I was 23 when I read The Scarlet Letter. When I read it, it was just a tale of ill-fated love for me, I could never view it through the lenses of infidelity which was the main driving plot line of the American classic. As young and as unknown to the ways of love as I was at that time, I still didn’t have a very black and white view of relationships. For me, there was always more to them than what appeared on the surface, and cheating was no exception.
While girls around me were busy keeping tabs on their boyfriends, I was more driven by the logic of “Live and let live”. Perhaps that’s where I was wrong. I am here to tell my side of the story as a person who decided to stay with her cheating boyfriend.
He Was Too Good To Be True
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Even as I write this, I wonder how did I not see it. Perhaps because he was perfection personified. Be it waiting for me with my favorite food in hand or making sure I had all the grub to make my periods a breeze, he did it all. He would always be there to pick me up after classes. He would listen to me talk and I mean he really listened.
When my friends would sigh over the fact that I landed the perfect boyfriend, I would rebuff them by saying that was our equation and all relationships had their own quirks, mine wasn’t any different. Secretly I would be over the moon because the fact was I did land the perfect boyfriend.
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He was my confidante, my lover, and my guide. Being with him was as easy as breathing. In a relationship like ours, there was no room for distrust. I felt like I could read him like an open book, and I was confident enough that I never felt the need to check up on him or even question him when he would say that he wanted to hang out with his friends. And I have to say, of the two of us he had a more out-going and attractive personality, still, I never felt insecure and suspicious.
I took pride in the fact that of instead of all the beautiful girls that surrounded him, he chose me. We gave each other space. There was love and there was respect in our relationship. As far as I knew it couldn’t get any better. Little did I know then that fate had something else in store for me.
He Broke My Heart For A Fleeting Moment Of Passion
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One day, I was hanging out with my friends when he came to pick me up. Not wanting to abandon my friends for my boyfriend I asked him to stay for a while. He seemed a bit uncertain but when pressed on by my best friend he agreed quite readily. It was a bit weird because I thought I saw them exchange a weird look. It was an intimate glance as if they both harbored a secret which was just theirs. I didn’t read too much into it at that time.
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A couple of days later, I saw a picture doing the rounds on one of my chat groups. It was someone’s birthday party, and in the background of that picture I could see it as plain as day, my best friend, and he engaged in PDA, oblivious to the fact that they were getting photographed. It felt like someone had knocked the wind out of my lungs. What followed was arguments with both of them. He admitted to me that it was a moment of weakness, and it meant nothing to him. Still, it hurt a lot. The fact that he didn’t even think of me when he did that and that too with my best friend broke my heart into a million pieces.
It felt like I would never get over it.
But I Still Loved Him
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But they say time heals all wounds and it did exactly that in my case. With every passing day, the pain became dull and I learned to live with it. It still hurt to look at his face but I couldn’t let him go. If you are thinking I was weak, I want to tell you that it was right then that I felt like I had an inexhaustible reserve of patience. I wasn’t willing to give up on something real but I also didn’t want to be with someone whose heart wasn’t in it. So I did what any sensible person would do. I told him that even though I wasn’t over it, I was ready to forgive him but I needed to know if he was all in or all out. He was grateful for a second chance and did everything in his power to let me know that.
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I forgave him, and how could I not? He made sure that I knew how sorry he was. His persistence to not give up on us made me realize that maybe he wasn’t as perfect as I thought him to be but his love for me was. Otherwise, why would he stick around after that whole fiasco? God knows he had options. I realized as big as it was, it was after all an error in judgment. A drunken kiss, that’s all.
No relationship is perfect. That is a fantasy created by the conglomerates to sell their movies and sitcoms. Relationships are a lot of work. I used this incident as an opportunity to strengthen my relationship with him. And while it took time, I am glad I did that, had I left him then I wouldn’t have understood the real meaning of a relationship which is to support each other even when it seems like they don’t deserve it.
Have you had any similar experiences in a relationship? Let us know in the comments.
The post Why I Stayed When My Boyfriend Cheated On Me appeared first on STYLECRAZE.