spooga - what’s scary is that this kind of thing isn’t uncommon. My mother has a cousin whose husband ditched her after she had surgery for breast cancer. His response when asked why he left? He couldn’t sleep with a diseased, breastless, scarred woman. Touching her made him feel repulsed - diseased! He told my mom that his wife was “rotting from the inside!” So he ditched her and their three young kids.
ASSHOLES like this do NOT deserve any kind of sympathy or compassion. Anne’s friends and his ex-friends will rally around the family and support them through this. The kids will need help, too…
I think that’s precisely the point… Tom did what was easy. I find the suggestion that we can’t judge him because we haven’t been in the same situation utterly ludicrous. Do I have to have murdered someone in cold blood for financial gain to know that it is WRONG? What Tom has done is JUST PLAIN FUCKING WRONG. It is, just as Spogga says, despicable and cowardly. He has taken the easy way out and caused his wife and kids more pain at a time when they already had more than enough. Apparently losing his wife isn’t such a big deal to him if he can just toss her aside.
If I ever abandon my husband because he contracts a disfiguring and possibly fatal disease, then I hope someone just takes me out back and puts a bullet in my head. If I were such a shallow, selfish asshole, I wouldn’t deserve to live. However, I know I wouldn’t do such a thing. I simply couldn’t live with myself if I did. I’m sure it wouldn’t be easy for me-- but it would be much harder for my husband. Doing the right thing frequently ISN’T easy. My mother was chronically ill for about 20 years before she finally died at 50 of well, massive failure of everything. It would have been easy for my father to run out on my mother and me and my brother. Why didn’t he? Maybe because it was the right thing to do? Maybe because he didn’t think he was entitled to run out on his commitments just because they weren’t easy anymore? And let me tell you, the long-term chronically ill aren’t pleasant to be around. What my father and the rest of us had to deal with was a lot worse that just looking at an unpleasant scar.
So many people today are such whiny, spoiled little brats who think they are entitled to do whatever is easiest for them. “I can’t do this anymore, it’s TOO HARD.” Fuck that noise. If you want to do whatever your selfish little heart desires, then don’t get married and don’t have children. You don’t get to cut out of your commitments just because they aren’t easy anymore. If you do, well, don’t be shocked when the rest of us who don’t take the easy way out think you are a pathetic piece of shit. This guy deserves a lot more than a public shaming, but since we don’t have a machine that could make him feel all the pain he has inflicted on others, I don’t know what that would be. But, by God, being refused service in a bar certainly seems inadequate.
The worst of it is the case of history poisoning the wife will have for the rest of her life. 20 years with this man, and it turns out it was all about the boobs? He was living a lie for 20 years, and she was living off it; the kids too. She’ll look back over every happy memory in those 20 years, and it’s all cast over with a shadow of falseness. It was all about the boobs, the whole time.
Fucking bastard.
Social shunning is certainly not too harsh a punishment; now that we all have embraced no-fault divorce, it’s in fact the only punishment. Good on the OP and his pals for meting it out.
Actually, I’d be a bit sick to my stomach that this s.o.b. had ever been a friend of mine. He lied to you too, spogga. He convinced you he was decent, and he wasn’t. Lucky for you, you never had to marry him to find out this unpalatable truth.
Pity that poor woman and help her as much as you possibly can, please.
** masonite ** I don’t so much feel as if Tom lied to me, for all the years I have known him he always seemed to be a decent enough guy, he loved his wife and kids and yet in the end he just couldn’t handle a few scars, this I find pitiful and as I said cowardly.
** MinniePurl ** I can feel empathy with your mother and fathers case, my Gramps lost his leg in WW1 and also suffered scarring to his face and neck, Gramma stuck with him despite this. She loved the man as he was not as he used to be.
** Elenfair ** Without actually saying it we get the feeling that Tom feels exactly the same as your mothers cousins husband.
It appears that Tom * HAS * been seeing another woman but for how long we do not know and how the hell he managed to keep it from us is a mystery.
Even more of a puzzle is how he kept it from Anne. One thing is for certain he has been seeing this other woman for over 12 months.
