Welcome to the first installment of Hi Tea, an anonymous advice column for the students of Bennington College. Send in your inquiries via this QR code and let me give you some advice!
Our first dilemma is as such:
Q: My (now ex) boyfriend cheated on me last term and now is trying to talk to me and reconcile this term. I can’t help but miss him. Do I go back to him?
A: People usually cheat for one reason: they are searching for something that you cannot offer them. It hurts a lot to know that someone you care so deeply about would just discard you completely when faced with the opportunity for some novel pleasure or excitement. That feeling of hurt, for many people, is enough to begin to move on. The pain and anger of unrequited commitment can be the end of a once beautiful relationship. Even if the cheater’s intention was not to directly hurt their partner, the choice they made is so inconsiderate and selfish that any self-respecting normal person wouldn’t want to continue being with them. It should be, if not the end of your relationship, the biggest red flag that this person is careless with your feelings. If they cheated on you once, who’s to say they wont cheat fifty more times. Cheating implies lying, it implies manipulation, it suggests a valley in your relationship from which a peak is difficult to return to. That being said, it doesn’t mean that your relationship is doomed. Under specific circumstances, if your cheating partner seems genuinely sorry and regretful of the disgustingly disrespectful act they committed, you can work through this valley together. You can climb the mountain step by step and carefully consider, using both the memories of your relationship as it was and the willingness you may have to accept your partner’s newfound flaws, what it would be like if you decided to make it work. It is normal to look back on a past relationship through rose colored glasses. It is also normal to want something that you know you can’t have. In this case, the relationship pre-cheating. But that isn’t possible, what’s done is done. All you can do is try to move forward, and for that there are a couple of options:
- Ignore him. He messed up big time, and doesn’t deserve a second chance with you.
- Acknowledge that your relationship will probably be different from how you remember it being, accept that, and give him a second chance.
If you choose option one, power to you. You know you’re worth and you aren’t messing around.
If you choose option two, there are lots of factors to consider in attempting to rebuild a successful relationship. Like I said before, he cheated once, which means he might do it again. It is important to establish clear and strict boundaries by which you both must abide (i.e. complete honesty, transparency, etc.) Ideally, you would rebuild your trust with each other over time and eventually be able to move past his abhorrent mistake, if that’s what he considers it to be. Develop, if not exactly what you once had, something similar to that. Similarly sweet, similarly new and exciting, similarly fresh. If that’s not possible, if you cannot rebuild your trust yet want to continue your relationship nonetheless, it will be toxic and painful. And if you want to get back together so you can hurt him the way he hurt you, if you are trying to get revenge, first of all take a look at yourself because why would you stoop to his level. Second, he probably can’t be hurt the same way you were, he obviously wasn’t as invested as you in the relationship and therefore won’t feel the same depth of emotion you did when he cheated. Be careful, he isn’t who you thought he was before he cheated. He made that mistake.
You can give the rebuilding a try, but do so with caution. Do it slowly, and carefully. There is a microcosm within the rebuilding process that can be easy to fall into. Where you either don’t fully trust him or harbor too much animosity towards him that he ends up resenting you and continues to cheat, you cheat back or do something similarly toxic, and it ends up in a vicious cycle of pain and lies and unfulfillment. This process is scary, it’s hard, and there’s a chance that it might not work out at all. But not all hope is lost. If you believe that in this fallen apple there may still be a seed of something great, water it. Sometimes it takes a full blown car crash to get your car in the shop to finally change the oil. Sometimes, the car is totaled.
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