Cheater Cocks (and Sometimes Pussies Too)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/23/the-cheaters-guide-to-love?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook

I read this poignant piece today and it reminded me of what a horrible, horrible thing infidelity can be. Love is fleeting, it comes and goes when it pleases, but trust is the glue that holds the relationship, any relationship, together. I wake up some mornings with a heart filled with love and only love. I find no flaws, nothing sets me off. But there are days when I feel bitter and quite frankly, tired. I want to end it all, erase the slate and move on, onto greener pastures perhaps.

It's human nature to get used to a pattern. My pattern is getting used to people who are usually all wrong for me. I fall in love so easily and yet I can't stay there. I snap out of it. That's what my problem is.
My first boyfriend and I went out for nearly a year till the hues of the relationship changed to more morbid, cynical ones. Was it the sex? Of course it wasn't the sex! We were too young to be fucking. It took us a really long time to get there. I was vacationing somewhere during that summer, away from him. We'd talk once in a while. I could sense something was amiss, but I didn't read too much into it. 'I'll be back soon', I'd tell him. 'I'll be back soon', I'd tell myself. Everything would be dandy again.
They weren't. My absence had driven him to ask a girl out on a date. What's the big deal? You'd think. But for me it was. The action didn't bother me, the fact that he felt the need to hide it from me even after I confronted him did. Things had somehow broken, they weren't the same. My ego was bruised and I did my best to take revenge on his minor infidelity by teaching him a lesson. I kissed his best friend and slept with another friend of his. He found out. I wanted him to find out. He dumped me. I wanted him to dump me. His heart was broken. I had achieved relative success. But in the process, my heart was broken as well. I didn't want to cheat on him. It was a bad, bad decision. Instead of fixing the problem, I had only made the cracks appear wider. I learnt my lesson. I'd never break someone's heart just to teach them a lesson. Why did my boyfriend have to ask someone else out? Was I not good enough? What did I lack? I tortured myself over these things long after the entire episode was over. Why did I have to break his heart just because he broke mine? I asked myself but there was no answer.
How could I be so unkind?
We tried to make things work again years later. But it just wasn't the same. The sanctity of the bond that we once shared was lost somehow, amongst all the blaming and the lying and the crying. We did what two sensible people would do-bid each other goodbye and exit from each other's lives.

I navigated through relationships and meaningless sex for a while after that. But I was never really happy. I wanted someone to hold me, someone to tell me that I'd be alright. I wanted someone to love me for who I was and not because I put out.
I had just started singing at Someplace Else when I was 18. I was the new kid on the block. I met a boy on orkut who seemed cool. I was infatuated with him despite his questionable reputation. People looked at us when we were out in public with questionable eyes. 'What's a girl like her doing with a guy like him?' they'd always seem to be asking silently. But I paid no heed. Looks weren't everything. There was so much more to a person than their looks. I've always been a firm believer of that. I liked him. I was almost falling for him. During the pujas one year, I remember being rather drunk and fooling around with him. He whispered the taboo words as he lay on top me. "Don't say it if you don't mean it." I said crying. "I love you" he said again. I was crying like a child in his arms before I knew it. I couldn't feel any love. I knew he didn't mean what he say. I knew he didn't love me. But he insisted anyway. I fell for it eventually. After putting up with the boy's emotional torture for months. I gave up. It happened one night, the night before my class 12 psychology board-exam. I broke up with him, unable to take his emotional blackmail anymore. I drank all the alcohol I could find and turned up for the exam with a hangover. But I was glad I did what I did. I moved on from him to the next one.
A few months later, when a common friend told me that he went to his ex-girlfriend and fucked her the very day after he asked me out, I let it go, pretending like it didn't bother me.
It did bother me. It bothered me quite a bit. Why would a boy go sleep with his ex-girlfriend the very next day after asking someone out? How could someone be so cruel? So disrespectful towards love and relationships? I don't know what happened to him since. I don't really care anymore. It's strange though, that even if I do think of him when summarizing my past relationships, it's always the lying and the cheating that comes to mind first.

