Confessions of a Cheater
I noticed him as soon as he wandered into the shop. He wore distressed, ash-blue jeans and a bomber jacket to shield him from the icy bite in the morning air. He seemed older than me, with a septum piercing and what I thought was a full sleeve tattoo. A saggy, black beanie clung to his head.
I quickly averted my eyes before he could catch me staring and carried the two coffees over to table seven. A yapping poodle-cross-something barked up at me as I approached. With all of the precision of a bomb disposal technician, I managed to safely offload the piping hot drinks onto the table. But I felt his gaze on me — even as I turned to walk back to the coffee station to collect another order.
Beanie Man was now leaning against the glass window, watching me, as he lit up a cigarette. It made me feel flustered and self-conscious to be watched. Although not particularly tall, he was kinda sexy, I had to admit, with bright blue eyes and a rough handsomeness to him. He had Brad Pitt-esque features, but not quite as handsome. Not that it mattered, I chided myself. I already had a boyfriend. Or did I?
The Non-Breakup
Jay. My one and only proper boyfriend since high school would be sitting in a plane seat at this very moment, jetting off to America. The night before I had started the we should break up conversation I’d been thinking about for weeks, but the look on his face — it broke my heart. I couldn’t bear it when he asked, “Don’t you love me anymore?”
I panicked and said, “I thought maybe you’d like a break while you travelled. No?” I’d never seen a man cry before. I evaded his ‘love’ question and floundered around for some reassuring words. There aren’t any when what you want to say is painful. Later, when we made amends, he cuddled into me and fell asleep. I’ll deal with it when he’s home from his trip, I thought.
If I’d known that soon I’d be handing over my number to a random guy, I’d have insisted on the breakup. But hindsight is a bloody wonderful thing, isn’t it?
Back to Beanie Man. I wasn’t imagining it — he was lingering at the shop that morning and, later he confessed it was because he wanted to ask me for my number.
Initially, I refused, and he left carrying his takeaway coffee. The next day he returned and the next day. By the third day, I convinced myself that he was very persistent. Perhaps this was fate. When he asked me again, I replied with my usual response: “I can’t. I have a boyfriend”. He smiled cheekily down at me and replied: “I’m not going to go away until you give me your number.”
I bit my lip and walked over to the EFTPOS machine to snatch some paper. I wrote down my number. My mind screamed at me: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” I knew it was wrong, but my body was bewitched and something propelled me forward until I was shakily handing him the piece of paper.
It’s the one thing, in hindsight, that I regret doing in my life.
Dirty and Anxious
You know that saying, “It’ll all come out in the wash?” Boy does it ring true for me. I decided to start seeing Beanie Man while my boyfriend was away, convincing myself that as soon as my boyfriend arrived home I’d come clean about my infidelity. What're a few innocent dates, anyway? Eight weeks later, I did come clean but there was no hiding the fact that my relationship with him and the relationship with Beanie Man had slightly overlapped. What I didn’t realise when I carelessly handed over my number that day was that in doing so, I was committing myself to a long battle with guilt, low self-esteem and anxiety.
The Grass Isn’t Always Greener
Beanie Man was my karma, I vehemently believe that. After the initial honeymoon period, our arguments started to wear me thin and I found myself looking at him with hatred rather than adoration. Everything he did started to annoy me, the way he’d brush his tongue in the shower to get rid of the cigarette taste before we’d kiss, the sight of his saggy stretched ear lobes when he’d remove his facial jewelry.
I finally left him and went through the typical coming of age progression. I immersed myself in every self-help book I could get my hands on like The Power of Now and even emptied my bank account to pay for life coaching with a popular mindfulness coach. And then I realised. Long before this all happened, I was a broken person. Perhaps I had attracted that situation because it was simply a reflection of the chaos inside me.
Only Broken People Break People
I wasn’t necessarily a cheater, but I was a little broken. I just needed a better relationship with myself before I could commit to anyone else. And after the guilt and regret subsided, I started to be thankful for what the whole situation taught me. Jay wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t my soulmate. Beanie Guy definitely wasn’t my saviour. It started to dawn on me that I had to be the love of my own life, first.
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle
Find A Relationship With Yourself
How did I navigate my way back? I began with journaling, I learnt to say no, listen to my gut and made time to take myself on dates. I even took a trip to America with friends, continuing on to Canada by myself. I learnt how our mind’s work, the ‘inner critic’, neuroplasticity and positive psychology and I did my best to implement it all, hoping that if I saturated my consciousness, eventually I could re-wire my brain to feel more positive.
“Among other things, neuroplasticity means that emotions such as happiness and compassion can be cultivated in much the same way that a person can learn through repetition to play golf and basketball or master a musical instrument, and that such practice changes the activity and physical aspects of specific brain areas.” Andrew Weil, M.D
Treat Your New Relationship As Something In Need Of Protecting.
I eventually met my husband. He was tall, broad-shouldered and outrageously handsome and when I cheekily tapped him on the shoulder at a bar, asking him to dance with me, he smiled and bought me a drink — which I immediately spilled over his shoe. He was a Cancer, I was a Scorpio and our relationship was effortless from the beginning. We moved out and bought a dog together only a year or so later and throughout the years he’s remained loyal, even-tempered, loving and patient.
Our relationship has spanned ten years and I have always been wary to treat it is as something in need of protecting. I treasure it and him and I don’t allow anyone to threaten what we have together.
While a relationship takes the commitment of both people to keep it safe, and I can’t control what my husband does or how he feels until the end of time, the most important thing to me now is my behaviour. As long as I remain a loyal and loving partner and I always do the right thing by him, that’s all that matters. I treat our relationship as sacred ground for continual learning.
While it might be true that a leopard doesn’t change his spots, sometimes, we are not dealing with a leopard, but merely a human being who made a mistake. I’ve come too far from that spineless, people-pleasing, seventeen-year-old to ever make the same mistakes twice.
***
A few years ago, I eyed a hipster wearing an eerily familiar-looking beanie. His hands were awkward and animated as I watched him introduce himself to a young girl. My face flushed red at the sight of them, memories momentarily flooding back. I sighed with inward relief as my babbling young son broke my train of thought and I watched as he was scooped up into the arms of my husband.
