20 minutes read time.
Hello,
first of all I will share the poll I did on Instagram:
However, only 10% voted and 90% didn’t. I myself few years ago would not have considered cheating as abuse either. So, I understand that some people were not sure about it and didn’t vote.
I added updated poll in here too. You can vote (you might want to read the post first and then vote):
I wasn’t sure which category cheating would be applied to. However, in my opinion it should be considered as a form of abuse.
Why?
Because of what it does to someone who is cheated on. Because cheating is a conscious decision to go against a person you claim to love. It is a conscious decision to hide it unless your partner finds out.
Also, they create double standards. Usually, people who cheat would condemn you, if you did it. But they can. Therefore, that’s why I think they on purpose humiliate you. If you want to get with many people – choose open relationship. Where both parties are okay to go and do whatever. But interestingly enough, cheaters on purpose choose monogamous relationships. So, you can’t argue with me, that this isn’t about control.
My psychotherapist added a good point I didn’t think of. Consent (I’ll talk about consent in my next post). People who cheat on you, don’t ask your consent. Meaning, cheaters don’t care whether you agree on this or not. You don’t have an option to consent on implications cheating has. Also, if they’re sleeping with somebody else and get you a disease – again – you didn’t consent to that. So, people who cheat take away your ability to consent. I think many people forget that a relationship is a partnership. Other words – business deal. You agree onto something and a cheater breaks the deal.
I remembered about cheating because I was reading that cheaters usually like to deflect and accuse you of cheating while they are the ones doing that.
Now, my abusive ex-partner did cheat on me. And I was thinking. Oh, he didn’t accuse me of cheating. I wonder why.
And then I remembered. He did. 1 year before I found out. He was questioning me. But he was entertaining other women. Actually, he did accuse me of cheating twice before I found out.
I’ll explain how it went. We were on holiday. In Slovakia. Going down the mountains. And we were talking about loads of stuff and somehow cheating came to the topic. I told him that one of my friend’s admitted she was cheating on her boyfriend.
Now I didn’t support her, and I did tell her she needs to tell her partner. I was telling her to break up with him because in my opinion at that time, if you cheat, you don’t love the person.
And that’s where my ex started questioning my integrity. First of all, he got mad, stopped talking to me and ignored me. I was so confused why he suddenly withdrawn from me and at the end of that trip I started crying. Then he explained that how he is supposed to trust me, if I have a friend who is cheating and what does it say about me?
He also was asking why I didn’t tell her partner about it. So, he went full on blaming me as if I was meant to do something. But it wasn’t my relationship. I didn’t even know a guy. Met him twice and barely talked. Now imagine me telling him that she is cheating with no proof. Yeah, it maybe would have put a seed in his head. Unfortunately, in the past, I involved myself in my friend’s relationships and in the end I burned down. My experience taught me not to get involved in between 2 people; relationship wasn’t mine. It was theirs.
So, my ex’s behaviour towards me confused me.
In his mind, if I’m a friend of someone who cheated, it meant I would do the same. He also provided the argument, if my friend can’t be loyal to her partner, how can I trust her and think she is loyal to me.
I never thought of that. I knew her since we were in 5th grade. Years and years of experiences with her. Never questioned the loyalty. But also, I never knew anyone who would cheat on their partner. (I am no longer friends with her, if you’re interested).
Irony is that he was questioning me while he himself wasn’t faithful. And he didn’t even tell me. I accidentally found out myself. Therefore, if I never would have found out, I would have never known.
Now what I consider cheating?
Anything that harms your relationship and that you hide from your partner. People hide cheating because they know their partner won’t forgive. That is a conscious decision. You go against the well-being of your partner. That is literally what abuse is. Conscious decision to go against your partner.
Also, I don’t think cheating is only when someone sleeps with someone or kisses. It can be flirting, hidden messages and stuff. Any emotional cheating does the damage.
Another thing I consider cheating is watching porn behind your partners back. Without telling them. Or getting off looking at some person’s nudes even when they’re no longer in contact with.
Let’s put in bullet points of what is cheating:
- Having sex with another person
- Kissing another person
- Flirting with another person / texting
- Giving them time and attention and opportunity to consider they can have you
- Getting off by watching porn
- Getting off by looking at somebody else’s pictures (don’t matter nude or not)
If you’re single – do what the hell you want (well don’t abuse though). But when you’re in a relationship, you come to an agreement to be faithful, loyal and basically, you make sure that your partner feels good and safe in a relationship. Cheating doesn’t bring safety.
