***QUESTION FROM A READER***
Hey Alex,
I have run into some problems with an on again off again girlfriend of the past couple of years. I was cheated on by her and she lied about it. At first she claimed that she had been raped by this guy and later she confessed that she wasn’t. At the time I felt like it wasn’t really her fault and she deserved another chance but now I know that it was her fault.
I feel trapped by the situation because she is my first love and I feel like she could be the one but she has lied to me so many times before. We don’t go out now but we talk on a regular basis (she is literally obsessed with me). I feel stupid for falling for her lies over and over but I still have strong feelings for her. I have grown from the whole experience but am still very confused.
What should I do now? Should I break it off or find a way to get over it and go ahead with our new relationship?
***MY RESPONSE***
There are many people who say you can continue a relationship after being cheated on or doing the cheating. They claim that it’s possible to move on from that dark period and continue to love each other just the same as you first did when those three magical words entered the relationship.
The truth is that a relationship dies once you step outside of it, particularly in your case. It was your first love and first loves always come with a strong sense of innocence and vulnerability. The more open you are, the more it will hurt when someone betrays you like she did. Once your trust is broken it’s almost impossible to get that naive wide eyed feeling back.
It’s always a good idea to never fully trust someone until they prove that they are worthy of your trust. Blind faith will get you hurt over and over again unless you are extremely lucky.
During the time when she should have been building that trust she was sneaking around on you with another guy. Vulnerability of a first love combined with her not creating strong trust in the relationship will create a lot of trust issues.
The only way you could trust her now would be to constantly keep a close eye on her every single day or decide to ignore your intuition all together. You can only ignore your intuition about someone for so long so we will go with the other solution: constant surveillance.
Only after months (maybe years) of close observation could you trust that she won’t cheat on you again. Constantly checking her emails, phone calls, texts for any signs of infidelity.
The problem with this solution is that your paranoia and watching her every move will cause her to lose attraction for you. This could lead her to cheat on you again or even worse stay in a non-attraction based relationship.
Then there is the question of why she is talking to you now. It could be that she genuinely wants to be with you and loves you. But there is also a chance that she is doing it out of guilt over what she did in the past. By making you happy and giving you what you want she can finally shed the guilt that has been corroding her thoughts.
There are some people who make a mistake of cheating once, come clean and break it off the relationship. They wronged the other person because the relationship wasn’t working in the first place. It was a mistake but they had enough respect not to continue to hurt the other person.
Then there is the other group of people who cheat because they believe sex is their only value. In a new relationship they feel amazing when they hear ‘I love you’ and their self esteem rises. After a while of hearing the L word on a daily basis it starts to lose it’s value and so do they. Restlessness starts to kick in and they begin to try and gather value from another source and so cheating begins.
Another reason for wanting to be with you is that she misses someone who idealizes her. Having a person look at you like you like you are the most beautiful creator that ever existed feels good. She longs to see you look at her with those loving and adoring eyes.
You need to ask yourself “is she in it for me or the way I feel about her?” If it’s the way that you feel about her then just about anyone could take your place. Any schmuck could kiss up to her and make her out to be a goddess.
The point is that you don’t fully know why she wants to be with you. I know that you deeply wish that she wants you simply for you but what if you are wrong. If you miscalculate the situation the pain that you feel now will become much greater. Pulling yourself out it will become much harder to do.
People never enjoy feeling dumb for letting others take advantage of them. It hurts the ego to such a great degree that they avoid it at all costs. If it does happen they respond by either trying to run from it or trying to mend the situation. This could possible be part of your motivation for wanting to be with her.
If you call it quits with this girl right now you will have to admit that you made a mistake and continued to do so for several years. The longer you go in the wrong direction the harder it becomes to stop. Foolish pride will often force people to continue on the wayward path instead of admitting that they were wrong.
Part of the reason why you want to be with her could stem from your desire to avoid owning up to your mistakes. You hope that she is “the one” because if she is then you get to avoid the embarrassment of sticking it out for all those years only to end up with nothing.
You mentioned that she told you she was raped by him but it turned out that she was just covering her ass. There are little white lies and then there are lies that are extremely disturbing. The lie that she told could have created a very awful situation for you or him. What if you had gotten enraged and gone to fight the guy? Taken a baseball bat to his head? Assault with a deadly weapon would have ended up with you being raped behind bars.
