SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I seem to be in the throws of it.

http://www.theeternalvictim.com/smear/

Ah yes,the smear campaign. WH has done this with his work friends. He tried it with other people who know me,but it didn't work with most of them. Guess which people he sticks with and guess who he tends to avoid,now?

Didn't even work on HIS family...no-one who really knows me has been taken in.

I've had nothing but silence from people in his life..not even his mother has asked about her grandchildren. He's very, very good at making people believe whatever he wants them to.

I'm glad in your case they saw through it. Maybe someday they will in mine as well..at least he's in another country now and I don't have to face it :P

Been there, bought the t-shirt. It destroyed my self esteem. It was here on SI that I first learned about smear campaigns.

Knowing what it was changed everything and saved my sanity. I was able to distance myself and depersonalize his attacks.

In my case, taking the high road and keeping quiet was empowering him to keep up his smear campaign.

So I changed my approach. For every smear email he sent out to my friends and family, I forwarded his emails to me apologizing, begging me to stay, admitting what he did. I even marched into court with some key emails neatly documented.

Through his own words, everyone finally saw how he has been manipulating them. It was a great strategy because now no one believes him, they all see him for who he really is (myself and the court included). He finally gave up.

I've learned to fight, but to choose my battles. Not one of our mutual friends talks to him anymore. They all know him well enough to know he's full of shit about me.

His family? That was tough. They KNOW he's a complete ass, but he's still family, so they flip flop. They want to believe him, and sometimes get sucked into his BS, but as has happened before, he is currently estranged from them, and his mother is going through me to see the kids since he refused to let her see them. I don't care how much I ever argue with his mother, I would never keep her from the kids..

Really, it's just the dummy OW I'm tired of him lying to about me. I just have to block and ignore the bitch cause she has no fucking clue what's really going on..

Some people matter, and I will defend myself to them. But some people don't, so they get dropped from my life.

I think the best thing I learned from articles like the one you posted is to not act crazy or get all antsy when defending yourself. I know it's frustrating and gets your heart pounding to hear the crazy lies, but I think an eyeroll works better at convincing people who is telling the truth..

I've been through this and am still going through it, even though we are now divorced. It is in the court documents in quite a few places that he thinks I'm mentally unbalanced, paranoid, overprotective, and so forth. This is a tactical move on his part because his lawyer managed to fully keep OUT of the court records WHY I might have behaved the way I did (because of EX's extreme cruelty, abuse, perversion, and so forth). It's a tactical move. I somewhat expect at a future date he's going to challenge me on custody & claim my mental status as the reason I should lose the children.

His lawyer so often told mine that I'm crazy & on anti-depressants that my lawyer actually believed him. The thing is, though, that I'm not crazy and have never been on anti-depressants. My lawyer was shocked to find this out, and I got a bit pissed at him for being taken in like that.

And then there's how he's told everyone, including the children, all kinds of lies about me. All kinds of nonsense that's actually a projection of what's wrong with him. But his kind of personality disorder makes him very convincing. Luckily people who know me already aren't taken in by his lies, and people who take a moment to try & get my side of the story immediately see that he's been lying to them. Except my children. My children are being torn in two because of EX's unrelenting triangulation and ongoing campaign. It breaks my heart.

Thank you for telling me your stories. It makes me feel not so alone.

Still in the middle of it, well he is still doing the smear campaign, no one responds or buys his kool aid anymore.

I learned a long time ago that he can say whatever he wants, that doesn't make it true. In fact if he's the one who is talking you can bet money it isn't true.

I am happy and enjoying my life, his opinion no longer relevant.

My STBXH has made up stupid lies, more to validate what he has been doing. And most were so stupid that nobody believed him, but he never tried to maliciously smear me.

I'm so sorry that this happens to so many and especially you being pregnant. This is just awful. Please don't let him and his evilness get to you. Know how wonderful you are. Know that you escaped a life with someone this evil. Take care of your children and take care of yourself so that those miracles growing inside you are safe.

You will NOT feel like you are lucky yet, but you have know ideal of the amount of psychological destruction he could've brought to you and your children. I grew up from 8-18 with a truly evil stepfather. You and your children escaped a horrible fate. His family knows better, but they are probably scared of him.

I will continue to keep you in my prayers and anytime you need to vent come here, and I will always listen (PM) as well.

Thank you <3

I hope someday I will be able to see those things.

Big time. One of the most shocking and hurtful things was the way that I found out that XWW had maligned me to her friends for months before she ever came to me with any of her "problems."

