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I reserve the vast majority of my anger for my WH, of course, but there is plenty to go around. He humiliated me by going out of his way to introduce me to every woman he cheated with (two physical, one emotional/online-sexual), and even make them my "friends." One was in our wedding-- let's call her Delilah(he didn't technically cheat w/her during our relationship, but remained "friends" with her after having been HER AP before we began dating-- and she remained married throughout). Same to some degree with nearly every one of the dozens of women he "flirted" with in highly inappropriate sexual and romantic ways.

I won't go into the "whys" in this post, I understand how sociopathic it seems (is). But related to this, he never really spoke a negative word about me to any of them. A couple definitely assumed some things-- they'd have to think I was stupid or pathetic or actually approved of his behavior almost by definition. But they were my "friends" partly because he spoke highly of me-- and they met and liked me.

I feel utterly humiliated after these revelations-- main DDays were Fall of 2022. (FTR, actual affairs were all over arguably at least 18 years ago and even the betrayal-level inappropriate "banter" with the near-APs seems by my surveillance and polygraph to have been 90% over at least 5 years ago... though he never went NC with any of them until 2022 and still considered many "friends.")

SO MANY WOMEN shared these secrets (see Omar Minwalla's "Secret Sexual Basement") with him while he blatantly disrespected me. Since Delilah tried to contact him twice recently with new phone/FB accounts (he blocked her immediately), I have been thinking, too, about his passive behavior with everyone else who has harmed me, in favor of affirming his own "okayness" and not ruffling their feathers lest he lose their "friendship" or whatever. Though anything resembling actual negative talk about me seems to have been mostly limited to Delilah-- and in another way, a couple of his former associates and his family-- he would let them talk a certain amount of sh*t about me and not respond to it-- but not defend me, either. I directly witnessed this with his family-- though he stood up to one member in a majorly affirming way in summer of 2023-- and I saw it in old messages between him and Delilah. She'd make a "subtly" disrespectful remark about me and he would ignore it, but... you shouldn't be ignoring that sh*t!!!??

Lately I keep seeing visions of these women grinding their high heels on my face. And him letting them, of course.

He has thrown them largely under the bus at this point, but I want to do some ritual to just get my aggression out, or put them back in their proper place, or... something.

Figuratively. Of course.

I'm not saying I want to burn them in effigy.... but I'm not NOT saying that.

Anyone have any ideas? And of how I can maybe involve WH too? He's doing a lot of work to break down and discard this extraordinarily disrespectful, frankly shocking mindset and tendency to "compartmentalize"-- which came both from his narcissistic FOO and from Delilah (she seduced him-- yeah, really-- when he was just 20 and she was older-- then made WH HER husband's friend, in order to have greater access to WH and also for whatever her own f'ed up or sadistic reasons).

WH himself has the vast majority of the h*ll to pay on this issue. Not to mention continued deep work (he now is in three kinds of weekly counseling and starting a fourth).

But for me? Besides living well, being much more beautiful, smarter, and obviously a better person than any of them... And NOT wanting to contact any of them or give them any satisfaction by letting them know I hate them...

Anything you have done or recommend? Thanks.

For me it just took time. For the first six months after I found out I was so generally upset and angry at my husband that I only felt intermittent anger for the AP. Then it kicked in HARD. As in your case, my husband didn’t badmouth me to the AP or plan to get a divorce, and in his head he could "see us being friends," which had me twisted up in so many ways. Also, while I was not close to his AP, we knew each other enough that it felt like a double betrayal, especially since I had encouraged him in being nice and supportive to her as a woman in a field that tends to be male dominated (so much for women supporting each other!!).

I was worried for a while at how angry I was at her. In the end, only time took it away. I don’t have positive emotions toward her now, but I’m mostly indifferent. It just took time. Trying to talk myself out of being angry at her didn’t help, I had to process and accept that anger for it to pass.

