If you stay with your partner after they’ve cheated on you, you need a reality check

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If you stay with your partner after they’ve cheated on you, you need a reality check

Stop making excuses for them

“I was drunk”, “it was a mistake”, “it didn’t mean anything”: fuck off. If someone truly does love you like they claim to, they would never, ever in their right minds consider cheating on you, never mind multiple times. It’s never “just a mistake” and it doesn’t “just happen”. You can ‘accidentally’ spill a drink on someone, you can ‘accidentally’ eat someone’s sandwich. However, you do not accidentally cheat. It is an active decision that they choose to make, so please for your own sake, stop being mugs.

Think about this rationally: if the cheater in question claims to love you, why were they so willing to throw your emotions and feelings aside? Be it a one night thing or a full blown affair, someone who truly wants you and only you wouldn’t disregard your feelings towards them like that. Love aside, if they even respected you at all, they’d have the courtesy to end things with you first if they were gonna be led astray by someone else.

If you find yourself making up excuses on their behalf, then you really need to stop, and think about how this is making you look. Answer? Like a mug. Giving somebody who’s disrespected you so badly, a chance (be it the first, second or 20th one) is honestly just letting them get away with treating  you in a way you don’t deserve to be treated. They have essentially walked all over you, and they will continue to, given the chance.

This isn’t to say that every person who’s previously been unfaithful is the same. I know plenty of people with an iffy past, a tendency to cheat and with phobias of commitment, but when they’ve met the right people they’ve become some of the most loyal people out there. But if the relationship you’re in now is based on lies and infidelity, the value of it is lessened, and there will always be that doubt there. If they can do that to you once, then they sure as hell are capable of doing it again. If they use the “I didn’t realise what I had until I nearly lost you” excuse, please don’t take it as romantic. What on earth is romantic about your supposedly committed other half sampling someone’s testers elsewhere only to realise that wow, they liked you, the one who they “love”, better. They wouldn’t feel the urge to go somewhere else if they truly did only want you.

A lot seem to stay with their cheating significant others out of routine or convenience. I know this all too well. It may seem like the easy way, as you’ve still got feelings for this person, you’re comfortable with them, you “get” each other and you have plans together that won’t be fulfilled if you end it. This is when you need to click, to realise you’re in love with the idea of this person and the comfortability of the relationship more than the actual person. With strength and self respect, you’ll realise that you’re worth way more than being treated like an option. This person who’s meant to care about your feelings has tossed any regard for them out the window when they invested their emotional and/or sexual attention into another person, knowing full well it would kill you when you found out.

You are the main course, you are the big fat juicy fillet steak with peppercorn sauce. You, my friend are not a side dish. You ain’t no garlic bread, so please, for your own sake, get together enough strength to leave your cheating partner where they belong – in the past. The perfect person for you is out there, and they would never, ever cheat on you.

@maredemlynparry