Cheating Husband or Loving Husband stories?

[EmilyMiller]

That's one of those "irregular verbs" from "Yes Minister", isn't it?

"I give confidential security briefings. You leak. He's been charged under section 2a of the Official Secrets Act." - Bernard Woolley

Yeah - I got introduced to it by a fellow student when studying in London. Also H2G2, Father Ted, and some other Brit classics. What’s the one with an all Indian cast?

I’ve read the novelizations. I have to look up a bunch of stuff, or ask a friendly Brit. And obv some of the references are kinda before my time. But the writing is great and a lot of it is timeless.

Emily

 

[StillStunned]

It's like the shopping cart theory: an individual's moral character can be determined by whether they choose to return a shopping cart to its designated spot after use, or whether they simply leave it wherever it suits them.

It's sort of true, but only in the abstract. There are plenty of reasons to not return the shopping cart that have nothing to do with them being an asshole. While I always return carts, would I still do it if I was in a wheelchair? What about the mom that gets to pick between leaving twin infants in a hot car, a car with the keys in the ignition, or leaving a cart off to the side?

Where I live, they introduced a system in the mid-1980s where you had to put a coin in the trolley to use it. And you know what? All of a sudden everyone found that there was no real reason not to return the trolley. Even when people started using plastic tokens instead of actual coins, they still returned their trolleys.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Where I live, they introduced a system in the mid-1980s where you had to put a coin in the trolley to use it. And you know what? All of a sudden everyone found that there was no real reason not to return the trolley. Even when people started using plastic tokens instead of actual coins, they still returned their trolleys.

Yeah, but you're talking about enforcement of a system rather than voluntary buy-in. A system, once enforced, also usually (or should usually) have safeguards to make it so that the enforcement isn't onerous. Even then, though, it represents more effort for a person who finds it difficult than one who finds it easy. It's a bit of extra effort for them that it may not be for others; they're forced to accept it, though, so they do.

Put it another way: we have handicapped spaces for people that need them, and we actively try to keep folks that use them from using those spaces. They're pretty much always directly in front of the stores, and that's legally enforced. That's a good thing, I think we can all agree. If they suddenly didn't exist--not marked, not enforced, etc,--would most people that don't need those spots voluntarily park further away? Probably not. Does that make them bad, or does that make them just people?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Ehhh, I don't know that I'd agree. It's a statement that edges way too close to "kindness costs nothing," a nice sentiment that's usually wielded by people with a lower emotional/mental stress level against someone with a higher one.

Let’s say it’s never OK to take your angst out on a bystander. It maybe more understandable in some circumstances than others - there is trauma and there is trauma - but I still don’t think it’s OK.

I’ve been triggered by stuff people say here when it’s trauma-adjacent. When the red mist has evaporated, I have often wished that I had expressed myself in a more measured way.

Again, it’s perspective.

I’m calling you out for utter insensitivity about my and others’ trauma
You are a bit overreactive on that subject
They went postal on them for no reason

Emily

 

[lustychimera]

The child support, not so much; most men, as long as the child is legitimately theirs (either genetically or through adoption) don’t have a problem with it, at least in LW comments. What they do have a problem with (outside of being required to pay for a child that was passed off as theirs but wasn't) is that they pay support for the kids but get almost no access to them. "Two weekends a month and two months in the summer, with alternating Christmases and Thanksgivings" isn't just a cliche in Loving Wives.

The vast majority of states don't have shared custody; they have "custody" and "visitation," and visitation, while court-ordered, is also expensive to enforce, and it can be used as a way to manipulate kids to be angry with the non-custodial spouse, i.e., "Oh, I wanted to take you to Disneyworld, but the only weekend I could get off is the one where you're supposed to be with your dad, and he doesn't want to give that weekend up. Oh, well." Then Dad chooses to give up that weekend with no legal guarantee that he'll get a replacement weekend to make up for it; or he gets a couple of surly kids mad at him that he wouldn't let Mom take them to Disneyworld. It's usually not that blatant, but similar stuff does happen on a smaller scale.

The alimony, though, definitely. Some guys got completely shafted in their divorces, and not in the MRA chest-thumping way. There's a historical reason for this. The last big wave of divorce reforms came at around the same time the ERA was up for a vote in the 70s, so women really were in a place where they needed that kind of support; after all, women couldn't get credit cards by themselves, sign rental contracts, etc. But society changed for the better, and what had been equitable became onerous.

