I think my mother taught me well, when at the tender age of nine I began watching daytime soaps. Not only did I get to witness some horrible writing and a few cases of bad acting, but I got to learn that every secret, no matter how small, would eventually come and bite you in the ass. Soap operas may be dramatic and unrealistic, but they certainly got one thing right and for that I am thankful. They definitely put the fear of God in me to never tell a lie.
There is always one secret that plagues so many relationships and has ended in so many of loves demises for centuries upon centuries, cheating.
We all know it's wrong of course, but yet the temptation of it still manages to ensnare so many of us. It's a tricky subject full of questions such as; what qualifies as cheating, what justifies it, and what are the reasons for the cheating to happen in the first place? Being someone who has been cheated on and possibly someone who has been guilty of emotional cheating, here is how I see it:
Cheating is not right in any way, shape, or form! There is no excuse what so ever. The claim that he or she cheated on you first does not apply or justify, so please save that argument for someone else. Cheating is any emotional or physical transgression with another person other than your partner who you have voluntarily committed yourself to. If temptation is knocking at your door then there is something wrong with the relationship you are in and you have one of two responsible choices. 1. You express your problems and discuss them with your partner. Confronting the problem head on instead of looking for someone else to fix it for you. This is a difficult choice, but its the mature one that can hopefully save your relationship and or help you both realize that it's not working without causing any other harm. 2.If you are positive that this cannot be fixed and or have no real desire to fix it, just end it now. You are being completely selfish by wasting that persons time if you don't feel the same way. Besides the other person, you are wasting your time as well, simply for the fact that you are too scared of being alone and having an uncomfortable talk.
So that explains how I feel about what to do if the you get the itch to cheat, but what about once the act has already been committed? As stated above, secrets are impossible to keep forever. No, you cannot sweep things under the rug and hope that they never see the light of day. Life does not work that way. It may be a temporary fix, but the problem will only get worse if you do not confront it head on. When dating my first real boyfriend The Teacher, it took me an entire year to find out the truth. Time didn't make his infidelity any less painful, in fact it made me trust him even less. How could I ever see a future with someone who could so easily deceive me as he did? How could I trust someone who so easily lied to my face for an entire year? Yes cheating happens, but it doesn't have to mean the end in all cases. If my boyfriend would have been honest with me when the cheating had happened, I can't lie and say I wouldn't be heartbroken, hell I may have still said I never wanted to date him again, but I would have had a lot more respect for his character and may not have slammed and bolted the door so tightly on the possibility of something more in the future. Since then I have forgiven him for what happened and part of me can understand why he did what he did, but I will never understand how and why he hid it for so long and why he kept me around. And for that part of his character I can't forgive.
This blog post is not meant to be a dig at cheaters, more of a wake up call for both parties. Cheating does not make you a bad person. Everyone makes mistakes, even me. So here is my confession, while at the end of The White Knight's and my relationship I pushed and toed the line of emotional cheating. I wasn't getting the attention that I needed from the Knight, we were fighting all the time, and sexually we were at a plateau. Instead of sitting him down and sharing this growing need for his affection I began searching for it in others. I toyed with the ideas that maybe the men who were paying attention to me would be a better fit. Finally, our relationship began to come to a screeching halt after the moment when I decided to finally confront the Knight about my concerns and he shrugged them off and went into ignore mode. We gave up. I gave up first because I didn't want to ruffle any feathers and then he gave up trying to make the relationship work. I never physically cheated, but that period in which I began to invest parts of myself with other people, other than my white knight, began constructing one of the many walls between him and I. Wall after wall was built to protect ourselves from getting hurt, until finally we were both left alone and angry. No one wins. It's good to be careful in love, but there is a point in which we are only isolating ourselves. The struggle for power and the game of who cares less in a relationship is counterproductive because in the end what did you really gain? Congrats! You proved that you have control and the final say, but it doesn't mean much when you lose everything else.
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