Cheating & Trust
[ 4 January 2008 ]
I recently received an email from a friend of mine, asking,
“Can you ever go back after he has cheated on you?”
My heart sank as I read it. This girl & her boyfriend are about the cutest couple I’ve ever met — totally in love & totally in sync. It just goes to show that life is really good at throwing you the odd curve ball.
The sad fact is that love & passion have expiration dates, & after a while, the raging excitement you once felt for your partner will wear off. Reality sets in & you realise that your lover, no matter how marvellous, is just a person, like everyone else. This is the time where you need to start working at your relationship, or it can really start to go sour. Cheating is easy, but keeping a relationship above water is not. Some people like a challenge, & some buckle under the pressure.
Regardless of whether monogamy is human nature or not, cheating on someone is still an extremely rotten thing to do. You betray their trust, break their heart & screw with their mind — something you should never purposefully do to someone who has given you their heart.
Here are some typical reasons that people cheat:
They don’t find their partner attractive or sexy any more
Their partner is unavailable a lot of the time, or just unwilling
It’s easier to get sex somewhere else
They don’t feel sexy or desired
There’s no challenge/boredom
They’re feeling alone or unloved
No intellectual connection or stimulation
Fear of getting older
Fear of spending the rest of their life with one person
Festering resentment (feeling unappreciated, anger at past actions, etc.)
Constant “grass is always greener” syndrome
Self-destructive urges (e.g. some people believe that real love is “too good to be true”, & they don’t feel that they deserve to be loved — so they go out of their way to destroy it)
I don’t believe in coincidence — I think everything happens to us for a reason. Please note that this does not necessarily mean that our partner cheated on us because we are bad/wrong/at fault in some way, but sometimes I think life is just trying to urge us in one direction or the other, or to teach us something. Regardless, we can choose to pay attention to what the universe is trying to tell us, fix our problems & move on, or we can deny it vehemently, & continue stumbling blindly through life, repeating the same old mistakes.
As an extreme example — are you (or do you know) someone who is cheated on by every partner they have? If you think about it — the only constant is you. To me, it seems ignorant to continually blame this on your partners. After all — you choose who you date, you know what you’re getting into, & if they always end because your partner is unfaithful to you, then you need to look closely at what’s actually going on.
I don’t believe love is so simple that if someone cheats on you, you should dump them straight away & erase any trace of them from your mind. I also don’t believe there is such a thing as a good “excuse” for being unfaithful — we are always responsible for our actions, no matter how drunk or angry or lonely we are, & communicating your needs to your partner should always be your first priority.
In a relationship, communication is the most important thing. Of course, you can claim that if your boyfriend paid more attention to you, you wouldn’t have had to seek out that dashing poet who wrote stories about you — but you need to take responsibility for your relationship. Did you tell him that he wasn’t paying you enough attention? If you’re angry at your lover or want to “get them back” for some perceived injustice, think before you act. Will cheating really solve the problem, or will it just serve to continue an ugly cycle?
A successful, monogamous relationship relies on trust, openness, communication & intimacy. This cannot be avoided. Trust is huge. Even if you haven’t cheated on your partner but they believe you have, the relationship is as good as over. You will never entirely win it back, no matter how hard you try.
What I do know is that once your trust has been betrayed, it will sit in the back of your mind forever. Regardless of how they reassure you or promise it will never happen again, you have no reason to believe them. Your heart & mind will try to defend you by being constantly suspicious — which takes an enormous toll on any relationship. It’s said that jealousy, suspicion & lack of trust are the major relationship killers. It is exhausting to always feel like you have to keep your eye on what they’re doing; just as exhausting as it is to always feel you have to prove your monogamy.
I was once in what I thought was a monogamous relationship. It was early days, & as it turns out, the boy I thought I was in it with, thought differently. He slept with someone else & I was devastated. He apologised, blah blah blah, & we ended up together for several years. I am pretty sure that these days, if that same thing happened, I would have walked away. Instead, I spent years in a relationship where I felt like a fool; a glutton for punishment; the underdog. I felt like I had let him get away with murder, which was terrible for my self-esteem. We never talked about it, because I was scared to bring it up & thinking about it made me feel sick to my stomach. & so it continued, until I met someone else. So you can see how these things go.
People make mistakes, & that’s okay. But the real danger is in how those mistakes are interpreted, & the repercussions of those actions.
If someone cheats on you — well, it’s your life. You can live it however you want to. You can patch the relationship up, though you need to be aware that it will be a lot of work, & probably never go back to how it was before. Unfortunately, my money says that you will feel better about yourself if you walk away.
Good luck, kitten.
Extra For Experts:
The Myths Of Monogamy
Emotional affairs
Dear Peggy
Beyond Affairs
Peter Fox gives infidelity advice
Super-love & cupcakes,
Gala
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great article, a friend of mine is going through this with his girlfriend or ex… the suspected infidelity has been in fact suspected and he doesn’t understand no matter what has happened between them its time to walk away because things wont be the same again, no matter how hard they try. not all relationships are like this but its a sad fact in this case. :( i might show this too him, to make him feel better.
i hope your friend’s ok Gala, i send hugs and cupcakes!
xx
thanks for this :) I know that my boyfriend is loyal to me (I know I can sound like I trust to much but is true! he’s crazy for me xD), but this article is great for relationships in general.
One of my friends “almost” cheated on her boyfriend because he didn’t pay much attention, and he broked with her because of that. He was an ass to her while they were together, but she didn’t have any right to do what she did…cheating is aweful, really.
Top advice as always, Gala.
