The Faults of Infidelity

Cheating is the worst.

     Whether you are being cheated on or you are the regretful cheater, infidelity in all its aspects is an awful experience. I have actually been on both end of the spectrum. I have been cheated on and have cheated on another. I would say it’s worse to be cheated on but others would disagree.

     When I was about 20, I was in college in California and I had two partners. The first relationship was my long-time boyfriend who lived in another city two-thousand miles away from where I was at the time. The second relationship happened by, seriously, a freakish situation. He was a friend from school and I had a little crush on him. Not knowing about my crush he began “hanging out” with me, using the excuse that he needed help with his homework. I began helping with his homework on a regular basis, we both enjoyed the time together. I enjoyed the distraction. Because we were at finals, I really had little time to talk to or talk about my boyfriend back in another city. The growing distance between us (my boyfriend and I) was wearing down on our relationship. He were growing tired of the distance and seeing other people had come up on many occasions. I was so busy, I didn’t really have time to talk on the phone and neither of us had money for travel.

     As the gap in time changed from days to weeks with most of my time spent with my finals homework assistant. Things between us didn’t start off romantic at all. I was too busy writing essays and going to classes. One night while studying at the library, we went out behind the library to smoke a joint. An elderly lady almost backed over someone in the parking lot and we giggled so hard, I wet myself a bit. When I told him, he let me come to his house to clean up and change (he also bought me a change of pants) out of my wet clothes. Now, as a human being at the young and ripe age of 20, I was just as attractive to him as he was to me. I didn’t think I was that attractive but he did. As we talked, I noticed we had a lot in common, more than me and my boyfriend. Hm.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

He started flirting with me subtly. A smile here. A wink there.

Then boom…we were kissing.

     My boyfriend was my first at that time. My first love and my first sexual partner. He was the only person I had sex with…willingly. At the time, I was going to college out of town. I was living with my biological father. I hadn’t seen him since I was little and I really wanted to meet him. Living with him was his idea but I was more drawn to going to college out of town. I wanted a change of scenery. My boyfriend was becoming mundane and our relationship dull. My mother and I were still on eggshells but repairing our relationship and I felt college was a way to make her proud.

     Deciding to live with my father turned out to be a life-changing decision. My father being the type of man whose interests lie with his seventeen-year-old daughter instead of women his own age. He had another daughter with another woman besides my mother (she was much younger than me), I only met her once or twice and I had no idea if he was doing the same to her. Maybe he was. The internal rage from that experience forced me to want another man (my own age of course) to touch me instead of my father. Blocking out the growing chaos in my mind, I decided to have sex with my boy-crush, cheating on my boyfriend.

Connection with another can get complicated  ~Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

     Things got hot and heavy between us. Kissing, touching in lovely places, massages, and lots of laughter. But when it came to him entering me, I hesitated. One simple memory crossed my mind…

     My very first boyfriend. I didn’t have sex with my first boyfriend, I was only 12. Wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend in the first place. Let alone have sex. He couldn’t deal with the waiting for me to be ready for sexy stuff so he cheated on me with my ‘friend’ who, after that, lost her friend status. I was so hurt by not being enough for him and not being worth waiting for. I started to think about how I would feel if my now boyfriend cheated on me with another woman. I would be furious.

     At that revelation, I stopped. We didn’t have sex but it got close enough for me to feel deep regret. I left and went back to the dorm, shaming myself for what I was about to do.

 

     Any aspect of infidelity is wrong because it causes pain to the one you call yourself loving. If you love someone, you don’t hurt them. At least not emotionally. Some folks like a little fight now and then. Cheating, I will say, is the worst kind of hurt because of how it makes your mate feel. Not you. If you wouldn’t like how it felt to be cheated on, why would you cause the same pain to another? The fact is, not everyone has the willpower to resist the temptation as I did but the regret I felt afterwards motivated me to not do that again. Learning from my mistakes. If you can’t control it, stay out of relationships and stick to casual dating. No harm done.

     I’m gonna stop telling you what to do and let you decide for yourselves what you think is right but I will leave you with this thought…

     Nothing makes a person feel smaller than when they are not enough for their partner. That empty feeling that you are no longer what holds their interest but keep them dangling on a string while you slowly drift away. It hurts. Release that person. You shouldn’t want to cause your love more pain. Let them go or you’ll both regret it.

Photo by Shamim Nakhai on Unsplash

This is Moonlyte signing off:

Make it a great day.