She endangered the lives of two people because she couldn’t tell the truth. That’s extremely neurotic and she needs to seek the help of a therapist as soon as possible. If she didn’t seek psychological help to fix her deep seeded problems then she will still be the same person. When you are that messed up to cry rape you can’t get over it without years of therapy. Has she done that?
You mentioned that she could be the one but I have some harsh truth for you…there is no such thing as the one. There is not just one person out there that is your twin flame or soul mate or someone who will complete you. It’s a concept created to make relationships and married seem more romantic then they really. And to sell more Meg Ryan movies.
With three and a half billion women walking the planet today statistically speaking there are thousands (if not millions) of women who will be almost exactly the same as this one girl. There will be tons of women who share the good qualities that this girl posses but without all the complications.
If it was me I would walk away from her completely. If you decide to stay you might end up losing those rose colored glasses you are wearing and see the situation for what it is and her for who she is. At that point you might be married with three kids and a mortgage, making it very difficult to break free of this woman.
This advice is coming from experience because I was in a very similar situation when I was younger. This girl I was dating claimed that she raped by one of her “friends” despite the fact that she continued to hang out with him. It was a lie but I was too blind to see the situation for what was really going on. Luckily I woke up before something bad happened like getting married or contracting an std.
If you choose to stay single the first thing you need to do is break ALL contact with this girl. No sobbing good byes or one last lay. No talking. No texting. No emails. Nothing.
When she is in your life in some form your judgment becomes skewed by your loving feelings. Around her the truth gets buried deep beneath the tingle she sends up your leg. Remove her from the equation and take the time to look at your relationship and her from an OBJECTIVE point of view.
Not having any contact with her will be quite difficult at first because of your history together. You’re an addict and she is your fix. Remove her from your facebook, block her email and even go as far as block her phone number so as to have no temptation.
Become disciplined in your decision to never see her again. Over time the truth about her will start to rise to the surface. Loneliness and confusion will be against you but your resolve will lead you to do a day where everything becomes clear. In one monumental moment everything will hit you like a ton of bricks and you will no longer miss her.
She will go from a painfully cruel joke to just a joke. You will look back upon it and barely believe that it was you in that tragic tale.
Hey Alex,
I have run into some problems with an on again off again girlfriend of the past couple of years. I was cheated on by her and she lied about it. At first she claimed that she had been raped by this guy and later she confessed that she wasn’t. At the time I felt like it wasn’t really her fault and she deserved another chance but now I know that it was her fault.
I feel trapped by the situation because she is my first love and I feel like she could be the one but she has lied to me so many times before. We don’t go out now but we talk on a regular basis (she is literally obsessed with me). I feel stupid for falling for her lies over and over but I still have strong feelings for her. I have grown from the whole experience but am still very confused.
What should I do now? Should I break it off or find a way to get over it and go ahead with our new relationship?
***MY RESPONSE***
There are many people who say you can continue a relationship after being cheated on or doing the cheating. They claim that it’s possible to move on from that dark period and continue to love each other just the same as you first did when those three magical words entered the relationship.
The truth is that a relationship dies once you step outside of it, particularly in your case. It was your first love and first loves always come with a strong sense of innocence and vulnerability. The more open you are, the more it will hurt when someone betrays you like she did. Once your trust is broken it’s almost impossible to get that naive wide eyed feeling back.
It’s always a good idea to never fully trust someone until they prove that they are worthy of your trust. Blind faith will get you hurt over and over again unless you are extremely lucky.
During the time when she should have been building that trust she was sneaking around on you with another guy. Vulnerability of a first love combined with her not creating strong trust in the relationship will create a lot of trust issues.
The only way you could trust her now would be to constantly keep a close eye on her every single day or decide to ignore your intuition all together. You can only ignore your intuition about someone for so long so we will go with the other solution: constant surveillance.
Only after months (maybe years) of close observation could you trust that she won’t cheat on you again. Constantly checking her emails, phone calls, texts for any signs of infidelity.
The problem with this solution is that your paranoia and watching her every move will cause her to lose attraction for you. This could lead her to cheat on you again or even worse stay in a non-attraction based relationship.
Then there is the question of why she is talking to you now. It could be that she genuinely wants to be with you and loves you. But there is also a chance that she is doing it out of guilt over what she did in the past. By making you happy and giving you what you want she can finally shed the guilt that has been corroding her thoughts.
