A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:I've been having thoughts of guilt because I cheated on my bf 5 months ago. He obviously found out and he broke up with me. I was aware that what I was doing was wrong, but I still kept on cheating because I didn't feel sexually attracted to him anymore. I feel horrible, but that's probably the truth and I never had the guts to simply ask him to give me some time to sort things through because I was scared to break his heart. I mean, he was there for me for 2 years in a half. Although he, was sweet funny, and would tell me he loved me, he would never compliment me, and I would always catch him checking out girls and it made me feel crappy. He would always put me down (academically wise) and he would always go on and on about other intelligent girls and how I just go to school to check out guys which is absurd. He thought I was going to cheat on him with a classmate since the beginning of our relationship. Ironically, it did happen. I just don't know why I had to do it. I guess I felt that I didn't trust him either and I thought eventually he would cheat on me, but I ended up being the cheater. I can't stand the fact that I cheated because I hurt someone that i really did care for. what hurt the most was seeing him cry the way he did and i hate myself for it. :( every bad thing you do, really does come back to bite you in the butt because I ended up becoming super unhealthily infatuated with the guy i cheated with whom just got a gf and my x just lost respect for me because he can't let go of the fact that i cheated. Not to mention, I feel super lonely. My x and I still talk and he wants to have sex every time we hang out but I don't want to. I tell him that I say no because we are not together, but at the same time I know I say NO because I don't really feel attracted to him anymore and even though it seems as if he's giving me a chance again, i'm not sure I really want to take it and I'm not even sure if he really means it anyway. Besides, i feel really stupid telling him something like that when I basically slept with someone who wasn't even my bf (he doesn't know we had sex). I'm just lost and I think i keep coming back to him because i feel lonely and I don't have anyone else. I don't know if I still love him or not. Sometimes I get scared of the thought of loosing him, but then when I'm with him, i begin to have second thoughts. Just recently I began telling myself that it would be ok to start seeing him with another girl just because i want to see him happy but then i start to feel selfish again and i think I wont be able to handle seeing him with someone else. The worst part, is that I feel terrible about myself. I'm what I don't want to be, a. It's just so wrong and I can't believe I did it. Yeah the sex was good but the whole time i felt sick to my stomach knowing that I was cheating on my bf. I hate myself for doing this. I can't control my urges and I'm not going to lie, I'm a flirt and i liked the attention. However cheater, I don't want to be like this anymore. I don't want to be that type of girl that screws her bf over and specially when all of his friends, his family, and my family thought i was such a good girl. unfortunately, they found out and I feel so embarrassed. i just can't help it but be this crappy person that I always go back to. Has anyone ever out there ever cheated and changed his/her ways? what did you do to change this, please share with me.
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (19 December 2013): I cheated twice, two weeks into my relationship (been together two years now) with a guy who I was sleeping with previously and I haven't done it again, so yes you can change your ways.
A
reader, anonymous, writes (18 December 2013): This is verified as being by the original poster of the questionthank you anonymous female. your advice was something else. really, thank you
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A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (18 December 2013): 1. You are using your ex right now. Being with him is comfortable and he takes away your loneliness. So you are lying to him about why you don't want to sleep with him anymore, just to keep him around. You should stop this if you want to be fair to him. If you won't break it off with him yourself then at least tell him why you aren't sleeping with him (and about the other guy) and let him make up his own mind.
