The Next Victim

She’s exactly who he needs to help make him socially palatable—a loving, supportive and good  person with long friendships and family connections. He will have neither. She will not be wealthy because that would mean too many people keeping an eye out for her. He needs to work under the radar. If it’s later in life she will be skilled and genuinely talented at certain things that are worthwhile, but not highly educated. He doesn’t want a critical thinker who is mature enough to trust her trained mind. She will be a hard worker and add value immediately. He’s getting tired. She will probably have a hard story of loss and grief in her life that leaves her alone. He needs someone vulnerable to hopium. She will be warm and accepting and generous with affection and encouragement. He is starving for narcissistic supply. And something about her body will match his porn template. For example, his mommy.

Age and circumstance will determine how his modus operandi shifts from the time when he picked you. But he still has one. He still needs one. He is still incapable of a relationship of positive mutuality because nothing in his brushing glance with the treatment industry will have touched what is broken in him. It’s still broken. Infected. Infectious. And that means relationships are still forged the same way—in his best interests at her expense. The description above is how that M.O. might appear in the newest version, possibly after several other versions failed and he had to “make adjustments” about who to focus on, and why.

What do you do?

Many women I talk to wrestle with the question of the “other woman” or the “next woman” in ways that aren’t grounded in resentment or anger. They want to warn his next victim. They want to spare good women from being duped as they were.

It can’t be done. In my opinion, it can’t be done.

 Just as we were in love with him, so these women are in love. Just as we believed in him, so these women believe in him. Think about how hard it was for you to accept he was a fake, a liar, a user. Even now with the passage of time, I don’t want to believe my ex was as terrible to me and my children as he was. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want to make that case again.

Neither does she. Just as nothing existed in us to imagine the truth, nothing exists in her to imagine it. And we can’t plant it there. 

So, what do we do when the circumstances of life bring us all together—at weddings, grandchildren, graduations, birthdays?

We smile, and are polite. We make no pretence of friendship, but are generous with courtesy. When that is offered, we step away from the energy that is swirling within her and between her and your ex. We step away. Smile and step away.

Whatever version you get of the “next victim”, do not step into their stew. The moment you do, some of it will stick to you. You will become the “pig in the middle” that will serve to keep her from facing facts and seeing truth for even longer. The “problem” former wife is a strong glue for keeping his new relationship together in a defensive and persecuted way. Don’t go there.

You already know that her life is going to become pretty lonely. He will be emotionally unavailable, sexually incompetent, and he will come to despise her lack of formal intellect no matter how many other wonderful things she brings to his life that no one else does. Remember, contempt is a basic building block for relationships with these guys. He will not be humbled by his inability to catch a brighter and shinier victim. He will resent it. And someone has to pay. You need to stay out of the way, so she can see clearly how things develop between them.

Yes. He will have told her as many lies about you as he needs to. The really skilled guys don’t even need to fill in the details. They just have to set up the lie, and she will fill in the details. I’ve seen them do it. Because she wants to believe he was a victim. There’s nothing you can do—except doing nothing. It’s the only thing that leaves his lie hanging in the air, unsupported by anything but her will to believe it.

More than one former wife has a story of how after several years of him in a relationship with the next victim, that woman finally twigs to who he is. Sometimes, she will even reach out to the former wife, looking for something that will confirm her own hideous realizations. I don’t recommend those conversations, either. They can actually lead to “reconciliations” because we put ourselves in between them, and ended up wearing the trouble after all. Stay away. Be polite and stay away.

As long as treatment industry practitioners are incompetent to assess and treat these men correctly, as long as women’s experiences of abuse are diminished and denied, as long as women and children are required to take all the risks in the family so that he doesn’t have to take any, as long as men called sex addicts pronounce themselves cured and tart themselves up in the treatment industry as certified “somethings,” as long as misogyny pits women against each other using the vile truth of who a man is, don’t touch any of it with a ten foot pole. 

You don’t need more of this. You need to take all that energy and invest in your life and your children’s lives, where it can still make a difference. Isolate the problem. Make it live with itself. Meanwhile give all that caring and compassion to yourself so that you heal and add value to this world. Love and support your children as you can. Be who you always seemed to be, because that is true and good. Not perfect, but enough.

In my tradition we call this a blessing:

May you be safe and well.

May you walk with dignity and grace.

May your silence be filled with truth.

May you grow beyond the scars of abuse.

May you offer kindness where you can.

May you give your spirit to a message worth serving.

May you show your children, grandchildren, friends and neighbours, what self-respect and self-worth looks like,

Not perfect, but enough.

May gratitude rise up to your Source of all good gifts and make your spirit bigger.

And may you find your healing is in your own hands,

and keep giving it to yourself.

With you,

Diane.