I shouldn’t be writing this.
I am way too biased.
Or, maybe I should.
I am super ultra mega qualified.
And I believe it can be justified.
I’ve been to every point of the compass rose when it comes to cheating and the halfway points in between.
Done it to others, had it done to me, cleaned up the messes when it has happened to my friends and I have been the mistress more than once.
R.M. Drake has been on A rotation on my newsfeed lately.
This.
This is important. A justification of sorts.
I refuse to be the bad guy for not living up to the expectations and ideals of someone who cannot be bothered to know me.
That is both lazy and illogical on their part.
Want to dictate someone’s every move? Go get a puppy or a puppet.
I don’t need to be trained, and I am a real girl. No strings needed, no leash required. Treat me right and I will return of my own accord.
Do I think cheating is great?
No.
I don’t.
But also, I think monogamy is toxic as fuck so there is that then.
I also know enough about myself and the world to now that the way I feel about things is not the only way things can be thought of.
Not my body, not my business what you do with it.
Do you boo.
But maybe listen to what I have to say before you right me off as a crazy slut with no boundaries.
Too many people in our lives have these false narratives about what they think we should be doing; what they think we should be. How they want us to fit them and how we should behave.
According to whom?
Am I not the boss of me? You go be the boss of you.
This dictatorship towards others leaves very little room for personal growth, truth and exploration. This constant bending and breaking and getting squished inside boxes that never fit, with labels that don’t match who we are.
It happened to me. More than once.
I couldn’t always find the exit. So sometimes I smashed through walls and made my own door.
Not subtle or graceful by any stretch. But I couldn’t stay where I was.
Especially not the last time.
Yesterday I was hit upside the head with the last time I cheated.
Like he sauntered into my inbox mere hours after I spoke of him.
It was weird, not gonna lie.
Remember that time I had a whole bunch of money and an apartment I really loved? (just testing)
I haven’t spoken to him in years. I cannot recall our last interaction, if it was good bad or indifferent.
I speak of him sometimes. He was my first healthy venture into the world of polyamory.
But not to him. Not until yesterday.
10 years ago this coming Super Bowl Sunday, when I was still trapped on the farm and really thought all hope was lost, he messaged me out of the blue.
If I had to guess, we hadn’t spoken since a really shitty break up a year or 2 prior. That time is very fuzzy for me. I just remember him asking about my tits and football.
He threw me a lifeline and like the drowning girl I was, I took it and didn’t let go. Hauling myself hand over hand to safety and sanity in an ocean of shit.
For he record. I hesitated. I had made vows and agreements and whether they were fair or sane, I made them.
2 months later I was sneaking out to sleep with him at every possible opportunity.
I’m telling all y’all it was a sabotage.
My ex husband had his mistress living in my house. I went back to an ex-boyfriend while still keeping one foot in my marriage.
No further justification needed right?
Technically, no, not really.
Literally no one except ex husband took any issue with what I was doing.
Shoulda coulda woulda left.
But at the time it did not seem possible.
So I did what I had to do to survive.
In an email to a friend I stated, “I was going to die or go insane, so I cheated.”
I was the least loved person in the house. Any dignity or ego I had shredded into nothing.
I really had lost the will to live.
The farm that was once Thunderdome had become a never ending episode of Survivor on a horrific loop. The 3 people I lived with doing their best to torture and banish me.
Good job guys, it worked. I left it to rot and ruin and built myself a new life. Several since really.
I did what I had to do to survive the circumstances I was in until I could change those circumstances.
I will not apologize.
I honestly don’t think I would have survived had it not been for my…mister, is that what we call male mistresses? I don’t fucking know. I think I named him the Ninja before. Ninja it is.
I had actually become completely accustomed to being misused and very misunderstood.
I had begun to think it was normal, that that was how things are.
At least when I was with him, I felt something that wasn’t sadness or rage or uncomfortably numb.
He didn’t promise me the world. I had hurt him too badly in the past for him to write a future with me in it, I don’t blame him for that at all.
He did what I cosmically needed him to do.
Showed me there was a world beyond the one I was trapped in. Reminded me that I existed, and that I was once happy and could be again.
He was a band-aid on a gaping chest wound. I know that now. But he slowed the bleeding just enough that I got my strength back and for that I am grateful.
I had to leave, take the knives out for once and for all so I could heal instead of impaling myself on the same sharp shit over and over. Constantly bleeding out.
And while there are raging narcissists like my ex husband for example who will cheat to fill the giant black holes where their souls ought to be, happy people don’t cheat. But, ultimately, he wasn’t happy, and as much as he tried to blame me for it, it wasn’t my fault. Nor was it his fault I was unhappy.
We just weren’t.
I know this is going to be a huge bone of contention with people who have been cheated on.
Sorry, but I believe this to be true.
I don’t like words like ‘blame’ and ‘fault’. I also don’t like the idea that I might end up in a situation where I am the only source of happiness for someone and that somehow my punishment for NOT being their everything will be their infidelity.
I accept that I can’t be that for someone, furthermore, I don’t want to be.
I have my own shit to do.
A lot of happy people I know are also polyamorous. Some practice it, others just understand it.
These are the ones who have a healthy idea of love and relationships.
They don’t rely on one source or one person for contentment and sustenance.
No one should really, it is a really too big a burden to place on one person.
And that is where I will accept some responsibility for the actions of my ex-husband, and my actions and reactions.
I did put that burden on him.
While simultaneously demanding he adhere to a picture of him I had painted of him in my head. Yes, he handed me the brush and some of the pigments when he lied to me and edited what he really wanted, and who he really was. But I did the same thing. Feigned contentment when I wanted and needed more than he could provide. Hid the pieces of myself that I fly like multi-colored flags now, announcing my presence and place in the world.
We both failed, ourselves and each other.
He tried to hide me away, but I let him.
He tried to amputate pieces of me, but I laid there and handed him the knife while demanding a limb for a limb.
Neither one of us was ultimately happy, or we wouldn’t have done what we did.
We weren’t compatible.
Like not at all.
I see way too many relationships like that and still participate in some personal relationships built solely on convenience and habit instead of symbiosis. Final Boss was that. Someone to scratch an itch I couldn’t reach, and I tried to make something out of it. Whoops.
But I am getting better.
None of my relationships prior to 7 years ago were built on any kind of understanding, because I didn’t understand myself.
Just one recipe for disaster after another and quite a few that I committed to imploding over and over again. Jamming puzzle pieces together instead of looking for ones that fit.
Ex-husband was a different monster in that knew who he was, didn’t like himself at all, and tried to make me responsible for fixing him and filling an ideal that couldn’t possibly exist in one woman.
I had no idea who I was and thought I could adapt and change into what he needed.
Dishonesty. All of it.
An easily toppled house of cards and lies and every time it would come crashing down, we would hastily rebuild it exactly like it was before.
The literal definition of insanity.
It was never going to work, and I cannot get that time back.
But I won’t dwell on my old prison, nor will I apologize for breaking out.
Part of me did die in that house, she had to so the rest of me could live.