Who is to blame for cheating?

Although not proud of it I have been on both sides of cheating, I have cheated on my partner and I have been the other woman, but who’s job is it to look after their partners interests?

I’ve seen some big debates in the last week or so about whether the ‘other woman’ is to blame or plays a big part in it, or if you should only blame the person in the relationship, I have to say that I have very mixed feelings on this, if I’m with someone it is undoubtedly my job to ensure that I am faithful to my partner but do other women make cheating too easy and the other thing is, do they always know? So, here is my history with this;

On my 17^th birthday we were all out the day before I was due to go on holiday, I walked into a room in a nightclub to find the boyfriend I was going on holiday with snogging a girl I went to college with, did she know he was my boyfriend? Yes, he was out with us! We did go on holiday together, however I binned it while we were out there, he was my first boyfriend, it didn’t get me off to a great start.

When I was young (19) I met this guy on May Day Morning (A massive Oxford tradition) he was a couple of years older than me, however for one I didn’t think to look for a wedding ring (we were young and I didn’t know anyone that was married at that point) however he wasn’t wearing one, we were seeing each other for a few weeks before one of his mates dropped him in it, he had a wife and a daughter that he had failed to mention, I became the other woman without knowing it, it was years later that he admitted to taking his ring off on nights out, as people didn’t talk to him when he wore it.  

There was the Car Salesman at 21, we were seeing each other for about a year, fairly casually when I found out he’d shagged one of my best mates, I was pretty angry at them both, probably more so her as I was more upset about losing her and had expected better of her, there is no question as to whether she knew about me!

When my five year relationship was failing badly I turned to someone else, I’m not proud of that and I don’t think that what I did was ok, if I could go back and change one thing it would be to have ended it earlier.

We hadn’t slept together for at least 9 months by the time I cheated on him (still no excuse) I should have tried to solve the problem, but I, WE didn’t, instead we grew further apart and started to live our lives separately, within a month of me cheating we ended our relationship, it was only at that point that he asked me if we could do anything to make it work, sadly it was about six months too late.

I cheated on him with W@nk Bag, they couldn’t have been more different if you’d have tried, the man I had at home was gorgeous, 6’2, gym bunny, a little shy, would have done anything for me, tactile, desperate to settle down, W@nk Bag on the other hand was 5’10 a bit chubby, a smoker, emotionally retarded, how did it happen? I don’t really know. His sister used to say that we were like magnets, we just gravitated towards each other.

When we met on a Friday night in a club, he was my (then) best (girl) friends brother, even she told me to keep away from him as he was ‘an emotionless cunt’ he had a girlfriend and I had a long term boyfriend, who I had a life and a house with. His girlfriend was flying over from South Africa that very next morning to spent a month with him, we kissed that night, we both knew each others situation, he told me then he would phone the girlfriend and tell her not to get on the plane, I said that was a very bad idea and that he should continue as normal and maybe see how we both felt after, I had a lot to lose and I wouldn’t have wanted him to always look back thinking that she might be ‘the one’ should it go any further, so that’s what we did.

We had a month when we just bumped into each other and said hi on a couple of nights out, I spent a lot of time that month thinking about what I was going to do, I didn’t think I could afford to live on my own, although I wasn’t in love with my boyfriend I did love him and didn’t want to hurt him, I have little to do with my family but his had become my family, I was extremely close to his parents but I knew that it wasn’t going to last, every six months he’d mention marriage and babies and I just wasn’t there.

As soon as the month was over W@nk Bag got in touch to say that it was over, that they had called it a day and he’d put her on the plane, he said he’d spent the month thinking of me, this coincided with the long term, lovely boyfriend asking if I was happy and I told him that I wasn’t and we started the break down of our relationship, telling our friends and family, putting our home on the market, splitting our lives, it was about 8 months that we lived together during that time, separate rooms and separate lives and it was tough, walking away from a good guy isn’t easy but you can’t make your heart feel something it won’t.

When I told W@nk Bag it was over his first words were ‘what about us’ I told him that it was too soon to think about it and I needed some time but it was soon after that we started seeing each other.

