INFIDELITY | RELATIONSHIPS | LOVE
When Someone Cheats, Who Should Carry the Shame?
If only I had known sooner
Shame is debilitating. When a cheating lover hides their deceit behind a wall of shame, it isn’t ours to carry. No matter how much they want us to.
When I was in my mid-thirties, I met a man. He was charming, seventeen years my senior in chronological age, not maturity. We both had mental health issues, one of which resulted in his controlling behaviours that my insecure self couldn’t recognize. I knew his demands were unreasonable, but feelings of unworthiness convinced me I deserved nothing more—shame on me.
I continued dating him, reaping the twisted benefits of a relationship built on unhealthy enabling. Others saw the warning signs. They tried to warn me, but I had stars in my eyes — a hindering sparkle of light. There’s a reason they say love is blind.
Life was tough. With compromised mental health, I worked a job with few hours, leaving me much time feeling intense misery. I spiralled into a dark hole that left me feeling dependent on Matt in ways one only does when selling one’s soul.
Yet, I convinced myself I was happy. I believed this man loved me. After six months of intense arguments, steamy sex, and a sense of comfortable discomfort, our relationship unknowingly became tested when Matt took his children on a trip to the Far East for a month and left me managing life’s issues on my own.
I moved back home, where I could breathe again — free from his controlling nature. Suddenly, I had time to figure out who I had become and to become who I wanted to be.
The postcards came daily. Matt’s words were loving; each said how much he missed me. He looked forward to his return, to embrace me in his arms. He had set his hooks into me the day we met, and his correspondence ensured they stayed there.
Before he left on his trip, we planned for his arrival back home. A friend had offered to pick him up at the airport since I didn’t have a car, but Matt insisted it must be me. I arranged a vehicle and set everything in place. No physical boulder was too large, but emotional capabilities didn’t always follow.
As his homecoming neared, I was ready until I wasn’t. As my mental health took a tumble, bringing me closer to the brink of taking my life, I checked myself into the hospital to get the care I needed. Despite experiencing one of my lowest of lows, I put Matt’s homecoming on my list of priorities.
Of course, I did. Isn’t that what obedient girls do?
I called the friend. I explained the situation and ensured Matt would get home safely from the airport without delay or inconvenience. It went off without a hitch, other than Matt’s attitude about the switch. In my two-week stay in a mental health ward, Matt visited me once, shaming me each time we spoke on the phone about how I had done him wrong.
It was my time to heal. This was the time to put myself first and to give Matt the chance to treat me as someone worthy of love. He failed miserably. He absolved himself of egotism as he threw his ball of shame into my arms, expecting me to carry it around with me. This constant reprimand burdened me, compromising my mental health even more.
He was a man-child — a narcissist, too hellbent to think of anyone other than himself. It took several months after leaving the hospital before I grew wise to Matt’s mental games and left him. I tossed back the ball of shame before I stepped out of the car, bid him goodbye, and never looked back.
It was his loss, not mine.
One year later, through a man I met on a dating site, I learned Matt had cheated on me while I was in the hospital. I didn’t know the woman, but my date had and knew all about the sordid affair. He contacted the woman for me and found out the details. I learned Matt hadn’t mentioned he had a girlfriend. I became an unwanted surprise.
The truth of the matter was that Matt had screwed us both, literally and figuratively.
Why are the innocents always the last to know?
I saw through Matt’s efforts to shame me. His self-absorbed behaviours were his attempts to hide his offences, not to highlight my mental health crisis. Not picking him up at the airport became a deflection. His reasoning for stepping outside of the relationship is the thinking of a narcissistic mind.
When Matt called me shortly after I found out about his infidelity, asking me to get back together, I never told him I knew. Rejecting him was all I needed to get even.
He’d be seventy-nine years old now. If karma is real, he’s felt the repercussions of his actions.
I’ve never let Matt mar my view of love. I know that the intimate bond between two people is sacred, one I never take for granted. Today, I’m filled with an abundance of self-worth that keeps my current loving relationship healthy, vibrant, and overflowing with mutual respect.
Matt’s efforts to shame me set me on a glorious path, reaffirming who I was as a woman and a lover. I now celebrate these last thirteen years as Ed's committed wife.
While facing humiliation, we must ask ourselves who’s really at fault. The answer is not always as clear-cut as it seems. We should remember that sometimes, the fault isn’t ours to bear.