Hello, friends and lurking Trolls! I've missed you! I hope today finds you well and walking the Road to Happy with solid, stable ground beneath your boots.
I'm hoping the awakening may serve the greater good.
This morning, while enjoying a nice cup of black tea and a luxurious breakfast of bacon and eggs, I lazily scanned my Facebook page and saw this:
A little background: A friend of mine, let's call her Rita, phoned me last week and announced her marriage to a very immature husband, we'll refer to him as Shit-for-Brains (Maybe SFB to be expedient) was over and she needed my husband's help. (to refresh your memory...Richard is a family law attorney.) Rita, in the pain and the confusion of her 3rd DDay with SFB found this ECard humorous enough to share with the world on her Facebook Page. Her comment posted with the Card was, "This made me laugh!" Followed by numerous 'laughing with tears dropping' emoticons.
Don't wanna skip past the fact that this is the 3rd DDay for her. THIRD DDay. That's right. Strike freakin' three. Me thinks those tears falling from the smiling emoticon aren't really from laughing. Rita is blessed with a beautiful 3 year old son and is expecting her daughter to arrive in 2 months. Now, instead of enjoying the last few weeks of her pregnancy with her loving spouse, she is planning a divorce. There are no more chances for SFB. This time the other woman, so thoughtfully referred to here as the Bitch-Whore or BW, is pregnant with SFB's third kid.
What motivated me to post was the PANG. I read the ECard snippet and there was a nearly audible PANG in my heart. I don't think about She Who Shall Not Be Named anymore, even though there are a couple of trolls who like to comment now and then and share updates of her sorry life with me. (weird, right?)
But the PANG returned She Who Shall Not Be Named momentarily to the forefront of my mind.
I didn't feel pain or regret or even anger. Here's the kicker....
I FELT PITY! A Pang of Pity! A PITY Pang!!
The Pang compelled me to write. I want to type a stern warning to all Bitch Whores (I know that name doesn't make my feelings of pity seem very sincere, but I assure you, I do feel the Pity Pang) about the errors of their sinful ways. I wanted to wave a white flag and offer a a bit of wisdom that most women are privy too, but must be allusive to the majority of BWs that, as the EComic so eloquently proclaims, Just Don't Get It.
Here we go.....Head's up BWs or any readers out there considering becoming a BW in the future:
REAL love is never based on lies! NEVER! You can try to convince yourself that your man just needs time. Or...the evil wife is using his kids against him. Or...you are soul mates. If you can only have half of him, that's all you need. He gives you the best of himself.
WAKE UP!
PLEASE, BWs of the world!! Do not buy into that steaming pile of excrement! You deserve better.
Anyone deserves better...even delusional BWs.
I pity the BWs that rationalize away the lies.
I despise the Liars.
I get that some BWs are lied to and kept in the dark about the wife and the other life. But, those BWs deserve our pity as well, because how dumb do you have to be to not wonder why you are never able to visit your boyfriend's house? Or, what is the density of your cranium if your TRUE love never wants to sleep over to wake up with you? That's a serious lack of IQ points. Pathetic.
I knew I'd post when I thought I had something that might be useful, informative or at the very least eye opening to me. I never imagined it would be a Pity Pang for BWs.
For the betrayed spouses reading....Maybe this post can be of help to some of you, too. No one expects you to feel pity for the BW. Oh, HELL NO! I had a solid 2 years of intense hatred and visceral animosity going for She Who Shall Not Be named. After that, it was a couple more years of basic apathy.
But just look where I am now! My Pity Pang is just one more sign that I've moved way ahead on my Road to Happy. It seems I've walked much further than I realized. It feels right to share that with you.
My heart aches for Rita. She is just beginning to walk the Road. I'm gonna walk with her and try to show her the way.
12 comments:
I hear you. You know, we see a lot of folks talking about karma and I am not a huge believer in karma, because if that existed then what the hell did I do? But, I am a big believer in the idea that G-d or the universe will keep teaching you a lesson until you learn it or die, whichever comes first.
It is clear your trolls have no thought nor desire to learn and grow, to move onward and upward. And, because of that, they will keep encountering difficulties in life, always being the victim of their own making. On one level, I can feel pity for that. On another level, our lessons often intertwine with the lessons of others and we have to steer clear of getting caught in their crossfire, if we can. We cannot force them to learn what they must learn for themselves (one of the lessons I've learned in all of this crap).