Our relationship was tough from early on, it was nearly five years down the line and after we broke up that I realised he was an emotional bully, however it was only three months in that I realised I was in love with him, I remember the very moment I knew and it surprised me, it was the first time I had been in love and so far it is the only time, I’m hopeful that I’ll feel it again at some point, with someone that is right for me.

He broke my heart, after how we met you might think I deserved that and to be fair I kinda do too, he cheated on me, with his now wife and that is I guess where we get a different perspective.

His wife did know about me when she slept with him, they went to school together years before, she had gone out with his best mate just weeks before until he’d dumped her for ‘being a psycho’ which still makes me laugh now.

Could we say that she didn’t know about me? They were Facebook friends, his status clearly said ‘W@nk Bag is in a relationship with Frog Princess’ we had been on holiday just a month before she slept with him and she had commented on our holiday photos’ (however not the ones of us together!) he lived at mine.

Way before I knew anything she was the kind of girl that had made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on mention of her name, when he mentioned her being out it made me feel uncomfortable, maybe just because she was new to the group, I don’t know? It wasn’t because she was beautiful, I can’t say that she’s the sort of girl that I’d look at as competition, she wasn’t pretty and for a man that used to tell me I was fat she was undoubtedly significantly bigger than me, in fact I remained pretty horrified that he cheated on me with ‘that’ I think I would have found a younger, prettier, skinny model much more easy to deal with, I also know a friend of her who said that she had zero personality and was desperate to find a man, however we can’t really look at it like that, I traded down too, every one told me that.

She probably doesn’t know a lot of things, like the fact that the night they slept together we had argued, he had stormed out angry at me, to be honest I probably pushed him straight into her arms, she won’t know that although he’d showered before he got into bed that morning (he always did being a smoker) that as he put his arms around me I told him he smelt different (my sense of smell is amazing) he’d shrugged it off, told me I was being silly and I probably believed him, the fact that he’d got into bed and cuddled me should have given away that something was wrong, I’m guessing it was guilt and maybe a bit of remorse.

I didn’t know any of that at that point, it was only after we’d split that the penny dropped and I pieced it all together.

We ticked by for a couple more weeks, it was Valentines weekend and on the Sunday before Valentines Day he cooked my favourite meal, a meal that takes a fair bit of effort to make, we had a nice evening, I guess I hoped it was a turning point, however the next day nothing showed any signs of changing, it felt wrong, I was sat in my office which was an hour and half away from home (on a good run) at 8 in the evening because I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t want to go home to my own home, the home I bought and was paying the mortgage on, the home he paid £200 per month to live in, who was the idiot here?

That is the very moment, on what is supposed to be the most romantic day of the year that I made the decision that I was going to call it a day, I got in the car and rehearsed the words for the whole hour and a half journey in the car, I walked through the front door, opened the living room door to find him, as usual on the sofa in front of the TV, the words I rehearsed came out of my mouth like a bullet from a gun, they weren’t the actual one’s I’d rehearsed, they were reduced down to ‘You need to leave’ we then had a bit of a discussion where he told me that he did want to be with me, he’d try harder, although he didn’t know what love was I was the nearest he’d ever been to it, I think that maybe hit me more than anything, I loved him, really loved him, with everything I had, he on the other hand thought I was as near as it got and I couldn’t love enough for us both.

In the end we decided that he would stay the night (it was late and it wasn’t fair on his parents to have him turn up like that) and that he’d go home the following day, at that point he went out for a fag, I heard him on the phone, as he came back in, I asked who he’d been talking to and he said his Mum, I said that if he’d already disturbed her that he may as well go straight over, so he did.

He came back the following day to collect some stuff, we had a short conversation where we said that we would have a two week break and then meet to see if it was really what we wanted, I was ok with that, at this point I didn’t know about the girl involved, I did know that I had never felt like I did about anyone else and I guess that I wasn’t sure that I ever would again (and nearly 8 years later I haven’t) I got into a pattern, I went to work every morning and sobbed all the way there, pulled myself together, threw myself into work, sobbed all the way home.