I wholeheartedly agree that communication is paramount in any kind of relationship. Keep your lines of communication open and honest and she’ll be apples… or pears.
P
x
I was with my first boyfriend for 5 years. Our relationship carried through to college when he went away to school and it became a long-distance relationship. I ended up moving to another city to be with him when I transfered to a closer university.
I ended up finding out that he cheated on me a full YEAR after the incident actually took place and AFTER I had moved to the new city. He said he was devastated, that he didn’t think I’d find out and he didn’t want to tell me because it would hurt me too much. I agreed to be the “bigger man” and took him back. I stayed in a crappy relationship for 2 more years.
It was impossible to get the mental images and scenarios out of my head, let alone ever trust him again. I definitely would walk if it happened to me today.
When I was younger I was with this totally charming guy who cheated on me all the time. I always suspected, but never had concrete proof. After he broke up with me, I still slept with him often (I know, i know, glutton for punishment or what!) and I told all his girlfriends he had after me that he was cheating on them and none of them believed me. When he was first hooking up with the girl he is now married to, he slept with me and I fell pregnant. It wasn’t until we got a DNA test done that she would believe he cheated on her and then she made herself feel better by saying they weren’t ‘really’ dating at that time. I am so glad now that I smartened up. What I did was terrible, but what he did was worse.
I could never forgive anyone for cheating on me now. If you feel the urge to sleep with smeone else BREAK UP WITH WHO YOU ARE WITH! It’s that simple in my mind. If you don’t want to break up, don’t cheat. you can’t have your cake and eat it too when it comes to sex.
I’m so thankful that I have an open and honest relationship with my boyfriend now. Always go for loyality and trust over arrogance and charm if you’re looking for a stayer! It sounds like common sense, but I know how easily it is to fall for a plah-yer.
As a very guilty, one time cheater, I can honestly say that communication is definitely the most important thing. My incident happened a year ago, my boyfriend and I talked it over for weeks, took a break and we’re still going strong. I believe that me cheating actually had a somewhat positive effect on our relationship. We communicate more, know what one another wants from the relationship. Of course the heartbreak and confusion sucked, but it helped us work out other problems in our situation as well as me cheating.
exactly Gala, “pay attention to what the universe is trying to tell us, fix our problems & move on”, everything happens for a reason, you are in the place you are supposed to be. Unless you can go back time, just learn from your experiences and work for a better future with or without him. :)
What about the species of gentleman (okay, cad) who thrives on drama and feels his ego increase with the number of girls he can string along?
Gala, I have to give a different view here. I was a cheater (one time, not long term). I am not proud of it, and there are some underlying reasons why I did it… reasons that would take too much room to go into detail. In a nutshell, it stemmed from a competition between my older sister and myself since early teen years. She was always the pretty one. She was always the skinny one… etc. Needless to say, I had self image issues that I never knew I had.
Anyway, I cheated on my now husband before we got married. We went to counseling (very important) and now we have been married for 13 years, we’ve been together for 19 years, and we have two amazing daughters (14 and 7). We have been through leukemia with our youngest daughter, we work together (no joke, we teach right across the hall from each other at a local high school), and getting out of bed in the mornings is so hard because we don’t want to let go of each other (snuggling is a major “have to” in our house).
He could have walked away from me, I know that, but he didn’t and we’ve been crazy happy since.
tee tee — Ahh, see, counselling is the key! It’s awesome that you guys have rebounded from that experience so well, & I know that there are some couples who use one half cheating as a way to strengthen your relationship. But unfortunately I tend to think that that is the exception rather than the rule — which is why I gave the advice I did. Recovering from something like this depends heavily on the person who cheated wanting to change their ways, & the other person forgiving & accepting them. All of those are big steps requiring a lot of maturity, a huge desire to improve & work at things, & a real “let’s stick with it" attitude. Good on you guys, that is amazing!
That was a great article, really. A while ago I cheated on my then-boyfriend (a combination of loneliness and, as you put it, ‘festering resentment’ over past actions)
I ended up breaking up with him, even though he said he would forgive me. Even though what I did was despicable, it made me realise that there were some things that had been wrong with our relationship for a long time that weren’t going to be mended. I didn’t realise until then how much some things he had said and done to me in the past had hurt.
Anyway, it still hurts (for both of us, I’m sure) and I’m not sure if I’ll ever forgive myself for what happened, but I know that ending the relationship was the right decision.
That was a great article. I realise how amazing i have it with my boyfriend.
Surely it all depends on how serious the relationship is? If you are young and a person you are dating cheats on you, then it is probably much better for your self-esteem to walk away. If you are in a mature, committed relationship (living together, for example) with real long-term plans and hopes, then I think a relationship should be given a second chance. With counselling and a lot of kindness and forgiveness, and open minds, relationships can definitely recover and even strengthen from a betrayal. It might not recover, of course, but if there’s a lot to lose, it has to be worth giving it a decent (six months? a year?) go.
Meant to add: At the very least you will learn more about yourself, and about love and forgiveness, if you try.
infidelity sucks. that’s why I’m so afraid of having relationships.
I have mixed feelings about this, I’ve cheated on my partner. It was devastating, painful and so terribly sad. And then we spent about 6 months working through it, really communicating, expressing, speaking out, (after almost a year of sadness and lots of shit on my part) and I can say we have the most healthy relationship we have ever had in all our time together right this minute. It does not mean it’s perfect, as nothing is but … it has been the best since. We talk, we do so much together, and we remind each other to be there. I feel we are better now, and our relationship is healthier. And the important thing is, we have maintained it for about 2 1/2 years. I don’t know if I am one of the lucky ones, but I’m blessed.