If you can’t be faithful in a relationship – then don’t be in one.
People who cheat not only don’t care about other person, but it is also all about control. Because they know what they’re doing. They’re in control and they control the narrative. While you? You have no clue what is happening.
Let’s talk about consequences for people who get cheated on.
This is why I consider it abuse. Because the aftermath people experience when they find out that their partner was cheating is bad. For me personally, affected my self-worth. I thought I’m not good enough. I didn’t understand what I am doing wrong to make him happy. I couldn’t stop imagining him cheating on me after the fact. I lost the trust. I just felt so worthless… But to somebody else, it could even bring them to the suicide. It is honestly dangerous.
But cheating is about cheaters. It shows who they are, and it says nothing about the rest of us. It shows that cheaters don’t have integrity, they don’t have empathy and they’re not good people.
I will share my experience. I am sharing it, because I realised how important cheating was in this whole relationship timeline. It was a breaking point.
How on planet earth I found out? Slowly. Things just kept popping in front of me. First, I found half naked girl’s pictures on his downloads folder (who he was chatting with before he met me). I wasn’t looking for them. I was just editing my video on his pc and accidentally came across them while moving my pictures and videos. When I asked him about it. He said, he must have forgotten to delete them. 3 years after being with me… In his download folder? Hm..
Then I found a screenshot of him flirting with a woman from internet company. Again, when I asked him about it, he didn’t see anything wrong with getting to know a person from customer service who he might be working with in a future, maybe?? I actually send that chat screenshot to my friend in LT and me, her, and her boyfriend at the time, were all trying to understand whether it would be considered cheating. None of us were really sure but we all agreed it is strange. Her boyfriend said that how he even knows what age the woman is from customer service. Which was fair point. But then when I talked with him, he explained they were waiting and then he just started asking her about the job she was working, and he said he would be interested. So, he easily could have found out how old she was. Not exactly, but plus minus.
Then he went to buy a car with Lithuanian couple. He wasn’t replying to my messages and after work I called him. A woman picked up the phone and was laughing. I don’t remember what she said. My heart literally dropped down. Imagine my reaction. Why on earth some woman would pick up his phone? He then said it was this LT woman; she wanted to tell me that they found the car. And then she helped him by meeting him and teaching him how to drive. Why then he didn’t allow her to talk to me? Why she wasn’t speaking in Lithuanian?
And then I was like. This doesn’t feel right. I need to know. You know – the intuition? I had a feeling.
So, I did go through his stuff. Then I found chats. With different women. Flirting, sending hearts, offering them to meet, when he was already with me. Then his chat with a colleague, where clearly there was something going on between them too. Then I found a reddit post, basically the post was about people who are single in Leicester and it was suggesting commenting below about yourself and maybe that way find someone. 1 year after we were together. And his comment – it was outrageous. He wrote something like, he is going to give a shot, described himself as an awesome person and if anyone interested – message him.
I stopped. There probably were more things but he is good at hiding things, so I’m sure I missed more.
ADVICE – I regret only 1 thing. I never took screenshots of him cheating. I didn’t think about that. You know, proof was all there, it wasn’t going anywhere. Aha. So, if you’re suspecting someone and you find evidence. For your sake – please save it to yourself! Send it to at least 2 other people. Because what my ex did, he deleted those proofs that I found (except reddit comment, which he will probably delete too, if he reads this) and later on told me I imagined all of that (or made it up) and he never cheated on me. Yeah. Abusive people are delusional.
Anyway, I didn’t break up with him though.
The time when I found all of it was very inconvenient. We were moving to Glasgow. One way it was the best time to break up, on the other hand it wasn’t. I had no clue what to do. All of that stuff broke my heart into pieces. The man I trusted – with everything. The man I thought was good. The man I thought was loyal. The shock I had. Honestly, I had such a breakdown that while he was in Glasgow at his aunt place – I was crying and screaming to break up with him. And you know what, he used that to tell his aunt that I’m mentally unstable. The irony again. 😀
However, instead of feeling guilty, his first reaction was – why are you going through my personal stuff? I knew it was wrong and I felt guilty. I should have just asked him to show me his phone and apps. Right? But that is gaslighting. Instead of admitting he was doing something wrong, he went to attack me. Let’s be fair, he also could have deleted all of it somehow. Secondly, he justified himself by stating, it was in a beginning of a relationship and since then he hasn’t done anything. He said he wasn’t sure, if I was very committed (which he knew I was because I publicly posted our picture of us on social media, interesting he though didn’t). As I said, I didn’t tell him about reddit comment I saw, which was 1 year into our relationship, which would have proved he was lying, but at that point – it didn’t matter to me.
