The Idiot's Guide to Cheating
By: tmhogirl (13 December 2008)
In the random connectivity of today's world, we have all been affected by infidelity, maybe we are cheating on our partners, or our partners are cheating on us, or we may know someone who is cheating or being cheated on by their partners.
A close friend of mine called me recently, he was inconsolable, sobbing down the phone and unable to speak. I was worried that someone in his family had died or that he had found out he was dying, whatever it was, my morbid mind was convinced that a death was somehow involved.
By the way just in case you're wondering, all your secrets are safe with me and will not end up in TMHO. My friend who I shall call Star is very happy for me to write about his experiences, and even had a sneaky preview of my rambling thoughts.
Anyway, eventually Star started talking. He wanted to know whether he could come and stay in my house for a few days. It took a bit of persuasion to get him to finally open up as to why he wanted to leave the lovely house he shared with his girlfriend of three years who he had been planning to propose to.
"She has been cheating on me." He finally snapped referring to his long term girlfriend. And a great sense of relief washed over me, and I betrayed this by sighing with relief. Mistaking my sigh for a sigh sharing his frustration, he said,
"I know. Can you believe that?" And then went back to the sobbing.
It is heartbreaking and difficult to hear a man cry. And before you have a mental image of my friend as a pathetic wimp, this is far from the truth. He is as manly as they come and personally, I think it takes a real man to cry.
But back to this story.
Finally when he had recovered fully enough to listen to me, I asked him whether he still loved her, and he snapped that I was asking an irrelevant question.
He was perhaps even more surprised when I said that if he wanted to stay with his grilfriend, her affair need not be a deal breaker. I said that he could perhaps take some time off, and was welcome to bunk at mine for a while, take a short break from the relationship, think things over, make her sweat a bit when she comes begging him to return home, and then decide whether to forgive her or not.
My so called sensible advice was rewarded by a long hysterical laughter which funnily seemed to calm him down a lot, and then the whole sordid story started coming out. He was finally coherent and strangely, very calm.
The girlfriend, shall we call her Eve, or do you think the Bitch is a more appropriate name? OK, let's go with the Bitch.
Star filled me in on the litany of incidents, the Bitch's secret midnight phone calls to the other man, including calls made from their land line at times when he was either sleeping, or she was meant to be studying. By the way, Star was the sole breadwinner because following a mid thirties crisis, the Bitch jacked in her job and went back to university to study a pointless self indulgent course that would never pay for the lifestyle that she had become quite accustomed to, thanks to my friend and his good job.
Star told me about finally checking his credit card bills, he had issued the Bitch a card, and for his sins, he was too busy and too rich to check his bills and just had a direct debit that settled whatever balance he had on his credit cards. Combing through his recent bills, he found numerous restaurant bills paid with his credit card, and even various purchases from random jewellery and male clothing shops.
There was also a large withdrawal of money from their joint savings account (by joint, read, Star puts money, the Bitch withdraws), which incidentally corresponded with a time the Bitch went abroad for a week, allegedly as part of her course. Star had been quite happy to travel with her and make it a little holiday, but she had convinced him otherwise with reasons that now seemed quite pathetic.
He also told me about viewing the history report on their home computer which showed shopping for sexy lingerie at expensive designer shops that were obviously not for his benefit. He also found Google searches for romantic gifts that were never for him, a 5 star hotel stay abroad at the time the Bitch was meant to be roughing it out with other students in a B&B, and even searches on legal rights for financial support when non married couples break up!
Star had found out about the affair when he stumbled upon a yahoo messenger chat the Bitch had left open on their shared computer. The texts from the chat, left him in no doubt that these two people were supposedly in love (probably an easy confirmation given the numerous declarations of love and playful arguments as to who loved who more), intimate, including having web cam sex, (she had insisted on his buying a new computer with a webcam three months previously), and very much a couple who had no plans of splitting up.
Their web chat also held another humiliation and heartbreak for Star. The Bitch had introduced the man to her friends, and it appeared as if everyone else knew and accepted the affair, except of course my dearest Star.
When he confronted the Bitch, she had been cold as ice, and irritable saying that he shouldn't have read her private conversations.
There were no denials, no apologies, no remorse, absolutely nothing from the Bitch.
"Darling, this has changed things. This has gone from a regretful fling to a full blown affair that insults you. But I don't know why you should be the one to leave. It is your house. She has to go." I had replied fuming with rage. The Bitch had moved into my friend's house just over a year previously, just before she started her course, having sold her house for a mighty fine profit, and of course deposited the money in a sole account.
There was no way my handsome, intelligent, kind, highly successful friend should put up with the cheating bitch, who had no respect or regard for him, and had crossed every line that could make any reasonable man forgive an affair, hell no!
But the Bitch had one more ace for my sweetest friend.