I see it clearly now, though. If she had thought she was in a troubled marriage, she would have come to me to talk about it, not slander me behind my back. No, the problem wasn't a troubled marriage (even though there were things that objectively could have been better). It was that she needed to play the victim in order to preserve her social image in the wake of the divorce. She had to get out ahead of it and get people on her side before she began the long, manipulative process of maneuvering towards the door and giving me the boot.

I am envious of some of the people who say that their mutual friends didn't buy the bullshit. I'm sad to say that most of the people who were exposed to it swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. I lost a lot of friends to this. I'm really sorry you're going through it.

Since he has NO friends IRL...he does it online/social media sites under assumed "handles"...ugh, the pathetic bastard!

He makes me feel so violated and dirty especially when I think back to how "loving" he was before.

Sending all going thru this huge hugs!

Friends and family believed me because I didn't try and keep the A secret. Everyone was so shocked that he'd have an A, most people realised that he'd kept a big part of himself hidden. I also was very careful how I broached it and was clearly open to R, so didn't match the stories he was telling about me. WH, on the other hand,was trying to hide his A and just talking about me (the nasty wife). It became clear very quickly who was being more truthful.

I went to that site you shared, Lost, n it was so very informative!

Thank you.

One year after divorce and my ex does it so well that he caused me to be fired from job...No one believes me

He started this smear campaign 5 Years prior to D Day and still continues.

Hells yes---since our divorce my X has gone full throtle with the smear campaign. She has pretty much redacted ever inch of her affairs, craziness, etc. and put it all on me. I figure in about 10 years, when my youngest is hopefully in college, it will have slowed down a little. 10 yrs will go by quick, won't it?

Yes. For years, unbeknownst to me, Trac-Fone waged a campaign against me. It was always with people who did not know me, and would never know me--though they think they do.

For a long time, a part of me was very concerned about the injustice of this.

And then I realized that I care less about having the record set straight than I care about being free from his crazy.

Oddly, becoming free from his crazy has completely removed his loser friends from my sphere, as well.

Win-win.

Yes, I have been going through it myself. He has told so many lies about me to people I thought knew me better. He is good at getting people to believe his lies because he had been lying to them for a while before the A even happened. My family and MY friends believe me because I didn't hide his A, I told them that I would even try R but he had already moved her in. His parents are completely on his side as I believe his siblings and their spouses and our so called friends are, he was able to begin feeding them lies about me long ago. I found this out from one friend that didn't fall for his BS. He even went as low as to call all the companies we do business with (phone, electric, cable, mortgage, bank, etc.) and tell them some BS story and take me off or not allow me access to our information. I did kindly inform them of the real story but it didn't matter.

That's why it imperative to expose the true reason the M failed. Throw out the truth and let the chips land where they fall. Its also a great way to determine who are real friends and who are not.

Yes. For years, unbeknownst to me, Trac-Fone waged a campaign against me. It was always with people who did not know me, and would never know me--though they think they do.

Yes he did this with his work colleagues...who are now his closest friends.

Silly example? He's passive aggressive, procrastinates and often 'loses' other people's things because they're not important to him.

So, he'd help tidy up and put something I'd need away in the wrong place, always a different place. I'd be looking for whatever it was and couldn't find it anywhere. This would happen a lot. Sometimes I needed whatever it was to be able to go out, cook, etc. Mostly I made do, but sometimes I couldn't. On those RARE occasions, I'd ring him at work and ask if he knew where it was. He ALWAYS replied that he didn't know. He never offered any suggestions. I'd tell him that I really needed it. He would ask if I'd looked for it. I'd be getting more annoyed and he'd keep on like this, with me trying to get blood out of a stone. Eventually he'd 'remember' or tell me to buy a new [whatever it was].

But he'd passive aggressively try to provoke me all the time. So sometimes I did get annoyed. If I did, (I now know, because he told me) he'd hold the phone away from him and look at co-workers to get sympathy. Then he'd have a coffee with a female co-worker and moan about me, playing the victim.

I take full ownership of my choice to phone him at work and to get angry. But he deliberately manipulated me for years to lay the groundwork for his A and to paint me as a horrible nagging wife.

When I realised that phoning him at work wasn't ok and didn't help, I stopped. At that point, he started phoning me at home, telling me important things he'd 'forgotten' to do...again trying to get a reaction. I always asked if he was somewhere private. He always told me he was. Sometimes he was. Then he'd come out of the room looking upset/down because I'd made him feel bad (even if I was calm - he felt bad). Sometimes other people were around and he'd try and provoke me. Really despicable.

At first, I did care what these people thought about me. But I don't any more. He made me into a straw man that he could set on fire. They don't know the real me, I don't know them and, hell, they don't even know the real WH. It's all a fantasy and it's why he kept me separate from them.