I'll give you a f'rinstance. Texas is a community property state. While a 50/50 split of existing assets isn't always what happens, it's rarely very far off from that. It also has some wrinkles due to the stuff mentioned above, like women having difficulties buying property or renting on their own before the mid-70s. If a wife slept one night in her husband's house, for example, it became part of the marital property. Didn't matter if it had been in his family for generations, he owned it before they married, and they got divorced after a month; she got half. Period.

Even when I got married twenty years ago, that was still the law, long after a lot of the social and legal reasons ceased to exist. It wasn't until about ten years ago, in fact, that the laws in Texas got adjusted to account for the shifts in the social and legal landscape to make things closer to equitable again; even then, a lot of the guidance is still "the mother should be given custody if all other things are even close to equal."

I'll give you a real-life example: one of my co-workers in the early 2000s. He'd gotten divorced in the late 90s and showed me the judgment that had been handed down in his adultery-caused (she cheated) divorce settlement.

• They both worked, and she only earned slightly less, but he paid alimony until five years passed or she remarried. She moved the AP into her house not long after the divorce, but they didn't marry until after the last of the alimony came through.
• He gladly paid child support. Dude absolutely loved his kids. He also had the "2 and 2" visitation described above. She had violated the visitation agreement several times, but he didn't have the money to get it enforced because...
• She kept the house, but he had to keep paying half the mortgage. Again, due to that throwback "women couldn't own property" thing that hadn't been true for almost three decades, and because she got custody of the kids and it was deemed better for them to have a stable environment, he had to keep paying on it until the wife moved or the youngest kid turned 18, after which they'd sell the house and split the proceeds.

There was more, but those were the highlights. He, of course, had to pay for his own apartment, and if he wanted to keep even a chance at visitation, it had to be big enough for both kids (enough beds/bedrooms, so no roommates, etc.). He ended up paying for in the neighborhood of one-and-a-half to one-and-three-quarters households when you sat down and did the math. And due to another twist in the Texas laws at the time, the alimony was based on his weekly takehome pay, so doing things like working overtime or getting a second job only barely helped; she'd still get a chunk of that, too.

Like I've said before, a lot of those guys are capital-T traumatized by their divorces, and the "she gets rewarded for cheating" stuff comes honestly. There's a bunch of other crazy shit, too, that's still kicking around. One is called "condonation," which basically means that if A) your spouse promises they'll stop doing whatever motivated the beginning of the divorce proceedings and B) you sleep with them once they do, then they can get the divorce case thrown out and make you start all over again. A) is easy to prove and B) is easy to perjure yourself about without much chance of getting in legal trouble, so...

I wonder how much gender actually plays a part in divorce and how much is just people getting shafted.

If a wife slept one night in her husband's house, for example, it became part of the marital property. Didn't matter if it had been in his family for generations, he owned it before they married, and they got divorced after a month; she got half. Period.

I don't really see the issue with that, tbh. Isn't that what marriage is, you split your life with someone 50/50? There's prenups and trusts and all sorts of ways people can take their property out of any marital assets.

My father was a farmer, and yeah, he got completely "shafted" in his divorce because of all his assets. He once told me that he spent about $50k/yr in alimony and child support just to keep all the generational farmland in his name. It's also of note that his ex-wife ended up with all 4 kids because she was the SAHM.

What they do have a problem with (outside of being required to pay for a child that was passed off as theirs but wasn't) is that they pay support for the kids but get almost no access to them.

I remember a famous case in Colorado about this. Chris Atkins should be the LW mascot. Dude found out his kid wasn't his 2 years in, got divorced, but because he didn't share DNA with his kid, he got denied any parental rights; however, since his name was on the birth certificate, he had to pay $700+/mo in child support. Really fucked up stuff.

Though, on the flip side, it did make national news. So that tends to qualify it as an outlier.

"Oh, I wanted to take you to Disneyworld, but the only weekend I could get off is the one where you're supposed to be with your dad, and he doesn't want to give that weekend up. Oh, well."

When I was a kid, my parents tried to pull this crap, and honestly, it had the opposite effect. It's like, that's my Dad you're shittalking. Kids pick up on that. But I agree that it's some very shitty and selfish parenting--though again, I don't believe it's inherently gendered. It's just women more often take on the roles that get the "benefits" of family courts, which it why it paints a picture than "men get shafted."

