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DawnElaine – ditto what everyone else said. I’m glad you posted b/c that is exactly what this site is for. We may give you some tough love (yes, I think you are a chump, just like the rest of us are chumps at some point in time. If you don’t already, read Chump Lady…she is fabulous!) but we get it like no one else can. My h. and I had a good marriage, a strong friendship and rarely fought. Like Annie’s husband, probably the worst thing was his detachment but it was a slow process that I only now fully see in hindsight. I think it can be harder to leave those types of situations b/c so many of our memories are good ones. We have to morn the loss of the marriage we thought we had. We think we can accept what they have done b/c we don’t want to lose the happy/stable life we built.
I find it helps me not to see him as “evil” but just fucked-up and it makes me sad for him but it also makes me angry that he could do this to me & our daughters. But, it really comes down to making a choice. Do you choose to accept his words (that, IMO, aren’t backed up by any concerete action. He’s living in his office? Boo-fucking-hoo), which is essentially giving him permission to continue his actions, once this current “crisis” is over? B/c as another sister said, they will slip up. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Personally, I cannot envision a life of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I did that for 10 years after the first discoveries – buried deep in my mind but it was always there so when last summer, I started to get a sense that something was “off” again, I knew that is was, I just needed to find evidence to support that. Anyway, I don’t want to invest more of my time in a known liar and someone who does not have my or my girls’ best interests at heart. I choose ME.
If only I had one, just one, day without a lie in exchange for all the (cheap, I found out) jewelry my SJ bought for me. Or one complete week he didn’t seek out other women for sex, I’d exchange for all the trips we took.
Well, not now I wouldn’t. I’d puke if he touched me.
Just saying, he took it upon himself to redefine marriage. He played the part of adoring husband to an embarrassing level of theatrics. But when I wasn’t around, that’s when he was his real self. Seven active dating profiles saying he was divorced. 40+ user names on hook-up sites. He admitted to sending out at least 70 emails to each site a day, too. Just hoping someone would bite. Mostly while I was asleep less than 15 feet away. This in addition to keeping his whores on call.
But people said we were the most romantic couple ever.
Right. When it came down to it, he told the world on national TV he “was only keeping his options open”. Romantic, huh?
I kid you not, I had to look at who wrote the post because it sounded like something I wrote about my H. My H brings me breakfast in bed, grocery shops, massages me if I want, lets me spend money and never says a word. My mom who doesn’t know what he has done thinks he is a saint because he treats me so well..to my face. Sadly your H is like all of ours..they are all on the SA spectrum, however what they like and how they treat their spouses varies from one to the other, but the core problem is the same. I told my H I wanted a divorce a week ago and he told me he loved me about 50X this morning. Posting on here helps me when I am in the swamp of his “love”. They have a way about themselves that pulls at our heart. They know we stay cause we feel sorry for them or that they are manipulating us and they don’t care as long as they don’t hurt. Just make sure if you stay/take him back that you do so with your eyes wide open. Xo
I found out the other day that he has a profile on Match.com. He’s 63 but says he’s 57. His status is divorced but we’re separated. I told him I knew he was on the site and he denied it. So I created a profile and sent him a wink. Couldn’t talk his way out that one! Meanwhile, he calls me on the phone crying every day that he can’t stand his life without me and wants to come home. I asked him why in the world are you dating? His answer is he doesn’t want to be alone.
Yep…the old “nice guy routine”…its a killer and describes so many of them to the letter? Not being present describes so many of them too. Is like they are physically there and acting out the role of “knight” but they are seem detached from the performance they are giving…I suppose with all those other plans constantly swirling in their heads. I truly question if any of these guys are actually “real”?? I really wonder if they are just outer shells going through the motions or if a human being is inside there somewhere? Perhaps it is the absence of an emotional life that makes them seem so 1 dimensional and flat. They are like mimics. they do the right things, they say the right things but somehow there isn’t any depth or emotional connection to most of what they do or say UNLESS they are dramatically crying about consequences? They can give such a convincing portrait of a caring man or an upset man….and then they can simply turn over and go right to sleep and snore like a baby. There is something really shallow and empty about any of their emotional “states”, perhaps with the exception of anger. They can do anger well…whether they do it loudly or passively. Something is missing in them. Its creepy once you recognize it for what it is. karen x
That’s so true, Karen. The role playing. The switches are the most surreal, if you are paying attention. SJ was wailing like a banshee when I put the separation agreement in front of him because it “made it seem so real”, but within 10 minutes he was hyena laughing in the car, retelling a movie he’d watched the night before, as he drove me to the airport, with those exact papers in his hand. As we neared his bank, I told him to stop in and have them notarized, and he did it, like he was picking up drycleaning or something. When he was declaring they would practically be his one way ticket to hell just minutes before.
