The classic signs that my ex boyfriend was going to cheat on me were always there. He was distant, emotionally unavailable, never made time for me, and spent a majority of his time with his guy friends. I could list a hundred more signs and it wouldn’t matter.
What I remember was the small little tell he had after he had cheated. Sometimes he would get this distant teary-eyed look in his eyes like he desperately wanted to tell me something important. It worried me but I ignored it even when he got that look on a night I joked and said, “Just don’t go and cheat on me.” I think deep down inside I knew.
The scary part is about a month before my ex boyfriend told me he had cheated on me, any time I watched or heard stories about cheating I felt my stomach knot up so bad it made me nauseated. I had ignored all the clear signs of his betrayal for so long that my body was literally trying to tell me.
The day I found out my ex boyfriend cheated was right after I did my morning walk of shame that I did every morning I spent the night at his place because he didn’t want me hanging around. We had been having issues since a girl started calling and messaging him on Facebook. He insisted it was just a girl he had met a while back and he didn’t know why she was calling him. Things got fishier when she actually showed up at his apartment with her friend and his roommate. I remember saying, “If something happened between the two of you, I’m more likely to forgive you if you’re the one who tells me.” It was utter bullshit that I seriously believed at the time.
Well, he told me OVER AIM (AOL Instant Messenger)!!!! And if you recall, I had just spent the night at his place and guess what? He messaged me on Facebook on my walk home to come on AIM the moment I got back to my apartment. No, we didn’t video call each other we IM’d each other. Yes, he didn’t have to face me or see me cry. He told me in the most cowardly way.
This is the gist of the beginning of our conversation:
Ex Boyfriend: I did stuff with that girl
Me: What kind of stuff?
Ex Boyfriend: I hooked up with her
Me: How?
Ex Boyfriend: I can’t say it
Me: Say it
Ex Boyfriend: Sex
I remember standing up numb but very calm and walking into the living room where my brother was watching TV. I asked him to come to my room and when he came in I said, “Hug me.” Jeremiah, my brother, had no idea what was going on. We literally had the same conversation as the one above. I told him my ex hooked up with someone and he asked me, “How?” And as he hugged me, I sobbed and said, “Sex.”
Of course my ex boyfriend being the dick he was, told me not to tell any of my friends but to tell my sisters. I did both. He had no right to tell me whom I could and could not tell. My hands shook as I grabbed my phone. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you are trying to call 911 but no matter how much you try you can’t seem to dial the numbers. My sisters were busy but not too busy to pick up and hear out what had happened.
I spent the next couple hours continuing my conversation over AIM with my ex, desperately waiting for my sisters to call. I knew even as we were having this conversation that I was going to try to forgive him, and it was also apparent to my sisters once they finally got back to me. My sisters didn’t fight me because they loved me and wanted me to make my own decision.
The thing I regret was that I stayed even though he still insisted he didn’t love me after I asked. He still didn’t know if he loved me even as he was pleading for another chance. I remember he told me he felt like he was going to lose me, and I responded saying, “That feeling you are feeling right now is love.” My ex was an idiot but then again so was I.
I remember the weeks following that day. I made my ex get tested for STD’s because I wanted him to learn the consequences of cheating. He knowingly put me at risk for over six months by having sex with me without a condom (I was on the pill). I did get some sort of satisfaction when he called me crying because he was scared the nurse was going stick something in his penis.
I also made my ex boyfriend tell me every single detail from where it happened to what position to how long it lasted. I don’t know why I did this. Maybe I thought if I knew every detail I could understand how and why it happened. Maybe it gave me some sort of control over the situation because I couldn’t control how I was feeling. I couldn’t understand how my ex still wanted to be with me after he had cheated. I was trying so hard to forgive him as fast as I could so I wouldn’t feel the pain.
I don’t think I ever looked at my ex boyfriend the same way after he told me he cheated. Sometimes I noticed a wave of sadness come over his face because he was seeing how what he did changed me. The most prominent example I can recall is when I started calling “the girl” terrible names. That wasn’t me and he knew it. My ex probably heard me say a handful of mean things about people to that point. He never told me but I know seeing me be this way hurt him a lot.
The fact I was in the process of trying to forgive my ex boyfriend while we were together made the struggle to cope with being cheated on worse. I was going through every scenario about what I had done to make him cheat and how I could have changed it. I knew the fact he cheated on me wasn’t his entire fault. I knew I put pressure on him to make me happy and I was insecure. I knew I had a role in the problems we had in our relationship and I told him that.
The hardest part was I began losing a sense of who I was. I was a crazy person obsessing about every little detail that led up to night my ex boyfriend cheated. Sometimes I couldn’t even recognize myself in the mirror. I felt as though I was on the verge of a breakdown, and at any moment I might lose myself completely. Most days I felt like I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough. I thought no one could love me during this time. I was going through something very dark, and I don’t even know if my ex boyfriend understood the depths of the pain he had caused me.
I used to think love was stronger than anything in the world, and that if I loved my ex it was enough for us to overcome any obstacles. When things began to get hard, my ex boyfriend told me he was over what happened and to get over it. He even told me stop bringing up that he had cheated. He said this to me within two weeks of the day he told me. I did everything he asked because it was hurting him. The pain swallowed me inside out as I kept everything in so he wouldn’t hurt. While he was waiting for me to go back to the way I was, he didn’t realize what I needed was for him to make changes in order for me to truly forgive him. This wasn’t like all the other times I figured out a way to forgive him. I needed to see he wanted to work on our relationship as badly as I did. I needed him to work as hard as I was working. Our love for each other had to overcome the cheating. Too much of the responsibility was placed on me.
I was naïve back then. I realized after years of processing that there are some things a relationship can’t survive. This doesn’t mean I don’t think a relationship can survive cheating because I do. It just so happened that cheating was the straw that snapped the weak foundation my ex and I built our whole relationship on. Our relationship couldn’t survive it.
I often look back and reflect, not because I’m not over being cheated on, but because I learned so much about myself. I am a stronger person I believed myself to be. There were times I thought I was losing my sanity but I was able to find a way out of the darkness when I didn’t know how. I wouldn’t have been able to pull through without my family but most importantly myself.