He Cheated on me. Plain and simple. And what did I do? I stayed with him. Let me re-iterate that again. I maintained our relationship even when I found out that he was cheating on me. The easy answer would have been to dump his sorry ass and to get on with my life. But I did the complete opposite.  Instead I stuck around for a couple of years, only to be cheated on again, and again, and again. By staying, I unconsciously signalled to him that it was okay to cheat because I would always be there at the end of the day.

From an outsider’s standpoint, it’s easy to tell a person that’s being cheated on to leave the relationship. You would have no emotional ties, no baggage to deal with afterwards, and you don’t know the whole story behind everything. And I get that. I went crying to my same friends, multiple times, each time telling them the same sob story “he cheated, but I still love him“. Every time I got the same response “you need to break up with him“. After awhile it becomes tiring for them to listen to my monthly cry-fests. Some of them stopped really caring, and others just continued to repeat the same thing over and over again.

But the real question is, why didn’t I just listen to them and leave him after the first time that he cheated?

I wasn’t the first one.

He cheated on his ex-girlfriend with me before we started dating. That was already a sign right there. The saying “once a cheater, always a cheater” is indeed extremely true. If he was willing to cheat on someone with me, then what’s to stop him from doing the same thing?

It’s because I thought that I was different. I believed that I was truly the one he wanted to be with, and that sometimes life puts you through obstacles and tests you before you can get to the final destination. I believed that I was his final destination. Wrong. I was just a stop along his journey.

Mind you, I was only 15, so I had a Disney Love story ingrained into my head at the time. Now I’ve become more skeptical and it’s sad to say, but my past experiences have slightly clouded my views of my present and future.

It was puppy love.

We were teenagers and in highschool. We thought that we were invincible and that nothing bad could happen in the world. For me, I believed that I’d never be caught in one of those horrible relationships. I didn’t think that being cheated was for me. I really believed that. He thought that he could do whatever made him happy and get away with it. He had no care in the world for anyone else but himself.

So we loved each other, we truly did. It may not have been mature love, but the love was there. It was puppy love. You know that honeymoon feeling that you get when you first meet someone and you guys just click? I wanted that feeling to last forever, I craved it and wanted more. I thought that since I felt so strongly about him, I wouldn’t ever feel the same way about anyone else. So I didn’t want to lose that feeling, I didn’t want to lose him.

He was my first love.

When you feel real love for the first time, the passion overwhelms you. It absorbs everything, and you’re inclined to make all of your decisions purely based on emotions and not logic. Everytime he cheated, he told me that he was sorry, and that he’d never do it again because he loved me. And I believed that. I let my emotions cloud my judgement and trusted whatever he said. I never thought to look back at his patterns and realize that personality doesn’t change, it’s constant. If he’s willing to cheat once, and I’m willing to forgive him, he’s most likely going to do it again.

Besides letting my emotions of experiencing love for the first time to run my decisions, I was also afraid of losing him. I was never the popular girl at school that had the entire football team fighting over me. I had lots of friends, but never any real guys that liked me. That’s probably because I’m very much so a guy’s girl. I love to talk hard, I’m not easily offended and I’m not overly girly. That on it’s own probably friend-zoned me to many people.

And when the first guy told me that he loved me, I didn’t want to lose that. I felt that by letting him go, I’d never be able to find another person again. Boy was I wrong. When they say that there’s plenty of fish in the sea, it’s really true. Everyone is trying to find their true love. If things aren’t working out, leave the person and try your luck at finding someone else.

Did I leave him?

Yes, yes I did. After awhile, I started to become desensitized by what was happening and realized that that isn’t how a relationship should function. I felt numb, and I wanted to be happy again. I understood that relationships aren’t supposed to make you feel like that. I finally came to the realization that it wasn’t okay that he was cheating on me, and that I kept letting him get away with it. He wasn’t prioritizing us, but prioritizing himself.

I’ve learnt that once trust has been broken, it can take forever to rebuild. But although I see the entire situation as a horrible one (between the crying sessions, depression and heart break, there was a not of negativity during our relationship), I look back and make sure to see the silver lining of it all.

There’s always a lesson to be learnt out of anything negative that happens. I’ve learnt to tell myself that what’s done is done, and you can’t change the past. The only way to move forward is to take the positive and to continue on with your life with that little tidbit.

I’ve learned that I deserve someone who respects me. I’ve learned how to read people’s actions. I’ve learned what type of personality to be wary of. I’ve learnt that having someone cheating on you sucks, and that I wouldn’t want to impose that feeling onto anyone else. And best of all, I’ve learned that the saying “time heals everything” truly does happen. With time, your heart heals and the pain disappears. So although everything may feel like shit initially, over time you learn to move on, and the scars will heal over.