[This message edited by Grieving at 2:56 AM, Thursday, January 25th]

Make a running list of stuff and do one a month. Add to the list when you feel angry.

I’ll start your list for you
-Donate to the opposing political group in their name. Preferably give their phone number. Those people never stop calling.
-sharpie marker, have a male friend write her info in the boy’s bathroom
- sharpie marker- write her name and stuff in the women’s bathroom and let street justice take the trash out for you
- sign her up for anal eeze anal lube from Amazon- a monthly subscription?
- send her partner the anal eeze from her.
- sign her up for a visit from a religious sect. Maybe donate to them first so they won’t stop visiting her
- catfish
- out her as an AP to her mother in an anonymous letter.
- buy her some lingerie but in a size or two too small, make it from him. Everyone hates getting clothes that are too small. It might make her feel terrible.
- friend all of her friends on Facebook or instagram…… but do not friend her. Start posting on her friends pages. It will make her nervous.
- send her random flowers if she is with someone. Send her partner random flowers. To work.
- visit her place of employment and be nice. Maybe schedule an appt with one of her colleagues. Make sure to do it when she’s there.

Make it a monthly date where you do something. Like a monthly commitment. Schedule a time to be angry. It helps.

I took great glee in using her name around my husband. I didn’t call her any names except her own. To humanize her to him. Because his was a Craigslist hookup.

This is so normal to have to deal with, sorry you have to be here and ask. Obviously, a lot of this anger should be expressed to your WH, discussed and hopefully-some will be resolved that way. Lots of people write letters they never intend to send or journal. I was an extremely angry BS and had leftover rage no matter how much i expressed verbally. This is the stuff that helped me most:

1. Exercise regularly.
2. Any demo around your house need doing?
3. Yardwork calling?
4. Buy plates @ thrift stores and smash (safely).
5. After some time, indulgences (steam sauna, facials, massage, groovy dining, trips) also helped me.

Hope maybe something will emerge that scratches the itch for you soon.

Why not burn them in effigy? Make paper cutouts and burn them, either with your H or not. That may help.

I read your post to describe being traumatized. Have you considered IC to help you figure out how to deal with the trauma?

*****

In my opinion and in that of my IC's, humiliation comes from messages one send to oneself. If you counteract the messages, you end the sense of being humiliated. That is much more easily said than done, but IME, the technique works well.

3yrsout, that is an incredible list and I hope and pray I never end up on your bad side.

My experience is I came up with ways to try to humiliate or hurt OM, I got as far as purchasing materials, creating on-line accounts, things like that. I was SO angry and hated that POS and wanted him to feel something of my pain. People here largely talked me off the ledge of the worst of it, I ended up doing nothing, and I now am mostly indifferent to the bastard (like I said, mostly). For me, the rage has dissipated and I’m glad I didn’t act, FWIW.

[This message edited by Revenger at 7:53 PM, Thursday, May 23rd]

Oh my goodness, petty revenge posts were my favourite types of posts for a while. I used to absolutely fantasize about the ways I could try to stick it to AP.

My most intrusive/not funny idea: AP in my situation was interested in my H and was subtly pursuing him at the time of our wedding. Their A did not start until shortly afterwards (I know, right?). She was not invited to the wedding, but gave "us" a wedding present. A marble cheeseboard. Post-D-day I dreamed about writing all sorts of nasty (totally unoriginal) things about her and throwing it through the windshield of her car (where much of the physical activities took place.

I used to imagine sending her flowers to the office so that everyone would gather 'round and see who they were from and then I would write something publicly denigratory in the "note". There were various iterations of this plot. Some involved glitter bombs. Totally unrelated, did you know there are websites where you can send a bag of gummi candy d*cks to someone, so that they get the message that they should eat a bag of them?

I dreamed about signing her up for email sites/text sites that would make her husband think that she was still cheating - so he would divorce her. (I feel bad about this, they were attempting R and it would have been needlessly cruel to OBS). Conversely, I used to imagine doing it in reverse so she'd think her husband was having a revenge A (I wanted her to FEEL what it felt like).