 

[overwatcher]

Yeah - I got introduced to it by a fellow student when studying in London. Also H2G2, Father Ted, and some other Brit classics. What’s the one with an all Indian cast?

I’ve read the novelizations. I have to look up a bunch of stuff, or ask a friendly Brit. And obv some of the references are kinda before my time. But the writing is great and a lot of it is timeless.

Emily

The Kumars at No 42? Maybe? Laugh-out-loud.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The Kumars at No 42? Maybe? Laugh-out-loud.

Not sure… will Google

 

[gordo12]

Bad husbands appear in LW all the time.

The thing is there are two different reactions:

If it's the wife: pile on the kindling, pour the gasoline and hand me a match.

If it's the husband: well, that not really THAT bad! (And my impression is...it's most often women making excuses for the man)

The comments, likes, downloads & scores follow that trend.

 

[StillStunned]

The Kumars at No 42? Maybe? Laugh-out-loud.

And Goodness Gracious Me. Their sketch about Indians in a British restaurant is a hoot.

"I'm going for the blandest thing on the menu! Watch this. Oy mate, oy mate!"

 

[lc69hunter]

I enjoy a well written cuckquean story or series, where the wife really gets off on the gentle humiliation by the husband and the cupcake

 

[NoTalentHack]

I’ve found the next “petty revenge” bit for a story.

 

[OverconfidentSarcasm]

I’ve found the next “petty revenge” bit for a story.

There was an LW story that I loved, but I guess the author took it down, because it's no longer in my reading list.

It was one of those "Just once... if you don't mind" derivates where the wife and her lover leave to spend the weekend in a highly digitized resort... and the husband just happened to be an "offensive security specialist". So, he messes with them in THE most juvenile way imaginable.

Like switching their lobster dinners into bowls of plain oatmeal, locking their room's AC at 55°F, disabling their door cards whenever they left for the pool in nothing but their swimsuits, or having a mariachi band follow them around. It was hilarious.

 

[NoTalentHack]

There was an LW story that I loved, but I guess the author took it down, because it's no longer in my reading list.

It was one of those "Just once... if you don't mind" derivates where the wife and her lover leave to spend the weekend in a highly digitized resort... and the husband just happened to be an "offensive security specialist". So, he messes with them in THE most juvenile way imaginable.

Like switching their lobster dinners into bowls of plain oatmeal, locking their room's AC at 55°F, disabling their door cards whenever they left for the pool in nothing but their swimsuits, or having a mariachi band follow them around. It was hilarious.

I normally don't like those stories, because the outcome just seems so obvious to me, but that sounds hilarious.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I don't really see the issue with that, tbh. Isn't that what marriage is, you split your life with someone 50/50? There's prenups and trusts and all sorts of ways people can take their property out of any marital assets.

There are, but those are a relatively new thing, or at least a relatively new thing in terms of how common they are; they mostly evolved as a response to people doing... well, exactly the type of things that traumatized some of the guys who got their divorces back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

I tend to agree that no fault, community property is the way to go, but the way the laws were written, there was no wiggle room. Some guys (and it was mostly guys; ask pretty much any divorce attorney working during those periods) got completely wrecked if everyone played the game fairly, at least in legal terms.

I'm not saying there weren't deadbeat dads that ran off with their mistresses, hid assets, etc. There absolutely were. However, when it came down to a simple "mom and dad fell out of love, one of them left," and no one tried to play the system by hiding their assets, etc.? It went badly. Both parties ended off worse than they were before the divorce, and the wife often ended up having less real capital/resources (because sexism in hiring, pay, etc.), but the man ended up massively worse off from where he started.

In my own case, I got extremely lucky; my first wife and I married after dating for about three years twenty-five years ago, then divorced less than two years later. She worked a handful of McJobs for a while, then wanted to devote her time to a series of hobbies, while I had a career. No problem; I loved her and wanted her to be happy, and we could manage on my salary. We had no kids, and I had brought the vast majority of the assets to our marriage. We bought the house after we got married, but it was entirely from my pay and a hiring bonus I got.

I'm not saying she didn't contribute; she cooked, decorated the house, etc. But I also did my fair share of things like upkeep, handling the bills, etc. I also tended to be the more stable, mature one, even though she was older by four years; when it came to emotional labor? That was mostly me, too. Like I said, though, I loved her, so I didn't mind.

