20% of men and 13% of women Whenever I tell anyone the story about my cheating on my boyfriend, I preface it with "I'm not proud of it." I didn't mean to do that - it's a tick, like saying "I'm sorry" when you're walking through a crowd. Lately, I've been thinking about how weird this is.
Of course, I'm not proud of cheating - which in our monogamy-obsessed culture is basically the equivalent of saying "I'm right" before you tell someone the story of how you once ate an entire roll of toilet paper. I'm not proud of that." Win the bet. Cheating is such a taboo act in our country that, according to a 2013 Gallup poll, Americans consider cheating to be more morally unacceptable than physician-assisted suicide, polygamy, and the death penalty. It makes sense, then, that many consider roughly 20 percent of men and 13 percent of women to be the sexual equivalent of The Dark Knight 's Joker - amoral, pure ego, and completely uncaring as a result of. ;We just want to watch the world burn. In fact, most of us who find out we've cheated are confused and ashamed. Mira Kirshenbaum, author of "When Good People Have Affairs," told Time magazine that most people she works with don't plan their infidelity : " People say, 'I never Never thought this would happen. '" They're being honest when they say that. "
I know I didn't mean it. Growing up, I heard my divorced mom and her equally divorced friends exchange field notes about a mysterious creature called a "cheating bastard"—a ruthless, ruthless man whose genes He's a playboy and only feels happy when using his cock. Humiliating women who care about him. I wonder how these women could be stupid enough to get involved with a man like this - couldn't they see what he was like when they saw him?
As I grew older, I imagined a wild, bohemian adult life filled with passionate love and maybe a few ill-conceived sloppy marriages—but I never imagined that I or anyone Someone I might care about would cheat on me. Who would do something so mean and vulgar? When I entered my first relationship, I was confident in this belief as well. My high school boyfriend and I were together for five years, but mostly unhappy. Coming from dysfunctional families, we jumped in with both feet immediately, and although we quickly realized we could barely tolerate each other, we just didn't know how to break up.
I no longer have an independent self. The idea of dumping him, the way you would end a normal relationship, seems about as realistic as chopping off your arm and throwing it in a ditch because it tickles too much.
It wasn't until a year into college that my boyfriend found out the most important thing of all: he had cheated. The way he did it was very humiliating (I found this out for myself when I was visiting my grandparents in Florida while he was living with another woman), but looking back now, we were just immature. We both tried to turn many small arguments into breakups, but in the end, it was only through cheating that he was finally able to break off the relationship (yes, I tried to get him back with me; thankfully it didn't work).
For years, I spent most of my life seeing myself as a victim; in my occasional moments of clarity, I saw that we were all stupid kids who made mistakes. I was certain that anything I learned from my high school dating life—like understanding geometry or being able to speak fluently about Ethan Frome— would never apply to adulthood.
This idea worked well for a while, until I found myself on the other side of the equation: six or seven years later, I was involved in an extremely intense relationship with a man who, depending on the date, I thought was either my soul Partner, or my soul mate. My karmic punishment for every terrible thing I have done in my life. We adored each other; we also often had brutal arguments that turned into violent, noisy hurricanes in which I screamed until I was hoarse and he gave me silent treatment.
I do not know what to do. I feel like we have completely integrated. I no longer have an independent self. The idea of dumping him, the way you would end a normal relationship, seems about as realistic as chopping off your arm and throwing it in a ditch because it tickles too much. I thought I would die without him, and I also thought there was a good chance I would die with him. I feel paralyzed.
So when I met a handsome man at an art gallery opening who didn't seem intimidated when he found out I had a boyfriend, I suddenly knew how my ex felt. It's easier to be the villain than to try to peel back the body of our relationship and try to explain how it got sick and died. It's easier to accept my boyfriend's hatred than endure the pain of discussing how unhappy our relationship makes me and possibly hearing how unhappy I make him.
On a subconscious level, I reached out to him so that he would open a door inside of me and remind me that I still have the power to choose in life, even if I use it to make really bad choices that make me feel bad Oops. If I can make choices that hurt me, I can also make choices that help me.
