Modern Day Cheating and How I Was Asking for It

How cheating yourself of the life you seek can cause you to be a victim of infidelity.

• disclaimer* I wrote this blog over a year ago, before finding out my husband was actually cheating on me. With the advice of our marriage counselor, I focused on my own codependency issues around distrust, and started journeling my discoveries. The truth was later revealed, but my new reality still doesn’t change what I have learned about myself. I believe that cheating myself out of the relationship I deserved was a factor that helped cause my husband’s infidelity. No one deserves to be cheated on, but maybe this advice can help others when they feel the same uncertainty in their relationships.

Anxiety and paranoia creep in, as if my mind is consumed with the fear of being cheated on — the fear of being left for someone or something better than myself.

There are days where I cringe at the sight of a Sports Illustrated cover, or get sick to my stomach over Victoria Secret commercials. I analyze my growing wrinkles in the mirror and compare my body to that of the latest sex symbol. The hot college girl who’s moved onto our block forces me to keep my blinds closed. Guilt creeps in when I realize that these thoughts are not that of the great leader I aspire to be. But in the same breath, fear paralyzes me at the thought of not being attractive enough for my husband. How do I marry the two true feelings and, most of all — avoid getting cheated on?

Shopping can kill my energy because I desperately want to be professional and inspiring to other women, but sexy for my husband. My husband however, enjoys the pleasures of a life that doesn’t place the same pressures on his bodily assets, or worry insanely whether or not he has plump enough lips. He simply knows that I love him, and looks to do what makes himself happy.

But what stirs anger inside me, is the divide between men and women on the issue of cheating, pornography and masturbation. Friends of mine act encouragingly when their men want to hit the strip club. Our girlfriends sit around at brunch and agree that they would rather their man watch porn than give them morning sex. The societal pressure on women to please their partners by being agreeable to these double-standards around sex, is so great that we abandon our values and seek to please them more than ourselves. We think — If they’re happy, they won’t cheat.

At the end of the day, no one is OKAY with being cheated on. Whether cheated on by lying, fantasizing over others, inappropriate conversations on social media, or taking action with another person. Cheating is defined as a verb, to “act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or relationship”. So by very definition, cheating in a relationship does not simply require only the act of doing something dishonest, but also the desire to keep something away from the person you love. Hidden, dark, deep and covered in lies. The cheater is cheating their partner out of honesty, integrity and respect. No matter how it may have been performed. So if your standards around sex are not those of the norm (say, you are bothered by porn), than do you deserve to be cheated on?

A walk down the “Family Planning” isle at Walgreens reveals two sides; one for men where products such as condoms, creams and enhancements scream pleasureful, long lasting, hot and sexy. While the second side for women boasts products for protection, cleanliness, prevention, testing. This isle for planning a family’s future, shows how mindless that planning part is for a man. They shall only seek pleasure, no matter the outcome (kids? hurt wives? STD’s?), while women prepare and do things safely, with precaution. Again, we are forced to be complacent with these norms, ask no questions and go-along with their desires, no matter the “unplanned” outcome.

Our desires are placed second to a man’s needs.

We have been programmed to care more about a man’s needs, than be honest about our own. Women have for years closeted their desires for real orgasms, and did whatever they could to support their partner in sex. Even allowing and encouraging pornography, masturbation, the types of things that don’t give women the same level of pleasure but seemingly keep their men pleased. The initial response to sexual images for a young woman is not attraction, but instead immediately comparing ourselves.

The fact that these sex tools are degrading to women, are an afterthought in any grown (programmed) woman’s mind compared to the fear of being alone.

This is how I lived my life for as long as I can remember. Existing in the world, scared to be left alone by my partner for something better than me. Thinking about the topic, searching for clues around it, far more obsessed than I should have been. The feeling would subside now and then when I felt truly loved, or fully safe in my life and relationships. But the stench of cheating and the paralyzing fear of abandonment, made me a jealous, slightly insane woman.

Recently some things in my marriage forced me to confront these topics. Ask myself why am I so enraged at how society perpetuates women as sexual objects? What is the worst thing that could really happen even IF you were cheated on? Confronting these challenges head on in my life revealed that I was actually truly cheating myself. Cheating myself out of the pleasures of sex without inhibition. Of expressing my own style rather than obsessing over what was sexy. Over jealousy and paranoia, wasted emotions that relied on other people rather than my own power within. Cheating myself had actually become a recipe for my life to be cheated.

One day at a time I will seek to avoid what makes me tick on this subject, embrace the few products, movies and publications that celebrate women as equal. And aim to please me, over anyone else.