The Cheating Curve

by Harlequin

Well I haven’t been around for awhile, since I have been moving into my new townhouse (with all of my friends, including Dollface) and getting used to classes.  So this has been my first week back at college…I am sorry for not being around, but there have been some interesting stories to tell – if i could remember.

But on another note, this has also been my younger brother’s first week at college – as a freshman.  We all moved him in last week and got him settled, and he seems to be happy.  But…he cheated on his girlfriend.  The kid’s first weekend at college, his first college party, and he cheats on the girl that he loves.  My friend told me it was not really his fault – he did love this girl but his hormones were too much for him to handle.  Perhaps that is partly true.  It’s an explanation, but it sure as hell isn’t an excuse.  So is monogamy even realistic, even when we outgrow our hormones?

Needless to say, I am disappointed in him.  But I understand – I cheated once, and it was more than just making out.  But my brother and his girlfriend are just so sickeningly perfect for each other.  Before this, my friends and I all fawned over what a great boyfriend he was, what a great couple they were.  And they are.  I can’t find a healthy relationship for the life of me, and he gets one on his first try.  In high school, nonetheless.  I suppose that is what disappoints me the most, that even the relationships that seem the best can fall apart so easily.

I do not condone cheating, but I also do not condemn it.  I think the best we can do is try to understand what lies behind the face of cheating, why people do it. Context can be everything, and although I only know of my own personal experiences, cheating seems to be everywhere today.  Even the most beautiful women in Hollywood are cheated on – Reese Witherspoon, Elizabeth Hurley, Sienna Miller.  I have been cheated on a lot, but when I was the cheater, I did it out of drunken vindictiveness.  He had been ignoring me for weeks and I decided that if he didn’t pick up his phone when I called him at 2 in the morning then I would have sex with an unnamed character.  Now, we broke up a week later; I realized he had pretty much already dumped me without immediately getting around to letting me know.  So I don’t feel too bad about that, although I do realize it was completely immature and wrong.  My second example is that of a friend who has been dating a man for 6 years, and everyone thought they were the perfect couple.  One night they had a party at their apartment, and a girl who had just broken up with the man’s best friend showed up, without an invitation.  As the night went on and people trickled in and out, my friend went to bed.  When she got up an hour later, she entered the living room to see her boyfriend, passed out and naked from the waist down, and the girl masturbating next to him.  Neither of them ever found out what really happened, and they are still together months later; in fact, they are having a baby next year.

So we get to my brother.  He was at a party, drinking of course, and a girl pulls him around the corner for an exhibitionist make-out session.  He tells me that she pulls off his shirt, and then her own, and kisses him up against the wall.  He says he kissed her back.  And then he stopped, and said, “I can’t do this,” to which she responded that she didn’t care if he had a girlfriend.  He called up his girlfriend crying and told her what happened, and other than that I don’t know of any new developments.

So what happens now – do you try to heal, or do you give your partner the boot?  And where do we draw the line of what is cheating – sex with anyone, sex only with someone of the opposite sex, kissing, or simply feelings?  Obviously the answer to these questions will vary from person to person, but I do not know if I could continue a relationship with someone who cheated on me, emotionally or physically.  Forgiveness is a lot easier than I thought.  But forgetting isn’t something that can ever really happen; at best you can move past it and live with it.  I don’t know if you can ever rebuild that trust.  An infidelity (or God forbid, several) is always there, lingering, making you wonder.  I can forgive my ex-boyfriend for his adulterous ways, but I can never forget and I most certainly could never be with him again.  I wanted to try, and I did, but instead of fading with time, his infidelities just became more vivid.  I turned into a crazed, jealous, suspicious, paranoid wreck.  A lot of that is still with me – and I feel that any man who dates me now deserves a trophy just for dealing with it.  But I have learned a lot from cheating, both on the giving and the receiving end, and I am still astounded with the complexity of emotions that are involved.

So what are all of your experiences with cheating?  Have you ever been the victim or the culprit, or maybe both?

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