128. Why Yes I Did Out My Cheater, Part 2

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Unknown Speaker (1:36): Hey. Welcome to tell me how you're mighty, real talk about cheating. I'm Tracy Schorn, the blogger known as chump lady, where I implore people to leave cheaters and gain lives.

Unknown Speaker (1:46): And I'm Sarah Gorel, radio broadcaster by day, single mother of four. And thirteen years ago, my ex walked out on his family for his affair partner. And it didn't feel like it at the time, but my life is so much better without him.

Unknown Speaker (1:58): And we're here to tell you that you are mighty. We survived infidelity, and you can too. And this is our podcast. Welcome. Well, we're back, Sarah, with yet more did you out the cheater stories.

Sarah Gorel (2:14): We had some doozies last week, and we've got even better ones this week.

Unknown Speaker (2:18): Yeah. It's it's funny, isn't it? Just as you think they can't get any worse, some of these stories, they do. I'm always stunned by some of the experiences that we hear. Should we start with the first example of outing a cheetah?

Speaker 4 (2:30): He is a professor, and his AP was one of his students. He skirted ethical issues because she was not technically a student where he was paid, but he was not paid at the other institution where he mentored her. I volunteered in animal shelter and there was a time when someone came in and we struck up a conversation and it turned out this person knew my cheater at the university. And he had some questions, which I was happy to answer for him. He knew something was up but didn't know details.

Speaker 4 (3:08): And I was able to let him know who the young woman was, what their relationship was, the fact that yes, my cheater was writing letters recommendation, was on this person's thesis committee, was getting money from the university for them, etcetera. As a result, it turns out, Cheater no longer is allowed to mentor students at the university. I have

Unknown Speaker (3:36): no idea how that happened. Talk about being a cliche. I mean, how many professors sleep with their students? It's like an epidemic. And in this one, she didn't do it with malice of forethought, right?

Sarah Gorel (3:50): She just happened to run into somebody and that person asked the right set of questions and it got back down the food chain, which I really think is like a beautiful way to out someone. It's like there's always that person. There's always that bonding molecule, that person who knows everybody, who's gonna tell everybody. That's the person you wanna tell.

Speaker 3 (4:11): And it goes beyond just exposing someone who's cheated on you. This is someone who's really exploiting their position and exploiting potentially vulnerable students.

Sarah Gorel (4:20): Yeah. Although it sounds like he did not lose his job. He just lost the ability to mentor students. Bleh. I just think, come on, people.

Sarah Gorel (4:29): Update your policies. It sounds predatory. Right? Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. It seems like a very dumb human resources policy.

Unknown Speaker (4:38): Let's hear another one.

Speaker 5 (4:40): Oh, I did everything you weren't supposed to do, I guess. After several days of telling people individually that my marriage was over and dealing with their grief and disbelief, it was just exhausting. So I made a Facebook post, and I said my now ex was cheating, that I had confronted her. And to her credit, she admitted it, which was a little bit of a fudge because it took two days for her to finally come clean, only because her lies were so ridiculous. And I got an outpouring of support.

Speaker 5 (5:10): A few days after that, my ex posted her version of events, which made it sound like it was just a mutual decision and that we were still a family, just in a different shape. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a friend of mine copied my post that laid out the affair and sent it to everyone on my ex's post who had liked or commented with sympathy. That is what finally angered my ex, but there was nothing she could really do about it because it was all true. And she was trying to deny the truth, and I decided I was humiliated by the fact that she was cheating, but it was less humiliating for me to just say it and be the one who broke the news to the world. So, I outed her.

Sarah Gorel (6:00): Yeah. I think of this one, she's outing her cheater, but, you know, she's the one who gets the outpouring of support. She told, and the result was that people were on her side. And then her ex wife, ex girlfriend tries to tell her side of the story, but the chump is beating her to the narrative, which is it rarely plays out like that. Usually cheaters get to the narrative first.

Sarah Gorel (6:23): So well done, you. Like, you got out there.

Speaker 3 (6:26): It's not about image control, isn't it? You know, sometimes when the the affair is discovers, and, of course, this is after months, possibly years of lies and cheating and deceit. They want the deceit to continue. They still want that image control to go on, and there's a lot of anger when that doesn't happen.

Sarah Gorel (6:43): Yeah. And and not only is the chump not doing the image control, the circle of friends aren't doing it either. You know? So then they just have to transaction ally find another group to hang out with, you know, shiny, bright, and new. And then rinse, repeat, I guess, until your story catches up with you.

