July 25, 2005

Ah, Jude. How we loved thee? You were Hugh Grant before Bridget Jones. You were charming. You were suave. You were witty. You proved you weren’t just a pretty face but also an “actor”. You were a husband, a father and recently engaged to be married. Most importantly you were English. And now, you are just another…cheater.

Hearts everywhere broke last week, when the impossibly beautiful actor confessed (because he was caught) to cheating (multiple times) on his equally impossibly beautiful fiancée, Sienna Miller which got me thinking about the C word - Cheating.

At some point we have all either done it or had it done to us, cheated that is. I know some of you are reading this and thinking, “I’ve never cheated and no one has ever cheated on me”. No one that you know of, that is. It’s been around for as long as men and women have and it’s usually followed shortly after the first kiss. Cheating is just one of the many awful things we do to each other when we’re in a relationship. Of course not every relationship involves cheating. But, that also doesn’t mean the parties involved aren’t capable. The one thing you have to accept is that no one is safe, no one is incapable, not even you.

As terrible as the act is it rarely has anything to do with the individual person. Sure, some people are just dogs and “can’t help” themselves but leaving those aside, most of us cheat because of something we’re not getting. This is dangerous to say because the last thing you want to do is blame the victim, right? Sure, it’s not that simple but believe me - something is amiss in your relationship. Brad-Jen-Angelina, anyone? Even nasty Jude has allegedly blamed his ways on Sienna not being around enough. Cad!

I have this friend who contends cheating is not so black and white. That cheating is something that must be determined on a case-by-case basis. For example, if one party is cheating and if the other party does the same, they cancel each other out. I also have another friend who believes that sharing a kiss with someone else is tantamount to cheating. So, there you go. Either way, they both have very personal definitions of what constitutes cheating that work for them. It’s probably a waste of time anyway to judge people when they cheat because there are usually a host of reasons, but they are almost always selfish.

When I was a little girl I thought I could never “cheat” on my boyfriend/husband. I also thought I would never drink or have pre-marital sex. Oh, well. As I got older I was comfortable with the definition that it wasn’t actually cheating if the relationship was already dead and the emotional connection no longer existed because if that wasn’t there you weren’t cheating on anything, were you? That’s what I told myself anyway, when I cheated on a boyfriend in college. You also have to factor in your role – are you the cheater or the one being cheated with? Some might say the level of responsibility shifts a bit depending. But come on really, isn’t that just a way to sugar coat it for ourselves? I mean the truth is we all like to think we “would never do that” but at some point we all have.

Case in point: There was this guy I knew once. He was a friend’s boyfriend. Not a very close friend but good enough. I knew “them” for at least a year or so and they were great. Quite possibly one of the more perfect couples I knew. They were funny, cool, attractive and seemed to genuinely enjoy each other. Your basic template for the kind of couple you wanted to be. Out of the blue, it seemed I started getting strange semi-drunken phone calls from him at odd hours. I’m still not sure how he got my cell phone number since I never gave it to him or his girlfriend. Nevertheless, the calls were innocent enough at first, at least in my naïve little mind. Surely, he wouldn’t be calling me for any other reason than to chat. He was my friend’s boyfriend after all! I thought for sure that his girlfriend knew about these calls and that they even shared a laugh about how he drunk dialed me. Turns out I was wrong. He hadn’t been telling her. Surprise, surprise, I know.

On one fateful night after another dialing incident, he and I met for a drink for what I had planned as “nipping it in the bud”. I was going to make sure these calls stopped. At the bar, I looked at him with equal parts of disgust and intrigue because I just didn’t get it. They were so happy together. He couldn’t possibly want to jeopardize it. But for the first time, I also really looked at him. He was gorgeous. I don’t know why it hadn’t hit me before. I’ve never been one of those girls but suddenly I started to feel very out of my league. He handed me my first drink and finally said, “Ok. I’m all yours. Ask me anything. Just promise me one thing - you won’t tell X that we met up.” Ahhh…the perfect opening, I thought. I said, “Ok. First question – why can’t I tell X that we met up?” What followed was not what I expected. He proceeded to tell me everything a woman wants to hear about herself through someone else’s eyes. It shouldn’t matter I know, but I listened. I was filled with mixed emotions; fear, excitement but never a firm decision either way. We talked for a long time, hours in fact and before I knew it I was doing exactly the last thing I thought I would be. Call me shameless, call me narcissistic, call me foolish but don’t call me stupid. I knew what I was doing and probably even what he was doing but I had rationalized it in my mind despite the fact. I wasn’t the one with a girlfriend right? And when two people are as attracted to one another the way he and I were that night, isn’t it almost out of your hands?

Surprisingly, the next day I didn’t feel guilty. I felt a momentary “that should never happen again” but it was quickly overshadowed by the memory of the night. I started to wonder if I was truly without remorse or morals or any of those things that “good people” have. Maybe this was why I wasn’t in a relationship – because I simply didn’t know how to be in one. Who knows, all I did know was that psychobabble wasn’t going to help. It was what it was and now it was over and I couldn’t be happier. I had my trophy f*ck. It’s crude but true. The problem is once is rarely ever enough. As cliché as it sounds, it was like a drug – how he made me feel and eventually I’d want more.

He called several times after that night but I either ignored his call or kept it brief because I didn’t need his words. I surprised myself even by how little of my emotion was invested in that experience. Months passed and then one night I did need “his words” and I made the one mistake I promised myself I would never ever do. I slept with a man to feel better about myself. It was awful. Nothing was how I remembered it. The next morning I felt the most physically agonizing guilt and shame. I felt sick and I literally couldn’t look at myself in the mirror because I did think of her. And it hit me how selfish and self-absorbed my actions seemed in the daylight. What I didn’t remember was that the reason I didn’t feel so bad the first time was because I didn’t start off feeling so bad. This time I had and it only made it worse. But at least I had enough of the drug. I hit rock bottom.

To this day when I am reminded of it or if I hear a similar story, I can still feel that all too familiar feeling, that nauseating emptiness in my stomach just before having to throw up. Maybe at the time I was subconsciously looking for a way to feel what I thought I was supposed to feel. I’m not sure but apparently it worked for me because I never “felt” more than I did that next day and every day since.