Cheating

This Reddit discussion, titled Do you agree with the saying "once a cheater, always a cheater". Why or why not?, has the following top reply:

Once, no. Twice, yes.

A reply to that comment indicates a self reported study showed that people who cheated once had fifty-fifty odds of doing it again and those who cheated twice had near one hundred percent odds of continuing.

So I'm someone who cheated more than once and wants to actually figure out how happy monogamy works. I never wanted to be unfaithful and twenty years of celibacy has taught me that I CAN keep it zipped, even if I can't seem to do that while married to an asshole.

I cheated on the same person more than once, a person who out of the blue when we were both eighteen ANNOUNCED he was willing to meet my needs, all I had to do was ask.

And I TOLD him I was unfaithful the first time. Because I'm excessively honest.

We were married eight months at that point and it was STILL a secret. I was living with my parents and he was living with his parents and had a job at McDonald's and I was paying for most of our dates and had paid all the wedding expenses.

While he TRIED to get into the Air Force for a YEAR and allowed them to jerk him around and string him along because his MOTHER wanted to blame all her marital problems on the Army and didn't approve of his desire to join the Army.

While he called me fat and ugly on top of not feeling obligated to actually support his wife which had forced me to drop out of college rather than admit to my parents I was married or LIE on college financial aid forms.

And I told him I was unfaithful the second time as well. To which he replied "If you do it again, I'm leaving." 

In other words: Stupid bitch, I now make the money and incidentally support you and our child because you stupidly stood by me while I dicked around forever until I pulled my head out my ass and walked over to the army recruiter and they shipped me fairly promptly. So having been loyal to me when I was failing horribly at both being a man and a good husband, you will be out in the street with a baby as your reward rather than us wondering why you are screwing up in spite of going to enormous lengths to make this marriage work.

After seventeen years of he and I both agreeing enthusiastically that ALL problems in the bedroom were ENTIRELY my fault because I was damaged goods due to having been molested as a child AND calling me fat and ugly to my face the entire time -- while planet Earth hurled itself at me and said "Honey, you're GORGEOUS! Call ME if he isn't taking care of it!" -- AND turning me down for sex every single time I asked even though he voluntarily instructed me to JUST ASK out of the blue when we were eighteen, I finally told him one night after being turned down "If you told me your dick fell off today, at this point I would call that a convenient excuse." among other choice words.

My default wiring is faithful to a fault. It's other people who hear I was unfaithful in the past and see OPPORTUNITY and imagine I'm easy pickings for their shitty values.

And LA LA LA not listening to details like "I've been CELIBATE for medical reasons for over twenty years."

In my early to mid thirties while living on Ft. Irwin, the National Training Center for the US that sees a LOT of soldiers go through there for a short period of time every year, I went for a five mile walk with a camelback of water, something I did frequently trying to stay in shape.

Perimeter Road is about a ten mile hike. To do five, you walk halfway around the base and then cut back through the middle of the base, past shops and such while avoiding coyotes digging in the trash.

Most people on base would readily recognize that a grown assed woman on a base in the middle of fuck nowhere -- especially one too fat to BE in the Army -- has good odds of being the WIFE of someone STATIONED there. Nonetheless, some drunken eighteen or nineteen year old soldier likely there for a week or two for training stupidly said to me "You would be kind of cute if you weren't so fat."

This is one of the better anecdotes of my life because:

A. You object to my weight but are apparently not noticing that I'm nearly old enough to be your mother.

B. It's a gem for telling you what DICKS men are on a routine basis TO women they find attractive and are wanting to sleep with.

Because why else would he say shit like that to me? 

People don't run around going "As a service to the public, I'm going to help random strangers I'm unlikely to ever see again get OBJECTIVE feedback on what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong!"

No, he was hoping I'm some fatty with low self esteem because FAT who will focus on "You're kind of cute" and throw myself at his drunken idiot self. In other words, he was negging on a woman out of his league because I was too beautiful for him to have any hope of getting lucky any other way except for betting on me having low self esteem over being insulted about my weight my ENTIRE life.

Joke's on him. I was a bag of bones until age seventeen and insulted about that to my face as a child.

I've known EXACTLY two men who really gave me HELL about my weight and one is the ex husband. The other is a guy with ISSUES who owns a forum called Cyburbia which is a tale outside the scope of this post.

There's a LOT to unpack and the TLDR is if you are a WOMAN, don't put up with this shit from men. 

If he is pursuing you AND dragging you about your weight, just tell him no. He can get therapy or be some other woman's headache.

If he is dragging you about your age AND pursuing you, tell him no. Your age isn't going to change because he doesn't like it.

If your hair is too short in his opinion and he is pursuing you, tell him no if you don't have a super compelling reason for putting up with it.

You know what the super compelling reason is that MOST women put up with this SHIT?