I see how much you are moving forward and ahead, learning and growing, taking the bumps and bruises along the way. I think that is the best we can do and they are responsible for doing the best they can do (or not). So, in that way, I don't feel a lot of pity for them. You know?
Does that make any sense at all or should I go pour myself a glass of wine and try again? :)
Oops! My last post had some errors, here is the edited one...
In 3 years I have learned that you move forward when you stop blaming the OW and start focusing on the reasons why we chose to marry these shit-for-brains husbands that did this to us. What's wrong with us that we would pick a man who would cheat on us multiple times? We had to have seen plenty of RED flags early on about their deeply flawed personality and we chose to ignore those flags, because why? The OW and WH need to sweep their own side of the street, the real work starts when we start to sweep our own side of the street.
Looking forward to something other than hate. Thought I had gotten there until THEY ran into each other accidentally on purpose and now my hate....and apathy if that even makes sense, are swallowing me!!!! Missed you Shawn!
I'm glad I have something to look forward to. Tomorrow marks the 2 year birthday of DDay... And for a while now I thought I had dealt and moved on - but for some reason, the last month, everything is flooding back. The mistrust, the insecurities, absolutely everything. I've tried talking to a friend, and the first thing I get asked is "so what did he do to bring the feelings back". He hasn't done anything - at all, and no, I'm not being delusional... I think I truly got the one of a kind - yes he made a mistake, and no he won't do it again - kind of man. He is also truly sober for 2 years tomorrow as well :) So very proud. The OW has faded into oblivion, and he was so drunk all the time, he didn't even ask her surname - and she thought it was true love. Is it only me, or are all the OW truly and irrevocably DENSE? How can their 'Happy-Ever-After' be built on the ruins of somebody else's? Anyhow, just had a second to rant. Missed you Shawn - to say the least - you are the reason I didn't kill them both.... LOL
Trust me, jaymie most likely feels ever more pity for you, Shawn. You stayed with a man who cheated on you multiple times. The opitome of pitiful.
Have you no self respect? No self esteem? No self worth?
Pitiful and fucking pathetic, you make my stomach turn.
Woman up!
Anonymous,
If you have so much self respect, self esteem, self worth, etc., why comment here at all. Why not be strong within your opinion within yourself, perhaps on your own blog and within your own life.
You know your words will not be heard here because they are coming from a place of anger and spitefulness, not from a place of humanity and caring. No, to speak such words here shows you have an axe to grind. Why? What do you fear about yourself to find in necessary to grind that axe here?
Shawn has clearly explained what her axe to grind was and why. Not only that, but what she has done to face it, learn, grow and move forward. She doesn't claim to have acted perfectly, but to have faced a great pain and to deal with it, sometimes in better ways than others.
Whatever pain you are carrying, what are you doing to deal with it, to learn and grow so that you can do so in healthier ways, as opposed to just spewing hate at someone who is trying to work through their own pain. What are you, anonymous, doing to face your anger and your ego? Shawn has described her personal experiences, the foundation of her anger and ego getting in the way. She has owned up to that. What are you doing to own up to your anger and ego getting in the way?
What are getting out of this interaction? If it is not for healing, then why be here at all?
I have been reading your blog ever since I found this website, and Shawn, I honestly want you to know I feel a kinship with you. I subscribe to your blog posts and truly missed reading how things were going. I myself have come to see a pattern that when I stop writing for awhile, it's usually because things are going well LOL
I can't believe the vitriol towards you on here. If it were on my blog, I'd delete these comments. How dare people make YOU out to be the villain?? As if you haven't been through enough???
And these people have no right to judge you. This "anonymous" doesn't even have the courage to post their own name/pseudonym. How cowardly.
There will always be people who think that betrayed spouses are somehow deficient for staying with their husbands who strayed, but those who comment such as this are narrow-minded and clearly have no insight or understanding into what "true love" really is. I have been there, shit, I AM STILL THERE. I am 3 years out and still working through it. When you marry "for better or worse", it's with the intent that people make mistakes. We are not robots. If someone who hurts us is truly remorseful and works to help us heal from the paint they caused us, some of us are willing to give them another chance. No one can tell anyone who should divorce and who should stay. Especially when their are children involved.
Shawn, you go girl! I would love to meet you for a beer one day. I think we'd be BFF's.