When the divorce came, it was because she wanted out. She had no complaints about me; her words were, "You're a great husband, I just don't want to be a wife living in the suburbs, and I should have realized that sooner." She was self-aware and fair, and while she broke my heart, that's the only damage she did. I wrote up a suggested settlement proposal while she was off the weekend she was deciding whether she wanted to stay married or not, and I tried to be fair. including more assets than she'd come into the marriage with, but not the house, etc. She signed it without blinking. Like I said, she was a good person, and self-aware. Our marriage was just collateral damage in her journey.

However.

If she had wanted to? She could have absolutely demolished me financially. Half my 401K, half our savings, half the house, half of everything. She brought into the marriage no savings, little income, a handful of possessions, etc., while I was doing pretty well for myself. Sh could, if she weren't a good person, have ended up massively better off financially than she was before we married, while I would have taken a hit that looked a lot like bankruptcy, and all for a marriage that lasted less than a US Representative's term. There was no real factoring in "length of marriage" or similar factors in the statues. Things like that happened to... I won't say a lot of guys, but enough that pretty much every guy in Texas of a certain age knew a guy with a story like that. I knew at least three.

I married again a little more than two years after my divorce. We've been together for 20 years, and we're still very much in love, with kids, a nice house, careers, etc. If, god forbid, we ever divorced, would she (and I, for that matter) deserve roughly a 50/50 split? Yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't begrudge that at all, I don't think. We built this life together, and it wouldn't be fair to either of us to expect one or the other to start over without a reasonable portion of the shared assets.

In fact, if you look at the Loving Wives stories where the marriage has gone on for that long, you'll see that, usually, the husband in those stories are like, "Yeah, fuck her for cheating, but I'm not going to screw her out of this just for that." More often, if it shows up in a story at all, it's a plot device where the wife tries to extort the husband into letting her continue the affair (or at least forgive her and stay around) as "all that changes is that you live less comfortably, while I keep the house, etc."

 

[AchtungNight]

If I ran this site, I would rename that category to “Drifting Spouses”. Less misogynistic while still accurate. I can’t do much about the monogamy crusaders who bash stories there- other than leave my ratings off and keep deleting negative comments. But I do agree with Millie the name isn’t the best.

 

[gordo12]

If I ran this site, I would rename that category to “Drifting Spouses”. Less misogynistic while still accurate. I can’t do much about the monogamy crusaders who bash stories there- other than leave my ratings off and keep deleting negative comments. But I do agree with Millie the name isn’t the best.

From the point of view of misdirecting readers, no the name is not the best. But from the point of view of an advertising success it deserves a trophy. It generates more talk on this site than anything else I've seen. Writers, readers etc, all polarized over it.

 

[AchtungNight]

Quiet is preferable to polarization IMHO. Especially in the adult world.

 

[desecration]

One of the earliest BTBs was AnonSky's "Don't Get Mad... Get Even" (10/08/00). This features female-on-male revenge (FOMR).

 

[desecration]

If she had wanted to? She could have absolutely demolished me financially. Half my 401K, half our savings, half the house, half of everything. She brought into the marriage no savings, little income, a handful of possessions, etc., while I was doing pretty well for myself.

Aaaand this is why anyone with legal experience opposes the law: we create a property for spouses which is available to them without consideration of fault, giving them a financial incentive to cheat, lie, steal, etc.

No-fault even-division divorce is probably responsible for more murders than any other law.

 

[SimonDoom]

Aaaand this is why anyone with legal experience opposes the law: we create a property for spouses which is available to them without consideration of fault, giving them a financial incentive to cheat, lie, steal, etc.

No-fault even-division divorce is probably responsible for more murders than any other law.

Well, speaking for myself, as someone with legal experience and as someone who's gone through a no-fault divorce, I would disagree. I think no-fault divorce is essential in a modern society that values equality between men and women. Fault-based divorce is a regressive shit show that in some cases requires spouses to make up lies about the other to obtain the divorce decree.

Marriage is a kind of standard form contract, and people who are looking at getting married need to be smart and look at it that way, and think about the implications. That's easier said than done, because nobody who's getting married wants to think of it that way. They just want to think about the love and romance. But even so, and speaking as someone who's gone through the whole process, it pays to be smart right from the beginning. If you don't like the terms of the standard contract, then modify it before it goes into effect. If you enter the contract, it's on you. You're bound by it.

It remains true that, on average, men do better after divorce than women, at least in the United States.

