I Cheated

And didn't regret it

Dear Baby Maybe,

I am currently in our longest and … only long term relationship. Before I met him, no relationship lasted more than a few months, the longest being eight months. And when I look back, the three most significant of those relationships were all with men I ultimately cheated on.

In retrospect, these were all relationships I probably shouldn’t have been in. Either because I wasn’t ready, he wasn’t right, or we weren’t compatible. My college romance with Lands, I was not ready for. And ironically, I met him while I was still with Caleb. Caleb should never have become my boyfriend, but we were quickly convinced when an older guy put in that much effort. Matthew was a different story, and the hardest one for me to think about today.

You’ll meet Matthew on a dating app when you’re about 25 years old. You’ll be selling merch in a Broadway theatre and he’ll be doing hair in another, so you’ll go on dates in Times Square and Hell’s Kitchen and start to bloom what feels like your first adult relationship. Matthew is the first guy you’ll date who lives alone, has a good job, and a steady life. Matthew is the first guy you’ll date where thinking about the future doesn’t just feel like a fantasy. But that future will also look different than the future you might want. Matthew won’t want you to meet his family, protecting you from their bigotry. He also wants to live alone for his whole life, his ideal being separate apartments in the same building. At the time that relationship would have worked for me. But knowing the person I grew into since then, I can’t imagine it would have worked out.

After a month or several weeks of dating, you’ll have the relationship-defining conversation with Matthew. You’ll talk about the terms boyfriend and partner, and ultimately decide to call each other “special someone“ to avoid complicating either of your baggage. You’ll also talk about how different this relationship feels. Matthew will tell you that you’re not like other people he’s met. Everyone else feels like they’re looking for the next best thing while they’re talking to you. But you will be focused on Matthew. And that’s true. You won’t think much about other people, you’ll be very happy to start to settle into something real. I also know at some point early in our dating the topic of monogamy and open relationships came up, because I’d been in a few. But Matthew will make it abundantly clear to you that is not something he wants. And I didn’t consider it a necessary thing, so it wasn’t talked about again.

Matthew is one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet. He’s a sweet guy who loves so wholly. He knew I loved corny dad jokes, and would keep a note on his phone of ones he heard or thought of so he could tell them to me on out next date. He was such a champion of all the weird work I was doing, and defended my identity with a ferocity I had not experienced before. He’ll be your first true partner, even though he doesn’t like to use that term, and one of the people in our life who raised the bar on how we deserve to be treated.

Quickly after you become official, Matthew will get an incredible career opportunity that will take him out of town for three months. After celebrating, he will tell you that he understands if it’s too early in your relationship for him to leave. I remember being so thrown off because I didn’t for a second consider that I wouldn’t wait for him. He will leave the city for three months and you’ll actually be fine. You’ll text every day, with occasional calls, and that genuinely will be enough for you.

Now, I’ve told you that you’re going to grow up to have a damaged relationship to sex and intimacy. And in the alternate version of these events, our special someone being gone for 3 months would not go over well. It’s probably the longest span of time you’ll spend not having sex since college. And there’s a very very high chance you’d get lonely, feel abandoned, and go meet a stranger in a hotel room. But that thought never crossed your mind. You didn’t even think about downloading an app to meet someone else. Matthew, even as a glorified pen pal in your phone, is enough for you.

It’s not until after Matthew gets back that something shifts. I don’t know what changed exactly, other than time passed, but suddenly your intimacy will feel disconnected. You won’t feel Matthew participating, and a whole lot of your investment in a relationship hinges on your physical chemistry. But you love him, so you keep going. You keep dating a man who barely touches you. You stay with a guy you never get to make out with. You hold hands on the way to his apartment only to be asked to leave before he goes to bed because he doesn’t like sleeping next to you. You try to talk to him about it, but he blames his body image issues. You don’t really see the connection there, because you don’t mind when he keeps his shirt on or how he has insecurities. You mind that you don’t feel important. You feel like he’s not meeting the bar that he raised on how you should be treated. And you feel like there’s no reaction from him when you beg for some affection.

After a few conversations about this, you’ll be sitting at the edge of his bed crying and begging him to touch you. Not necessarily in a sexual way, you just want to be held or something, anything. But he’ll just sit there and watch you cry. Before you leave that night, you’ll tell him you want to have sex. You deserve to have good sex, and you would love for it to be with him. You don’t mean that night, you’re not pressuring him into anything, but you deserve to feel desired by your special someone. Up until that point I’d been getting him off while feeling ignored. I don’t even remember if he kissed me goodnight that night.

That weekend, Matthew will go out of town for a gig. Just one weekend this time. But since you’ve been having issues with feeling desirable, this time you actually do download an app where you can meet someone. And you do. You meet up with a man who has offered to give you a massage, knowing the massage won’t be rated PG. But I think you think that telling yourself it’s just a massage pads the guilt of making the decision you’re ultimately making. And here’s the brutal truth, it was more than a massage. But I have no idea who that man was. Because I was wishing and imagining it was Matthew the whole time. I was pretending we had never lost our dynamic and we were in sync and he found me beautiful and he wanted to touch me. It wasn’t until my walk home that I finally admitted to myself that what I had just done was cheat on the man I love.

I called my best friend to talk about it and she asked me how I felt. And I said good. I didn’t regret it. I told him I deserved to have good sex, and then I met someone who would make me feel good. I didn’t love the undercurrent of what it all meant, and I probably should have just ended the relationship before it happened, but I didn’t necessarily regret it. I regret how it would make Matthew feel. I regret breaking his trust and his heart all at once when I went to go tell him about it. But as I sat there in his bed holding him while he sobbed into my chest, I realized that I was doing for him what I had been begging him to do for me. I was holding him. I was hurting him, but I was also taking care of him as a result of that pain. And in that moment, I was okay with it ending.

Matthew didn’t forgive me. I never saw him again, except once across a train platform. And while I wish it had ended differently, I don’t really regret what I did. I tried to tell him beforehand, and neither of us were brave enough to know that should have been the end. But what I learned from this is that I don’t really understand the concept of cheating. Maybe it’s just because it hasn’t been done to me, but I really don’t understand the big deal. I understand having boundaries around safety and personal health and whatnot, but I don’t really care if my partner has sex with someone else. And now I’m in an open relationship. Which makes sense for me, because I know that one person doesn’t have to be my everything. If Matthew had been open to the idea of an open relationship, I still don’t think we would have been together forever. But I do think the ending would have been easier for him.

Ultimately Matthew and I were not right for each other. We might have been compatible, but our baggage wasn’t. I like to say we were broken in ways that didn’t fit together. I wish I had seen it sooner instead of shattering his trust in irreparable ways. But at that stage of my life, I would have rather hold onto a dying relationship than admit that it isn’t working. I wish I had the courage to tell him it was over instead of telling him that I had cheated. But in the end, I might regret how it happened, but I don’t regret that it did.

Your Future,

Mae