I’m Fine. Fuck You.

This situation is new, but the feelings are all too familiar. I lost my dad when I was 20 years old and it ruined me. The next 2 years of my life included a headfirst dive into the joys of alcohol, followed by the sobering experience of failing a university course just because I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I distanced myself from everyone I knew and loved—except for one person ironically enough.

This fucked up situation is different, but the motions are the same. In the first weeks, I stopped eating. This time the booze was followed by weed (I have expanded my horizons!). I refused to get out of bed until I had to, and even when I had to I’d still say fuck it. I lost interest in everything and I distanced myself from everyone.

So here I am, a month and change since my life came tumbling down around me, but I’m OK. Really. I’m OK. I know only a person who is not OK would try to convince you this hard that they are in fact OK, but seriously, fuck off, I’m fine.

Because I’ve learned that being OK is kind of the only thing I can do. I still drink and smoke too much, but I’m a musician in his 20s so let’s just let that one slide. But I make myself eat. I refuse to stay in bed and I am seeking out my friends as much as I can. I don’t let what she did ruin me. I don’t let her and this act consume my every waking thought. Not anymore. Because I am OK.

I tell myself I am OK. And even though it sounds like one, it is not a lie. It’s a hope. And it’s a reminder.

I have so many amazing things in my life and I need to remember that—as hard as it is. So I have learned to take my life day by day.

Today I woke up and I am healthy. I do not need to worry about where my next meal is coming from. I have an amazing mother and brother who I don’t see nearly as often as I should. I have an incredible network of friends and I love my job.

So I am OK. I’m fucking great… or at least I know I will be.

Revenge or just returning the favor?

Ah, revenge. Sounds fucking sweet right about now. Anyone who has been cheated on has to consider a revenge affair at some point… it would feel so good.

One of the first things my friend Mark said to me: “You should go fuck his wife.”

And ya know what, buddy? That sounds wonderful. Make both of them pay. I thought about how I could make her understand the pain she was putting me through if I went out and did the same to her. I want her to hurt. I want her to suffer. I want her to understand how badly this sucks.

But I’m not that person.

Even with how she treated me, I have too much respect for her to go out there and purposefully hurt her and go back on my word. I am a man of my word and right now I kind of wish I wasn’t.

And if I did act on these feelings of revenge, how can I still say what she did was wrong. Doing so settles the score (kind of) and I don’t want the score settled. I don’t want to stoop to her level and I don’t want there to be any possibility of her believing any part of this is OK.

So justice won’t be served. She gets away with it. She had her cake and ate it too.

As fucking cliche as it is, the best revenge in this scenario is for me to go out and be the best me that I can. I can only prove to her that I am the catch and if she wants to keep me around, she needs to work for it.

So here’s to the new and improved me…coming soon to a theater near you.

 

Sex, sad sex, and rough sex…

This one gets a little graphic.

If you are going through an infidelity, and you are anything like me you have read every fucking article and blog ever written on the topic and you have surely come to the concept of hysterical bonding…

It’s this twisted thing where you cannot get enough of the person who screwed you by screwing someone else. You crave them, want them, need them. Why? To make them stay. To take ownership of them like a dog marking their territory. To prove you’re better than this other person. To feel something other than disgust and hatred for the person you love. To stop everything and finally feel like you two are the only two people in the world. Sound nice when I put it that way, doesn’t it?

And the sex has been great. She’s not shying away from all of the things we always loved doing to each other, she’s just as into as I am and in a way, it is the one time that I feel good. And there is finally a release. So I plan on taking my heightened libido and running with it.

But this desire to be the only two people in the world that matter… just doesn’t work.

It is true, I can’t keep my hands off of her. We end up in bed every time we see each other and do not hold back. The last time we were together, she told me to bend her over, pull her hair, and be rough. So I was. Rougher than I probably ever had been. I was working like I had something to prove. Like I could actually fuck the feelings and memories of this man out of her.