So I cheated. For months, I slept with this guy whenever my boyfriend was away. a lot of . The moment we were together, I was happy and wondered if we could really have a future together. The fact that our relationship was a secret made it intense and unreal, like a drug, an intensity I would occasionally attribute to love. I didn't feel like I usually did when I was with him - like a mean succubus caught too early in a relationship that somehow became a mirror image of my parents' miserable marriage. I feel relaxed, happy, and carefree. One night when we were out to dinner, an older couple stopped by our table and told us how happy they were to see us so in love. They bought us a drink. I think those people would lose their minds if they knew the truth. I thought, why can I only feel what everyone tells me I should feel when I lie?
When I got back to my boyfriend I felt like a monster. I don't understand why I do this to him. He already thinks I'm just a bitch, but I know I'm worse. I'm a liar now. I have this mark on me. I feel outside of my body when we have sex, and the rest of the time I'm tearful and emotionally unpredictable (which, to be fair, is not that different from my general behavior at this time in my life) . I fantasized about moving to a new place where they couldn't find me or anyone else. Sometimes I wonder if I deserve to live.
But even though I was in the throes of a panic attack, I knew this whole thing wasn't just about the guy I cheated on with - and taking his number out of my phone or unfriending him wasn't going to do anything either . On a subconscious level, I reached out to him so that he would open a door inside of me and remind me that I still have the power to choose in life, even if I use it to make really bad choices that make me feel bad Oops. If I can make choices that hurt me, I can also make choices that help me. Like ending my relationship.
Unlike my past boyfriends, I didn't pursue a brief affair as a "nuclear option," but I did take advantage of the feeling of separation the affair gave me and eventually ended things. Breaking up with him was as messy and difficult as I imagined it would be, but my affair served as a ballast and reminded me that I had a separate self and that my boyfriend was not in charge of everything in my life. If I were healthier, I could get that feeling by taking up a hobby or meeting new people. I would never consider cheating to be a choice a healthy person makes. But this isn’t just a choice made by evil people.
In case you're wondering: No, I haven't cheated since. That’s not to say that I’ve since stopped being attracted—sometimes extremely attracted —to men who weren’t my partner. But my experience made me realize that for me, infidelity had nothing to do with sex or desire; This has to do with feelings of loss and worthlessness. The only reason my affair caught me off guard is because I had never been taught this about infidelity. I was taught that it was about people's inability to fight their most basic animal instincts.
But I've never had a problem fighting my most basic instincts - or, let's be honest, all of my instincts, even when they're trying to alert me to trouble or danger. When I cheated, I felt helpless about my ability to survive outside of the toxic relationship. Sexual self-restraint did not prevent me from cheating again; taking care to only engage seriously in respectful relationships.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that my story is necessarily representative of all or even most people who have affairs. Some cheaters cheat again—people who cheat once are 3.5 times more likely to cheat again, according to a 2014 study by a University of Denver graduate student. Obviously I am not qualified to question this fact. But I would dispute that idea – with article titles like “8 Things You Don’t Know About Liars,” “9 Signs He’s Not a Liar,” “6 Things You Don’t Know About Liars, According to Science” to spread. The reality show Hustlers even has a saying "Once a Hustler, always a Hustler" - the Hustlers are some sort of alien species, creatures different from other humans. no. Many of us are regular people who are too immature, too hurt, or too scared to know how to say "These things aren't working for me" or "I want to leave." We let taboos do the heavy lifting for us.
Registered psychologist Erica Martinez, Ph.D., tells Bustle that we tend to think of cheating as something "others" do because "defense mechanisms come into play—mostly projection...of having these thoughts and feelings." Being inconsistent with [our] self-perception causes a lot of anxiety…so [we] attribute it to the other person instead of confronting the anxiety to gain insight and incorporate a new, evolved self-concept.” Dr. Janna Koretz, licensed psychologist and founder of Azimuth Psychology, told me, “Cheating is a loaded topic, in part because it can cause people incredibly painful emotions, such as rejection, low self-worth, and abandonment… So, no matter how much we know about cheating logically, no matter what it means or doesn't mean, our emotional brains take over and we want to be as far away from the possibility of being cheated as possible."
In an ideal world, we all know how to talk about our feelings, and we wouldn't view all-encompassing, sometimes suffocating love as the only romantic ideal worth pursuing. But this is the world we live in, and people are not perfect. Not all cheaters are "cheaters," they are monsters who have descended into our world to wreak havoc with their loose morals and mind-blowing genitals. I’m not saying you have to respect my reasons for cheating, or the reasons of any other past, present, or future cheater. But you should know that we have them.
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Image: Gabriel Moss
