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.
Happy now?
Facts not in evidence.
you aren't funny
Yes I am. I even crack myself up, and I'm a tough audience.
Who did I insult who wasn't here? If you mean your husband I never insulted him. I worried for him being married to a harpy like you. The poor man. I would never insult him. He's got enough problems.
And the insults, that you want me to "laugh at
No, sweety. I don't want YOU to laugh at them. I want the audience to laugh at them, and thereby, laugh at YOU. You can't seem to understand the simplest things. That's why you have no sense of humor. You are book smart, but not people smart.
Want to see a very ugly person, inside and out? GO LOOK INTO THE NEAREST MIRROR, OR SOME SHINY OBJECT.
No, angel face. When I look in the mirror I see a Greek God. And my mumsy says I'm special.
No, no replies. But then, I really didn't expect any.
And no, I am NOT "obsessed with sex", nor even all that interesting in your sexual habits. I just wanted to show you( the plural you ) that it takes two.
Bully for you.
Let's shoot for 1000.
Maybe that's true and it probably is. But to the casual reader of the thread, it looks like you used it directly after I did. My accusation was a subtle attack. It's one of the many ways I work to defeat your gung fu. And now I have you explaining yourself, so you look even more foolish. See how this game is played?
You never had a chance dear. You should never have came at me ugly.
Yes, after eating the apple, they both discovered, to their shame, that they were naked and THAT innocence was lost.
All religions have stories that are supposed to teach certain lessons to their observers.
It can mean any number of things, amongst them Christianity, Christianity being goodness, etc.!
A whore in the metaphorical sense. As a fallen woman. A woman without virtue. You chose to take it literally. Another failing of yours. You need to study your opponent. Figure out their language patterns. I often speak in different styles all mixed together. Maybe hard to decipher for one so strict and serious such as yourself.
Loosen up.
On the sexual questioning.
There are better ways to point out hypocrisy. I would change up from the detail oriented questions to a more general approach. It seriously does come off as creepy. For example, I would never ask you, or any woman that, even if I was really going after you (them).
The Pentagram isn't in any way a "Masonic symbol"!
It's been an extremely long time since I've watched this movie, but I don't remember ANY "Masonic" symbols at all. Care to point all of them out?
And are you certain that you know what IS a "Masonic symbol"?
Exactly my point. I have chosen to take that lesson from that story. No man, including you, has the perfect answer.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
You are a driven woman.
Horrifically, some insane doctors are now working on trying to figure out just HOW to transplant a uterus into trannies who imagine that they were "born in the wrong body".
Repetitive hogwash.
I'm always happy, diddums.
:)
I don’t need your links, which you need because you don’t know about such things, I know all about the Thune Society and other such in Germany at that time. Most people do, now, because of the Nazi connection.
You aren't very selective in your linking.
But no, it's true. When you try to lump me in with an "ilk" you make a huge mistake. There really is nobody else like me. I am unique, like a special snowflake. At least mumsy told me I was.
Assigning me to an ilk just proves that you are incapable of recognizing traits and difference in people. It means you are mentally lazy or incapable of differentiating.
Be better.
You and others here, have misused the word feminism and misused it in an historical content.
If you truly are all in for "first wave feminism" ( which is actually what the SUFFRAGISTS were about and they never called it feminism ), then good for you and that's exactly whom I was defending!
It's the Suffragettes on down, who were and still are the rotten apples in the barrel.
There were crossed wires here. Have I managed, at last to get my position through to you, as you finally did with me ?
You do know, I'm certain, the story about giving someone something to eat, for nothing, as opposed to giving him a job...right?
I think in terms of first, second, and third wave feminism. The second and especially the third waves did and are doing the real damage.
Unless you consider women voting as doing damage. Some do I'm sure.
Yes, the so called cultural revolution was comprised of many factions. including, as you call them, the red diaper babies. The ideology of second wave feminism that evolved during that time resulted in it's own particular policy and cultural changes. Third wave continues and magnifies the damage.
So I think, in essence, you are correct. But I think I am too. And if you can separate in your mind "women" from "feminism" you will not be so defensive when people attack feminism.
Is that a reasonable compromise?
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