2. You CAN control yourself. You choose not to because its more fun to do whatever feels good at the time. Don't say you can't. If you don't want to be a cheater then don't be one. Nobody was putting a gun to your head and making you cheat. Taking your clothes off and sleeping with someone takes more than 20 seconds, you had plenty of time to back out of it.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (18 December 2013): It sounds like you have low self esteem, and this causes you a lot of self doubt and uncertainty. People with high self esteem tend to not doubt or undermine their own thinking - not to say that they won't question their own actions, but it's usually not in a way that undermines their own sense of self and, relatedly, their ability to behave positively and constructively in the world.I think your low self esteem is what stopped you from leaving your boyfriend. He doesn't sound in any way perfect - and many women would have left him purely on the basis of him looking at other women, never complimenting you and projecting onto you the idea that you would cheat with someone you both knew. He gave you just enough - a semblance of loyalty (which on an unconscious you've doubted is 'real' eg because he would look at other women) and affection - to keep you going back to him to try to get the more that you needed from someone. You were right to need more from him, but I think your low self esteem stopped you from seeing that this is what you were doing. Low self esteem tends to blur and confuse a lot of things. However, an added complication is that the 'more' that you needed was not just a matter of getting that which any woman might legitimately want eg. to be complimented and feel 100% certain of their partner's loyalty and trustworthiness. You also needed 'more' in the sense of more self esteem, which ultimately no-one else can give to you. With low self esteem an individual tends to look to other people to confirm their self worth because there's an absence of a positive sense of inner worth. This is a very dangerous pattern because other people, instead of raising your self esteem, can damage it further or can offer you a complicated mix of raising and lowering your esteem. It also means that, due to a lack of strong sense of self, you are more prone to 'auto-suggestion' put forward by others. So, when your partner said to you that you would cheat on him with this other man, at an unconscious level this became ingrained into your psyche as a message, almost an instruction. Really, the logic to this is that there was no other positive or affirming message originating just from you - it's like someone putting a message into an empty space and, because you have nothing else to go on except a lot of confusion about yourself and your own true desires, you end up acting on this message. Had you felt more able to assert yourself much earlier on, you would have left your partner because he wasn't giving you what you needed and, therefore, his 'message' to you to cheat would not have entered into your world at all.As it is, you acted on this message without really understanding why and the sex that you had with another man temporarily gave you a sense/illusion of high self esteem - people often seek out this illusion of high self worth by aiming to achieve, even including 'achieving' sex - but this was mixed in with your own sense of guilt and taking a very inwardly punishing attitude towards yourself for what you were doing - so by punishing yourself inwardly you were also lowering your self esteem. No wonder you feel confused! In none of this has there been any 'happy medium' which is what should be the desired norm.Until you figure out why you have a low sense of self esteem - usually this will be to do with the way that your family treated you growing up and it will usually take a while to 'see' patterns in their behaviour that you were not aware of before - problems similar to this - though not necessarily always sexual - will keep arising. You say that you are aware that your friends and family thought that you were 'such a good girl' but that underneath you feel you are this crappy person that you keep returning to. I wonder if, in some ways, your family have sent out messages to you that you MUST be a 'good' girl otherwise you face rejection or the withdrawal of their love? Could it be that you are unconsciously testing out the possibility of losing their love by veering towards behaviour that they will find unacceptable? Many people do this, especially children and young adults towards parents and usually without having a clue that this is what they are doing...effectively you could be saying "look, I'm a human being who is trying to define things in her own terms, not just yours, and it's confusing because so far I've kept trying to live in ways that please you and, when I step out of that and try to understand what it is that I want, you react in ways that suggest that you'll stop loving me, or will judge me in ways that reduce my sense of worth. So, I'm going to see if you really do love me by carrying out this unacceptable behaviour. Maybe if I find the right behaviour for me, I will gain the sense of self worth that I need and which will mean that I no longer have to worry that you really love me or not.Of course no one really thinks like this at a conscious level, but this will give you some idea of what may be being suggested to you unconsciously. The fact that you are writing into this website, rather than talking through the situation with family or friends, suggests to me that they have not taken the time to really know or understand you in ways that will help you in life, but possibly only want to impose their own ways onto you.You may not want to think all that deeply about any of this and just do what another respondent suggested - when you feel like you are going to be unfaithful, break up with the partner you are with. It's not at all a bad suggestion, but it may not really help you to understand the root cause of why you feel that you want to cheat. Cheaters cheat because they already feel cheated - usually of their sense of self worth and often the person that they cheat on will be reinforcing a negative sense of self worth that family put in place far earlier on.
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A
female
reader, largentsgirl89 +, writes (18 December 2013):
 I don't understand why you didn't just break up with him? Instead of cheating? I've always wondered what the thinking on that was. I'm curious, if you don't mind.
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A
female
reader, Denise32 +, writes (18 December 2013):
 You say you are a "crappy person that I always go back to."
You are putting labels - negative ones - on yourself and then living up to them. I notice you said your boyfriend was afraid you would cheat on him with a classmate and so you did. You didn't HAVE to do that: you just felt compelled to live up to his expectations - and your own bad self-image. However, your ex doesn't sound such a great catch either, from the way you describe him.
But basically, that's neither here nor there.
You need to stop treating yourself like a puppet on a string and take control of your life. If you are no longer attracted to him then stay away from him.
If you had a best friend and she were "you" behaving like this, what kind of advice and support would you give her? Think about it, and then be your own best friend.
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A
male
reader, CMMP +, writes (18 December 2013):
In your case there is an easy fix: when you find yourself drifting away from someone, leave them. Even if you love them it's the right thing to do, because you're obviously no longer compatible.
Finding someone who you're both in love with AND compatible with is the key to long term happiness.
Also, you really should stop seeing your ex, you're just dwelling in the past. Forgive yourself by learning from your mistakes and becoming a better person.
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