CHEATING –

CHEATING –

What is cheating when it comes to dating? Where is the point in a relationship that it is monogamous? Do you have to agree that you are only dating each other?

I don’t know about you but I was brought up to believe that you do not cheat in a romantic relationship. I don’t know where I heard or learned it, but that was a huge “no-no.” Maybe I felt (and still feel) very strongly about this because my mother would take me with her when she cheated on my dad (even though I was just a baby/toddler). Kids can sense things even though they don’t yet understand.

As a teen I was dating someone who told me that he loved me. As a young, naïve, inexperienced girl I assumed that we were serious and monogamous even though dating isn’t really what it was. We never went on a date. Not to dinner or the movies. Not anywhere. We just “hung out” often. He wasn’t seeing anyone else and neither was I.

My mother wasn’t happy with several things where we lived, one of them being that my “boyfriend” was 5 years older than me, so we moved 70 miles away. He wound up moving back to his family home so now we were 130 miles apart. We stayed in contact via telephone (do you remember long-distance phone charges?) and letters/cards (this was WAY before cell phones) and he visited . . . for a while. His pattern was to phone, write, and/or show up (uninvited and unannounced) expecting me to drop whatever I was doing, then he would ghost me (though we didn’t have that name for it yet). I also found out that he was dating other girls. Even as a teen, I knew that the way I was treated was wrong and when another boy asked me out, I went. We went on real dates. We hung out. Our relationship progressed. I loved him. It was different with him. We had fun, laughed, and even wound up working together. This was a real dating relationship.

Unfortunately, the first guy kept up his pattern (for almost 5 years). In some ways that made me feel special but it also made me angry and confused. He expected me to be sitting home waiting for him after having been ghosted for (sometimes many) months at a time even though he was dating others. My lack of understanding dating gave me the guilt of thinking that I was a cheater which took a toll on me. This is the only time that I allowed myself to be in that situation; lesson learned! Yes, I have been cheated on in almost every romantic relationship I have had. I have also been the one that someone cheated with. That was very difficult for me too. It was a very short period of time and I never did that again either.

Fast forward to recently which is more than 40 years later. I have lived a life where I have loved then lost loves and learned from each of those experiences. Never have I cheated. Not even when I knew that they were cheating on me.

Through therapy, I realized something that changed my way of thinking about my past. Neither of those boys, that I recall, ever asked me to “go steady” and I believe that I never asked them. Therefore, I wasn’t cheating; I was dating different people at the same time, just like others do. I have not yet figured out why I felt that I was cheating. In time, I will get there.

Going through these things and being open to reflection makes you a better person. No one can ask more from you than that.