The cheating lover gets the pink slip everytime. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. They cheat, they go.
Not that I've ever had a cheating lover. Up until I met my wife I was always the one to go. Not that I cheated - well okay. Once.
But the relationship was over, I just hadn't moved out. I understand how it happened. We got together quickly. The first year was great. Then the differences started to creep in. We'd talked about kids, money all that sort of stuff; but not about where my work might take me; what I really wanted to do - what she really wanted to do; we didn't talk about what was happening when the lust settled; we didn't talk about the totality of our relationship because we weren't fully engaged with it. We were together 3 years, the last two of which kind of drifted along. One of us should have ended it, but we were both lazy. It was easier just to keep things as they were, even though neither of us was particularly happy. Not that this is any excuse.
I know now that I should have ended the relationship long before I did. It wasn't working and I should have asked myself why. It would have meant making some difficult decisions, but I would have made them cleanly. I think all too often we look for a reason to help us take a difficult decision. Falling for someone else is a reason to end a failing relationship; but it's not a good reason. Nor is it an honest reason. We don't fall for someone because they attract us more than the person we're with. We fall for someone else because we are unhappy with some element of our current relationship. So if we cheat, we're saying that we don't want to fix that element; instead we'll find a solution elsewhere.
That's why the cheating lover gets the pink slip from me; because if she really loved me, she'd fix it instead of looking for alternatives. My brain doesn't compute the "yes I cheated but I still love you" story. I know some of my friends will disagree; arguing that this is too simplistic a statement and ignores the complexities of emotion and human failings. For me, however, it is simple. You promised yourself to me and I to you. You break that promise, you lose my trust and once you have lost that, you have lost everything. I could never trust you again; and if I can't trust you, then I can't be with you.
See? Simple.
