Posted on 11/07/2017 1:15:39 PM PST by drewh
When I was a freshman in college, I thought I met the love of my life. He was cool and fun and sexy, an older frat guy who was good at beer pong and knew exactly how to make me laugh. Within weeks of our first meeting, he became my official boyfriend. Within six months, we moved in together. Another six months later and we were engaged.
It was a whirlwind romance by any definition — except for the fact that I cheated on my boyfriend three times. Despite the heartache it caused, my experience with infidelity taught me a lot about love, relationships, and growing up.
Before college, I had been a serial monogamist. Since my first schoolgirl relationship at 14, I had several long-term boyfriends, and was never single for longer than two months at a time. I lost my virginity the summer before high school, and after that, had been sexually active with my subsequent partners. Despite my "experience," as my friends and future boyfriends would call it, I had no idea what it was like to be in a serious adult relationship — that is, until I went off to college.
That's when I met the man I would date, get engaged to, and inevitably cheat on. That's when I learned what a real romantic relationship was.
The beginning of my relationship with my college boyfriend was like a fairy tale. We were inseparable: He walked me to class, studied with me in the library, ate meals with me, and slept over nearly every night. We partied together on weekends, got to know each other's friends, and started talking about The Future. I was 18, and although I had been in what I had considered a "serious" relationship before, this was the first time I had the freedom to explore what I thought an adult relationship was supposed to be like — love, sex, drama and all.
The first time I cheated on my boyfriend, I wrote it off as a foolish mistake. I was drunk at a concert with a group of friends who found some cute boys for us to hang out with. After a half-dozen 20-ounce beers, a couple of joints, and a few sexy country songs, could I really be help accountable for my drunken actions? I loved my boyfriend, after all, and I knew we were going to be together forever, so what was one stupid mistake?
Even though I tried to write it off as insignificant, a week after I cheated I fessed up to my boyfriend out of sheer guilt. His face crumpled as I admitted, as he had suspected, that something did happen the night of the concert I didn't want to tell him about. His eyes burned with anger when I tried to tell him the same excuse I had been telling myself: I was drunk, and it didn't mean anything.
Eventually, he did forgive me, but after cheating, there was a distance between us that no amount of time seemed to be able to close. Something had changed in our relationship, and it wasn't just broken trust on behalf of my boyfriend. It was an uneasy feeling in my gut and a tiny voice in my head that said, But what if you did mean it?
Something had changed in our relationship, and it wasn't just broken trust on behalf of my boyfriend. It was an uneasy feeling in my gut and a tiny voice in my head that said, But what if you did mean it?
The second time I cheated on my boyfriend was no drunken mistake, and both of us knew it. After partying with friends, I ended up at a former crush's house and quite predictably, one thing lead to another and we slept together. The next day, that uneasy feeling in my gut had some company: pure guilt, and an overwhelming sense of being a truly terrible person. The voice got louder too, and started to say more: You did mean it, and this won't be the last time this happens, either.
When I cheated on my boyfriend for the third and last time, he wasn't actually my boyfriend — he was my fiancé. Despite the bumps in our relationship, a combination of our feelings for one another, a heavy dose of hormones, and the idea of finding happily ever after kept hurtled us towards a disastrous engagement that would only last seven uncomfortable months.
A month before it all fell apart, I cheated on my then-fiancé with another former crush, and even before our lips touched, I knew I was doing something wrong, but that I wouldn't regret it. I needed this infidelity to get me out of my relationship, something I knew deep down needed to happen, but something I was too weak and too immature to do on my own. So I cheated — again — and it served as one last sign that not only were my fiancé and I not meant to be, but I was not mature enough to really be with anyone.
That's the biggest lesson cheating taught me: that fidelity is an exercise in trust and maturity, one that not everyone can perform. I certainly couldn't at age 20, and it showed me that not only was I not ready for a serious monogamous relationship with my ex, but that I was not ready for a serious monogamous relationship at all. I may have felt like an adult, but I didn't have the relationship experience, communication skills, patience, or empathy to embark on a forever kind of love I so desperately wanted to have. I was selfish, uncaring, immature, and too caught up in the idea of what relationships are supposed to be, rather than what my relationship was actually like.
Cheating ripped away the false narrative about my relationship that I had created — we were in love, and with love came pain and drama — and instead illuminated my love, or lack thereof, for what it was: hurtful and ugly and so necessary for me to become the faithful person I am today.
