Some folks lie a lot, and then they make those lies someones else’s truth.
In her essay, “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” Adrienne Rich writes:
“Women have been driven mad, gaslighted for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates male experience. Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other. When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
Dear friends: Here is the truth.
F*ckwit men will mind f*ck you, and some women will suck the dick of those f*ckwit committed partnered men. The hypocrisy is not your problem. Cleave unto YOUR truth and don’t waiver. I see you.
People have a lot to say about infidelity and betrayal. As it turns out, I have a lot to say too. Let me start by confirming to everyone who is wondering if the pain is actually as bad as others describe it. It is. The sloppy rusty razor blade cuts to your heart (and ego) are no joke. Betrayal is disorienting and manic untethering. It is trauma and real shit.
The best advice I received while walking my way through the darkness was in a book called “Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life” by Tracy Shorn. It is a girlfriend’s guide to translating the bullshit, and she tells the cold hard truth about what it means to be a Chump — one who has been gas lit, lied to and manipulated by their partner.
So, here I am, a Chump. However, I didn’t leave a cheater. I was too chumpy for that. I was left by one cold turkey and here is a chapter in my story.
Coming to grips with a partner’s sexual infidelity is eye opening. It is also heartbreaking. It’s impossible not to be self-deprecating and full of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment in the face of such a reality.
I thought I was in a healthy committed relationship. I had boundaries. I was thoughtful. I was honest. I assessed the emotional climate along the way. I moved slowly. I shared my needs, and I listened to his. I adjusted and compromised based on the partnership.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter. The man who I trusted with all of me walked away one morning after coffee on a Sunday and never came back. He left me for a woman twenty years younger whom he had been with for months. Turns out I knew her. She met me, and my children and watched my dog, and oh, apparently was also f*cking my partner. A tale as old as time.
As horrible it was, I learned a few things.
While this is not my quote, this is a universal truth. “The same red flags you ignore in the beginning will be the same reason it all ends.”
I read it once in the middle of my divorce and apparently my short-term memory is crap because guess what? Since I didn’t learn it the first time, the universe created another opportunity for me. Damn it. I am putting that one on a laminated post-it notes — maybe even a tattoo on that soft spot where a woman’s ovaries sit. Here is what I learned.
Red Flag Number One. Some folks are really good about rewriting their stories.
If a man tells you a very believable, victim, injured story about why he left his biological family, there is a good chance it is a work of fiction and they might do the same thing to you. I heard a story like that, and I thought surely, there must be something else. I have been through a divorce and endings are not simple. Guess what? For some folks, it is that simple, and there really was nothing more to that story because they will do the same thing to you and your boys. While the woman and children might be different, the story is the same. Leaving is what you do. Damn, good story tellers.
If I am honest with myself, I did not completely trust that a man who could walk away from his own children wouldn’t walk away from mine. I was right, and it turns out I didn’t need an oracle card for that one. The man who told me the story about walking away from his own family did the same thing to mine. There was one difference. He drove down the driveway, and my boys weren’t here when he did it.
I know there are exceptions, but Chump girl, you’re probably not it. This one hits the mama heart hard. Believe the story the first time.
Red Flag Number Two. Some folks are really good at gaslighting and deflecting your experience.
When there is a photograph of questionable pseudo-sexual content on the man’s phone and you never received it, it was meant for someone else. This one is embarrassing really because I haven’t ever received a picture of a male genitalia before so I was completely off my game when I saw it. For the record, I think a picture of your dick is pretty damn pathetic, so there is that. However, if the man tells you it was intended for you, and he changed his mind about sending it, trust your gut even when it whispers.
As I slowly unpacked the layers of deceit and manipulation, I figured out that the man had been lying to me for months about his relationship with the intended recipient of the genitalia picture. There was actually a lot of this — lie after lie and manipulation after manipulation. I was taken for a ride, and while I pushed my intuition away more than once and asked about her on more than one occasion, I thank the universe that my own intuition saved me from even more humiliation as time passed. He went out the back door and left a broad trail of clues for me to play detective, embarking on a humiliating month of coming to my own conclusions. It felt like amputation without anesthetic.
Chump girl this one hurts. If you feel they like they are lying to you, they probably are. Trust your gut the first time.
Red Flag Number Three. Some folks are really good at projecting their own securities onto you and blame shifting so you actually think you did something wrong.
After he drove away, the man wouldn’t take my calls. He did, however, reach out for four more weeks with texts that kept me hooked and feeding his ego. After three weeks, he said he loved me. He was open to repair, and he wanted to talk. I still believed that we could fix things, and my hopeful unicorn heart was running the show. I thought maybe we could re-enter at the exit point. At the time, it felt like a relatively clean wound. There was so much I didn’t know. We talked.
Chump girl. In my defense, after that conversation, I knew he wasn’t telling me the truth. What I didn’t feel in my bones on Sunday after breakfast, I felt the minute I laid eyes on him three weeks later.
There was no connection to me at all. There was a shell of a person blame shifting and describing how he had been the victim. He said my boys didn’t like him, he wasn’t respected, I wouldn’t let him move in soon enough, I stayed connected with my male friends, and I never changed my Facebook relationship status. What? I don’t even think I know how the status part works. For real, I don’t know how it works. It was my understanding that tagging you in family/couple photos sort of signaled to the social media world that you were, in fact, in a committed relationship. I don’t take this claim lightly. I double checked my hypothesis with several sources.
I am a grown woman with two children. Seriously. In what universe did I not get that men who are cheating often project their infidelity onto you? Their reality says more about them than it does you. Believe them when they show you who are the first time. Chump.
With a cargo hold of support and friends with clarity around me, I spent weeks rocking in my hallway muttering affirmations to myself while I processed the betrayal, abandonment, and withdrawal. Not surprising, he made those lies someone else’s truth and moved in with her instead. While he was spackling over the deceit of his wandering troublesome glitter dick, I turned to therapy and recovery workbooks trying to make sense of the disorientation.
This morning I rocked back and forth crying in my shower so my boys wouldn’t hear me because I felt like such a sucker fool. I am the girl who misses getting hit by train and stands on the shoulder of the tracks crying because she can’t believe she is still standing and alive. I cry because holy shit, that was a close one. I dodged a bullet or a train or a f*cking restraining order.
I still feel like a fool.
However, I am safe now. We are safe now. I burn sage and light candles and play native American flute music 24/7. My boys and I all climb into my king-sized bed and watch movies on the brand new 65-inch television we bought at Costco on Friday.
It’s a real thing. You think you found the love of your life and turns out he is a legit f*ck wit. He has the same shallow playbook of charming vulnerable recently divorced women, quickly setting his sights on moving in with them, posting pictures on social media all coupled up validating his ego. It might be funny if it wasn’t true.
If you look closely, you would see her face on a mountain bike cruising down a trail behind him, her face in front of the camper loaded up with gear, her face on a stand-up paddle board in a mountain lake, and her glass in the pictures of craft beer. The woman is different and the pictures are the same. They are exactly the same. The words are the same. I know there are exceptions, but I am pretty sure the behavior is the same. All of it. People don’t have character transplants. Warning Chump.
It is tough to accept that your face was one of the many Chumps who believed his charming ways — even wanted him around forever.
I am saying this to myself and to anyone else who might need to hear it from someone else — “the same red flags you ignore in the beginning will be the same reason it all ends.” The thing is Chump to Chump — let’s tell the truth and do the work and make those red flags deal breakers. Being lied to cuts deep. Let’s share our stories because “when a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.” I am here and I am listening, and I will dynamite the space it takes to make room for all the truth around me. Go.
