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.
I did not say it was a direct quote; it was a paraphrase.
Shakespeare wrote for the masses, yes; it would be an interesting comparison (if the historians have adequate knowledge) to compare the contemporary experience and interpretation of Shakespeare, by his audiences (did they prefer Titus Andronicus to Merry Wives of Windsor?) to ...not movies, they aren't interactive, but to well-done professional theatre, say, farces such as Ray Cooney's Whose Wife Is It Anyway?
Gulliver's Travels (as well as A Modest Proposal) contained biting political commentary; did Shakespeare's audiences appreciate or demand the same?
I missed your line about Hee Haw.
You *owe* it to yourself to re-read Sayers. I was extremely impressed -- for example, her treatment of The Documents in the Case which (returning, sort of, to the original topic) concerned a love triangle: the lover poisons the husband by using a synthetic form of a poison found in certain wild mushrooms, but gets tripped up because the synthetic form is a racemic mixture of the D- and L- forms of the poison. And she wrote this in the 1930s before the molecular theory behind the behaviour was understood.
Oh -- and go re-read Gaudy Night. A really good discussion of the role of "hearts vs. brains" and the role of women in society.
As for Allingham: I got one of hers as "books-on-tape" (CD/DVD) for my wife. She couldn't concentrate on it in the car, so I gave it to my boss. ;-)
That would be nice. Maybe you can stop infecting perfectly fine threads by going off-topic with your girl power shenanigans and your attempts to prove how superior you are.
And take your little leg-humper with you.
But before you go, can you tell me more about your extensive vocab? I can't get enough.
The wigger.
Oh there there, you poor baby; was your mommy unatentive?
Part of the use of the word "whore" is attempting to exert social pressure, so other young women do not follow the example of the woman in the OP.
Titus 2:43Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not slanderers or addicted to much wine, but teachers of good. 4In this way they can train the young women to love their husbands and children, 5to be self-controlled, pure, managers of their households, kind, and subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be discredited.
One of the problems, is that older women either were not reverent or chaste themselves (and, for that matter, seem to have a thing for red wine)...or they were all into "You go GRLLL" empowerment (defined as promiscuity without consequences).
If the women do not shame the sluts, it's left to the men to do so.
I'm gonna have my people tabulate the number of personal insults I've used compared to yours. I bet you win.
this is your way of striking back at those with whom you disagree.
Oh, so when they go low, you go high. Uh huh. A simple rereading of the thread will put to rest that balderdash, hypocrite.
...you are balding, fat, toothless, and freakish looking,
Told ya. Go look at my pic on FR facebook page (Michael Bagwell Fresno, Ca.). I'm prettier than a fifty dollar whore on payday. Also.....
I'm Batman.
I think Harvey Weinstein's indulgences from the left have just about run out...
Sorry you didn't enter the priesthood? Missed your true calling? Do you belong to OPUS DEI, or atren't they "pure enough" for you? ;^)
Look, this nation has gone through many years of the destruction of manners, morality, rules, civil behavior and it was NOT all fomented by the "feminists"!
If the girl in the article had been a college lesbian...then you could blame THAT on the crazed feminsts, who have been telling college girls that they should all be lesbians during college, at least, and if they have to, then marry some man later on.
If you want to go back to the '60s, then blame the feminists for the whole "BURN YOUR BRA" garbage and even dressing weirdly and/or the progressively worse dressing in almost nothing of today.
Forget the whole "BRIDE OF CHRIST" bit! This is sci-fi and robots were a BIG deal, in that genre, in the 1920s.
I doubt that you ever heard of the early 1920s play, R U R, but it was once very famous, world wide, and began a whole run of similar plays, movies, and stories.
You know how I know you're mad? Your amazing and superior vocabulary fails you.
I know you meant "inattentive", right?
Either that, or you're not as smart as you brag about your being CONSTANTLY.
Which do you think it is.
p.s. Never talk about a wigger's mama. Hahahahahahaha.
Mama jokes!
*snigger*
No, seriously, I mean it, because IF it were true, that the highest 2 levels of Free Masonry actually ran the world, WHICH THEY NEVER HAVE DONE, then that would include my family members.
But then, do you also believe everything written in THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION? Do you even know what that book is ?
Oh come on...don't blame your E.D. on me nor others. Besides being a useless member, it's also underdeveloped.
YOU STOLE MY WORD FROM POST #425!!!!
put to rest that balderdash,
That's the final straw!
Use your own words, thief.
Adam ate of the fruit, when proffered.
Why do you hate your mother? Did she ever pay you any attention, or was it that she wouldn't allow you to do everything you ever wanted to do?
Stop being so serious all the time.
My mama wouldn't let me go to the prom. So I used my powers to confine her. At the prom, the mean boys dumped pigs blood on my head when I was crowned prom king. I was sad. When I went home, my mama tried to smite me. I smote her right back.
Please don't bring it up again. I still have nightmares.
The Wigger
p.s. Your dime store psychiatry will not avail you. My gung fu is strong.
And personally, I prefer the KJV of the Bible and find all others not particularly satisfying; not to mention the fact that every time someone translates the Bible or modernizes the language it loses some meaning.
Do you always throw Bible verses at people, no matter what the topic of conversation is? If so, yes, that IS rancid.
Proffered by who? Eve. The original whore.
So, to bring it home. Women are the guardians of their own virtue (the apple). If they proffer their virtue to man, he will avail himself of it, for he is weak.
Therefore, feminism is responsible for slut culture. Thank you for your testimony, nopardons.
This case is closed.
Bailiff, escort the witness from the courtroom.
No dance? No mea culpa?
A little intellectual honesty, por favor.
Did you forget to CCP it?
Where, in there, does it talk about "FREE LOVE"?
Are you completely unaware of the fact that the defeated nations, of WW I, were not only suffering from the aftermath of WW I and the TREAT OF VERSAILLES, as well as from the world wide DEPRESSION, which made it necessary for many women to go to work ( there's something wrong with equal pay for equal work and educated girls, now? ), and you don't want women to have the vote?
What else are you against, when it comes to women and girls?
Should they all have to wear special clothing, not be allowed to drive, or leave the house without a male relative at their side?
I was talking about "FEMINISTS", not a SUFFRAGISTS nor SUFFRAGETTE movement.
Obviously, to you "feminist" and Suffragists and Suffragette movements are all the same thing. THEY AREN'T !
Do you find all of the body of Christ “rancid” or just the xy parts?
Hopefully it taught him a lesson too: when it comes to cheating, ONE strike and you're out, not three.
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