Cheating ripped away the false narrative about my relationship that I had created — we were in love, and with love came pain and drama — and instead illuminated my love, or lack thereof, for what it was: hurtful and ugly and so necessary for me to become the faithful person I am today.
They say once a cheater, always a cheater, but after my experience, I can say that phrase is patently false. Cheating on my boyfriend multiple times taught me invaluable, albeit painful, lessons in love and relationships, on adulthood and maturity, on growing up. My actions showed me that relationships take a lot of work, not just together, but within oneself. It can't be forced, it can't be rushed, and it can't be half-hearted. When it is, people — yourself, your partner, your loved ones — get hurt.
Cheating taught me that kind of hurt never quite goes away.
Oh, you took that seriously, huh?
I guess your mind is stuck in one gear. That's probably why you equate recognizing and speaking the truth about feminism as "hating women."
So if I speak about problems in the "black community?" I hate blacks. If I should dare to comment on the "gay community" I must hate gays.? Etc. I've heard this song before, but not from people on my side.
No, I don't hate women. I do hate the ideology of feminism. And, like you, I hate what has been done to our culture. I'm old enough and smart enough to understand the progression of the debasement of our culture and who is responsible for it.
Just because it was initiated by outside forces as a means to overthrow our country from within, doesn't excuse the tools that bought into it. And those tools were the women who described themselves as feminists.
Yes dear, feminists and feminsism are responsible for the destruction of marriage, the family, and the wanton behavior of our "slut society" both men and woman.
That is not to say they are solely responsible. But feminism is a limb of the enemy. Men who went along and allowed this to happen are also responsible.
I truly don't hope that you think you're the only one that knows things and that your big brain is superior to all others. That would be a mistake.
You're harshing my buzz.
:)
You're the one stuck on stupid and are not only exceedingly proud of your mordant stupidity, but always just double down, when met with FACTUAL rebuttal, you double down and repost the same crap multiple times thereafter, as though the repetition makes it so. It doesn't!
Are you married?
If you are or ever were married, were you a VIRGIN when you took your vows?
If not, how many sexual partners, of either sex, had you had?
Modern day "feminism" ( today's is not the same as it was in the previous decades of the late 20th century, which were NOT the same as it's earliest incarnation of the Suffragists; notice, not the same as the SUFFRAGETTES, which came later and was the beginnings of feminism! ) had very little to do with the debasement and immorality of today's "culture". That is all on the heads of the stinking COMMIES and the abject stupidity and abrogation of the "normal"/non-Commie parents of the BOOMERS.
You aren't "smart enough" and I wonder about your age as well, diddums, to "understand the progression of the debasement of our culture and who is responsible for it." at all! If your statement were true, you would NOT say what you keep saying. :-)
How old were you in 1968 ?
If you don't want to say, then just say that you were in grammar school, high school, or college. I doubt that you were old enough to vote. *snicker*
Nooooooooooooo...the MORONS who "bought into" the Commie plot were mostly kids who who either went all in :HIPPIE", or played at being a "HIPPIE" on the weekends and/or the summer time.
And babycakes, I was a very aware adult, back then and unlike you CAN prove my side of this argument.
I most assuredly know and understand far more than you do or ever shall! But no, I don't think ( something I can do and that you are incapable of !) that I am the "only" one who knows these facts; it's just that you don't know them and so, I am "superior" to you.
Or, perhaps, that "buzz" came from your typing one handed.
Ho.
Simmer down, granny, you'll scare the cats.
No matter how much you blather about RED DIAPER BABIES, the policies demanded by feminism were put into place due to modern feminisn, not the suffragettes. And the rot began in the sixties. Sure there has always been outliers of bad behavior all along human history. It wasn't condoned by laws and social approval until the sixties. Thanks to feminism.
No fault divorce, abortion on demand, birth control.
All these things were instituted due to acquiescence to the feminists. And all those things were instigated by feminism.
Why are you so offended by facts?
Stop lashing out so ugly. I'm not blaming you for feminism. I'm sure you spoke out against it your entire long life. Right?
Plenty of men allowed this to happen. Hell, Ronald Reagan signed no fault divorce into law in California. He was not a feminist but he brought us a feminist inspired law.
Maybe your man hatred doesn't allow you to understand what I'm saying. Is that it?
Anyway, let's try to keep it clean, okay? I don't mind teaching old people, but they sure can get scrappy.