I know of no evidence that no-fault divorce increases the incidence of murder, and I do not believe that at all.

 

[desecration]

Fault-based divorce is a regressive shit show that in some cases requires spouses to make up lies about the other to obtain the divorce decree.

This is the nature of adversarial legal systems generally. If you don't like that, you have a far bigger problem with this type of society than divorce law.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is the nature of adversarial legal systems generally. If you don't like that, you have a far bigger problem with this type of society than divorce law.

Believe me, I am extremely familiar with our adversarial legal system. I know its pros and cons intimately.

The point is that no-fault divorce laws provide a less adversarial way for marriages to end, and that has to be a good thing, right?

 

[desecration]

The point is that no-fault divorce laws provide a less adversarial way for marriages to end, and that has to be a good thing, right?

No, because then you have given someone a magic bullet to seize fifty percent of another party's wealth. That creates an incentive. This in turn causes people to murder spouses to avoid that problem.

 

[SimonDoom]

No, because then you have given someone a magic bullet to seize fifty percent of another party's wealth. That creates an incentive. This in turn causes people to murder spouses to avoid that problem.

I don't think there's any evidence that this is actually happening in any significant amount, except maybe on TV shows. It's not "seizing" another party's wealth. When you get married, in most states in the USA you agree, beforehand, implicitly by operation of law, that the wealth earned by either spouse is treated as being earned and owned by both spouses, and divided equally upon the split. That's not seizure. By getting married without a pre-nup, you consent to this arrangement and you cannot complain that it's unfair or immoral. If you want something different, you can get a pre-nup, and that's why many people today do so.

I don't see the unfairness. In many cases the wife gives up a substantial or all of her professional earning capacity to stay home and take care of the home and kids. That's still true, to some extent. She contributes value to the marital unit, just as the husband does, even if it is of a non-monetary kind. The law treats their contributions as equal by default, which eliminates the unpleasant prospect of the two parties fighting in court over the value of their contributions.

 

[NoTalentHack]

No, because then you have given someone a magic bullet to seize fifty percent of another party's wealth. That creates an incentive. This in turn causes people to murder spouses to avoid that problem.

You're missing the flipside. Assume we go back to the way thing were before community property entirely. You'll see as many, maybe more, murders coming as a result of that. They might just not show up as murder.

Think about it this way: right now, what type of person would kill someone over getting a 50/50 split instead of a 75/25 or a 90/10, no matter how unfair that might have seemed. If my ex had tossed aside the agreement I'd written up and gone for the throat, there's no way I would have murdered her over that. It's just stuff. It's not worth a person's life. But the type of guy that would go, "yes, I will kill my spouse because she's taking half of my business and home?" That's a fucking nutter, a controlling, abusive person at their core.

Before community property... well, it's like Vera Donovan in Dolores Claiborne said, "An accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend." The murders you see as a result of no-fault are clearly murders, even if the spouse tries to cover it up. The ones from before? The ones that happened because a woman married a man and found out five years or ten years into their marriage that they'd married an abusive asshole, or a profligate cheater, or a controlling bastard, and now he controls the purse strings? Those often led to a life of quiet desperation for the women living in them. Sometimes, tho... well, an accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend.

Community property can be and has been tweaked to be fairer since my divorce. Now, things that were brought into the marriage are de jure not included as community property, including houses, 401ks, savings, etc. Contributions or purchases after are, though. They also eased up a little on no fault. Quoting TexasLawHelp.org:

The court is not required to divide marital property equally. The court is only required to make a “just and right” division, considering the needs of the children, education and earning capacity of the spouses, fault in the breakup of the marriage (if stated in the divorce petition), who has custody of the children, and any other factor that the court thinks is relevant. If the spouses agree to a division of property and debt, the court will usually approve the agreement as “just and right.” The spouse who is awarded the property is typically responsible for the debt that goes with it (for example, a car payment, or mortgage).

My friend from the early 2000s with the bad divorce from the 90s would have been much better off. However, the division of property still leans towards more even than less even, espeically the longer the marriage has gone on.

Texas is still a community property state, one of nine in the nation. It's just much, much better now than it used to be about how it divides that community property, and what it considers community property. That was the big problem with the system before, and now that it's been addressed, things are much more equitable. However, those changes to the law are also relatively recent, so people still haven't heard about most of them. And there are states, plenty of them, that still have the more archaic, nastier version of community property on the books.