Unknown Speaker (6:59): One interesting thing, though, is sometimes when you tell friends, you get those people don't want to get involved, really. They just want to say, well, you know, there's two sides to every story. He may have had an affair, she may have had an affair, but nobody knows what goes on in a marriage.

Unknown Speaker (7:14): Yeah. We call those Switzerland friends.

Speaker 3 (7:16): I had a couple of those, including one woman whose own husband had had an affair a few years earlier, and she had been utterly distraught. So I naturally assumed that she would be quite sympathetic. Not in the slightest.

Unknown Speaker (7:29): Oh god.

Unknown Speaker (7:30): No, not in the slightest. Sort of saying, oh, she seems to be falling apart, doesn't she? Talking to other people saying, oh, her husband's been a naughty boy. And look at her struggling with her four young children. Quite unbelievable with their reaction.

Sarah Gorel (7:45): Pickled in the patriarchy. Naughty boy, really? I just have, ugh, for that. Fortunately, I did not have so much of that because it wasn't a long relationship like you would have over a long period. But I did have a similar kind of reaction from one woman who was like a friend of a friend and who knew my story.

Sarah Gorel (8:05): And she, when it happened to her, had gotten divorced. And she was from South America. I don't know if this matters, but patriarchy is in every culture. But she said to me that she regretted her divorce and that she goes, You're the wife. You're the wife.

Sarah Gorel (8:20): You have the status. She's just a little thing on the side. And I'm like, What kind of status is it that I'm part of the pussy buffet? Like, that was not what I signed up for. But her thing is, like, why why would you give up a marriage, like, when you're top of the food chain?

Unknown Speaker (8:39): I just thought, this is so messed up. I don't even know where to go with that.

Speaker 3 (8:42): Well, again, it's sort of buying into that reconciliation industry, isn't it?

Sarah Gorel (8:46): Yeah. And men can have wandering dicks, and that's fine. They're just naughty, little silly thing. But as for the Switzerland friend thing, we both know how much it hurts and how devastating it is to discover a partner's double life. And as someone can see you that shattered and how hurt your kids are and to go through that kind of experience and feel neutral about it, then you don't share the same values.

Sarah Gorel (9:12): This person's not on your team. You know? They can be a casual acquaintance. You can demote them. You can have them in your life, but they're not like your friend.

Sarah Gorel (9:21): I would reserve friend for someone who really cares and shows up.

Unknown Speaker (9:25): Right. Where are we now? This is, who do you tell and what did you do? Let's hear another example.

Speaker 6 (9:30): I told everybody. Absolutely everybody. And when people asked, I said, yeah. The bastard's been fucking around. Yep.

Speaker 6 (9:37): My entire social network, anybody that wanted to know what was going on, I told them the truth.

Unknown Speaker (9:44): Yeah. This is another person with zero regrets. The bastard's been fucking around.

Unknown Speaker (9:50): Well, I suppose that, you know, you're telling the truth. Why not? I suppose it depends how you tell it and who you do. But again, goes against that narrative, doesn't it, of being nice and meek and quiet and not saying anything at all? I quite admire a bit of honesty.

Sarah Gorel (10:03): Hey. I admire a bit of potty mouthedness because one of the things for women anyway that we're told is we cannot be angry about this. We can't be mad. We can't be sweary. We can't use naughty words.

Sarah Gorel (10:14): You know, it's like, oh, I'm not bitter. I I moved right past the anger phase. I was talking about this on another about the Oprah interviewed Belle Burden, wrote a bestseller here, Stranger, about being chumped. And she was in pains to say that she was not bitter. And this guy had, like, a long double life.

Unknown Speaker (10:32): And I mean, was absolutely horrific. But she has no icky feelings. None. None. And he's a good father, and he's good to the children.

Sarah Gorel (10:40): I thought, well, that's why you're on Oprah. Right? Because you read about it. You told your truth. Hurrah.

Sarah Gorel (10:46): Very brave. But we stop in anger. We cannot be angry. We can't say the fucking bastard is fucking around. Nope.

Sarah Gorel (10:53): Nope. That's not allowed. So I like that this woman was swary and mad, and she set her peace.

Speaker 3 (11:00): The only thing that you do have to watch out for when you tell everyone is that tilted head and the, what did you do to drive them to this behavior? Which, again, is a you know, that that does happen. That happened to me with my ex mother-in-law. What did you do to do to drive my son to this behavior?