We had arranged to meet up on the Tuesday two weeks later to talk, I was sat at work at 10am on the Monday morning, an hour and a half away from home, surrounded by my team of staff when I saw my phone light up, it was him.

We’d had no contact for two weeks, however I knew from Facebook that he’d been out a lot, I’d seen messages on his wall from her, asking if he was coming to the pub, more comments appearing on photos.

I opened the message, expecting it to be about meeting up the following night to talk, I don’t know what I wanted at that point, I honestly don’t. The message was a coward’s way out, instead of talking they following night he text me, telling me that although I was the nearest he’d got to love and that he thought I was a great person he didn’t think we would work out long term and he couldn’t give me what I wanted (which wasn’t necessarily untrue) I went to the toilet and sobbed for I don’t know how long, well until the MD came to find me.

I hadn’t told anyone in the two week break what was going on not even my best friends, I was in auto pilot mode, work, home, work, home, I didn’t want to tell anyone in case we got back together, I didn’t want my friends to feel even more badly about him, he already wasn’t terribly popular as he was always busy for their dinners, parties, my family stuff, I’d already spent five years explaining he was busy at work, he was playing pool, it was his friends birthday…….

I pretty much had a break down, I couldn’t function, I was having black outs, he came to collect most of his stuff, I sobbed in the living room the whole way through, couldn’t look at him and didn’t move.

Over the next couple of weeks, Facebook threw up more and more things, them having conversations on his wall, her constant comments on everything and then a friend of mine popped in, she said that her friends drank in one of the same pubs as him and before we’d split up that she was ‘all over him’ but that she didn’t want to be the one that told me, I wish she had, the penny dropped on that night when he’d come home at 4am I sent him a message telling him I knew about them, he tried telling me it was only going on a couple of weeks, she meant nothing to him and it was just a shag, he’s now married to her…….. however finding that out was a great turning point for me, the devastation turned to anger and that started my recovery.

So, I guess the question is, should she have worried about me or should she have thought it was his problem to worry about it? It was obviously him that should have been thinking of HIS girlfriend, not the other girl but she definitely knew about me.

Then we have Cunt Face, met on Tinder, three months of texting/app messaging, two amazing dates and then I find out the lodger is actually his girlfriend, maybe I’m naïve, but I didn’t think I needed to ask someone on a dating app if he had a girlfriend (I do now) he was the first person in those 7 years since W@nk bag that I could have started to see a future with, as soon as I knew about her it was over, lies and deceit don’t make a great relationship.

However 18 months on, we’re still friends, we still see each other on occasion (twice so far this year) I snogged him just two weeks ago, however I’m pretty sure he has a (different) girlfriend but he has denied it over and over and over again, so should I worry about a person that he denies the existence of? Or is that for him to worry about? I’m in a different place with him now, we have ridiculous chemistry but I wouldn’t have a relationship with him, because of the past but if he denies a girlfriend should I worry about the girlfriend he denies?

The message I got last weekend from Shoe Guy, I know he has a girlfriend and when he mentioned meeting up I told him that wasn’t an option, I do know about his girlfriend, would he cheat on her? I don’t know but I wouldn’t do anything while I know she is around.

For me, although I cheated by the time I did I had nothing to lose, our relationship was over apart from us saying the words, I hate what I did to a good person and I wouldn’t do it again but for a lot of people I don’t think they cheat because it’s over, they cheat because they can.

So, when cheating is the case, where does the blame lie? Should we just go and get what we want regardless of who is hurt in the crossfire? If someone repeatedly tells me he’s not got a girlfriend should I steer clear in case he is lying and he has?

From my experience I would never get involved with someone that was with someone else, I’m still a firm believer of if they’ll cheat with you they cheat on you but I can’t worry about a girlfriend that I don’t know exists, or one that is constantly denied?

I think really that you can only blame the person in the relationship for cheating, not the person that they cheat with, however we shouldn't make it easy for them and should steer clear if we know that there is a partner involved.