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.
So you're right there with the most backwards of Muslims. Thanks for letting us know.
No work, no school, no voting, what next, do you want all women to wear burkas?
Are you forgetting, or since it doesn't fit your agenda, you're ignoring the fact that 53% of women voted for Trump last year?
Or the fact that most of the time that American women have had the vote, they didn't vote for Dems?
I am fully aware of the FRINGE, whose louche behavior, in Germany and FYI...all over most of the world, went off the rails after WW I.
The thing about wars, in recent times, are : 1) during and after, many people turn to immoral behavior 2) turn to spiritualism and/or the occult 3) standard rules of behavior gets thrown out of the window by some.
OTOH, what happened here, to our culture, starting in the late 1960s was the result of a concentrated effort of stinking COMMIES, combined with, thanks to Dr. Sock, an abrogation of parenting. It began a bit slowly, gaining speed and adherents, like a snowball rolling down hillm in the following years.
And the original American suffragists were NOT Feminazis at all!
You’re being ridiculous.
I think the possibility exists that it could mean a number of things. Innocence of many things, including sexual knowledge.
To interpret as to mean knowledge in general begs the question. Knowledge of what?
I'm sure there are biblical scholars on FR who could chime in with their interpretations. I'll stick with mine. No man is an expert.
Certainly not nopardons.
Yes, yes, n00b, comfort yourself with that delusion. LOL
53 percent of WHITE women.
Do you even follow politics?
Frankly, I can’t be bothered...this whole thing is just proving how much this site has fallen. So I’m just posting perfunctory replies.
Oh its noob now. So you are smarter than everybody AND you have seniority.
Ain't you somethin'?
Yes, dear. You are a special princess. Better than all the other little girls.
I've been posting here for a very long time and read it for even a longer time.
And just CCPing other people's words, as your own, means that you don'/t know anything at all. An d just because you find something on line, doesn't mean that it is 100% accurate.
So toddle along and go play in traffic.
Dude, even I could spot the flaw right off the bat. And I'm dumb and uneducated.
I think you're losing steam. Being wrong so often can do that.
You do much better with your sideckick to give you strength. Where is your fellow cat lady. I hate to see you like this.
And it's NOT something I would do to you. The "abuse button" should only be used against a poster who breaks the rules here in the worst possible way/s. And what is that? Well I think that you know, but posting unending tirades using almost nothing but expletives, threaten bodily harm or worse, threatening to kill a president ( yes, in the early days, there were a few posters who did that and yes, got a visit from the Secret Service to boot ), deliberately and continually posing full articles or even part of them from organizations we aren't supposed to.
I have no doubt that you have been called far worse, but did not come away unscathed.
And you posted that go look at my picture stuff to MM; not to me. Are you having an advanced Alzheimer's moment?
>Are you forgetting, or since it doesn’t fit your agenda, you’re ignoring the fact that 53% of women voted for Trump last year?
Liar. 54% of women voted for Hillary.
> OTOH, what happened here, to our culture, starting in the late 1960s was the result of a concentrated effort of stinking COMMIES, combined with, thanks to Dr. Sock, an abrogation of parenting. It began a bit slowly, gaining speed and adherents, like a snowball rolling down hillm in the following years.
>And the original American suffragists were NOT Feminazis at all!
Everything the feminist’s movement brought to fruition was part of the suffrage movement. They simply couldn’t push it in a public manner, but it’s in their personal correspondence and internal publications. Suffragettes were, by and large, international socialists and direct forerunners of Communism.
Not that I'm complaining. I like me a good rumble. And your gung fu is strong. Just not as strong as mine, dear lady.
I mean, after all, you are the fairer sex.
:)
p.s. Just a few more and we hit 500. Maybe we can get this thread into the hall of fame, if you stay strong. I won't give up till you do.
>You’re really not an authority on anything at all, especially who is and who is not FreeRepublic ( which is how it’s spelled) material.
I’ve refuted half a dozen lies with hard facts this evening. You don’t seem to be an authority on anything besides how awesome and smart you think you are.
>I’ve been posting here for a very long time and read it for even a longer time.
I haven’t read a single item from you tonight that wasn’t a lie or a personal insult. Why would you bother pretending to be a conservative? We value truth and fair debate above all else.
I'm not a braggart; I'm self assured.
Want to know what's "ugly" and off putting? Sarcasm, insulting people who don't post here, have never said a word to you, but who are a members of a poster's family! And the only reason I relied in kind, is because you kept on doing it, when I hadn't done it all to you. Sauce for the goose and all that.
And the insults, that you want me to "laugh at", just keep on coming from you.
Want to see a very ugly person, inside and out? GO LOOK INTO THE NEAREST MIRROR, OR SOME SHINY OBJECT.
Oh do try... I’m sure you can do it; you do such things so well.
No, I posted it to both of you. Once to her when she kept doing the "hair for men" thing. And then to you when you did the fat, toothless, bald, freakish thing.
I know what I'm about. Also, my childish and cloaked insults are far less aggressive than yours. It's an art. And they work as intended. Look how pissed off you got. And don't say you didn't cause I wont believe you.
It's far more infuriating to insert an insult within a sentence about something else. Go back and study my work. It might help you improve your game. Just one word placed into a sentence at just the right point can have a devastating affect.
You are way too blunt. No humor involved. Even though your insult streams have me bustin' up laughing as I read them. I'm sure you would rather I become enraged.
Anyway. Just a few helpful tips. Somebody as aggressive as you needs to hone their technique to perfection. You have the brains. Humble yourself for just a moment and take my advice. It will serve you well.
Actually, no, I didn't see you use that word. And I have used it for an extremely long time. As you know, it's a very useful word; a word which you don't "own".
You are asking me to make up words, now?
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