I felt like I don’t have any other choice but to try to forgive him. Move away to Glasgow and start freshly.
But I couldn’t. Because I didn’t trust him anymore. I started questioning him, I started observing him. I wasn’t seeing anymore what a ”great” man he is. No, I started realising – I was absolutely blinded.
When I remember this now, it feels like the breaking point in the movie. You know, where character starts finding out the truth? And then it gets really bad, before it gets better.
But his cheating didn’t end there. No. We moved to Glasgow. And one day. I find out that he has been watching porn and getting off from it. Always did. Behind my back. (I won’t be sharing how I found out because he really humiliated me and I don’t want to talk about it). Not only he didn’t feel guilty about that, but he also blamed me for that. In his defence, I didn’t want to have sex with him every day as he did and I never send him any nudes/naked pictures of myself. He said to me – what else I’m supposed to use? Funny, actually he never even asked me for nudes. Not that I would send, because I am against these things. Never done that and not changing my mind. Especially, after he was using some girl’s pics he knew for getting off – disgusting.
Again. I didn’t break up. Because of finances and the fact that we just moved to a massive city where I didn’t know anyone or anything. I was trapped. So, I thought. I will try to forgive and move on. Actually, it so messed up with my head, that I started thinking how can I please him, so he wouldn’t ever watch porn. I felt pressure that I’m not good enough and his blame on me – it worked. I blamed myself. I thought that something is wrong with me that he needs to use porn. That I don’t satisfy him.
Now, research have shown, that men who abuse are very addicted to porn. Apparently, there is some correlation to that. I think it also correlates with sexual abuse. Now, he was abusing me before we moved to Leicester. It’s not that it was not happening. It was. But I was excusing him and believing him. He would do something and then say he didn’t mean it or blame his behaviour on me. Or say he won’t do that again and change. And I was complying. I was believing him.
But since finding out about him being unfaithful, when we moved to Glasgow, everything just got worse.
All the abuse. It went like 2x times worse. It was literally getting to a climax of terrifying. Me finding out he was cheating was like a first wake up call. I started analysing him, I started noticing what he is doing, mostly – I started questioning him. And what abusers hate the most?
When you don’t comply. I stopped complying. He started losing control of me. So, his abuse – was getting worse. He was getting more aggressive. Because he needed to get the control back.
If you ask me, how I feel about it. I am fine. Honestly, cheating is not the worst thing he did to me. Just another cherry on the cake. What I mean is that I don’t hold the grudge. I learned that cheating was never about me. It wasn’t about my worth or that I was doing something wrong. Nope. All I did is love and trust the wrong person. Do I regret not breaking up with him the first time? Yes and no. I didn’t know how it will all go. I’m not a psychic. I genuinely thought he is just an innocent guy who does mistakes. We are human beings – not perfect. My empathy is a strength but a weakness too.
I think better question would be – do I feel ashamed? The answer is – yes, I do. I’m ashamed that I chose him over me. I chose to believe him rather than myself. Instead of protecting myself from him, I did what his mother was doing – protecting him from himself. I was protecting his feelings because that’s what I learned from childhood from my mom.
I was protecting him from his shame, his betrayal and his abuse. Because he is delusional. He is incapable to admit who he is. Mothers usually do this, where they convince their sons, nothing is their fault and don’t allow them to face reality.
That’s why dr Ramani and many others talk about radical acceptance.
I needed to accept he is a bad person. I needed to accept that his behaviour has nothing to do with me. Once I did that (which I did only after breaking up with him, because till very last minute I still believed he is a good man) and then I became free. He isn’t free because he can’t accept who he is. (And that’s another reason why abusers don’t change, because truly changing requires accepting all of your emotions and feelings, and they can’t do that).
As I said. I consider cheating another form of abuse. Because you break down the person. You humiliate the person you claim to love. Truth – always comes out. No matter how much you’re trying to hide. Cheating shows that they never cared about the person they’re with in first place. And as my psychotherapist nicely added – you don’t consent to that. No consent = abuse.
This is also a beautiful introduction to next form of abuse – sexual abuse.
Thanks for reading!