your hands are sweating and your heart plunges to your stomach, yet your stomach is in your throat because all you can think to do next is throw up. you’re the recipient of the news from someone you trust. someone who saw something that shouldn’t have been seen. someone who has dreaded this phone call or the delivery of what they practiced over and over to say to your face. someone who knew when they told you – it would break your heart.
he’s cheating. the realization buzzes through your veins and all you can think about is why? you’re a good girlfriend. you’re faithful. you put up with his negative attitudes from time to time and love him through it. you cook him dinner. you support his stupid idea of a career. you make him laugh. you do his laundry, for god’s sake! why? the tears form in your eye sockets and trying to hold them back would be like holding back a runaway train.
images of him and her flood into your mind and you start to wonder just how long it’s been. how long has he been coming home to you after coming from her place? how long have the flirty text messages existed between them followed by an i love you text to you? do you know her? does she know about you? all you know and all you can fathom right now is that you want to kill him. you want to rip the dagger this news has sliced in your heart and stab him in the back with it. you have no words to say to him, yet all the words in the world right now. you want to call him every cuss word under the sun in hopes that hurting him with your words will somehow overpower the hurt in your heart. {by the way, it won’t.}
it’s a normal reaction to panic. it’s a normal reaction to cry. it’s a normal reaction to dial his number imprinted in your memory and yell and scream and sob with a million how could you’s and do you know how hurt i am’s. maybe he will feel bad and maybe he will say he’s sorry. he might ask for your forgiveness and try to explain and you might weaken down and accept the apology. yet months down the road, he might just do it again. and that’s a vicious cycle you don’t want to start.
the harsh reality is that he doesn’t truly love you. no one who loves someone they’re with will ever give up what they want most for what they wanted for a moment.
--
so what do you do? there are a million roads you can travel with a million more outcomes and at the end of the day, you can read this but not hear a word i’m saying. you can read this and decide your plan you’ve devised is better – and it might be. but i have a feeling you’ve been cheated on before and that’s why you clicked on this post as soon as you saw the title. so let’s start by dissecting. you’ll be happy to know there are only two steps here.
step 1: you could be breaking down inside and unraveling at the seams. you could have just cried mascara tears into your pillow 30 minutes prior, but dammit when he walks in your door to collect his stuff – his stupid t-shirts, his dumb cd’s, a couple random movies & a toothbrush – you don’t let him see any of that. it will be hard to be strong in front of someone you want to lay out on the floor and stomp on their face with your shoe. it will literally take everything you have, but do not cry in front of him. have a solemn face and normal tone. don’t raise your voice or tell him the cool thing that happened to you yesterday or chit chat about your day. he doesn’t care about your day, remember? he cheated on you. and when he leaves and the door shuts and his tailights have faded into nothing– that's when you let it out. you need to let it out because it’s healthy, but not one second while he’s there because you’re a strong woman and the woman a year down the road from that moment will thank you for that. trust me.
step 2: move on.
i know you didn’t want to read that. i know a part of you wanted me to tell you it’s okay he did this because you still love him. you want to forget the distrust and hurt and believe that it was a mistake and he will never again. and maybe he won’t ever again, but cheating is a choice and one choice too many.
he will expect you to try and find a way to get back at him. it’s human nature to expect consequences to result from an action. and when you don’t do that – when you see him out, you smile, nod, and move on with your night; when you see her, you don’t go rip her hair out – it’s noticeable. you’re exerting your time and energy into creating something that gives a damn about you and not into people who are waiting to exaggerate your next move. i heard a song once and you might know it. it went something like this.
everyone’s here; everyone’s here. everybody’s watching you now. everybody waits for you now. what happens next?... the tension is here between who are you and who you could be; between how it is and how it should be. i dare you to move like today never happened before. - switchfoot
people will remember you didn’t seek revenge and they will respect you for it – the old saying of an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind is so true here. he hurts you; you hurt him back, but what are you really accomplishing? if you really want to get back at someone, you don’t get back at them at all. don’t say a word and do something kick-ass with your life instead. create a movement in something that you’re passionate about because in this life, there is one thing that will always be greater than revenge:
and that’s absolute success.
xo,
-A
follow me on twitter: @agcrute
