It’s the wee hours of dawn and I just can’t seem to catch some shut eye. My mind is racing and I can’t sit still in my own bed. I toss and turn for hours but my mind is consumed by these deep and heavy thoughts. I decide to get up and try to find something I can distract myself with. I turn on the computer and I stare at a blank screen that’s staring right back at me. And suddenly, I realize why I can’t sleep. I’m teary-eyed. My eyes are welling up and I have a heavy heart. I can’t even stop the tears from falling at this point. I can’t contain them. I can’t seem to shake myself from the idea that I just wasn’t good enough for you. I am consumed by the thoughts of you not loving me enough to stay loyal to me. I can’t stop thinking about how you chose to cheat on me.
Have you ever had your heart broken before by a cheating partner? It’s different. It’s not like any other kind of heartbreak. It’s just plainly devastating. There’s a certain level of suffering that comes with realizing that the person you love has decided to cheat on you. This is one thing that I know about cheating: it’s a choice. It’s not something that happens by accident. Cheating isn’t something that happens out of chance. When someone cheats on you, that person is deliberately choosing to cheat on you.
And when someone tells you otherwise, just don’t believe it. When you choose to respond to another person’s sexual advances, that’s a choice. When you choose to take advantage of a drunk girl, that’s a choice that you’re making – even if you were drunk yourself. When you choose tor reply to someone’s suggestive text messages, that isn’t exactly something that is happening by accident. Not only are these all deliberate choices to engage in relations with a third party; these are all deliberate choices to break my heart – whether you intended to or not.
Getting cheated on really does something to you. For me personally, it shook me to the core. I used to be such a confident and self-assured person. And now, I find myself unable to shake my insecurities. I always think about why I was never good enough for him. Getting cheated on made me feel like I was unworthy of love; like I’m still unworthy of love. I keep on thinking back on the things that I could have done to prevent it from happening. I feel like I’m regretting what happened even though it wasn’t really my fault. I feel so guilty even though he was the one who screwed me over. Somehow, I’m victimizing myself in a situation where I already am the victim.
He made sure of that. And he did it so well. I don’t know how even though he was the one who cheated on me, I still feel like it was my fault. I feel like I am a completely worthless human being who is unattractive and unwanted. I feel like I am completely destroyed; like I am less of a person than I used to be. When he cheated on me, I felt like a huge chunk of myself was ripped from my being; and I feel like I’m struggling to get it back. Not only did I lose a huge part of my confidence; but I also lost my dreams. Everything I thought I knew about life; everything I thought I wanted in love all went to waste. I used to believe in the idea of falling in love the way that they do in the fairy tales.
I used to think that happy ever afters really happened in real life as well. But when he cheated on me, I was dealt with a good dose of reality. Love doesn’t always work out. Life doesn’t always hand you the cards that you want. You’re always going to have to prepare yourself for disappointment in this world. Even something as beautiful as love can be tarnished and bastardized. And that’s exactly what happened to me. When I realized that he cheated on me, it tainted my view on love forever. And I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to change it.
So, if you ever decide to cheat on someone, at least have the decency to own up to it. Something that happens “accidentally” can be forgiven; it can be something that can be moved on from. But it’s not accidental. Cheating is ALWAYS a choice. And when you make a choice, you have to be able to stand by it. Yes, you can regret it. But don’t try to say that you didn’t do it on purpose. Because if you had made a conscious choice to act otherwise, then we would still be together.
