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I don't have the answer, except to say that clearly, learning to trust again after someone cheats on you is a painful, scary process. You hear about people who make their new lover pay for what someone else did. They can't get over it. They should know better. They should just go back to who they were before.
Except, it's not an easy thing, logic over fear. The fear isn't always something you can control. And that person you were before is never quite coming back. You have to find a way to move forward.
My boyfriend was supposed to join me at a swank hotel Wednesday night. Even though I was doing fun stuff all day, I was really looking forward to it. I'd packed this black, silk number I'd gotten for a steal at a silent auction. I'd decided we'd simply have to get wet in the fantastic shower. I couldn't wait to see him.
When I called him, he had bad news. He'd poured sour milk on some cereal, ate it without realizing, and he was not doing good at all. He wasn't going to be coming to join me.
And it wasn't that I didn't believe him, or that I had any reason at all not to believe he was telling the truth, but out of the blue, like being hit by a truck, I started thinking, What if he's lying to me?
It was completely irrational. I didn't want to feel it, but there it was, running through my mind, "What if he's lying? What if he's lying? What if he's lying?"
And all the things that happened before. And all the feelings from before. And everything I hadn't seen, and hadn't done right, and hadn't had any control over that caused me to be so deeply, deeply injured by someone evil.
I hate when people get judgmental about the time it takes to get over something. So if you're thinking that right now, I really don't want to hear it. I want to be completely over it. I want it to go away and never come back. I don't want to find myself suddenly, irrationally afraid.
I didn't want to be in that place so bad, that I knew I had to find a way to deal with it right then, in that irrational moment. My first instinct would be to talk to friends, to keep it hidden from my boyfriend, to "stay cool." And in that moment, I felt very deeply that if I tried that, it would never go away.
I've held a lot of bad feelings at bay many times in my life, and I can hold one hell of a lot of emotion in, but I just wasn't having it. I needed something to change.
Praying it wasn't a horrible mistake, I called my boyfriend back when I got to my room, and I spilled it all. "You'd tell me, right, if you were just tired and you didn't want to come? You'd just tell me the truth, not some stupid lie?"
Because the evil one could have simply told the truth - there was really no good reason not to - but he didn't. He lied to me repeatedly and ridiculously instead.
So let's just say I've developed a slight sensitivity to lying and being made a fool of. I simply can not suffer disrespect.
I would rather hear, I'm tired, and I don't want to come, then some story about spoiled milk.
But, it wasn't a story, and my boyfriend was now sick and calming down a mildly crazy person.
The hardest thing is trying to explain to someone that it truly isn't anything they've done, and that you're fully conscious that they're not lying, but you are freaking out that maybe they are. That's what he asked me about a couple days later. That he hadn't done anything to trigger my response. I said, You're right, you didn't. It was all me, and I knew it was me, and I just really needed to talk to you and tell you. I just knew that that was what I needed.
In the moment, he listened and he talked to me and I felt better. I tried to explain why I felt that I had to talk to him about it. I tried to explain that I think it's the only way to survive, and the only way to finally get through it. I told him that I thought it might be the last bit of garbage rearing its head on the way out. I believe