They say that girls and boys cheat for very different reasons. I don't know if that's true. But I have cheated so many times in the past that at one point I remember thinking of myself as such a stud because I was able to pull it off. I was sleeping around and even though everybody knew, they pretended like they didn't. My epiphany came one afternoon when I went to a friend's place. I swore to myself that I wouldn't succumb to his charm. I'd stay true to the boy I'd been dating then. Sure he was a little dull, but he was sweet and he cared. But I broke my promise to myself. I slept with my friend. I couldn't resist. I had reached the lowest point in my life. I needed to detox. I swore to myself that I'd mend my ways. I did.

I put up with the boy who beat me everytime he felt jealous. I put with the boy who humiliated me in front of friends, constantly belittling me. I put up with the boy who once urinated on me. I thought it was my penance for my past. It was my karma getting back at me for breaking hearts. I took it all, never complaining. Maybe I wasn't destined for a great romance. You could make a BDSM porno out of my love-life at best, never a Mills and Boon novel.

The good thing about time is that it heals most wounds. I no longer feel like the villain in a relationship and neither do I feel like a victim. Emancipation is a strange thing, you find it in the strangest of places. My emancipation comes from the fact that I have the ability to forgive. I find it comforting to forgive those who hurt me. I pray that those who I have hurt over all these years forgive me as well. That's the only way to move forward.

I don't forget though. How can I forget the look on his face when he saw me kiss someone? It broke his heart. It broke my heart to see him so shattered.
I never forget. I never forget how lonely and unloved I felt when his friends told me that he was cheating on me and it had been on multiple occasions, not once like he claimed. I wouldn't want my worst enemies to feel that shattered.

As someone who has cheated and been cheated on, it's the suppression of information from your partner that hurts more than the act itself. I respect those who have the courage to admit to the fact that they've cheated. I respect those who have the courage to seek forgiveness. Lying about it doesn't make a person clever or smart, it only makes them a coward, spineless, gutless. Men who lie about cheating are no men at all. Women who lie about cheating are no women at all. But hey, that's just my opinion. Cheating is rather relative. Some people think it's okay to flirt with as long as it's healthy and no actual physical cheating is involved. Some people think it's not. Some people don't think it's cheating when they sleep around, as long as they love only one person and some people think that is a rather absurd concept. For me it's doing something that I wouldn't want my partner to do. It's suppressing information, no matter how insignificant, because they might suspect something. If I'm, say, out drinking at a party with a friend and there's nothing going on between us, I should be able to tell my boyfriend. After all I have nothing to hide. But having said that, at the end of the day, all I want would be to spend some time with my boyfriend and him alone, instead of going out and meeting others. Because that's just the kind of person that I am. The whole world may want to get in my pants, but I usually always have my heart set on one.

Anyway, I'm not going to wallow on all the things that went wrong in the past because being the forever optimist that I am, I firmly believe that someday, I will find that perfect man who will love me and only me. He'll tell me that he loves me and I'll believe him. I wont feel the need to keep my options open and he'll be more than glad to be with me and me alone.
Maybe I'll be able to make love to him and not get bruised, so bruised in the process. In my relationship utopia, there aren't a hundred Adonis' and Hercules', there is one. Only one. The one who makes me goes weak in the knees. The one who means it every time that he loves me, but most importantly, one who'll have his eyes on me and me alone, as will I.

Till he comes along, I can only wait the endless wait. But I am hopeful that he's around the corner somewhere and it's only a matter of time before our story begins.

I think I'm ready to be in a relationship again. A real one this time. I want to dive into it with all I have and not look back. My heart is finally free of all the baggage it had been dragging along all this while. I am finally free. I'm not afraid to love.

Love, come to me, I am ready for you.