But no matter what I do, we are not the only two people in the world. We are not even the only two people in that bedroom.

Every time she closes her eyes or looks away, I wonder if she is thinking of him. Every time I touch her, I wonder if she liked the way he touched her more. When she does something a little different. I wonder if he taught her that. When she asks me to be rough, I wonder if that is how he fucked her. Every inch of her body I touch, I wonder if he touched her there too.

We are not the only two people in my mind—and I am sure not in hers.

Sex has always been a highlight of our relationship. To this day she says I am the only man who ever made her cum (I feel bad for that sorry man’s wife: a cheating husband who can’t even please a woman). There is just about no fantasy either of us will say no to. Our sex is passionate, exciting and constantly evolving and had only been getting better. Our sex life was something to be jealous of.

I shouldn’t compare myself to this man. I have no reason to feel like she doesn’t want me or to feel like I’m not good enough in the sack. She assures me I am incredible. She assures me that our sex was better and that it meant more.  She reminds me that she always wanted me… even during their relationship.

So why can’t I stop thinking about her with her legs wrapped around him and wondering if she liked it more?

 

Friends… They’ll be there for you

Somehow when you’ve been cheated on you end up feeling ashamed. Even though you did nothing wrong. You feel judged for doing such a horrible job in picking a partner. You feel guilty for making others look at your partner in a negative way. You feel fucking weak and stupid just for considering giving them another chance.

So it is no surprise that I struggled to tell anyone.

I went for hours before finally calling my best friend Mark. He dropped everything and came straight to my apartment with a box of double stuffed Oreos: a solution to girl troubles we started back in middle school.

He helped me make it through those first days.

Mark made me talk about it, he made me laugh and poked fun at me like the sarcastic assholes we both are. He forced me to eat and just listened to everything I had to say. He offered his thoughts (he has a unique perspective having cheated in an early college relationship himself) but told me only I could make the choice. He has known me both in and out of this relationship and just wants the best for me. He called me every day after work for the next week and even Facetimed me shitfaced from vacation because I was having a bad day.

It can be hard to open up to friends and easy to feel like you are a burden, but it is times like these that make me remember, that is exactly what friends are for. So fuck it, use them.

I eventually told my best female friend, Amanda. Amanda is the kind of friend who knows exactly what to say. She reminded me that I am not weak for wanting to stay. In her eyes, I was picking the harder choice and she respected how much strength that took. She reminded me that I did not deserve this. Paragraph texts were sent and she calmly responded and listened to everything I had even as I felt like I was being nonsensical and ridiculous.

But then my friend’s support slowly slipped from neutral to very clearly against me staying in the relationship. They continue to respect that it is my choice and will genuinely support whatever I decide, but their thoughts are clear. 

And that sucks.

The people who care about me are telling me what they think I need to do, and even though there is a part of me that agrees and knows they are making sense, it is not what I want, and just not what I am going to do.

So I distanced myself. I became afraid to tell them anything. Every time I even hinted at wanting to end things, they would seem happy for me to finally make what they thought was the right decision. Anything my partner did that upset me I felt like I couldn’t share because it only reinforced what they thought about her.

This brings up the most difficult part of working past an affair. The only person I want to talk to, the only person I fully trust, and the only person who understands is the very person who hurt me. But can I really tell her “I hate you and think it might be best to break up” if I want to work through this with her? Probably not…

So I’m left alone. I try to talk to my friends when I need to get something off my chest, but I know every speed bump that comes my way is just another reason they think I should leave.

So I am fucking alone.

“Should I stay or should I rock the Casbah?”

The worst part of being cheated on is being left with this choice. A choice I did not want to make and a choice that was not even remotely on my mind: To leave or to stay.

My partner fucked up. She took all of the risks, received all of the rewards, and now I am left to choose.

