I wish you had touched him, and kissed him, and been intimate with him. At least then the pain I felt would have made sense. Nobody would have told me “Boys will be boys!” or “Stop overreacting, every man does it.” At least then I could have left and saved myself 8 years of degradation. Nobody judges a woman who leaves a man who cheated on her.
Dear Ladies,
You don’t know me. I’m the woman from the other side of the screen. I was the woman who loved that man you “didn’t cheat” with. I was the one who waited for him in bed while he was downstairs with you.
I stayed up as late as I could, most nights. I waited, one time, perched on the side of the bed in a seductive pose, in a seductive outfit… He didn’t know I was waiting, it was supposed to be a fun surprise; but instead he stayed downstairs with you. Eventually I crawled under the covers and went to sleep.
I found you, all of you. One morning I wanted to see what had kept him from me and I found you… all of you. You took my breath away. I realized very quickly why he laughed when he discovered me in my lingerie and why he told me that I looked ridiculous. I can’t compete with you. You’re almost perfect. You’re willing to do all of the things that I am not, and you seem to enjoy them.
He would come to me every single night, unless I had displeased him in some way. On those nights he would spend the beginning of the sleeping hours with you ladies. You never let him down. You never left dishes in the sink, embarrassed him in front of his friends, asked for too many compliments, or demanded his respect. In fact, you didn’t need anything from him except his lust and his credit card, and he seemed happy to give to you both.
I tried to be like you! I wore more revealing clothes; I spent money trying to make my body look like yours; I whispered the things that I wanted him to do to me in his ear, all the while praying that he’d never make me do them. He seemed to like me more this way, but I never could rid myself of that nagging habit of requesting his respect. So unfortunately he would still slip out of bed some nights when he thought I was asleep so that he could go spend time with you.
He didn’t cheat on me though, right? He never slept with you. He never even met you, or spoke to you, or interacted with you in any way… So why is it that when I thought about you I wished I could have curled up into a ball tight enough that it would compress my heart hard enough to stop the bleeding? If he wasn’t being “unfaithful”, why is it that I am sure it was you he was picturing every time his eyes were closed while he was with me? If you weren’t his mistresses, why was it that I lost hours of his time so that he could be alone with you instead of with me?
I wish you had touched him, and kissed him, and been intimate with him. At least then the pain I felt would have made sense. Nobody would have told me “Boys will be boys!” or “Stop overreacting, every man does it.” At least then I could have left and saved myself 8 years of degradation. Nobody judges a woman who leaves a man who cheated on her.
Sincerely,
I left anyway.
*Porn is cheating. I know this now.
