Don't be proud of being a fucking bitch

The BBQ Pit
261

A small part? She could barely be less subtle than if she advertised on a highway billboard with big flaming letters. Clearly, she’s waiting (impatiently) for her husband to figure it out so he can have it out with her, thus taking the responsibility for the results out of her hands, and in her eyes, making him the bad guy for not understanding her. The most irritating thing about this is what a cliche it is; classic self-victimizing behavior with a narcissitic bent. Heck, she’s not even making a sincere effort to justify her behavior beyond an obsession with her own happiness; clearly, she wants neither anomyminity or sympathy.

Huh. Well, I guess he was wrong to be anxious about your relationship with your “longest and best friend,” non? No worries there, right? Clue #1: real friends don’t help their troubled married friends by sleeping with them. Either this guy is getting his thrills on the cheap or he’s at least as screwed up as you are.

As for all the vitrol you’re recieving, you have to realize that it’s not really about you; none of these people have an agenda to insult or humiliate you out of inate hostility toward you. Everyone has been betrayed by a friend, a lover, a parent, or someone else important in their lives, and this is an opportunity for each and every one of them to respond and vent (even if not to the right target). Few if any people here have any genuine deep concern for you. However, you should recognize that the responses you’re getting right now are mirroring the kind of reactions you are going to get in real life from people who do have trust in you. Every person raging at you for lying to your husband because they were deceived by a spouse represents your husband; every poster who was betrayed by a cheating parent and suffered the emotional consequences is a stand-in for your children. And if you think what you’re getting here is a “‘lynch her’ mentality,” just wait to see what happens in real life.

Oh, and giving explicit, easily traceable personal details not only about yourself but your “Loverboy” as well? Very uncool. I feel almost as sorry for him as for your family, as you clearly intend to drag everyone else down with you. I’d say I hope it all works out well for you, at least for the sake of your children, but you clearly don’t have their interests at heart, despite your statements to the contrary.

Stranger

262

RSSchen, do the right thing. Either break up with your husband or break up with your boyfriend. If you’re going to keep the boyfriend, tell your husband right now, refuse alimony, get a job, and take your lumps. I understand this will impact your life greatly, but you know as well as we do that it’s wrong to deceive him, wrong to make him pay, and wrong to benefit while making him suffer financially.

As far as the child support thing goes, your husband needs to do his share in supporting them, but you can lessen the burden he’ll endure. If the courts tell him to pay $100/week, kick back half of that to him. Let him rebuild his life.

You can’t choose who you love, but you can be fair. Best of luck to you.

263

Plenty of points have been made. To wit: you will do great harm to many people and the likelihood is that ‘lover boy’ and you will not follow through with this great plan.

I suggest you check out some relationship boards that deal with adultery. You will see hundreds and hundreds of stories of women who have the exact same tale - soul mate bla bla, never had the chance bla bla, finally true bla bla. The reason they’re on the boards is that the guy never did follow through on his promises or else they did get together and they’re as miserable as her initial relationship was.

In short, you’re running full-tilt for the edge of a cliff and refusing to listen to all the people warning you that the edge is before you.

I’ve seen this before. You will ignore all the good advice because you read it as ‘hate’ :rolleyes: , leap off the cliff, and then come back whining because you’re crushed on the ground. You’ll get no sympathy then, nor will you deserve it, because you have chosen your path despite all warnings that it will end up badly.

Out of curiosity, how, exactly, do you justify pursuing your happiness if it means that others will suffer?

264

In my experience with a self-help group for the last three years, hearing all kinds of stories, most people who are messing up their lives this badly usually are hurting in some way, and usually looking for people to help them find their way out of the mess and heal themselves and their lives. I had assumed that somewhere inside, RSSchen was like that, and acting out like this from deep pain of her own. I don’t think that any more. I don’t think there’s anything left here but the trainwreck.

Your husband was jealous of the friend that you always wanted as a lover and soul-mate? Guess he’s not completely stupid after all.

265

I have something to say about this to any newlyweds out there or people contemplating marriage.

If you DO have any “best friends” of the opposite sex that you have had sexual relations with in the past or have a chemisty with (you know what I mean), end the friendship before you get married. Do NOT have someone available and “there for you” when things go bad in your marriage. All marriages go through high and low points. The highs can be so fantastic and the lows can be so bad you can’t believe you ever let yourself get into marriage to begin with. That’s reality. When you have a friend in the wings that you have a mutual attraction with, you’ll have a terrible time when the decision comes down to “Stay with the person I married and currently can’t stand to look at or be with this perfect person that I’ve built up in my mind as flawless and that loves me unconditionally and really understands me.”

