An Introduction: Chump Lady

About Chump Lady
Chump Lady

Chump Lady is a nice person who wants better for you.

If you’re reading on this site, chances are you’ve been cheated on, or know someone who has. You’re not part of the Smug Unknowing class, untouched by infidelity. You’re a chump. You got played and you want to know how to navigate yourself out of this pain.

I’ve got the toolkit right here. Chump Lady is not a site optimistic about reconciliation. I liken reconciliation to a unicorn, a mythical creature I want to believe in, but which is seldom seen. This emphatically is NOT a site to save your marriage — this is a site about saving your sanity.

Who is Chump Lady? She is the friend who sits with you at 3 in the morning, pours you a bowl of raisin bran, and tells you to LEAVE that motherfucker. You deserve better than this. There’s a GOOD life out there without this jerk in it. Move toward it. You’re going to be just fine on the other side of this nightmare.

So why would you listen to a chump?

Because I lived it. And I got to the other side with my soul intact. I spent several years trying to figure out what the hell happened to me when I allowed my life to intersect with a serial cheater’s. Chump Lady is the wisdom that I wish I had the day I woke up in bed with another woman’s thong stuck to me. Chump Lady is the brain dump of everything I learned (painfully, stupidly) about infidelity. (Consider this the trial-tested results of What Not To Do, flubbed by yours truly.)

I also spent over a year trying to reconcile. Enough time to know what a painful time suck that is. Another place I spent a ton of time was online infidelity forums and realized, after reading thousands of stories over six years, that affairs are terribly banal and predictable. Cheaters have their playbook.

This is yours. Welcome!

I have a love/irritation relationship with Chump Lady. If you need someone to hit you upside the head with a 2x4 and tell you, as someone who loves you, that you need to get the hell out of your toxic situation, she's your woman. If you want an entertaining read that will get your blood boiling in righteous indignation, hie yourself to her blog or buy her book. If you need some tough love and to face your own codependent habits, shoot her an e-mail. If you want an outside, jaded opinion on a confusing missive, feed it to the Universal Bullshit Translator. If you want a chorus of support in getting a divorce, Chump Nation has your back.

In the wake of learning of betrayal, when you're casting about for some firm ground, when you've just learned how little you can trust your own instincts, Chump Lady's recommendation to always assume the worst - to Trust That They Suck - is clarifying advice. (It's not tenable in the long run, if you are considering reconciliation - but it's useful protection in the immediate aftermath, and depending on what you see, may help you determine if reconciliation is a worthwhile endeavor.) She also has useful posts on what to do right after D-Day, what not to do, and how - should you decide to - leave.

If, like me, you tend towards the generous interpretation of any given interaction, Chump Lady at least forces you to question your assumptions. That heart-to-heart talk - was that real, or a masterful pity play? That defensive anger - a normal human reaction, or evidence of Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

If, like me, you have a hard time allowing yourself to feel and show anger - Chump Lady assures you that you have every right to be angry, to express it, to use it to propel you into a better space.

Another thing Chump Lady excels at is giving certain concepts a memorable name. Ego Kibbles. The Pick Me Dance. Cake. Genuine Imitation Naugahyde Remorse. The Skein of Fuckupedness. Many of her phrases have entered my vocabulary, and I'm sure I'll write more about them at a later date.

But Chump Lady has an unabashed one-size-fits-all solution to infidelity: Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life. And one-size rarely fits all relationships.

Certainly, Chump Lady would take one look at my life and recommend kicking Drew to the curb. I imagine the conversation would go something like this: He cheated. Done. Pre-meditated, sought-out affairs. Friends. Craigslist. Ashley Madison. Done and done. In our house, in our bed. *Shudder* Without protection. Are you kidding me? While I was pregnant. Why are we still having this conversation?

But, of course, that's not the whole story of our relationship. Drew has always shown me love, kindness, respect, support - well, except for THE WHOLE CHEATING AND DECEPTION THING. I have a physically and intellectually attractive husband who is happily as much of an equal parent as his schedule allows, who makes double or triple what I'll ever hope to make yet is nonetheless planning on moving wherever I need to for my job, and does far more of the cooking and household chores than I ever will. Who has never implied, to me or anyone else, that anyone but he himself was responsible for his cheating. Who seems willing to do what he can to make me feel safe, to reassure me that he will never betray me (sexually or otherwise) again, to delve into the deeper reasons as to why and how he could do this in the first place in individual therapy, mutual journaling, and marriage counseling.

But yeah. Still. THE WHOLE CHEATING AND DECEPTION THING. I read other betrayed people's stories and see no reason why they're sticking around - yet I have to acknowledge (and in fact I'm scared) that you may read my story and, like Chump Lady would, wonder why I'm still in limbo land.

Which is why I still read her blog, daily, as a kind of personal barometer. But it's also why, when I crave a more nuanced consideration of whether or not to stay with a cheater, I go elsewhere.