In my internet stalking era, I was able to find home addresses and phone numbers for both her and OBS's families and I used to imagine sending them anonymous postcards about all of the shameful stuff their daughter/DIL was up to.

I thought about sending her self-help books with funny/insulting titles. Books like, "How Not to Be an Asshole", "If You Want Clsure in Your Relationship. Start With your Legs", "How to Not Be a Whore" "A Real Lady would Never Do this", "Beauty Fades, Dumb Is Forever", "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself", etc. etc. (these are are all real titles, I had a list in my notes app!) There is one called "How to Masturbate at Your Office Without Getting Caught" that I wanted to send to her office. I feel like it was cathartic to find books titles to add to my list - even if it just made ME laugh. If I'm honest, this list still makes me smile.

I had a friend back in college who got revenge on another woman.

She signed the OW up on all sorts of sites.

Tarot readings every day
Nudist activities (including an upcoming nudist campout and fishing weekend)
Free puppies and kittens
Looking for mates on just about every site she could find
S&M lingerie and toy sites
Free subscriptions to sex advice videos on how to please her man

She was relentless.

My therapist suggested an exercise that works great for me:

Get paper and writing utensil and sit at a table -

Write by hand (no typing) sentences like 'I'm angry that _____' or 'I'm furious about ____' filling in the blanks with whatever comes to mind.

The limit was always 3-5 minutes, but I've always found myself laughing in under 2 minutes. YMMV.

I wrote many many many letters to OW and burned every single one. Some were 1 or 2 sentences some.were pages. But they all allowed me to get my anger out. I then would burn them. Allowing the negative energy to leave. It
Was helpful and I did it for about 18 mos.
I never met ow and felt cheated out of the opportunity to tell her off and show her I was the prize. Writing and burning those letters helped me let go. Ultimately she is a pos human and I did not want to waste time or energy on her.

After regaining my self esteem, I took satisfaction in knowing how sub par of a human he/they were. He is not only not on same playing field as me he is not near my ball park. They always affair down, and this was definitely the case with my W. An AP is always willing to accept second place, leftovers, because if they weren't an A wouldn't have to be conducted in secrecy. The BS is the one left in the dark because everyone involved knows they will never accept second place, its pathetic actually.

My WW's AP was a leader in his church, he was a D BH and ran a support group for couples in his church in marital difficulty. I blew that up by calling and talking to the Pastor, He was a wolf among the sheep.

It will take time but you will get there and see how pathetic they are.

Sign her up for every mail and email list that ever existed. It’s cheap, harmless other than annoying, and you’ll run out of anger before you run out of things to sign her up for.

Emergent 8-

Love the reading list, lol!!!!

Ha, thanks. To be clear, I never actually did any of these things (and don’t recommend that anyone else do either). Somehow, making the list was cathartic enough.

Agree with Tanner... especially about cheating down.

Cheating is cowardly. Take your hand, feel around your crotch, and find your nuts. When you find them, stick them back on and tell your spouse you want to have sex with other people, multiple other people, and see how that goes. They don't. Cheaters are cowards. Deeply insecure. They know there is nothing respectable about who they are and what they're about.

There is nothing you can really do except ride the wave, harness that energy is a positive manner, and know those people are subhuman and lower than dog sh*t. That is the only real way to get past it. That is a 8-course sit-down meal. Satisfying and peaceful.

If you harness it in the other direction, stooping to that level, playing their game... it'll feel good for a moment and than what? It's like eating cereal for dinner, over the kitchen sink. It's easy. It's quick. It's sweet. But it never really satisfies.

It has taken me 3yrs to realize I wasn't the chump. I wasn't the sucker in the room. One of my WW APs was in our Bible study. Our kids were around the same ages. We went to each other's kids' functions. And then, all of that ceased.