Unknown Speaker (11:16): What'd you do to make a fuckwit? You birthed him.

Speaker 3 (11:19): Again, though, it comes from that narrative that your behavior is responsible for their behavior. When everyone accepts that, you know, in a marriage, in a long term relationship, there are always things that everybody is going to do that is going to be irritating. No marriage is perfect. Kids come along and it's it's not all skipping through the daisies with hearts and flowers. But that doesn't excuse going and having an affair because your so called needs aren't being met because the likelihood is that the other person's needs aren't being met either.

Sarah Gorel (11:47): No. Right. And only one of us is out risking the other person's health and diverting assets and doing unethical things. So it it's just not even a fair fight. Right?

Unknown Speaker (11:57): Ugh. Okay. We got another one here.

Speaker 7 (12:00): I definitely outed him to my closest friends and family initially and down the road to more people than that. But I also outed him to his Christian private school employer. He was trying to get our two youngest kids to go to that school, and apparently, the administration of the school had offered for them to have a full ride. I did not agree with the religious views of the school, and I had some other issues with it. But I also didn't want the kids to get ensconced in a community and then have the administration find out what their employee had done and renege the offer and have it be like a traumatic thing for my kids.

Speaker 7 (12:42): So I decided to go to the school, and I had evidence with me. And I told them about my husband, and it did feel good. It didn't do anything. But if anything, it made me more assured than ever that I did not want my kids to attend a school that had the name truth in its name and purported to be Christian, but were okay with their employee being a cheating dad and husband.

Unknown Speaker (13:08): Oh, yeah. We have a Jesus cheater overlay here. I like that those kids aren't going to that school. I think that that's a that's a happy ending for her. Probably not for him.

Unknown Speaker (13:19): Well, it's the audacity, isn't it? He wanted them to go to the school probably because of the values of that school, whilst merrily ignoring all the values himself.

Unknown Speaker (13:27): Yes. He works there. He is working at the Christian school.

Unknown Speaker (13:32): Yes. Teaching the values but ignoring them.

Unknown Speaker (13:35): Teaching the value while fucking the staff. And I mean

Speaker 3 (13:38): One thing is children to know those values because, obviously, they're so important, but not important enough for him to follow his life according to those values. It's the hypocrisy in these things that's just so staggering.

Sarah Gorel (13:49): What would Jesus do? I think Jesus would probably blow the whistle and out them. That that's just my thought. Just my theological interpretation of that situation. Alright.

Unknown Speaker (13:59): We have another outing story here.

Speaker 8 (14:02): So my ex husband had a side business, and I managed all the social media accounts since he didn't have any social media. Once I found out what he did, I went to those accounts, deleted all the information off of it, and changed the profile picture to a quote about cheaters. That sat there for a while. And then I saw through some other website that he made an announcement that his product was being purchased by a larger company. When in reality, he had to change the name of his company, which is still his, had to relabel everything, go through the process of paying for the name change, the LLC, and also printing up new hats and shirts because the old ones were no longer good.

Speaker 8 (14:44): So along with having all that expense, he had to go through the embarrassment, I'm sure, of his customers seeing what he did and wondering what happened. Now his new wife manages all his socials. Hopefully, doesn't do the same to her.

Sarah Gorel (14:59): Sometimes they're so dumb. I mean, if you're having a an affair in your business and you have your wife doing your social media accounts, I guess you're really trusting her that she's gonna be an obedient chump and not use that power. Unbelievable. But he was embarrassed. This is very hard for him.

Speaker 3 (15:18): I know. Well, you're supposed to sort of meekly carrying on doing your wife work and your social media, but not use it for any purposes that might cause upset.

Sarah Gorel (15:27): Embarrassment. He was embarrassed. He had a bad feeling. It was uncomfortable. He was cheating on her, though.

Sarah Gorel (15:33): Who cares? But it was just difficult for him.

Unknown Speaker (15:36): It's okay, though, because he has got a new wife appliance to manage his social media. So that that gap has been filled quite nicely. Let's hear another one.