Men make the money. 

Why do MEN make the money? Because WOMEN "stand by their man" when he's a total fucking loser and HELP him sort his shit until he walks across the hall and talks to an Army recruiter while MEN say "Honey, get therapy. Don't make the abuse you endured in the past MY problem. Get fixed or get lost."

I took a total fucking loser and turned him into a real man with a respectable career and he never thanked me. He also wouldn't FUCK ME when I ASKED like he TOLD me he would. And THAT'S why I cheated.

On the upside, he did get the hell out of my life when I told him to. The divorce was my decision and it was amicable and I didn't put up with the mountain of shit I've heard other women talk about during their divorce.

My mother told my father all the time "If I worked for a COMPANY for forty years (instead of you), I would have a retirement account."

Pursue a career, not a man. 

Stop cooking as your part of the rent while shacked up with a man not married to you while he pays for an apartment you could never afford because he will not give you alimony after YOU invest in building his career by playing unpaid SERVANT while his ego grows larger as his salary increases until he trades you in for someone younger and prettier and less whiny because she hasn't yet learned firsthand what an ungrateful, disrespectful pig he is.

Women are LETTING men do this bullshit to us.

If you feel you need to put off having a child until your thirties to have a real career, plan to get knocked up when you are ready to be a mom and raise the child ALONE.

I had no career while married because I gave up a National Merit Scholarship in part imagining he had agreed to marry me AND I couldn't count on him FEEDING the children while I was out for a few hours. 

I raised those children largely ALONE and planned around him being a useless sack of shit who did nothing for anyone but himself other than provide a paycheck while treating his paycheck like a big salary and NOT like family money, which is another long story outside the scope of this post.

Sit down and ask yourself why are you servicing him in bed if he's not doing the same for you.

Sit down and ask yourself why is it you can work all day, come home and cook for BOTH of you and he can't work all day and feed his damn self much less do half the cooking.

This is called The Second Shift and research documents that women CHOOSE pink collar ghetto jobs intentionally in order to conserve energy so they still have it to give when they get home and have to cook and clean and help kids with homework etc.

Men don't do that. They give their all at work, come home and flop down in an armchair like Archie Bunker and yell "Woman, bring me a beer." followed by "How long until dinner?"

And THAT is why MEN make the big bucks. Because they give every drop to their job and their job rewards them for it and they COUNT on heteronormative culture guaranteeing that any woman they sleep with will STUPIDLY volunteer to be his bitch in hopes of getting the good life by having a man with a good income.

Rinse and repeat and the doodoo gets deeper with every passing generation.

For the record, the first man I cheated with was my ex boyfriend that I previously slept with for about ten months.

I knew him from age six or seven and he WORSHIPPED the ground I walked on for years. He kissed me when we were about seven and I bit his lip bloody and shoved him out the tree we were standing in.

For a decade or more, he, I and both our families told both of us I was too pretty for him, too smart for him etc etc etc. I gained a lot of weight after I turned seventeen and the future ex did nothing but give me SHIT about my weight.

Meanwhile, the future ex looked like something out of Revenge of the Nerds when I first slept with him. So I kindly got him a better haircut and took him clothes shopping and put an end to him reflecting his MOTHER'S lack of taste and style.

So the first time I cheated I did so with a guy I had already slept with many times before, so it hardly felt like a big deal, and I did so because I knew he would tell me I was pretty and do something for my self esteem to repair some of the extreme damage my husband was doing to my self esteem.

I don't regret marrying my ex husband but the reality is the marriage extracted BOTH of us from extremely dysfunctional families while HE acted like HE saved ME.

If you want to believe I'm damaged goods, don't pursue me. I'm content to sleep alone.

If you aren't as loyal, dutiful, high minded, giving etc etc as I am, I don't want you and I don't need you and I don't want to hear it's somehow MY fault we can't make it work.

Because that's bullshit. And the tendency of other people to NOT be my equal and then want to somehow trash talk ME is something I've seen countless times in not only romantic relationships but so-called friendships where people use me to fix their unfixable problems as free therapy and then bail on me.

If you don't actually want a happily monogamous relationship, then I'm not the girl for you. Because other people who hear that I was UNFAITHFUL or whatever and WANT to use that as a means to establish a life of debauchery and blame me or whatever are hearing what they want to hear.

I've been CELIBATE for over twenty years. In that time, a lot of people have been interested and I have continued to sleep alone.

And rest assured no matter the details of the relationship or my circumstances, I'll dump your sorry ass too the minute I figure out what bullshit you're really up to that has nothing to do with actually for realzy realz trying to work out a happily monogamous commited relationship.

Because skanks and losers who would like to hit this are a dime a dozen and lined up down the street and around the block hoping to replace you. So I have absolutely no reason to put up with your shit while you pretend you love me.