (PhD ended) he still contacted her via FB. I was almost 8 months pregnant and unable to fly away to my FOO (btw. My mum just told me to stow it, for the kids sake). And I was so furious and humiliated.
The first person he wrote about the birth of our son, besides his family, was OW. After she had left. After there would be no chance of meeting her again. This is how low he/I got.
I quite quit the marriage.
He changed career path, we moved to the countryside in a different country, we unschooled kids, his behavior got much less self-centered (individual therapy helped him). Lots of shared family projects – No more work buddies, he works from home now. Iโm still wobbly but I told myself I would get kids out of the house and then see. I known, Iโm a big silly old stubborn masochistic Chump. But in 12 years he worked a lot on himself even though Iโm not sure still he grasps the fact heโs permanently damaged me.
I’m sorry, but, he’s still cheating. Just hiding it better. They don’t change.
I stayed after DDay #1, we took jobs involving very little travel instead. I thought as you do we were over the difficult hump in the marriage.
Nearly 30 years later I discovered that FW simply got more creative and deeper underground with the cheating. We also had a Down syndrome scare. FW eventually stole 7 figure sum in the course of long secret double life. He thought about a fatal accident for me (I’ll never know the extent of his plan).
You’re not silly and masochistic, you just don’t trust that he sucks. He works from home, which limits his opportunity to cheat. That doesn’t mean he’s a changed man. If he doesn’t grasp that he’s damaged you, there’s proof he hasn’t really changed inside, he’s just putting on a family man act. For now. Why spend years being miserable while you wait for the kids to grow up? What benefit is there to them of having an unhappy mother who settled for less than she deserved? Remember that you are their model for what women should be and they are going to think it’s normal for women to low expectations for relationships and live with men who fundamentally don’t understand or genuinely care about them. So please line up those duckies. There’s no harm in being prepared to leave. Even if you decide not to right now, it makes sense to be ready for a time when you have to.
Don’t be so down on yourself. We’ve all been there and most of us smoked the hopium at some point. Best of luck to you.
Thanks OHFFS,
I am indeed quite troubled at the moment, and thinking that getting prepared for leaving might be a good strategy regardless. In a way I regret not having left then, now heโs trying to give me elements to see how he has changed and as an optimistic person I canโt deny anyone the possibility to become a better selfโฆ itโs just that I have troubles even trusting the signs of change. Trust does not regrowโฆ thatโs what is bothering me the most at the moment.
Get ready for the divorce and initiate it yourself when you’re ready. Don’t wait for him to do it. There’s no telling how many marital assets he’s dissipating and how much money he’s hiding while you wait for him to change. Spoiler: He won’t.
And please, please get tested for STIs. If you don’t want to go through your insurance, there are free or low cost clinics that will do it.
Personality disorders don’t get better, ever, and many FW are narcissistic personality disordered. It’s permanent.
Infidelity abuse isn’t about your trust issues or communication style or sexual allure or any of those red herrings the RIC/morons throw out so chumps scramble to fix, to understand, to desperately save. It’s in our nature. That’s what made us such useful spouse appliances.
It’s all excruciatingly clear when you scrutinize FW instead of yourself, and realize that you married a manipulator abuser. Wasted years, decades of your life being the sucker at the poker table. The FW, the affair partners, enablers have all been playing you and far better at fakery than you.
How to win this rigged game?
Not by studying better poker strategies or doubling down bets or scrutinizing the “tells” of your opponents (aka marriage policing).
You get up, and walk AWAY from the table and LEAVE.
First time posting. Mr. JudasMcFW and I are both teachers; my position is itinerant to a few schools in the school system and early in the school year ’23-’24, his high school was unexpectedly added to my list of schools to serve. FW claimed about a month later that “money was tight” (discovered that this was a lie…long story) and he took part-time evening work at a local big box chain hardware store.
I didn’t know it at the time, but JudasMcFW was already in a secret relationship with one of the single-mom lunch ladies (her story goes, she was recently divorced due to some DV and she was “my friend”–she claimed–and my family was “helping her out”). Spring 2024, FW asked to “take a break” from our marriage so he can “experience others”! He then instituted an in-home separation. And FW still expected friendship, and all the privileges of a wife. I was in some sort of fog, and a serious state of shock.
Of course, it was a full year before I learned about this when I went to the cafeteria one day to get a salad because I forgot to pack a lunch. The cashier saw my name badge and asked if I was FW’s sister; I replied, No, I’m his wife. Cashier said “He doesn’t have a wife. He has a girlfriend.” Um, well, we’ve been married 37 years, so….”
The Cashier then blurted out the whole tale–names, his coming from OW’s apartment (@ 3 minutes from the school) many mornings, his lurking in the cafeteria during his planning period…
Then, friends and acquaintances from the high school marching band (where I’d volunteered for over a decade for our 3 kids) began messaging me, asking what’s going on?, Why is FW hanging out and volunteering with OW at all these marching band events? OW had two kids in the band as well.
Not sure what happened but apparently OW lost that cafeteria job and got job, with help of FW, at big box hardware store….
Did he cross lines dating a coworker and parent of kids at the school? Yes. Did some things occur that violate school board policy and “moral turpitude” rules in the contract with the school board? Yes.
Have students witnessed this and observed him flaunting AP at school events? Yes. Has this effected the work environment? Yes.
There are teachers and students who are apparently “creeped out” by his 60 year old FW self. He’s destroying his program at the school that he’s worked 27 years building and wrecking his reputation in the school and community.
Have there been workplace consequences? Other than he’s not permitted near me at work, no. It’s apparently not “bad enough” for him to lose his job, although I have seen good female teachers lose their teaching position over much less.
As someone said above, welcome to the club that no one wanted to be a part of… sorry you are here but at least you found CL and CN. Your story is just hideous. What a horrible horrible ordeal. So sorry.
Me and my ex are both doctors. We opened up a clinic together. He had an affair with our nurse.
Oh mannnn… double betrayal and so much work, trust, snd relationships destroyed and lost. Heartbreaking. So sorry.
Oh mannnn… double betrayal and so much work, trust, snd relationships destroyed and lost. Heartbreaking. So sorry.