Fri 25 Nov 2005
You know what blows my mind? How men seem to be able to continue a relationship in which they were cheated on. How do you ever look at your mate the same when you know they’ve cheated on you? How do men just put that aside in their heads? I know I can’t ever be at peace in a relationship in which cheating was involved, even if the cheating happened a year before I got evidence of it. I know it seems unfair that the reality of cheating or betrayal is that it takes 20 years to undo (if you’re lucky) the 20 minutes spent destroying the trust. I’ve seen women so insecure and so needy that they went ahead and married the guy who cheated on them hoping it’d lock the man down, and I can tell you, in that marriage there is still no peace. It doesn’t even matter if the guy’s cheated recently; the fact that the trust had been shattered once means there will always be scars and doubts in the woman’s view of the relationship. And the man will hear it and hear it, or see evidence of it in what he will call her “paranoia.”
I’ve often wondered whether the strength is in leaving, or in staying. For me, staying is pointless because there can be no resolution. The knowledge and the memory can never be undone. So then what’s the point? Why not just learn from this and move on to something with a clean slate?
I finally understood tonight that a man really doesn’t get why cheating is such a big deal; he’d stay and work on it if it were the other way around. But I don’t get it, it is huge for me, it is the ultimate betrayal within a relationship. It’s not a second of losing it in anger; it’s actively choosing to take someone over your mate and to actively hurt your mate through the entire act, and in the case of an affair, it’s the continuous choice to lie to, betray and cheat on your mate over a course of week, months, years. Yell at me, neglect me, abuse me in a relationship and I will at least give it a shot and see if we can get past this. But cheat on me, and I know the cracks of this damage will reach no end in time. Hate me for leaving something a man sees as salvageable, but I can only do right according to myself, and I know there is no getting past this.
You’re right Cindy, you have high ethical standards and that’s a good thing.
I have a friend who dumped his girlfriend though for cheating on him. He didn’t try to continue that relationship once he found out. He went the smart way and just got out because he was very upset.
I don’t think men value relationships any less than women as a whole, it just seems that way sometimes.
Well, in this post, I’m not as much talking about how many men cheat vs. how many women cheat. I’m just saying how I can think of 4, 5 men who either have taken their mates back for cheating, or are willing to continue a relationship despite the woman’s cheating, whereas I and most of my female friends can not. It doesn’t end the love for the cheater (at least, not right away), but it’s more like we know the pain and suspicion will never go away, so it’s not worth continuing the relationship when there’s gonna be that much resentment going around. But it just seems that men treat cheating (whether they’re doing it or it’s done to them) as just another regular relationship issue, like trying to get their mate to be more clean, or do more around the house. Before my ex and I got together, he broke up with his then-girlfriend and then she wrote him this little email in which she expressed her pain at having lost him. His big complaint about her was that she was sorta flat emotionally and they didn’t have much to talk about, and when he got that email, he told me that if she had been like this (meaning that expressive) in their relationship, they’d still be together. It confused me at the time, because I was like, “What about how you don’t want to spend any time with her and you’re always here with your boys drinking in a bar? What about all the girls you cheat on her with?” But that wasn’t an issue to him, the issue was simply that she wasn’t expressive, and he seemed to equate it with issues that I feel are much bigger, like the cheating and the not wanting to spend any time with her. And that if she only changed one little thing, talked to him more, they’d still be together DESPITE his obvious choosing of everyone else over her.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe cheating ISN’T a bigger deal than lying or having bad fashion sense or no tact or messiness.
No, it definitely is a bigger deal than any of those things.
I guess guys really are just more shallow than girls?
well, not all guys. The hard part is finding the ones who aren’t, and hoping there’s one available who doesn’t have some other major issue.