Cheater, Cheater

Cheating. It’s something that most of us fear when that will happen when we are in a relationship. It’s one thing that I fear the most when entering a new relationship. What do you consider cheating? Your partner having sex with someone else? What about your partner having an emotional connection to someone else? Is it cheating when you’re in a relationship and your partner views porn or other men/women on websites like O.F? How would you feel if your partner went to a strip club when they know it’s something you’re not comfortable with? What if it’s flirting with someone that they’ve been friends with for years or someone at work? Here’s one that seems to be more common now: talking with someone on a dating site?

I know sex is definitely something that is still seen as taboo but with social platforms such as TikTok, I’m seeing a lot of people open up about things like “swinging.” People have kinks about sharing their partner. I’m definitely not here to kink shame anyone… you do you, boo.

I personally have never been with anyone that has physically cheated on me… at least I don’t think I have been. I know this is the most common form of cheating that people know about. I’m here to talk about the other forms that people seem to dismiss. I feel like these are more common than the “physical” cheating.

Porn as cheating

As a strong Catholic, I never viewed porn like the rest of my peers. I grew up absolutely adamant that I’d never give into the temptation of it. I wanted a relationship with someone that had the same views as I did. When I met Jacob, I told him this and he felt the exact same way as I did. He told me that he had never viewed it and had no desire to either. This made me feel so at ease that my future husband was going to only lay his eyes on me. After our second child was born, I wasn’t feeling myself. I had severe postpartum depression and sex was the last thing on my mind. My focus was on healing myself and the ugly demons that were taking over my mind.

One day, my parents were visiting us and I had asked Jacob if I could use his phone to look something up. He handed it over and I went straight to google and saw that his most recent searches had been porn sites. I remember dropping the phone into his lap and storming off to our room. My vision was blurred with tears instantly. How could he do this to me? Jacob followed me and asked me what was wrong and I confronted him about what I saw on his Google search. He assured me that it wasn’t him that searched it… it was the guys at work that did. How fucking stupid do you think I am? I let him think that I believed him but I knew the truth. A few weeks later I walked in on him with his phone doing some… not appropriate things when he was in the shower. I knew my gut told me the truth that first time I saw his recent searches. A few nights later he left his phone unattended and I decided to look again at his search history. I found nothing but porn websites. I think he had well over fifty tabs open and every single one of them was porn. I think what hurt the most is that he was searching for skinny blond girls. Which I’m the complete opposite of. It’s one thing when your partner is looking at another woman but when that woman is the complete opposite of what you are.. that shit tore me to shreds. Yes, Jacob and I had our problems but I was doing my absolute best to make our marriage work. That was one of the only nights I saw Jacob cry. He didn’t cry.. he was at my feet, on his knees, bawling and asking me for forgiveness. I was furious. I didn’t want to forgive him because he had promised me the last time that he would never view it. I know he had lied the first time but I had hoped that he would have taken that as a warning and would have stopped viewing other women. I was wrong. I remember calling my brother to come over and pick up all of Jacob’s guns and knives because I was honestly scared. Jacob was so inconsolable that I thought he was going to take his own life.

A few days later, we had a scheduled meeting with our priest from our home parish. Not only did I feel like Jacob had broken his vow to me to be faithful and true, but I was also nervous that he had actually had a porn addiction. He ended up telling us that he had started viewing porn at a young age like most boys. There it is, another lie. I felt betrayed that he had lied to me about never viewing porn. If he had just been honest with me from the beginning, we could have worked through it so we wouldn’t have had this problem down the road. I don’t remember much after that. The one thing I do remember is the priest telling him that viewing porn could eventually lead to physical cheating. Jacob had said that his recent viewing history had all stemmed from the lack of sex he was getting from me. I just couldn’t understand how he couldn’t be patient with me. Our daughter was still so young and my body had a rough time recovering from my c-section. My mind wasn’t in the right headspace. Along with the postpartum depression, I was having horrible anxiety attacks. Most likely PTSD from being sexually abused by my grandfather. I didn’t want to be touched at times and he couldn’t understand that. He had the mindset that because we were married, I had to give him what he wanted. I now know that this is considered spousal rape. I don’t know if he continued watching porn after our counseling session with our priest. After the entire situation, I hated myself. I didn’t want him to look at me. Because of this, I felt that I wasn’t what he wanted. I still have serious issues with this. If my own husband could do this to me, I’m sure any other man would do the exact same thing. I still feel completely undesirable because of this.

Now I want to talk about strip clubs.

This kind of goes along with my views on porn. I personally wouldn’t want my boyfriend/husband going to a strip club. I know that there are some couples that enjoy this kind of thing, and once again, I’m not kink shaming at all. I know that some people go just for the experience when they’re in places like Las Vegas. This isn’t what I have a problem with. I want to know this: Let’s say you don’t feel comfortable with your partner going to a strip club and they do. Is this cheating? What if they purchase a private dance from one of the strippers there? Their eyes and hands are on another woman.

