I wrestled with the idea of infidelity for quite some time. I confess that I have “cheated” on girlfriends in the past. I’ve rarely been caught. In times of weakness and utter stupidity, I have confessed to cheating. The response is always the same: “if you wanted to be with someone else, why weren’t you honest and just tell me?” I’ve always refrained from answering that question honestly but I’ll do so now:
I didn’t tell you that I wanted us to date other people because I DID NOT want US to date other people. I may have wanted to date other women, or at a minimum, I may have wanted to have sex with another woman, but I certainly never wanted you to date or have sex with another man! That’s why I didn’t say ”ummmh, let’s date other people”.
In retrospect, I should have done things differently. I never should have promised fidelity to one woman. I should have told them all that I was too young-and maybe emotionally immature- to be devoted to A girlfriend. I should have confessed that I love women and love to get to know different women all the time and that experience sometime translates into romantic and sexual interest. Do you know that when I was a teenager I actually ”dated” the same for 5 years! It was like we were married!
But then, I was a victim of my culture. In my town, at that time, it was commonplace to have a “girlfriend”; to call someone yours; to “go with” a girl. ”Going with” someone for years at a time was commonplace. It didn’t matter that this girl and I were probably wasting each others time; that we didn’t really know what love was or what it entailed. We were teens and thought that we knew everything. She was my wife and I was her husband:)
The sad part is that my dad never pulled me to the side and said, “What the hell are you doing?… You got the rest of your life to be miserable with one person!… Why are you doing it now? You should go out and meet different women. Have fun!” He never said that. I’m gonna tell my son