"But I don't want to stay here. They had sex in our bed…in my bed." He said with a stutter that betrayed that he was anything but calm.
"What do you think I should do? What would you do?" He asked me in a little voice.
"It's not my place to tell you whether or not to end the relationship, and whatever you decide, I will support you wholeheartedly. But it seems to me that there is nothing to save if she wasn't even remorseful." I replied bluntly. Star and I had a relationship where when the chips are down, we don't bullshit each other and I wasn't planning on starting now.
"But if I were you, she would be packing her stuff right now. You can always redecorate the house or sell the house but she has to go."
It was not the time to tell him that I had always disliked the Bitch with a passion but never said anything because he was crazy about her. It wasn't time to tell him about the numerous occasions where I would be uncomfortable with her blatant flirting with other men, including my partner, or to tell him how she would make me uncomfortable by her relentless flaunting of her sexuality. It wasn't the time to tell him that I thought she was a miserable, lazy, gold digging piece of crap and I could never understand what the hell he saw in her, other than of course her intense sexuality, if you like that sort if thing.
Star got the Bitch out of his life with an impressive swiftness that reflects why he is highly successful in his career. Her attempts to extort money or financial support from the Star failed rather miserably once he got his lawyers involved. Star quickly decided that he loved his house and had no plans of selling, or selling at a loss in the current climate. He treated himself to a couple of weeks in a top London hotel and came back to a home fabulously re-decorated by a top designer that was even better than before. Any signs of the Bitch and her sordid affair, or the bed which she shared with him and her little lover, were long forgotten.
As for the Bitch, she was the loser all round. It turned out her lover was a fellow student who was about ten years younger than her. With her money on tap gone, the so called love of her life, swiftly dumped her.
This brings me to the title of this piece. Men and women cheat, for reasons which are as complicated, as they are varied. And perhaps another time we can discuss why people cheat and whether relationships can truly survive infidelity. Can trust ever be restored back to a relationship when a partner cheats? Should an affair be a deal breaker to an ongoing relationship?
Sometimes when the infidelity comes to light, a couple can honestly examine their relationship, and move on, stronger than before, especially where children are involved. But most times when the affair is conducted publicly in a way that humiliates and disrespects the cheated partner, there is usually no going back to salvaging whatever is left of a relationship.
I am in no way advocating or supporting infidelity or for that matter judging anyone who for any reason find themselves conducting an affair.
However, if you want to have your cake and eat it, have your affair, and stay in your present relationship, discretion may not be a bad thing.
The Idiot's Guide to Cheating
1. For the love of all that is decent and good, use a condom. Impregnating or getting pregnant with your lovers' child, or worse contracting an STD, is probably the worst thing you could do.
2. Leaving evidence in your home computer for your partner to find is stupid, unless you want the affair to come to light. *This may not be the best way to tell your partner you are cheating on them…duh.* Download a portable Firefox in a memory stick which will allow you to surf the net without leaving incriminating evidence. The application will also prompt you to close all windows when you take out your memory stick.
3. Be discreet, and do not make your little affair public. If you tell one friend, they may tell someone else, who may tell someone else, you see where I'm going with this?
4. Destroy receipts for restaurants, hotels or shopping for your lover.
5. Invest in a pay as you go phone exclusively for your little secret. Making telephone calls with your mobile telephone, or worse still, like the Bitch, with your land line telephone is a complete no no. Saving sweet little texts or messages to and from your lover is also a complete no no.
6. If you meet regularly, have a ready made alibi.
7. Give your lover a fake name of the same gender as you.
8. A change in your personality or routine may signal to your partner that you are cheating. This will of course include suddenly being distant or overly attentive, secret phone calls and texts, increased business trips, or the rather unoriginal working late excuse, suddenly starting to wear aftershave, being overly generous, having constant headaches especially at night times, or a sudden interest in the gym and getting a fit body.
9. Never tell the partner in a relationship that you are interested in saving that it is their fault you cheated. If they are willing to even consider forgiving you, an honest conversation that alludes to the reasons you cheated, if any, may be appropriate. This does not of course justify your affair. It takes two to make a relationship work and an affair is not always the best solution.
10. An affair might not be the solution to your problems and might just complicate your life even more. If all fails and you cheat and your cheating is discovered or suspected, deny deny deny and if confronted with damning evidence, better start begging for forgiveness immediately.
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Comments on this post:
"Give Star my phone number please!"
summer (14 December 2008)
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"No 11. Do not install a google lattitude (GPS thing) that will tell your spouse where you are as long as you have your mobile with you. If you are being lavished in some hotel whilst you should be working."
andys (28 April 2009)
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"Lol - lavish/ravish? I give up but great point Andy:-)"
tmhogirl (29 April 2009)
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