I’m going to talk about an ex-boyfriend. This is the one from my blog post “I damn sure never would’ve danced with the Devil.” Allan and I were going to go to Las Vegas. My best friend was getting engaged and I wanted to be there for it. So I reserved us a room and purchased plane tickets for us. I gifted Allan his ticket for his birthday. When we started planning our trip, he told me that he was going to go to a brothel when he was there. Excuse me? He wanted to go to Las Vegas and fuck another woman? Hell no. I told him absolutely not and he told me that if he didn’t go to a brothel that I had to let him go to a strip club. I felt so conflicted. I’d rather him look at a girl instead of fuck one. So I played cool and said we’d go. He then told me that he didn’t want me there. That him and his best friend were going to be the ones going and that he’d be getting a private dance. Hell to the fucking no. I wasn’t going to be paying for this trip if he was concerned with looking at and fucking other women. I told him that the only way he was going is if I went with him and we’d sit in the very back and no private dances. He wasn’t even allowed to tip any of the girls there. I know that might make me sound like a complete bitch and I told him how I felt when Jacob was looking at other women and of course, he didn’t care. He said I needed to get over myself. Three weeks before our trip, a friend of his who had recently been dumped by his fiancé was going to come and visit. This was a weekend that I had the girls and I wasn’t going to be able to hang out with him and this friend. I told him that he wasn’t allowed to go to the strip club with this friend. He told me that he HAD to since this friend had just gotten dumped. Fuck that shit. I was done. I told him that he was sacrificing our entire relationship for this friend and the strip club. He’d tell me things like “the women here are ugly anyways. They don’t mean anything. At the end of the night, you’re the one I’m coming home to.” I didn’t buy any of it. He then promised me that he wouldn’t be visiting the local strip club but that he was still going to one in Vegas. In my heart, I knew this was the last straw. A few nights later, I told him that I had a dream that he and his friend had gone to the strip club and that I broke up with him. He laughed and I told him that it wasn’t funny and that if he didn’t keep his promise to me that my dream would be his reality. It pissed him off that I was “telling him what he can or cannot do.” If he couldn’t respect this one thing, I was done. I had been looking for excuses to break up with him and this was a good enough reason to. He was upset that I broke up with him over something that hadn’t even happened yet. I told him it was the fact that the thought had still crossed his mind even though he knew how I felt.

Okay so now that we are on the subject of “Allan,” I’d like to point out that he had most likely been cheating on me the entire time. Even when we were in a full blown relationship, I saw that he was still getting messages from women on Bumble. He told me that he had just never deleted the app and it must have just still had him on the feed. Bull fucking shit. Bumble puts your account as “inactive” after not using their app for thirty days. We had been in a relationship well over that thirty days. This meant that he was still actively swiping on women and talking with them. I’m not sure if he ever met up with any of these women. A few days after our breakup, I made a new account on Bumble. Bumble added a “New Here” badge to my profile to indicate that I was a new profile on the feed. This badge goes away after two weeks or so. After a few swipes, I saw his profile. Like I said, this was only a few days after our breakup. His profile didn’t have the “New Here” badge like mine did. That means that he had to have had the profile for over two weeks and for sure had been active on it within the last thirty days. That fucker. At this point, I felt like our entire relationship had been a lie. Even if he never physically cheated on me, he was still matching with other women and having conversations with them! If his heart wasn’t in the relationship with me, why was he dragging me along?

Now let’s talk about this. What if your partner is talking to someone that they’ve had a previous relationship with? When I’m in a relationship, I cut off all ties to people that I’ve ever been in a dating or intimate relationship with out of respect for the person I’m with. I know that I’d personally never cheat on a boyfriend but like I said, I do it out of respect. What do you do when there’s still that communication between your partner and their ex? I personally have never been in this situation so if you have any comments, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you. Don’t worry, you can stay anonymous!

This next one is something I’ve seen way too often. What if your partner is flirting with someone at work? My parents have worked in the school system for several years and let me tell you… the amount of flirting that goes on between some teachers is absolutely insane. And most of the time it’s not even teachers… it’s administrators! Let’s say that there’s nothing physical going on but it’s something that’s witnessed by literally everyone else. Students see it, co-workers see it, hell, the whole fucking community sees it. What do you do? Do you just brush it off and call everyone else crazy? Do you side with your partner and believe them when they say that there’s nothing going on with their fellow co-worker? Do you wait until something does happen? Once again, curious to hear what all of you have to say on this. Give me allllll the tea please!

This last one is a little different. Let’s say there’s absolutely nothing physical going on. And let’s switch up the perspective a bit Let’s say you’re in a relationship and you’re loyal. Your partner is absolutely everything you need to take on this crazy thing we call life. You were made for each other. You are soulmates. Now let’s say that someone has unexpectedly come into your life and you start to question if that person could be the one for you. There’s nothing physical going on but your heart is beating for this new person. What if your heart is split in two. Are you now cheating because your heart doesn’t just belong to your partner? They’re now sharing your heart. Let’s say you think you’re making the safe choice by choosing to stay with what’s familiar and comfortable with you. Do you tell them the honest truth that they’re not the only one who has your heart? Do you feel like you’re cheating?

---

A co-worker of mine asked me to spill my thoughts on cheating. These were all the thoughts and feelings I’ve had on the subject. I’d love to hear your feedback. If you have your own story and don’t mind me posting it and commenting back, let me know.

Click to Be Notified When there's a New Post