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.
:)
And YOU claimed that I write "ugly"? Whatever that idiocy was meant to mean. Just look at this HORSESHIT that you are posting!
“Yick” indeed. :-(
Old clog lady here.
I see that you’ve been subjected to a flank attack.
It’s been fun to read.
:-)
.
What a fine word. You ARE smart.
:)
:)
Ya, I'm trapped on a hill, surrounded. I'll try to fight my way out.
Pretty fun, though for sure.
(I think they secretly like me)
tsk tsk.
Manners.
Better ask my friends about that one. Before you lose any bets.
I'm a peach.
{(I think they secretly like me)
Aaaaaaaahhhhhh,nope,but I’m going to stay way from this discussion because I’m not well educated.:-)
.
I will represent the uneducated people Mears. Not to worry.
We must have a voice!!!!!
Next, she'll set up a counter, so she can keep track of the tally of her sleazy sexcapades.
I can't stop laughing.........
>>One cant make sure that a daughter doesnt become a crazy Feminazi;
Can’t? Why not?
The facts, however, are that "feminists" were never the originator of the ruination of this once "polite", civil society.
Oh the feminist spirit has been around as long as humans have been out of the garden. Jezebel was consumed with it and destroyed most of the prophets of God at the time in favor of Baal worship. Zechariah 5 has another take on it.
“5 Then the angel who talked with me came out and said to me, Lift your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth.
6 So I asked, What is it? And he said, It is a basket[a] that is going forth.
He also said, This is their resemblance throughout the earth: 7 Here is a lead disc lifted up, and this is a woman sitting inside the basket; 8 then he said, This is Wickedness! And he thrust her down into the basket, and threw the lead cover[b] over its mouth. 9 Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there were two women, coming with the wind in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven.
10 So I said to the angel who talked with me, Where are they carrying the basket?
11 And he said to me, To build a house for it in the land of Shinar;[c] when it is ready, the basket will be set there on its base.
Shinar is Babylon, and I believe the Mystery Babylon that Revelation speaks of which is described as the mother of Harlots in which the whole world becomes drunk with her iniquities....
Margaret Sanger displayed this same spirit and it was her, I believe that helped corrupt(perhaps co-opt is the better phrase here) what the early suffragette feminists were trying to do.(They were emphatically prolife)
What next...bring back the stocks?
Public shaming isn't the answer...a restoration of rules, manners, civility, morality, and yes, actual parenting is the answer! So is a return to religious belief; excluding those of Islam.
"FEISTY"? No...just not a shrinking violet and someone who is your better in every imaginable way. ;^)
Okay...up next, were you a virgin when you got married? Did you shack-up before you married? did you "have to" marry her?
I'm not "mad"; actually, you are nothing more than some ineffectual, constantly buzzing, the size of a no-see-um insect.
And FYI...I abhorred Bella Abzug when she was alive and now abhor her memory.
As to what and how much I know....I am a vast font of information.
>>Shinar is Babylon...
..
>>Margaret Sanger displayed this same spirit
[Metropolis 1927 Film English Version]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn8Pk4dyCR8
Fascinating film. Clearly whoever made it saw certain relationships unfolding, back then... too.
There is nothing new under the Aten!
Just WHY do you believe that you are funny/clever/intelligent? You aren't and you try far too hard.
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