God bless. And thank you for sharing yourself with us here. You truly DO help so many of us.
Hi all:
I have been pondering for quite some time why it is that some people are so angered by a betrayed spouse's choice to forgive the cheater. It really puzzles me. It's a personal choice that involves looking at the marriage and the person as the sum of all parts rather than the cheating episodes.
But, yes, as others have noted and IMO, the people spewing vitriol are in pain, over something and they want all cheaters punished to the fullest extent. I feel empathy for their plight. Perhaps they are a betrayed wife, or perhaps a pumped and dumped OW.
Still, I am glad I chose reconciliation.
Does that mean everything is just a bowl of cherries. Well, no. What marriage is easy.
I will say that I am happier with my marriage now than I was prior to my husband being caught cheating. I wish we could have gotten there another way. But, I focus on the good aspects. There are many many many improvements, and mainly for me.
Omg Shawn. I so hear you sister!!
I thankfully discovered your blog not long after my D-day a couple of years ago.
I thought I would die from the shame and self loathing I was experiencing. I thought I had gone mad.
I certainly visited my own version of crazy town ; lots of ranting , way too many messages to my newly ex friend who had been f**king my husband for years. But your Blog saved me from becoming an even worse version of myself.
One of the dumbest things I did was watch the sex tapes they made over and over again. I particularly enjoyed tormenting myself when they spoke about how they had been besties and soul mates for years when they confessed to the others in the room that whilst they were both married it was t to each other!! What was I thinking.
I have beaten myself up over and over again because I just couldn't walk away from our marriage. I really wanted to hate him, but I couldn't. I hated what he had done and the person he had become, what he had done to me but I knew the good man, my beautiful man was still in there somewhere.
So after much trickle truth, we began again.
I'll get to the point now. Not long ago. I had a thought about her. I really did feel sorry for her. I couldn't believe that she could think that little of herself that living a life in the shadows with someone else's husband was good enough. It really was a what the! Moment.
I really do pity her.
I still have really bad day (like today) which is when I come searching for you. But despite the hell I have been through ( it really is the most traumatic thing to experience) I am a better person. I know myself better. I know I am a good person. I know I'll be ok.
Thanks for being there for all of us when we each needed you.
*sigh* I feel pity for the BW's who were deceived, but not if they discovered the deception and thought the D was good enough to stick around and perpetuate the cheating and deceiving and hurting of another woman. That special individual I disdain. I feel pity for strippers. I saw a girl have crumpled up singles thrown at her, then watched her crawl around on the floor picking them all up after her snail impression. Now THAT was pathetic. I could literally feel the credibility of women everywhere slip a notch. But for the BWs who willingly participate in deceiving, who get a kick out of sharing snatch and tit pics with a sly "delete plzzz. Don't want your wife/fiancee/girlfriend to find that!" accompanied by a winking emoticon, that BW can rot in hell. Nope. No pity.
Shawn,
I commented on your blog a while ago (first time I did it I wrote something not so nice and did it anonymously), and am now trying to get caught up with it. First of all, I wish Rita and her children the best; my ex left me (he was cheating but didn't leave for another woman) while I was pregnant with our son so I can certainly empathize with her situation. Second of all, I wanted to ask you a question that I've wondered about since starting your blog. You obviously don't have to indulge me since it's none of my business, but I was wondering how you would've handled things if your Other Woman had gotten pregnant and had your husbands child? Maybe you don't know the answer to that since you were never put in that situation, but I wanted ask since I'm very much interested in all you have to say. Hope all is well and I look forward to reading more of your blog.
Hey, Courtney:
I gotta say I only thought about that early on after DDay. During one of my conversations with She that Shall Not be Named, she said something like...."Things would have been different if there had been a baby." WTH?? Oy Vey, She was so living in a dream world. Her words brought a huge load of crazy down on Richard that night!
But....Her remark made me ponder what would I do???
It's all speculation, but I think it still would have depended on Richard, on how he handled the trauma.
Oh, Lord I wanna say I would not hate the child. I wanna say I would have been the best step-mom ever, but while I lived in Crazy Town, no one was safe.
Like everything else after Day Day, time is your friend. It all gets better.
Bottom line....if reconciliation is the goal, that may be the toughest compromise a betrayed spouse would have to endure.
I hope you and your son are well and walking a smooth Road to Happy.
Hope & Hugs, Shawn
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