Objective reality matters. Do you really want a friend that insists you buy into her lies? Do you like who you are in that relationship?

I had the worst time in my life when I felt thrown on the trash heap. I was worthless and I was stupid. The worst part of it was I felt so stupid. And I’d always been proud of my intellect. Fast forward to the biggest con of my life and I felt stupid, how embarassing! How can this have happened to me? How was I so blind? Cheaters often display emotion when their affairs are discovered, but if you pay attention, it’s usually sympathy for themselves—not the pain they inflicted on you. What consequences are you going to impose on them? Whatever will people think? How will they live without their affair partner? Who did you tell? What do you know? Can’t you see how very difficult this is on them? Your pain is very upsetting.” Practice meh. The cruelest thing you can do to cheaters is pay no attention to them. Their little narcissist souls die every time a kibble is withheld. When you engage in drama, you’re filling the trough with ego kibbles. If you show them your pain, the only thing that registers with them is that they matter. They feel central! Pretty! Fought over! When you practice indifference, however, it unnerves them. They usually try to up their kibble game with “remorse,” or more in-your-face antics to get a rise out of you. (Feed me! Feed me!) Do not give in. Practice meh.” So, according to him, women can stop earning college degrees and starting businesses and running for high office. If they want equality, or to take over the world for that matter, all they need to do is cat-call the old white farts currently in charge and it will all just be . . . handed over. Because, you know, we’re old. And we’re flattered.A few years ago, after some really rotten behaviour on the ex’s part, it became obvious to me that he would make me, his supposedly beloved mother, and worst of all for me, his kids, suffer pretty much anything, rather than face any unpleasant feelings, rather than allow any touch of besmearing to his image, rather than taking responsibility for any of his own behaviour. Oh he’s definitely projecting. He wants everyone to think that I’m the bad person so he can get away with it looking like he just has another “crazy” ex. And that was that. I passionlessly looked at the mediator and said “See what I have had to deal with?”

I did think I hit ‘reply’. If it didn’t show up as a reply to your comment that was an honest mistake. It is difficult to navigate the new sit with an iPhone. I needed “content note” at the beginning of your post to warn me of your impressive display of arrogance. You may decide you want no longer to be a bad person, and work toward changing that….in your future life. (Not with me!) But, if you betrayed your partner and your kids and your community and everyone who loved and trusted you by constructing a double life of deceit and betrayal, yeah, I think that qualifies for a “bad person award”–being in the Boston area, I guess that would be a “Whitey” (as in Bulger).I am a fellow chump who 4 years ago was betrayed, gaslighted, emotionally abused, on and on, by my partner of 8 years. He cheated with a married coworker and I was devastated, traumatized and Chump Nation was my savior. Amazing, he’s still looking for kibbles from you! He wants that absolution, for you to say that he really is a good person who just did one little bad thing, and regrets it so much, why, that must make him an even BETTER person! Yeah this is why you gotta be with someone you can trust (is that possible after going through this stuff?). Because we can’t control or police their behavior all the time, even if we work with them all day! Nor should we have to!