I have always said that cheating is one of the few things in life I considered unforgivable (and part of me still believes this). The issue was always black and white to me. It’s so easy to look on from the outside and know exactly what you would do. Someone cheats, you leave. If you don’t, you’re a dumbass.

Well, nice to meet you, my name is Dumbass.

The choice is not an easy one and until you are in the midst of it, you cannot possibly understand what that is like. The friends I told (and I didn’t tell many because somehow I feel ashamed) say they will support me no matter what, but no matter how hard they try to hide it, they think I should leave. They don’t understand how I could even fathom forgiving this person. How you I possibly trust her again. How I could still love a person who would treat me this way. And there is a part of me that agrees because I know how unbelievably fucked up this all is. And there is a part of me that just wishes I could stop loving them.

But I can’t do it. I can’t get myself to agree that I need to leave and I feel like shit for staying: “How can I just let them get away with this?” I feel weak for not having the courage walk away, to demand what I deserve.

But I look at my girlfriend and think “I love you. I wanted a future with you and I don’t know how to throw that away.” No matter how badly I am hurt, no matter how much I may dislike her or even hate her, I still love her.

She broke my heart, disrespected me, replaced me, and now I know she loves someone else.

But she is my best friend. I love her with every fiber of my being. I just can’t throw away everything we have. Even if it ends tomorrow, next week, or in a year, I have to try.

I’m not ready to let go.

My life was damn near perfect…

This is my first post, so I guess it only makes sense to start at the beginning. My name is Jay, I am 25 years old and my girlfriend had an affair—I decided to stay.

Alyssa and I have been together for just over 6 years. We have had our up and downs, but our relationship is something really beautiful. She is my best and closest friend. We have been through so much together and shared so many amazing memories. Our sex life would put most erotica to shame.  And in the past several months I would have told you my life was perfect… until she fucked everything up.

Just over a month ago I received a Message request from an unknown woman. I was at work and decided to look later. A few hours later I opened the message and my first reaction was “Is this some kind of weird spam?” The message very plainly explained how my girlfriend and her husband had been sleeping together for several months. I immediately texted Alyssa and asked if the woman’s name meant anything to her. She responded, “why do you ask that?” And that was my answer. I left work immediately and called her. After her finally saying it was true I proceeded to cry, yell, beg, and who knows what else for the next several hours.

The man was 49, married with 2 kids and a former supervisor at her internship. It started out as workplace flirting and when the internship ended it quickly became more with dirty messages and pictures before finally agreeing to meet up. They had a handful of sexual encounters over the course of a few months and slept together twice. They never met in public or “dated.” They did not end the relationship. He got caught.

She assured me that she still wanted to be with me, that this did not change her feelings for me and that she simply lost herself. And I wanted to believe her. I decided that if what she said was true, and I still loved her, our relationship, which we both can find little fault in, is worth working on.

One month in, information keeps pouring out as we both struggle to process. And last night came the biggest bombshell since receiving that first message. She loves him. She didn’t realize she had such intense feelings for him and she doesn’t want to have these feelings, but she does. She still says it does not change her feelings for me—she is not in love with him and she still does not want a future with him.. but she talked to him on the phone. He called and she answered. She is struggling to let go. She still says she is in love with me, but these other feelings make her question our relationship.

So what the fuck do I do now?

I can stay and deal with the fact that the girl I planned on spending my life with shared her body and her heart with another man. I can deal with the fact that she still loves this man; a feeling that will likely linger for quite some time. All for the glimmer of hope that she decides she wants to make this work and we can have that beautiful relationship and some version of a happy future together.

Or I can look my best friend, the love of my love, in the eye and tell her I do not want her in my life anymore—even though I do.

So I picked my poison and decided to stay.

I am making this blog just because I want to share my thoughts. Get some feelings off my chest. Maybe in the process I can show others they are not alone and to feel less alone myself—especially as a man going through this (so much online is about when “he” cheats).

So here goes everything, I guess.