The Chump Lady Survival Guide to Infidelity: How to Regain Your Sanity After You've Been Cheated On

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Katie Pig, your posts are *on fire* today, and I agree with every word you’ve said, in every one. I’m so sorry you went through such hell. Hugs. ???? If you're here, it's because you are surviving, or have survived, infidelity in a relationship that you thought was life-long. This is a support sub, a safe place to ask for advice and guidance. Regardless of your decision to stay in your relationship or to go, we are here to support you on your path to recovery. Geeezzz… if they could do all of those necessary steps towards forgiveness, (and its a great list!) they wouldn’t have cheated in the first place. They would’ve understood that WHEN we would find out that we would be absolutely devastated and traumatized to the nth degree… at least that’s what I thought, every time I felt an attraction to another man. all I could see in my mind, was the look of horror on my dear husband’s face and I COULD NOT DO THAT TO HIM! (this was before D-day #1 when afterwards, everything ran amok) In fact funny thing is when fw talked to our preacher after Dday, he said he hoped to help whore with her youngest son. Preacher told fw that it wouldn’t work because at least half, and likely more of what make our son so successful would be out of the picture. Also there was not way I was going to subject any of my son’s upbringing to a whore who had already raised three miscreants on her own.

Is that a cheater thing or a guy thing? I’ve always been terrified of STD, but xH never seemed to care.In the end, it was my husband who killed himself, after OW left him. I never wished him ill, nor did I ever suggest to him that my life would be easier without him. Because I’m a decent human being. He’d been unspeakably cruel to me, abusive, vicious, and horrible. And I still would have gone to help him if he’d told me what he meant to do. Because I have empathy. I have a heart. I still feel guilty sometimes, because my life IS easier now. But I wouldn’t have asked for this life at the cost of someone else’s. He gave away his family because he is “An old man flattered by the attentions of a beautiful young woman?” Wow. Makes us old men sound really stupid and powerless. That was really sweet! We all need to accept ourselves, and be only with the ones who accept us too. I find you a little hysterical. Other people are other people, you don’t get to micromanage how they speak.

I’m always amazed at how people think that they are special to a cheater, even knowing what the cheater has done. Nobody is really a “friend” of a cheater. People are of use to them, and that is all. OFNF, what makes you think for a second that this cheater values you? She didn’t value the man who swore to love her for all time. She found him useful. Now that he is dead, he is even more useful, because she can keep all his stuff and tell lies about him that he isn’t here to confront. The reason you didn’t tell the chump about her is because you really know this is true. She would have tossed you aside, and you would have become Enemy #1 the moment you stopped supporting her and keeping her secrets. Thank you, CL – once again you have succinctly stated what I’ve been struggling to put into words. When my STBX was stumbling around reconciliation, I kept saying to him, “You can’t just say you’re sorry like I’m someone you bumped into on a bus,” and, “I need to see remorse — regret and remorse are two different things.” All I got was the classic, “Well, I said I was sorry. I don’t know what more you want from me.”

Patience. Real remorse understands that repairing a relationship after infidelity is a long haul with dubious prospects. GINR wants to you to “get over it” already because hey, it said it was sorry. The journalistic guidelines for reporting of death by suicide (at least in UK) advise that method of death is not disclosed, because there is a lot of research about how reporting of method makes imitation more likely. Details here: https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/media-guidelines/media-guidelines-reporting-suicide/

Be an enigma. Don’t show them your vulnerability. Don’t try to plead or reason with them, or tell them you care. That’s power to a cheater. I know you don’t see it that way, but you’re not empathy- and character-deficient the way they are. This person has just demonstrated to you in the most intimate and humiliating way how little respect they have for your feelings. So it stands to reason that they cannot be trusted with more of your feelings.” Infidelity is the theft of your reality. You can’t cheat on someone without gaslighting them. It’s an insidious, intimate form of abuse. One that drove S to blow his brains out. L denied S’s reality. This man who was so devoted to her, she would not treat ethically. He said she got tested for STDs every six months. He did not appear to think that was odd, that it could mean she had many sexual partners. He also failed to see why this didn’t sway me from insisting that he get tested. “Don’t worry” was his motto.Chump Nation saved you and you tried to be supportive of a friend who was cheating on her husband?! Whom you claim to have loved?!!

And to the mealy mouthed snowflake twats wittering about language, and being ‘sensitive’, language should be *powerful and descriptive* otherwise it’s just meaningless anodyne waffle.As the daughter of a father who killed himself by shooting himself in the head I also disagree that CL should change the wording to “died by suicide.” The writer seems to be getting something out of being close to this tragic situation. Maybe she is replaying her own trauma of being left be buddying up with the cheater this time, hoping to replay this situation and be the powerful one. Only this story took a tragic end and S died, while she covertly participated in the abuse by being L’s emotional support. Enabler may be a better term. Leaving that aside, adding a content warning at the start of the post so people can take care when reading is a good idea. Content notes are not censorship, they’re just warnings: if you add them, people can be advised that there’s heavy stuff in the letter, and can make an informed choice whether to engage, or not, or how or when.