Screw You for cheating on me. Screw you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. The same person who thought, oops, he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Fuck you. This isn’t about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned. —David Levithan.
The thing about a lie – especially one not yet found out – is that you have to keep it alive every moment, every second of the day, whenever you are with the person, and in doing so, you may start living the lie. It may become your very life. That is the truly scary thing about veils and lies. They can so easily take over and drown you in the collective, oppressive weight of their shame and necessity.
So, when people know this, why do they still cheat?
Well, there are a number of reasons. The most common stated by all genders is that they feel the fire has gone out of their relationship. The attraction, the feeling that drew them together had died. The spark had gradually fizzled out, leaving behind an empty shell, making them seek love and affection elsewhere.
And love and affection are the two things that form the base of any relationship. Trust is then needed to sustain it. But without the former, there can be no relationship.
Another reason is that in today’s world, people have a lot of options. If you have the basic qualities to be a good person and conduct yourself well, it is easy for you to get partners. Thus, at times, you may get bored with whom you are, or get a sudden crush or get infatuated with someone else because you find something in them that you find lacking in your current partner. After all, aren’t we all attracted to the newest things? Of course, people are things, but the fact remains that it is easy to forget what you have in the search for something else – something more. However, it should also be remembered that you know the flaws of our partner after having been with them for a long time, thus, you may find flaws in any new partner with time as well. Everything appears enticing from a distance.
‘I didn’t see it like that,’ or ‘It was just a small mistake,’ or ‘I lost control,’ are just reasons. It may be a small thing for you, an error in judgement, but in the end, you have still broken your partner’s heart. What worse feeling exists for them than being shattered by someone they trusted?
Remember, once you have broken someone’s trust and been unfaithful, it will be difficult for them or even others to trust you again. Instead, it is better to break up and leave a clean wound with honesty than to cheat and let the relationship turn dark, peppered with doubts and betrayal. Give them the same consideration that you would want for yourself. The same respect that you would want for yourself. Place yourself in their shoes, and think about it. Empathy is an oft underrated but very important feeling. After all, isn’t it better to break up with your partner and let them be free – and be free yourself in the process – than continuing a farce of a relationship where you are cheating on them?
Live honourably, so that both you and your partner will be happy, even if that means you aren’t with each other. After all, breaking up is better than breaking trust and making the other person lose faith in love and relationships.