The big question now is, do we tell Anne or not and another question remains, did Tom leave Anne for the reason he gave us or did he leave her for this other woman. As I said before Anne said that she would be able to handle that sort of situation.
If I see him I’ll ask but whether or not I get a straight answer is in the lap of the Gods, I’ll let you know.
If my late wife had undergone the surgery that Anne has I most certainly would never have jumped ship. Come to that if Joan had had both breasts removed she would have still been the person I loved.
Good lord, cheating on his cancer-stricken wife?! What an ass! I’m not normally a fighter, but Jesus, that makes me want to check him into the Beatdown Motel.
spogga, you have to tell Ann what’s been going on.
There are two reasons for this. First, if she does find out on her own, and learns that you guys knew about it, she’ll never trust you again. Second, if he was cheating on her, he probably wasn’t using a condom. She needs to go get tested for STDs (I speak from bitter experience).
Tom’s about as low down as they come, and I can only hope there’s a karmic reward for him out there somewhere.
Back when I was in college, my aunt was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. She went through a mastectomy, chemotherapy, AND radiation. During the chemotherapy, her husband left her. Turns out that he’d been cheating on her for years with male prostitutes and whatever flavor of the month he could put up in an apartment he leased for his little love nest. He filed for a divorce and then proceeded to do his best to hide all of his financial assets from her so she wouldn’t get a dime in alimony (this being a woman who’d spent her life being the homemaker and child-raiser so he could focus his efforts on his career). Her son-in-law, a corporate lawyer, stepped into the fray and cleaned him out. The rest of the kids had nothing to do with him from that day forward. His own mother wouldn’t speak to him.
A few years later, he died miserable, alone, and frightened of colon cancer. My aunt, though a bit fragile, is surrounded by supportive friends and family. Who knows, maybe there is a little justice in the world.
It’s almost better knowing, isn’t it? Leaving your wife for another woman happens every day, on the soaps and in real life. It’s more reasonable than leaving your wife because she got sick, or had her boobs amputatedd, isn’t it? Not to justify it, or anything. But it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
I hate marital unfaithfulness, I truly do. If you’re going to make those vows at all, you damn well ought to keep them. If you think you might not be able to, better to never make the vows in the first place.
A friend of mine faced the possibility of his wife suffering damage to the thing he loves most about her – her mind, in this case – and while I know it was difficult for him because I stood by him while this was going on, it never occured to him not to do so. She’s his wife; he loves her; that’s not going to change. Their marriage remains a thing of beauty, and the way he acted during this is one of the things I admire about him.
I am biased. I don’t like cowards or adulterers, and it looks like Spogga’s finding out this old friend is both. I don’t believe cowardice can’t be help, and I know people can be overcome by fear firsthand! The people I respect are those who can be in a situation where they are scared out of their minds and full of the desire to be anywhere but where they are, yet who still stay and do the right thing.
Under the these circumstances, I’d tell Anne. As masonite pointed out, it’s much better knowing you’ve been left for fairly ordinal, venal reasons than because a disease you don’t want and can’t control has taken over your body. Also, please do encourage her to go to support groups. I was a big fan of pride, independence, and doing things on my own until those qualities left me flat on my back in the hospital, overcome by fear. If need be, tell her, “I’m sure you can do this alone, but it’s easier with help from people who’ve gone through it, and you’ve got enough on your plate right now.” There’s nothing wrong with getting help when you need it, although some of us stubborn, Lancastrian types don’t entirely buy that. To give you another pet rationale of mine, she doesn’t try to fix her car on her own; why should she try to fix this on her own. If she does fix her own car, point out that she sought help for the physical aspects of cancer; why not do so for the psychological effects? That might work better anyway.
Excellent advice (as always), Siege. A cathedral stand on mighty pillars, but it needs the support of the flying buttresses. Phouka, I can only hope that spogga’s ex-friend meets the same sort of karmic payback.
When did Anne get diagnosed with cancer? Did he start seeing this other woman before or after? If after, my roommate says “typical male.” If before, I say “Jackass bastard coward.”
Would rather make his wife feel like she’s no longer attractive due to a medical condition than admit that he’s a scumball. Ug.