The death of a relationship

He’s cheating on me. And has been since the very beginning. Since we met. Before we met, I guess, since it started with someone I knew he was sleeping with before me. Even before that. 

I know this because I snooped. I know this because I saw it in his own handwriting. A friend of mine says, “Never ask a question you don’t want to know the answer to. You will never like what you hear.” 

She’s right. 

He’s cheating on me. And this was the death of our relationship. 

We met in college on the leafy green lawn of campus. He was sleeping with someone, I was dating someone — the timing was terrible, but there was a clear connection. Thing is, the girl he was screwing was also seriously dating my best friend’s brother. Follow that? He was a cheater when I met him. But love is blind, Gentle Reader. L'amour est aveugle.

Months later, we’d both stopped seeing the other person we were with, and the real dance between us began. We never even really dated, if I’m honest. In a couple of weeks, we were just… together. People began talking about us with a constant “and” between our names. Rarely were we not in each other’s company or seeking it out. He was hot, and we were randy twentysomethings. Ah, college. 

He graduated first and got a cute, tiny apartment that I moved into by the end of the year when I graduated. We talked about the future — types of houses we liked, kid’s names, what part of the country we wanted to live in, where he’d go to graduate school, where I’d have a gallery. We talked about the mundanities — where we’d go to dinner, what toothpaste to buy, whether or not we needed curtains and blinds, what to watch on TV. We talked about sex — what we liked, what felt especially good, what we should try tonight, what we never needed to try again, which lube was best. 

We had tons in common — books, movies, style of dirty talk, music, politics, tv, taste in food, bands. We could talk for hours and solve all of the problems of the world. He was thoughtful and always texted to see if I needed anything on his way home and often surprised me with curly fries or a Frosty. We picked out Christmas trees and sofas together. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other in between. We’d cuddle up on that sofa on Sundays to read the paper and watch Meet the Press. And stay in bed late on Saturdays to fool around. We were blissfully in love. Fooling around was one of our main pastimes. I look back on it now and honestly have to ask myself how the man got it up so often. Ah, youth. 

“And through all of it — ALL of it — he was f*cking me and other women.”

And through all of it — ALL of it — he was fucking me and other women. Every chance he got. Sometimes it was women he worked with, other times it was someone he met after work at a bar. Sometimes it was a blow job in a parking lot, other times a handjob in the car. Sometimes he paid prostitutes. 

When I would go shopping or take a nap, he’d watch porn. It got to the point that he’d encourage me to go shopping or take a longer nap. A lot. I don’t need to tell you, ladies, that my clothing collection blossomed under his subterfuge plans. 

I know all of this to be true because one day I went to our bookcase looking for a self-help book to lend to a friend going through some stuff. She wanted to read it but was wary of spending the money to buy it. I now assume that the universe sent this little bird of truth to me so I could finally see what was going on. As I flipped through the pages of the book, I sank into a chair just like you see in the movies — like someone had stuck a pin in me and I began to very slowly and painfully deflate. 

I read the responses he gave to the questions about addiction and realized he was a sex addict. This was the death of our relationship, and I was at the very uncomfortable funeral. If I’d been wearing pearls, I’d have clutched at them and asked someone to pass the potatoes. 

“I now assume that the universe sent this little bird of truth to me so I could finally see what was going on.”

Here’s where I betrayed him. I kept reading. And then I took that book and hid it under the seat of my car in case he went looking for it. I wanted proof, and I wanted that proof someplace safe. And then I put on some shoes and got tested for everything you could possibly get through sexual transmission. EVERYTHING. Good news: I’m clean. 

Some of you right now are wondering how I missed him cheating. How could I now know this man was happening for years? Ask your other friends and I would imagine they’ll say the same thing: Good question. The short answer is that he was very good at deception. The long answer is… I don’t know. I asked myself that question almost every day in the year after we broke up.