I wrote yesterday about how my relationship with an ex taught me how different types of betrayal can have lasting and damaging effects. I used to think cheating was black and white. It isn’t. I learned that it is not just the act of cheating, but the intent behind it, and also how it is handled afterwards that can go on hurting us long after any thoughts of love for a person have evaporated. Here’s the second part of my story, showing how the betrayal ran so much deeper than the physical act of sleeping with another woman.
After about a year together, Stuart* and I had been arguing worst than normal. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what was wrong, but something was different. He seemed disconnected. It was enough to urge me to investigate and late one night (after yet another argument), my heart wrenching at the disloyalty of what I was doing, I opened his laptop and started to read his MSN conversation history. After reading a couple, I started to feel like more and more uncomfortable with betraying his trust in this way. There was nothing there! A few nasty messages about me to his friends about me not giving him enough sex, but I was used to that and there was nothing as dramatic as I had feared.
And then, there it was. The conversation I had unknowingly, but instinctively been looking for.