Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater...

[D4ly1341]

Thank you for all of your advice, kind words, slandering, hateful remarks, and overall input. I know that I may be selfish, pompous, over emotional, or naive. But in recent days I have found God for myself and I feel that, with all of the negative things that are happening, I am being called to something. I know what I am called to, which I feel should be my business alone. So, forgive me if I don't reveal it to anyone here. I never considered myself an atheist; I have always been a man searching for God. I have found him. And with that, I leave one "selfish" prayer that I once read. To this day, this prayer is burned into my heart and with all of the bad things happening it, sickeningly, brings me peace:

 

My Father, if I am not worthy of anything else, I ask you to grant me these things: Like a leper rotting in flesh let all avoid me. Like a cripple without limbs let me not move freely. Remove my cheeks, that tears may not move down them. Crush my lips and tongue, that I may not sin with them. Pull out my nails, that I may grasp at nothing. Let my shoulders and back be bent, that I may carry nothing. Like a man with a tumour in the head, let me lack judgment. Ravage my body sworn to chastity, leave me with no pride, and have me live in shame. Let no one pray for me, but only the grace of the Lord have mercy on me. Amen.

[hendrixpal]

I loved your post. I have a really hard time feeling normal and human sometimes because i forget that there are other people inthe world that i can actually relate to. My situation is similar to yours in many ways from what i can tell. I personally have a problem that i hope you do not share of beating myself up about what i have done because of the harsh and judgemental words of strangers. Don't let these people get you down and remember to take life one decision at a time. No one respects intentions nearly as much as i believe they should. If you, as you said in your original post, are not setting out to harm people, you will either a.) Grow out of bad behavior with time, b.) Find someone who knocks you so hard off of your feet that you cant stand the thought of doing something that might even accidentally hurt them, or c.) You will continue to cheat and be somewhat selfish forever. The truth is that it doesn't matter which you choose as long as you are happy with yourself. No one will ever know what its like to be you so judgements and advice can only matter as much (or as little as you allow them to.) Shame on the people who have demonized you for sharing your experiences. I for one hope that you find happiness with yourself and live a fullfillled life be it as a person in a traditional manogomous relationship, as a "lifetime cheater" or as something all together different.

[Manu25]

Hi there OP,

 

I just wanted to say good on you for honestly writing your thoughts out and trying to understand yourself better. I know you're not a hero, because, just like me, you didn't open up in real life about your problems but on an internet forum. I would like to think that opening up to someone in real life is a hell of a lot more courageous. This is more playing it safe. But it's a step. A good and definite step. Although you don't admit it with so many words, deep down you don't feel good about yourself, you seek out people's sympathy and you want to at least make the beginnings of a change. I can only applaud you for that.

 

I know that what you did causes great hurt. I have in my life seen the great hurt that cheating can cause, in my own family. It can hurt and scar people life-long. Luckily, you don't have a family yet. I don't think there's any use in focusing on the guilt and the negative things here. I think you already feel guilty, and frankly, guilt is no starting point to change, so don't focus on your guilt. I'd suggest to you, if you really want to learn, and grow personally, and genuinely without trying to make you feel guilty, I advise you to thoroughly try to empathize with someone who was cheated on by a dearly loved one. You've mentioned that you aren't very empathic, well, I think this might be a clue for you to understand some more about your actions, and this sort of experience will make you evaluate the cheating in a whole new way. Just sit back and observe or talk to someone going through being cheated on by someone they dearly love(d), and, most importantly, try to FEEL what they feel, even though that is hard, really really try that. Go look up stories of people cheated on on the internet. Talk to someone you know who was cheated on, preferably someone you care about. Is there any good friend of you in military who was cheated on and felt really bad about it? Or a family member or other friend? Also try to imagine the person/girl you have loved most in your life and try to imagine how it would feel like if you were cheated upon by her while truely in love. It might give you some valuable insights.

 

Good luck with everything. You have a long and tough road ahead, but all of us can change. That is exactly why I think it's good that some posters weren't all focusing on all the negatives. You can change, but you will have to put in a hell of a lot of work, and first of all, you have to decide you WANT to change. Take care.

Edited July 12, 2011 by Manu25

[KathyM]

I suppose that this is the appropriate thread for this sort of topic. It's about cheating. No, it's not a complaint that I've been dating a gal for such-n-such time and she's hanging out with "Somebody So-and-so" more often than she's hanging out with me. Yes, I'm currently dealing with that, but it's not the point. Also, pumpkins are delicious, so pairing them with such a nasty word as "cheater" is blasphemous and upsetting no matter how cute it sounds in a childish rhyme. I just hope I caught your attention with a melodramatic, cryptic title and you can read into this a bit and give me some feedback that you might also share with other people. So, please: read on, enjoy, slander me, provide opinions, and hopefully we can all take something out of this topic.

