Well, this was a topic that had to be discussed at some point. Cheating, unfortunately, happens to a lot of us, whether you’re the cheater or the cheatee. The topic has been explored at length, with people trying to analyze the reasons someone could have for cheating, who’s to blame, the effects it has on the person who was cheated on, etc. etc.
I’m here to break it down to a few very simple principles, that are, in my eyes, always valid. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
First things first, let’s make something very clear. Cheating is a choice. A deliberate choice. It doesn’t just happen. Especially when it comes to the actual physical act of cheating, there’s no such thing as an “accident”. Falling off a bike is an accident. You don’t trip, fall and land on someone’s d*ck. Just like you don’t trip and stumble into someone’s p*ssy. Are we clear on this? At some point you decided to take your drawers off, knowing full well you got somebody waiting for you at home.
“But what if the other person drove you to cheat?” No such thing. Your S.O. might make it so that you start to look around, at which point you should already be asking yourself if you should still be together. But again, the actual act is something that requires action on your part. It never just happens.
So we’ve covered the physical act of cheating, but we all know it doesn’t even take all of that to betray someone’s trust. Now this has a lot to do with your personal perception of things. There is another kind of cheating that doesn’t necessarily involve actual nookie. Cosmo tells me it’s called micro-cheating. It’s basically flirting with people who you’re not with. Or “keeping in touch” with someone you used to do a lot more than text with. Or keeping a backup plan around.
So how do you know if you’re micro-cheating? Simple. If you feel like you have to hide it from your S.O, you’re already there. The easiest thing to say would be to tell you to imagine if it were the other way around, but chances are: you see things differently because you don’t see the harm in what you’re doing. But they do. Their frame of reference is not the same as yours.
Lastly: can you move on with the same person after one of you (or maybe both of you) cheated? It can be done, I’ve seen it in my vicinity. I’ve tried it. Of course I can only speak for myself, but the only way it would have worked out for me is if absolutely everything else would have been perfect from that moment forward. Which of course it wasn’t. So my trust in him never fully restored, and lack of trust will destroy your relationship and your state of mind. The people I know that have moved on together seem happy now. I’ve talked to both parties separately, and the formerly-cheater indicated that after seeing the harm that was caused, they would never ever put themselves or their partner in that position again, because they came to realize how much they really loved their S.O. When I asked them if they thought their S.O. trusted them again, they told me they thought so. It had been a couple of years and they never gave their S.O. reason to doubt them again.
The person that got cheated on told me they stayed because of love. It’s hard to leave someone after you’ve gotten a glimpse of your future together. This person, however, still doesn’t trust their S.O. not to stray again, and still grows suspicious often. I recognized what they were saying and although I admire their determination to make it work, I decided that I couldn’t live my life like that, so I left my situation.
You often hear “Once a cheater, always a cheater.” I don’t necessarily believe that to be true. People learn, they grow. Of course there are those people who just can’t really deal with monogamy, so if that’s what you’re after, these people are to be avoided.
If you decide to stay though, don’t allow other people to shame you for it. If you believe that it’s the right choice for you and your partner, then that’s what you should do. I’ve told you before, there’s nothing worse than living with “What ifs”.
Anyway I hope you get some basic principles out of my sharing these experiences with you. To summarize:
- Cheating is a choice;
- Cheating doesn’t always mean sex: micro-cheating is a (subjective) thing;
- You can get over being cheated on and move on together, that is YOUR choice to make;
- People can and do change.