:)
>>And the rot began in the sixties.
...
>>Thanks to feminism.
Except feminism appears to have been a product of...
[The Architects of Western Decline:
A Study on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism]
https://vid.me/UoQm#17m10s
And thus, just another tool for social deconstruction/demoralization in the process of weakening the Golden Calf before the slaughter.
Oh, please. They think feminism began with the trite minds of Patricia Ireland or Molly Yard. They know nothing of its significance to western civilization thanks to Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill and other great thinkers; they are more like swine than men.
It wasn't just feminism that destroyed ouc culture, and it wasn't the American woman solely responsible for feminism. If we can think of feminism on it's own, however, it has been a HUGE wrecking ball on our culture.
Would you rather your daughter had feminism or cancer?
(Who said that, HLPhat?)
Knock off the stupid “ageism” will you? All you fat, bald guys revert to the same cliches when a woman speaks up to you. I happen to know No Pardons personally and she’s a good-looking, educated lady. If anyone scares cats, it’s you and the other sex-starved idiot men who post here.
Cat ladies unite!!!!!!
Let’s see what you look like, ahole. Have you visited Hair for Men yet?
>>Would you rather your daughter had feminism or cancer?
Neither - given that they are both equally destructive the context of the host organism.
I dunno who said it - but would whoever it was rather their son have homosexual marriage or cancer?
Same effect.
And just what "ism" does that little bon mot fall under, my good gentlewoman?
Look, dear. Nobody is disputing your or the other cat lady's knowledge of feminism. I'm sure you are up to date on feminism since before you got the vote. Maybe you were out there smashing whiskey barrels during prohibition. I have no idea.
That is not the point. The point is "modern" feminism and what it's policies have done to our culture. Can you both try to stay on point here?
I often wonder if it was wise to give you all the vote, considering your inability to reason and your emotional reaction to logic.
Everything I need to know about *Sadie’s* history I learned from the article...
You sound like a complete moron.
Yes, No Pardons and myself have a knowledge of western history and its role in the enfranchisement of women. It is that what distinguishes man from beast and western man from a low-browed jihadi.
How we’ll ever recover from guys who use and abuse women and then call them sluts, I’ll never know.
Absolutely correct, but I would state it another way. Homosexual marriage is not the issue. You could almost say it's a product of and the cousin of feminism. When we start giving special rights to and recognizing people for their gender or their sexual preference, or their race, we end up with unnatural abominations like gay "rights", women's "rights" and even mens "rights".
We become a nation of conflicting "rights" rather than a homogenous people with "individual rights."
But your basically right. Both feminism and gay rights (which led to gay marriage) are cancer.
p.s. You should google the quote, "Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer" and see who said it. Tell me if you laugh or puke when you see who?
Yick.
Secondly, I neither "scare cats" nor little children, or anyone with more than 3 working brain cells...which I guess leaves you out. LOL
I am perfectly calm, not the least bit "ON FIRE", and since you believe that I am, snowflake...go get your blankey, some crayons, teddy, and rfun, as fast as you can, to your "safe space"!
On this thread, as well as on many others, when confronted by facts, which disprove your stupid posts, all you ever do is double, triple, quadruple down and repost the same specious crap! And as I told you before, the more you repeat things, or even repeat and expand on it, that does NOT make it true. *snicker*
I see that you have, yet again, ignored my queries. That must mean that you are everything that I have assumed you to be...a non-married, louche living, brain dead, woman hating, uneducated, LOSER!
I don't "hate" men ( not REAL ONES, which you aren't one of; widdle pajamaboy ), nor do I "hate" women! I hate, loathe, and abominate stupid people; especially ones like you, who are so stuck on stupid and who refuse to accept that you can be wrong about anything you absurdly believe is "true", but which isn't!
Right back at ya...WHY ARE YOU OFFENDED BY FACTS? You're the one offended by them and rejecting them out of hand, because they disprove your positions.
I highly doubt that you could "teach" me anything at all worth knowing. You don't know ANYTHING whatsoever, worth knowing !
And as far as my age goes...though I am probably older than you are, pet, I knew far more, at the age of 10, about politics, history,and most everything else, than you'll ever know, if, GOD forbid, you live to be 100 and study, VERY diligently, 18 solid hours every single day, until that birthday!
"UGLY"?
That's what you post and probably what you look like as well.
He’s NOT going to accept that. He imagines that history only started the first day he can remember; sadly.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.