Those moments come, they really do. The worst thing in the world to have when they do is someone there to lean on that you care about in that way. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to to is tell a former love/close friend that we could no longer be friends for exactly this reason. My husband and I have been together for 14 years and married for 9 at this point and while I do miss my old friend, I’m glad I broke up with HIM years ago instead of running to him when my marriage got hard.

Unfair? Maybe. Life’s not fair. I would have been very happy to have my husband and my former love/friend, but that’s not smart or fair. I don’t regret THAT decision for a moment. I’ve seen this exact thing play out so many times it’s ridiculous.

I know what you’re going to say- That’s not how it is for ME! My friend is my FRIEND and friends don’t just leave each other, blah blah blah. I’m just saying you would be amazed how easy it is to fall back on that crutch when things get hard, and they WILL get hard. I’ve seen it again and again. Break that tie and give yourself to your marriage completely. Don’t have a “back up plan” for your emotional or sexual needs in the form of a “friend you tell everything to”. Just don’t do it.

RSS, you already know what to do. Do it now, do it fast, and get it done. I personally don’t think you need to disclose the affair. But you need to stop it right now, get your shit together, and separate from your husband. Then focus on your new family dynamics, figure out custody and all that. AFTER that’s finished, start your new relationship. He’s been your friend for this long, he won’t go anywhere.

266

And risk her meal ticket?

267

But he makes more money and makes her happy.

268

So he’s a cop. Have you discussed, in your long friendship, what a cop’s life is like, and what it’s like being married to a cop? You know cops have groupies, right? And that alcoholism, drug abuse, and adultery are common? So you know that cops face temptation every freaking day they go to work, not to mention the whole chance of getting killed thing, and they’re only human. Being a cop’s wife is lonely. Is tonight the night he doesn’t come home? And when he does come home, he can’t or won’t talk about it. They work odd, long hours. The job is difficult and dangerous. You can’t relate to most of it. Have you talked about any of that? I’m not impugning your lover’s honor, or any cops who do deal honorably with the temptation they face on a near daily basis, only if he’s one of the fine, upstanding ones, why is he having an affair with a married woman, one that’s purportedly his friend? If this is true love, and you are soul mates, why couldn’t he wait to fuck you until you were at least separated from your husband? He’s waited 17 years, he couldn’t wait another couple of weeks/months?

Have you even talked to Loverboy about you leaving your husband? If you haven’t, do. His response should tell you everything you need to know. Then, regardless of his response, go get a job, and tell your husband you want a divorce. Move to Sacramento if you have to, to find a place that you can afford on your own. Become self-sufficient. It’s possible, single mothers do it all the time. Granted, it’s hard, but it’s doable. Start making choices with the long-term consequences, for both you and your children, in mind. Stop making short-term, because it feels soooo good choices. Call your sponsor. Go to a meeting. If you don’t have a sponsor, get one. Go to another meeting. Keep going to meetings until you figure out how to stay clean and stop acting like an addict. This last bit has been known to take a lifetime.

269

Now THIS was something useful. Thanks BoBettie

270

And how!

:stuck_out_tongue:

271

Well, I’m glad you find it useful. I wish I had a dime for every person I’ve advised that way that said “that’s not the way it is for US!” then ran into the arms of their old love. Marriage is often very hard and you gotta do it without a net or not do it at all, period, IMHO.

272

Is anyone else disgusted by the fact that established law dictates that if our dear RSS does decide to divorce, the husband will still lose the kids and a substantial chunk of his income, all because of RSS’s wrongdoing. As for those suggesting she returns some of the payments from her new sugar-daddy’s income, I have very little trust in someone as narcissitic and with as low opinion of the husband as RSS.

The law is the law, of course, but it strikes me as dreadfully unfair, and gives much ammunition to the “don’t get married” men’s-rights contingent.

273

Do you have a cite for that law?

274

I think this advice is way off base, because you’re talking about two different things. Yes, if you have a former lover or friend that you’re secretly carrying a torch for, it could be a threat to your marriage when you hit a marital rough patch.