 

I'm a cheater. I have been for something around 2 years now, and each time I've cheated I felt a rush. I've felt a deep sense of satisfaction that I've done something wrong and gotten away with it. However, modern satisfaction seems to be laced with an ounce of guilt. I remember the first girl I slept with outside of my relationship. Her name was Katelyn. Katelyn and I knew each other since high school, and we've always had a deeply romantic and sexual interest in one another that we never seemed to be able to fulfill... until one night.

 

I was living with a gal that I had been seeing for a 2 years at that point. I loved her dearly and I had never really had the inclination to do the dirty with anyone else, because I felt I was satisfied with the relationship and where I was. One night, Katelyn called me. I walked onto my porch and took the call and figured it would just be a happy conversation between two old friends. Little did I know that she would ask me to come over and see her. At that point, I felt something inside me grow like a weed. A desire that I couldn't ignore. I told her, "No, I'm seeing someone." She persisted and said, "Don't worry, I can keep secrets." I came to find out that she was keeping a secret herself because she was dating another man. So, I thought that two wrongs don't make a right, might as well enjoy life while you're alive. I found a good night to lie to my live-in girlfriend and told her that I will be out helping my oldest brother with moving (luckily for me, he really was moving out of his home). I don't need to explain what happened from there, because you get the gist.

 

Since that night, my life turned into a flourishing garden of infidelity and deceit that I couldn't even keep track of as time went on, and it slowly overgrew itself. I became a master of lying because I learned that the best lies I have ever told were actually the truth. I won't get into any philosophical debate on what "truth" really is, so please bare with me and focus on the main story. The point is that I believed myself when I lied, and if you believe yourself, then someone else will believe you. (Reading this frightens me because of how awful it really is.) I kept on cheating with different girls and at different intervals of time. (relating to the old saying from the book "Dune": If you walk without rhythm, you won't attract the worm). After a few nights with Katelyn, I was done and moved on.

 

I felt guilty after my first few times cheating, and then the guilt slowly went away. I shouldn't say that it disappeared completely because it was still there, it was just well hidden from perception. But one day I was caught because the live-in girlfriend actually had the sense to look at my phone and see the most recent girl I had been having an affair with. After that, the live-in girl was foolish enough to forgive me and take me back after I hid myself from the world and wallowed in self-serving fear and sadness. Things went well and I had "sworn never to be unfaithful again." Or so she and I both thought.

 

In the recent year, the live-in girlfriend is now my ex girlfriend and I am casually seeing another gal that I feel so much more strongly for. I have had my moments of being a cheater while dating the new gal, but I can promise on what little honor I have left that I genuinely try to look the other way whenever I am tempted to fulfill my dark needs.

 

Having told you the basic story, you can piece together in your minds what horrible things I've done and how easily I've gotten away with them. The reason I post this story to all of you is because I am now sincerely questioning why I've been unfaithful in my last two relationships. I don't know. I read posts on eHow.com, Askmen.com, and any other informational website out there and why cheaters cheat. All of it is so inapplicable to who people fundamentally are. It's all full of slanderous ranting and biased opinions from people who have never cheated on anyone in their life. How could they understand why I cheat? Why anyone cheats? I don't even understand why I cheat, and yet I do it anyway.

 

When I ask myself "Why am I a cheater?" I can provide you with a million tiny, insignificant reasons: 1) I live in the moment and life is too short to be satisfied by one thing; 2) The relationship is falling apart so I want to prepare for the worst; 3) I am a bad person and I love it; 4) I've been cheated on before, so why not make the female race pay?; 5) I feel that giving myself to those whom I trust is important and satisfying; 6) I'm a cauliflower from Jupiter and my evolutionary programming requires me to mate with human females. I don't ****ing know for the life of me. The question I also ask myself is do I regret it? I feel that regret is too simple of a term. I feel that "living without regret" is too foolish. I also feel that regretting anything is equally foolish. So that's also a hard question to answer.

 

However, I know what I am certain of. I know who I am as a person; I know what I do wrong and what I do right and I always focus on doing right; I have never in my life done something to smite someone I love on purpose; lastly, I am an honest man - but is it only because I have never been caught?

 

I don't know what cheating is about, even as a cheater, but in the end it's all the same. In the end it's all about immature needs, fears, insecurities, and childish rhymes. In the end, it's all about pumpkins.

You are rediculous. Why bother to have a relationship at all? If you like screwing around with a bunch of females, just don't try to maintain a relationship at all. Not fair to the woman. Be a player, and you'll end up a lonely man. Seek counseling. You obviously have attachment issues.

[Tayla]

Ohh its delighting and refreshing to hear a few posters with such wisdom as "Gee so long as you are happy, don't worry what others think".

 

I wonder how often a parent says this to a pedophile...gee so long as you are happy doing that...don't worry what others think...

 

Or the Guy who is fixated on nailing as many chicks as he can," Gee so long as he is happy"

 

I rest my case...some folks actually look at the consequences before uttering such dribble.