I debated for quite awhile on whether I wanted to write about the topic of infidelity. But after much dilemma I felt it was for the best. This is not an easy subject for me to be writing about at the present time solely for the fact that I’m still in the thick of dealing with it. But as with all my writings, I am finding it’s healing to do so. So I would like to apologize to all of you in advance of reading this in entirety, only because its length is beyond my normal entries. I pray and hope for all those out there who have either considered cheating on their partners or done so already in their lives, as well as for all those who have been a victim of it, that my words may be healing on some level…
A few days ago, if you were to ask me how my relationship was going with my partner, I would have said that everything was amazing and I meant it. It had been over two years since we first met online and twenty months since we officially became a monogamous couple, or at least from what I had believed to be so. We rarely had any heated discussions and if we did, we always worked through them in a timely fashion and with a lot of love. While I believe there is always room for growth in every department of a relationship, including sexual intimacy, neither of us rarely had any serious complaints with each other. But all of that came crashing down in my world in a fraction of a moment, when my partner’s phone innocently beeped somewhere around 2am early Monday morning.
I was seven days into one of my ongoing trips back and forth between my home in Massachusetts and his in Ohio. He had retired early due to his work schedule the next day, while I remained awake and ironically had been writing an entry in here about embracing my inner child through my watching of cartoons. By the time I had completed that article it was just about 2am. It was then I went into his office to spend the normal few minutes it takes for me to write in my grateful God journal, which I do at the end of each night prior to going to bed. While I sat there in his desk chair writing down the fourth thing I was grateful for on that day, I heard a strange beep from behind me and noticed his cell phone was flashing. I thought it odd given how late it was, so I took a closer look. On its screen was a strange message from a number with no identification other than its digits. While I am unable to recollect its exact words at the moment, it was from someone who appeared irritated that my partner hadn’t gotten back to them and wondered if his partner (meaning me) was still in town. Immediately my heart started racing as I got a bad vibe from the message. Up until that point, there had been a high level of trust established between my partner and I where it was ok for us to answer each other’s phones or messages. But what I found out next in doing so, changed all of that.
In the course of a few minutes, this person provided hard to refute evidence that my partner had cheated on me with him only weeks prior when I had been at my home in Massachusetts. At first I thought it was a joke or that the person had texted the wrong number. But when they provided my partner’s name and a picture that was taken by me during a wonderful day we had spent together only a few weeks prior, my heart sank. Suddenly, I noticed I was shaking with anxiety, which I haven’t felt at any point or on any level since my relationship began almost two years earlier. I immediately went into the bedroom and woke up my partner to have a discussion, where I proceeded to watch the scenes of so many movies I’ve watched play out. First came the major denial by my partner of who this person was. Next came the pieces of information he kept changing during the conversation. And lastly, the truth began pouring out slowly by surely after almost two hours had passed with him giving more and more denials.
I really wanted to believe my partner’s innocence when he sat there and said things to me like “I swear to God on my parent’s graves” or “That’s the truth, I promise”. But I realize that his fear had gotten the best of him already on what he had done from the moment I showed him his cell phone. The long and short of it is that my partner had cheated on me back in the middle of October when I had been home for several weeks taking care of some personal matters. I learned his indiscretion had begun back in September, weirdly enough on 9/11, when he had been cleaning his filing cabinet out. There he supposedly had found a piece of paper with a name and number on it of someone from a previous fling before we had ever met. He had texted that person to see if they remembered him and his slippery slope to infidelity began at that precise moment.
While I am still struggling to understand how such an amazing relationship could have something like this happen to it, I’m working more on coming to acceptance that it happened. The five stages of grief seem to be applying in that process as I am still floating in between all of them trying to arrive to that stage of acceptance. The truth is, I’m still in shock over the matter because my partner is someone who constantly spoke with passion about his disapproval of those who cheated on their partners. My brain is having a very hard time wrapping itself around that fact and the idea that he went as far as he did in his indiscretion. All of it has left me in a difficult spot filled with so much confusion. To get through this, I have been having to look in the mirror and see how my own past was filled with similar behaviors. Some say karma’s a bitch and maybe indeed it is. Maybe I just needed to feel what it felt like to be on the receiving end of this. In all actuality, I am just as guilty in many of my past relationships of similar behaviors to my partner’s infidelity.
While I never fully went into any type of sexual relations with anyone in this lifetime while being monogamous with another, I believe I once walked time and time again, a tightrope of what monogamy really entails. I used to maintain many friends I secretly lusted after and wanted to sleep with. I also used to look at porn for hours on end fantasizing about images of people I’d never meet. I even went as far as having sexual chats on the computer or on the phone with people where I claimed things like I was lonely or that my partner wasn’t giving me what I needed. I often played this sympathy card because deep down I was so insecure that no matter how much love any of my partner’s ever gave me, it was never able to fill that bottomless pit of despair I felt from within me. And when I wasn’t playing that sympathy card, I was making crazy excuses to myself as to why it was ok for me to be doing what I was doing. All in all, when it comes right down to it, any form of lustrous behavior or actual infidelity by a person in a committed relationship does nothing more than cause a destructive path for everyone involved.
It hurts the person doing it because of the guilt it creates within their soul and the poison that guilt manifest itself into for all the unspoken time it’s hidden away. It hurts the person they’re doing it with because of their involvement in sexual behaviors that are dark and not filled any love and light. But most importantly, it definitely hurts the other partner they’re cheating on so profoundly, especially if that other partner has been doing everything they can to love and support them and their relationship.
The simple fact is that any form of infidelity, whether it is acted upon or walked dangerously closed towards, only ends up bringing more darkness upon one’s soul and this world. It breaks down all trust and communication previously established in a healthy relationship. And it also creates an incredible amount of doubt, insecurity, and feelings of betrayal. And no matter what the reason why anyone ever does this, it all boils down to their selfishness and self-centeredness. Usually the person doing it wants to boost their ego and create a feeling of being more desired. But the reality behind it is that the person is really just unhappy with themselves or their life in some way. And while it may be their hope that playing the field while in their committed relationship will bring them what’s lacking from within themselves or their life, it ends up only creating more heartache and pain for them as it has for my partner.
I honestly can’t say I know where our relationship is going to head from here because of all of this. But I can say that I have already forgiven him and I do feel that my spirit and the God of my understanding wants me to give him a second chance. At the present moment, I have begun the process of doing so, as I truly believe in the saying to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The fact is I never used to practice that in all my previous relationships, but through God’s guidance, I am desperately trying to do so now.
Will my partner prove the saying true that “Once a cheater, always a cheater” I don’t know? I know that I have proved that saying wrong, as even through the greatest temptations I’ve faced lately, I have remained faithful to this relationship and plan on continuing to do so. So for my partner’s sake, I hope he can prove it wrong as well and I pray as well that he’ll receive spiritual guidance as he begins his own healing process on accepting what he has done and the ramifications it’s had on his soul, and my own. In the meantime, I will remain as devoted and loving to my partner as I have since the day I knew I had fallen in love with him, because truly, that’s what I believe God would want of me…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