Speaker 9 (15:44): My Jesus Cheater and I worked at the same Christian school. Couple months after D Day and a lot of therapy, I went to our administration and told them my situation. I also told them that if he knew I had gone to them with this information, that I was very concerned for my safety and the well-being of our kids, truth, I somehow managed to convince him that they would miraculously understand our separation and let me stay on. He went in and told them that he could no longer agree with their integrity or lifestyle statement and they allowed him to resign. To this day, he has no idea that our whole admin knows his sleazy details and we're happy to keep me on and let him go.

Speaker 9 (16:29): I have no regrets because I knew I had to fight for my kids and I had to stay in that community. Jesus cheaters suck. It still kinda kills me that he probably thinks they all miss him and hold him in high esteem, but whatever. I have my new life.

Sarah Gorel (16:43): Another, yet another Jesus cheater Christian school story. How many of these cheaters are out there? Oh my god.

Unknown Speaker (16:51): See, again, it's one of those that just just leaves you speechless. I think, again, it's the hypocrisy, isn't it? There's a lot of hypocrisy involved, but when you're bringing all of your your faith into it as well, that's kind of a whole extra level involved.

Unknown Speaker (17:04): Yeah. Well, it's spiritual abuse. It's also like you lose your community. Right? Or this person's risking it's not just risking your family.

Sarah Gorel (17:11): It's risking your belief system, risking the people you surround yourself with, your safe space, all of it, where your kids, you know, where they go to school. I I mean, it has such implications. It's it's beyond it's beyond what goes on in a marriage. You know?

Speaker 3 (17:27): So after long and extensive examples then of what happens when you out people, where do you stand on this? Do you out people or do you not out people?

Unknown Speaker (17:36): Well, I would draw a distinction. I absolutely tell your truth. It's your story. What happened to you? Look.

Sarah Gorel (17:42): I mean, I'm outing myself every day. I write as chump lady or do this podcast with you. I think you absolutely should not wear the shame that somebody cheated on you. That that's ridiculous. I think your actions, like in terms of, like, telling an employer or doing revenge posting of some kind, You gotta check that impulse and weigh how or if it's gonna bite you in the butt and not act impulsively.

Sarah Gorel (18:06): But telling your story, telling being truthful what happened to you, I'm pro that. What do you think?

Speaker 3 (18:12): I I think truth in a world where there's been so many lies is absolutely vital. Why should you carry on pretending when you've experienced living a lie? So why not just say it exactly as it is without obviously going too far and causing that whole, oh, you're you're a vicious ex accusations?

Unknown Speaker (18:32): You mean don't mention the hooker habit? Don't talk about your your sexually transmitted diseases that you got at the hands of this monster, I mean, which was a podcast or two ago. I think when you're in the raw early stages, you have to be careful who you tell only because you might get the Switzerland friends. You might get the person like your ex mother-in-law. What did you do to make him cheat?

Sarah Gorel (18:55): So tell your nearest and dearest. And then when you're less wobbly, like, you're stronger and you've integrated this trauma into your life, then you can be like, yeah. Yeah. I get cheated on. You know?

Sarah Gorel (19:06): Fuck him. I have a better life without this person.

Unknown Speaker (19:09): You know the the worst one, though, actually, this just sprung into my mind is that this whole idea that you're not allowed to tell the children. So you're not allowed to tell the children why your marriage is is broken down.

Unknown Speaker (19:19): Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:20): And I completely get this. Don't be bitter. I find it really difficult because you undermine a parent and you're sort of undermining them because that parent is part of them. But I think being truthful, it's perfectly fine to say that the reason that your dad is no longer here is because he's gone off with another woman. Why shouldn't you say that?

Sarah Gorel (19:39): Oh, you should. I mean, but I I'm at odds. Maybe that should probably be our next podcast. We should see how people told the children about what was going on. Because I argue it's not okay to gaslight children even for the best of intentions.

Sarah Gorel (19:52): And if you say something vague like we grew apart, I mean, that's kind of terrifying. Children might think, well, what if you grow apart from me? And then the other part of it is is that I wish this wasn't true, but it's often true, is that your kids know before you know. Like, they've been introduced to this person. They've found incriminating evidence.

Sarah Gorel (20:11): They're keeping the cheater parents secret, and they're living under this burden. So by telling the truth, it lifts the burden. Anyway, this is a deeper dive. Yes. Tell.

Unknown Speaker (20:21): Don't tell. How you tell. Let's do more the next time. Reach out to us. You can check us out at tellmehowyou'remighty.com, or check out the blog at chumplady.com.

Sarah Gorel (20:37): I'm always open to your suggestions there.

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