Ah, Valentine’s Day has passed. Maybe you’ve been cuddling up to your sweeties. Maybe you went to dinner. Maybe you just had some fun with some friends. Maybe you had sex with someone you met on Tinder. To each their own.
Valentine’s Day should be a day for celebrating all the different kinds of love that make us happy. However, now that it is after Valentine’s Day and we’ve all sobered up a bit I’d like to give everyone some advice on relationships based on a really shitty experience.
A couple of weeks after my anniversary with my ex-boyfriend last year, he cheated on me with a girl he met at college. He then continued to have a sexual relationship with her throughout the year. He kept this fact a secret for about nine months.
When you’re in a monogamous closed relationship and you’re cheated on, it sucks. It especially sucks when that relationship has caused a lot of stress for you and been problematic in your life. It also sucks when the person you’re dating lies to you about the cheating. But with all the guilt and horrid dread that rushed through me, there were also some really important lessons that being cheated on taught me. I’ll take you through a few of them.
Trust Your Instincts
You’ve probably been told this one before, but it is completely worth repeating. If you feel like there is something wrong in your relationship, you are probably right. I asked my ex-boyfriend many times if he had been unfaithful when he came back on breaks, and he always told me that it was okay. But I was still uneasy. When my ex-boyfriend broke up with me (the first time) and then later asked me to get back together (the first time) I felt uneasy about the situation. I felt like I was finally becoming independent, and that maybe I shouldn’t go back into something just because it was comfortable. Gut feelings can sometimes be right, and you should really consider them if they feel icky.
If you feel like something’s wrong, something probably is, and if someone really loves you, they will want to talk about how you’re feeling and try to help you.
Power Should Be Equal in a Relationship
In my past relationship, my ex-boyfriend held all the power. I found myself continually saying sorry to him for my presence in general. Whenever I wanted to bring something up that was upsetting to me in the relationship, he would try to shut it down.
A lot of the time, when power dynamics are uneven, it can be hard to tell. My ex-boyfriend was really sweet to me, and I thought I was just being crazy when I felt powerless in the relationship. When he cheated on me, it created a power imbalance that continued to be more uneven every time he lied about it.
This power difference only became noticeable after he told me that he cheated on me and requested that we keep it from many of my peers. This left people confused and bewildered when I ended the relationship, especially because people had a weird amount of investment in my relationship.
Just Because Your Relationship is Good for Others Does Not Make it Good for You
I went to a small high school. There were sixty kids in each grade. Small schools create a bubble where you get into close relationships that become so related to another person it can be hard to get out. My relationship was my identifier. A freshman girl once told me after the two of us broke up (the second time) that she cried when she found out. People were invested in each other’s shit. My ex-boyfriend’s mother was my English teacher, his sister was one of my best friends, and our mentor was the same person. When your life is so tightly entangled in another person’s, everyone will tell you that the relationship is good for you. When I told some people that Chad* had cheated on me, they encouraged me to try to work things out with him because they thought we were a good match. When I was asked to make a decision about our relationship, I was essentially being asked to figure out whether or not I wanted to throw part of my life away (or at least that’s what it felt like). It wasn’t till I built a new life at Kenyon that I understood that my life was my own. There were none of those stressful attachments.
Your Feelings Are Never Wrong
Your feelings can be biased and skewed, they can be related to some traumatic experience you’ve had, or they can be based on incorrect stereotypes about a given group. But they are never wrong. The actions that you use to express those feelings can be wrong, and they often are, but the feeling that you have is never wrong. I told my friend after I found out that my ex cheated on me that I felt ashamed. I felt like I had done something wrong in the relationship or not been enough. He went on to lecture me that I should not be ashamed and that no one should regret the decisions they make in life. While this was an interesting philosophical argument, it was not very helpful in making me feel okay.
If you get cheated on, be angry, be sad, be ashamed, be a fucking title wave of emotion. Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t be. If someone wants to help you by talking through why you feel what you feel, that can be helpful. But no one is allowed to tell you how you should be feeling. Especially not a person that you love.
Forgiveness is For You
If someone does you wrong, you don’t owe them forgiveness. No matter what type of relationship it is, you don’t owe anyone forgiveness. While yes, a person may do things in order to make amends for past wrongdoings, that does not mean that you must forgive them. If you are forgiving them it is in order to release hate from your heart.
After Chad broke up with me, I tried really hard to forgive him because I wanted to make him happy. Once I realized I couldn’t do that, I knew I needed to break up with him. After I broke up with him, he called me to tell me that I owed it to him to be there for him and to help him. He thought I was over the cheating. What he didn’t understand was that I can’t control how I feel, as much as I try. Unfortunately, you can’t just pretend like someone never fucked you over. You can still treat them with decency, but you are never obligated to continue a relationship that fucking sucks. If you ever get cheated on, I’m sorry. If you get lied to, I am extra sorry. It seriously feels like getting hit by a truck. But with every shitty thing that happens in this weird computer simulation we call life, we learn more and more what we need. Hopefully some of this advice helps someone out there figure out exactly how to be in a healthy and happy relationship. And if it doesn’t, well at least everyone at my tiny high school knows what that boy did.
*Name has been changed to Chad to protect his identity cause I’m not a sociopath.
Image Credit: Death to Stock, Barbra Richardson, Isaac Haseley, and Kent Fisher