It’s psycho movie material. But you can use it to your advantage if you just don’t trip their internal ‘survival mode’ alarms. Maybe it was just mine, but he compartmentalized so well, something that he was angry about, or had feared, could be reintroduced as benign in a different setting and suddenly it was just peachy keen with him. I don’t regret learning or using that at all.
my husband was really nice for the first 10 years…. everyone raves at how nice he is. sorry dawne, but i do think he is like the others.
Love letters, flowers for no reason (now I know the reason) foot massages. These guys make me so mad. How will I ever tell a real good guy when these jerks were so convincingly good guys? Raise your hand if you married “the guy who would never cheat” Mine even stayed overnight on the hospital chairs when I had my c sections. Sadly I now know that it was because by having his mom come and stay with the baby at home he was free to “just go get some air” now and then. (air=BJ) Every memory I have is tinged with the knowledge of what was really going on.
Hands up. My h proclaimed himself “True Blue” the day I met him. I should have known a line that cheesy couldn’t be real. But it was so nerdy, like him, that I thought it was actually kind of cute.
Both hands up here too.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the dishonesty and the emotional detachment with my sah. I am realizing that the deeper he got into his secret, the greater the lies and deception, and the quieter and more detached he had to became. I think they have to be emotionless to keep their deception from coming to light. They detach so they don’t slip up. Mine is silent every time “we” (i) have a fight. He says nothing. I believe he does this so he doesn’t let anything slip. Other wise he is a gem of a guy. He was never mean, never said disparaging things to me, always wanted to hug, kiss and snuggle – just no sex (since the affair). He now says that is because of his shame and guilt. Who knows. He did not show the monster side until I said “no more.” Once he could really see himself reflected in my eyes, the defenses went up and he was like a cornered animal. Minwalla helped him with that the most.My hands are up too — mine was was the poster child for niceness, selflessness, and being a “good guy”. I was first attracted to him because he coached kids basketball and he was so much more clean cut than my previous boyfriend. I never in my wildest imagination or nightmares thought he would cheat. Never. Even if someone had offered me a million dollars, I wouldn’t have believed it.
As we moved in together, I once casually asked him if he ever looks at porn, he said “Nah babe, I don’t have a need to” — I believed him and thought he was in a league above all the guys who do use porn.
If we watched a movie together on the couch and my feet were cold, I’d say “Honey, can you please be my human socks?” He would cup my feet with his hands for the entire movie. Always gave me massages, always wanted to hug and kiss me, did the housework, love letters, kind, gentle, caring, made me feel I was his priority and so loved, and I thought he was perfectly happy with me.
There were of course red flags, but at the time I didn’t see them, and the ones I did see I didn’t know what they meant. The strong “good guy” facade profoundly dominated and wiped away any moment of doubt.
Never was mean or overtly abusive to me throughout our relationship, that only started after D-day. He treated me so well on the surface before then — I really did feel and believe he was my knight. That’s why it’s been so hard. The massive sudden shift from one extreme to the complete opposite extreme. Both the reality of who he truly really is, and the extreme change in the way he has treated me.
Trish, I agree with “I am realizing that the deeper he got into his secret, the greater the lies and deception, and the quieter and more detached he had to became.” My SA was very attached to me before the real flesh cheating started, and I’m not just saying that — he really was emotionally attached. The detachment began, however, once the strippers were in his life. All his energy went towards decieving, manipulating, and hiding things from me — as if I became the secret enemy.
Hands up. And how many women over the years have said to me, “Oh, it must be so wonderful to be married to him!”
“I became the secret enemy”
That hit like a ton of bricks. Because, I learned the whole time from day one when he asked me to be “exclusive”, I was the enemy in SJ’s head. Even when he was professing love and devotion and fooling the entire world, he was planning (and practicing) the escape with another woman, or three or four, because “she will leave me when she knows the truth”.
Let’s see, to a normal person that would be easily remedied
: Change the damn truth, Freako, stop calling and seeing whores!!! But no, I couldn’t be trusted because the truth was going to leak out one day, then, I was going to leave. The other side of this, in a normal person’s consideration is: She’s got two children, and has just dug herself out of a literal hell from leaving their father and gotten her life and theirs on an even, reasonably comfortable stable foundation. Why marry her and put her in a sure to explode situation?He’s not normal, obviously, so those two things didn’t register in his head. Just that I couldn’t be trusted because I would leave when I knew the truth. Hell yes, I’m leaving now that I know about his lies, and whores, and outrageous financial fiascoes. Who exactly is going to blame me? SJ. And anyone that ‘knows’ me through him. I wonder how anyone could ‘know’ anything about or through him, he’s a hall of mirrors in psycho land.
I was always the “secret enemy” and my leaving him proved him right in that, completely, in his head. And so on he goes to the next “secret enemy” now that my double agent status has been revealed.
KraKra land for sure.
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