As shocking as it may sound, I was never raised with the conventional belief that cheating on one’s spouse or significant other was wrong. In fact I though quite the opposite, because the “cheating” in terms seemed to outnumber the accounts of happy unions in nearly every relationship situation I was aware of. This remains true throughout my life. It keeps me wondering if mankind was really intended to be faithful beings.
When the food on your table is supplied by money from middle aged men who need a literal break from commitment and moral values you learn quickly, even as a child, that life isn’t straight out of the Sunday school story books, thou not only shall cheat, thou shall cheat often. It wasn’t really until the early teen years that I began believing that cheating is more or less wrong, or so I thought.
Later in life I displayed an extreme sub-conscious ambition to remain faithful in relationships, viewing my childhood as more or less distorted and “un-realistic” interpretation of the way things are supposed to be. Armed (or at least I thought) with a strong moral compass and what could only be driving force, I set out to find the ideal candidate for the perfect and faithful other-half, psychologically attempting to re-live and or fix my diluted childhood. Herein lies my first mistake, at this point I have drawn an unfaithful situation into my life, simply because I’m trying to force it so hard the other way.
And of course it happened. I found myself in a situation were I had been cheated on, and to my amazement the initial pain was tougher than I ever imagined it could be. It was the pain that had me wondering why. Why does this hurt? Could it be because it’s the exact thing that I didn’t want to happen? Honestly at this point I felt as though I would have been cheated on whether or not I was specifically intending for it not to happen. I never accused the other party of cheating until after they admitted to the act.
At this point in my life I no longer knew what to believe about the way a relationship should work. It wasn’t until I really hit ‘rock-bottom’ on this issue that I came to terms with the way I actually feel about monogamy in a relationship. My interpretations and beliefs did a 360` once again with my previously negative view on cheating. Instead of trying to control this facet of the relationship from the other end, I realized that I needed to think about the reasons I am now left in this situation feeling pain, while the other person seems to be “over it”.
The reasons people do things could fill countless books, I understand now (as everyone should) that you cannot hope to control or understand the reasons other people do or feel things. The control comes from within, and the modification of one’s own behavior based on present reality. More difficult still is the requirement that you must posses the ability to not only accurately monitor your feelings and actions, but that they must be truly understood by you in order to be effectively corrected.
In my experience, when you get down to exactly why you would feel hurt when cheated on, whether it’s yourself or someone else the response is fear. The fear being that you will loose the person you love to someone else. You don’t want your other half to find another better half, because where does that leave you? But the fact remains that if the love is stronger from outside, for whatever reason, there is nothing that you can or should do to prevent your other half from exiting that situation because it simply was not meant to be for the two of you. The remedy for the pain that comes from being cheated on, or even the guilt of cheating on someone lies in the firm belief that things happen for a reason, and we have no control over that reason. While we remain responsible for our own actions, one cannot feel guilt for what should have been and isn’t, nor should they feel guilt or pain from the actions of someone else, these things are impossible to control. Along the same lines pain is a temporary transition emotion, that can seriously affect the next relationship you enter. Basically, what I am saying is that based on what happens in a relationship, the only negative effect of cheating comes from the left over pain and guilt we have after the act, that we then bring into the next relationship we enter (aka Baggage). The key to a happy life through a happy relationship lies in the abolishment of this guilt and pain through the realization that the outcome of the situation was beyond your control, or beyond that of which you even have the ability to understand.
When the food on your table is supplied by money from middle aged men who need a literal break from commitment and moral values you learn quickly, even as a child, that life isn’t straight out of the Sunday school story books, thou not only shall cheat, thou shall cheat often. It wasn’t really until the early teen years that I began believing that cheating is more or less wrong, or so I thought.
Later in life I displayed an extreme sub-conscious ambition to remain faithful in relationships, viewing my childhood as more or less distorted and “un-realistic” interpretation of the way things are supposed to be. Armed (or at least I thought) with a strong moral compass and what could only be driving force, I set out to find the ideal candidate for the perfect and faithful other-half, psychologically attempting to re-live and or fix my diluted childhood. Herein lies my first mistake, at this point I have drawn an unfaithful situation into my life, simply because I’m trying to force it so hard the other way.
And of course it happened. I found myself in a situation were I had been cheated on, and to my amazement the initial pain was tougher than I ever imagined it could be. It was the pain that had me wondering why. Why does this hurt? Could it be because it’s the exact thing that I didn’t want to happen? Honestly at this point I felt as though I would have been cheated on whether or not I was specifically intending for it not to happen. I never accused the other party of cheating until after they admitted to the act.
At this point in my life I no longer knew what to believe about the way a relationship should work. It wasn’t until I really hit ‘rock-bottom’ on this issue that I came to terms with the way I actually feel about monogamy in a relationship. My interpretations and beliefs did a 360` once again with my previously negative view on cheating. Instead of trying to control this facet of the relationship from the other end, I realized that I needed to think about the reasons I am now left in this situation feeling pain, while the other person seems to be “over it”.
The reasons people do things could fill countless books, I understand now (as everyone should) that you cannot hope to control or understand the reasons other people do or feel things. The control comes from within, and the modification of one’s own behavior based on present reality. More difficult still is the requirement that you must posses the ability to not only accurately monitor your feelings and actions, but that they must be truly understood by you in order to be effectively corrected.
In my experience, when you get down to exactly why you would feel hurt when cheated on, whether it’s yourself or someone else the response is fear. The fear being that you will loose the person you love to someone else. You don’t want your other half to find another better half, because where does that leave you? But the fact remains that if the love is stronger from outside, for whatever reason, there is nothing that you can or should do to prevent your other half from exiting that situation because it simply was not meant to be for the two of you. The remedy for the pain that comes from being cheated on, or even the guilt of cheating on someone lies in the firm belief that things happen for a reason, and we have no control over that reason. While we remain responsible for our own actions, one cannot feel guilt for what should have been and isn’t, nor should they feel guilt or pain from the actions of someone else, these things are impossible to control. Along the same lines pain is a temporary transition emotion, that can seriously affect the next relationship you enter. Basically, what I am saying is that based on what happens in a relationship, the only negative effect of cheating comes from the left over pain and guilt we have after the act, that we then bring into the next relationship we enter (aka Baggage). The key to a happy life through a happy relationship lies in the abolishment of this guilt and pain through the realization that the outcome of the situation was beyond your control, or beyond that of which you even have the ability to understand.