There are some people who make a mistake of cheating once, come clean and break it off the relationship. They wronged the other person because the relationship wasn’t working in the first place. It was a mistake but they had enough respect not to continue to hurt the other person.
Then there is the other group of people who cheat because they believe sex is their only value. In a new relationship they feel amazing when they hear ‘I love you’ and their self esteem rises. After a while of hearing the L word on a daily basis it starts to lose it’s value and so do they. Restlessness starts to kick in and they begin to try and gather value from another source and so cheating begins.
Another reason for wanting to be with you is that she misses someone who idealizes her. Having a person look at you like you like you are the most beautiful creator that ever existed feels good. She longs to see you look at her with those loving and adoring eyes.
You need to ask yourself “is she in it for me or the way I feel about her?” If it’s the way that you feel about her then just about anyone could take your place. Any schmuck could kiss up to her and make her out to be a goddess.
The point is that you don’t fully know why she wants to be with you. I know that you deeply wish that she wants you simply for you but what if you are wrong. If you miscalculate the situation the pain that you feel now will become much greater. Pulling yourself out it will become much harder to do.
People never enjoy feeling dumb for letting others take advantage of them. It hurts the ego to such a great degree that they avoid it at all costs. If it does happen they respond by either trying to run from it or trying to mend the situation. This could possible be part of your motivation for wanting to be with her.
If you call it quits with this girl right now you will have to admit that you made a mistake and continued to do so for several years. The longer you go in the wrong direction the harder it becomes to stop. Foolish pride will often force people to continue on the wayward path instead of admitting that they were wrong.
Part of the reason why you want to be with her could stem from your desire to avoid owning up to your mistakes. You hope that she is “the one” because if she is then you get to avoid the embarrassment of sticking it out for all those years only to end up with nothing.
You mentioned that she told you she was raped by him but it turned out that she was just covering her ass. There are little white lies and then there are lies that are extremely disturbing. The lie that she told could have created a very awful situation for you or him. What if you had gotten enraged and gone to fight the guy? Taken a baseball bat to his head? Assault with a deadly weapon would have ended up with you being raped behind bars.
She endangered the lives of two people because she couldn’t tell the truth. That’s extremely neurotic and she needs to seek the help of a therapist as soon as possible. If she didn’t seek psychological help to fix her deep seeded problems then she will still be the same person. When you are that messed up to cry rape you can’t get over it without years of therapy. Has she done that?
You mentioned that she could be the one but I have some harsh truth for you…there is no such thing as the one. There is not just one person out there that is your twin flame or soul mate or someone who will complete you. It’s a concept created to make relationships and married seem more romantic then they really. And to sell more Meg Ryan movies.
With three and a half billion women walking the planet today statistically speaking there are thousands (if not millions) of women who will be almost exactly the same as this one girl. There will be tons of women who share the good qualities that this girl posses but without all the complications.
If it was me I would walk away from her completely. If you decide to stay you might end up losing those rose colored glasses you are wearing and see the situation for what it is and her for who she is. At that point you might be married with three kids and a mortgage, making it very difficult to break free of this woman.
This advice is coming from experience because I was in a very similar situation when I was younger. This girl I was dating claimed that she raped by one of her “friends” despite the fact that she continued to hang out with him. It was a lie but I was too blind to see the situation for what was really going on. Luckily I woke up before something bad happened like getting married or contracting an std.
If you choose to stay single the first thing you need to do is break ALL contact with this girl. No sobbing good byes or one last lay. No talking. No texting. No emails. Nothing.
When she is in your life in some form your judgment becomes skewed by your loving feelings. Around her the truth gets buried deep beneath the tingle she sends up your leg. Remove her from the equation and take the time to look at your relationship and her from an OBJECTIVE point of view.
Not having any contact with her will be quite difficult at first because of your history together. You’re an addict and she is your fix. Remove her from your facebook, block her email and even go as far as block her phone number so as to have no temptation.
Become disciplined in your decision to never see her again. Over time the truth about her will start to rise to the surface. Loneliness and confusion will be against you but your resolve will lead you to do a day where everything becomes clear. In one monumental moment everything will hit you like a ton of bricks and you will no longer miss her.
She will go from a painfully cruel joke to just a joke. You will look back upon it and barely believe that it was you in that tragic tale.