Partners who cheat on their spouses are trash; and don’t say “we’re going through something”. You’re putting someone through something. It just doesn’t “happen” either. It’s a series of choices, each one a betrayal.

Have you ever been cheated on? I have, and I can tell you that it absolutely sucks. Pain and heartbreak varies. There are different types, and I don’t think there’s ever been a pain quite so unique as being cheated on. It’s just different.

For me, (and this was a very long time ago and I’m way past it), it was what ended a one year relationship. I guess I should have known something was wrong because that weekend we kept missing each other. We both knew we needed to see each other but we couldn’t sync up. She’d reach out to me, I’d reach out to her, but we kept missing each other.

The night I knew something was wrong, I woke up in the middle of the night, scared, confused, worried, and profoundly sad, and I curled up in fetal position and just started crying my eyes out. I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew it hurt very, very much.

The only way I could explain it is to say that there was always a kind of tether between me and her. It was like a connection we had. I could always feel her. That night, I physically felt that tether break. I know how it sounds, but it felt like my heart was snapped by a rubber band that broke after it’s been stretched too far.

What made me cry though, was that I felt the connection that she and I had just disappear, like it never existed.

Well, I kept trying to reach her after, but she ghosted me for a while, which hurt just as bad, and when we talked some time later, after which she confirmed that she cheated, (I didn’t tell her how I knew), and we officially broke up.

One day you’re talking about marriage and weddings, and the next you’re listening to your girl tell you about how she went out with a friend and ended up in some other dude’s bed. I’m not sure I can adequately express the betrayal I felt.

Since that day, I’ve run across multiple accounts of cheaters and their victims – and yes, I meant to use the word victim – and there were always the same things said.

They’d say, “it was an accident,” or “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” or “it just happened,” and many similar sayings.

The reason I’m writing this today, my first observational hazard, is because of another cheating story I read about.

I won’t share her information without her permission, but the gist of her story is that her husband cheated on her with different women over the years, and the last woman he cheated with, he was also giving her money for her bills.

When she found out, it became a public spectacle with videos circling around the Internet.

At one point, before they broke up, they were on a live together. She was trying to decide whether or not to fight for their relationship, and he was very defensive.

Then I heard him say something that took me back to my ex when she cheated.

He said, “we’re going through something right now. She’s hurt,” and went on to say how he’s going to make it right and how people “go through things” and how “it is what it is” and he showed absolutely no remorse. She was in tears and couldn’t even look at the camera.

And I wanted to shout, “y’all ain’t going through something right now. You’re putting her through something and she’s hurt because you hurt her. She’s a victim!”

I don’t know how many videos I’ve seen or stories I’ve read by people being cheated on, but the cheater always seems to have an excuse or a reason; man or woman makes no difference.

Well, now it’s time for me to say what needs to be said.

Cheating is not a mistake. It’s not accidental. It doesn’t “just happen” – cheating is a series of conscious decisions that are each betrayals of the person you’re with.

In order to cheat in a relationship you have to do a few things that are deliberate decisions.

You have to:

Entertain the person you’re going to cheat with. Whether it’s talking or flirting, you have to entertain them.

Then you have to lie to your partner, or be ready with one in case they ask questions about who you’re talking to. Deleting messages, secret accounts, a different phone… it’s deception.

Then you have to make plans to meet up – where, when, how – even more deception and lies because you have to hide it from your partner.

Then you have to actually meet up, go inside, make out, get naked, have sex…

At any point from the time you met that person, you could have thought about your partner and said, “you know what? This is wrong. I shouldn’t. I can’t do this to him/her“.

Even at the point of making out, before the clothes come off, you could have thought about your partner.

But you didn’t. You just kept making one decision after the other, and betraying the person you’re with again, and again, and again.

Let’s be clear, the cheating isn’t the sex alone. All of it is the cheating.

From the moment you realized there was more than something just plutonic and you decided to entertain that person, that’s when the cheating started.

Now, I’m not sharing this just to put beans out there and make a point. I’m sharing this because I’m tired of the lies that downplay just how bad cheating is, like it’s something you can just get over or ignore.

Truth is, infidelity is one of three acceptable reasons for divorce, those being adultery/fornication (cheating), abandonment/desertion, and abuse. If it’s serious enough for God to allow it, then you know it’s bad.

And I’m sharing this to dispel the notion that cheaters are somehow victims too; that they just fell into something unwittingly or made a mistake.

There is not, “I didn’t mean to” with a cheater. They were being selfish and deceitful, and they made an entire series of decisions from the very beginning.

Now, I’m not saying a cheater can’t change or a person can’t be tricked or fooled, but let’s be honest, if it was by coercion or force, then it’s not cheating – they were raped.

But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about people who willingly cheat and make victims of their partners.

It’s not my place to say forgive or don’t forgive. That’s not what this is about either.

What this is about, is making it plain as day as to what cheating is, and my hope is that people read this and understand what cheating is and does, so that either they don’t accept the excuses from cheaters, or become a cheater themselves.

That way, there are less broken hearts, broken relationships, broken families, and broken people in the world.

Don’t cheat.