But not all relationships end with that kind of unresolved lingering attraction. In many cases, former lovers really do get over the relationship stage and move on to being genuinely just friends.

However, when that’s the case the ex-lover usually ends up being on good terms with the new spouse too. If you have an ex-lover or friend who remains sort of a “special friend just for you”, whom your spouse is jealous about or who doesn’t get along with the two of you as a couple…that’s a danger signal.

275

Well, that’s what I meant- I tried to make that clear but apparently did not. I am talking about someone you have a lingering attraction to- I said chemistry, but I guess that wasn’t clear enough.

276

It doesn’t always work that way. My husband (BobPi) ended up with physical custody of his three children, and his ex-wife didn’t even cheat or abuse alcohol or drugs.

She was just a vile, mentally unstable person, and he was, with the help of an attorney experienced in dealing with father’s-rights, able to prove it.

277

It does happen that way a lot, it seems. But it doesn’t always happen that way. In the case of the neighbor I spoke about in the other, locked, thread, the lying, cheating wife was denied custody and forced to get a job for the first time in 12 years so that she could pay child support to her ex-husband. This, in spite of the fact that she had been the primary caregiver and the husband works nights and has to make special arrangements for childcare. The arrangements are that the ex-wife’s family, who has all but disowned her, comes on a rotating basis and spends the nights with the kids. Sometimes, justice IS done.

278

No Joy-Joy from this corner for the Heroine of this drama. Sorry. I can see this one going ugly, in a dramatically spectacular way.

The Heroine deserves to lose her kids, at least as primary custodial parent. Perhaps the sad-sap, “dim” father can find a suitably non-scummy second wife who can serve as a functional mother. It isn’t so much a matter of punishing the Heroine, but rather acknowledging that her judgment is at best, suspect. Her wiring is damaged, and the kids need a functional custodial parent, lest their cognitive spongers absorb her damage.

I do believe, however, in kharma, albeit more of a self-inducing sort, rather than as a cosmic calculator sort. The heroine of our sad, bleak, nasty story doesn’t value monogamy. Pre-recovery, she explicitly disdained it. The Sap, of course, had plenty of bright red, do-not-marry-this-train-wreck-of-a-human-being, which, being a Sap, he ignored. Such is love.

One could certainly argue that our Heroine is acting in character. The fact that she wants our acceptance of this is the problem.

Marriage is simple: it’s a contract, and it gets unforgiving when children come along. In my view, when there is an asymmetric fault in the marriage, the non- or less-offending partner should get primary custody of the children, with little or no consideration for the other.

In short, when (not if, but when) this sad, sorry episode culminates, our Heroine should get diddly: no support, non-custodial status, but no scarlet A, please. Just the appropriate consequences of showing oneself to be an unreliable spouse.

If the Heroine wants to avoid this mess, she should, in this order, do the following: end the affair, get therapy, not dump/disclose this crap on the Sap if she wants to keep the marriage. But this will not work out well. But the therapy might help limit the collateral damage induced by the Heroine.

If the Heroine wants to do the right thing(ha!) by her children and by the Sap(Ha!Ha!), she would end the marriage, accept the blame, explicitly decline support, cede primary custodial custody to the Sap. If in the wake of this she wishes to spawn creatures with her One True Love, so be it. But let’s give the Sap a clean break from this misconduct. One is generally allowed egress from a sinking ship, so let’s not force the Sap and the children to go down with this ship. The Sap can provide safe harbor for the children, and the Heroine can visit. Such is the cost of taking a huge shit onto one’s marriage and family.

One can maintain post-marriage, opposite-sex friendships post-marriage: there’s these neat things called boundaries. The key is that the friend respect the marriage as much as the spouses do. The general idea is that one is in doubt, stay out of it. It would also not hurt to develop a friendship with the spouse - if you’re friends of both spouses, you’ll be less likely willing to help either spouse violate the marriage.

279

Oh, okeydoke. I misunderstood your remark about friends “that you have had sexual relations with in the past or have a chemistry with” (emphasis added). I thought you meant that any ex-lover automatically ought to go into the goodbye-forever bin, even if there’s no lingering chemistry between you. Glad I was wrong.

280

am having a difficult time seeing a message in that post that differs substantially from what others have been saying, in both threads. sure many of them, especially in this one, are ‘in your face’ types, but not all, and especially in the other thread. or is it that she’s suggesting that the cop will wait for you?