Hello, I'm a serial cheater
Hello, I’m a serial cheater. I may be a sex addict.
Never is enough enough. I have ruined every relationship I have ever been in, because of my addiction to sex. I rarely find satisfaction mental or physically from a sexual relationship or affair. I used to say that it was because she wasn’t good enough, experienced enough, or whatever. But the truth is, I wasn’t good enough. I didn't feel like I was loved or able to love myself enough to let someone love me.
I am an expert at not getting caught.
For years, and years, I would always be in relationships with people that were loose and non-committed. But that really didn’t matter. If the relationship got too real or committed, then I would just cheat on the person, sometimes for year snap dryers with multiple partners, sometimes multiple partners in the same evening or afternoon. It never made me feel good about myself, except in the most passing minute of feeling like a Grand Male Sex God. It was all a lie. I was lying to myself. I was lying to whomever my partner or partners was or were. But the hardest thing was that I was lying to myself.
I couldn’t understand how so many of my friends could be with only one person. How could they get married and be satisfied with only one person? I dated a lot. I often dated people who shared my polygamous ideas. But rarely would any of these women feel the same extreme pull that I had with me all the time. I would tell myself and whomever was supporting my behavior that I was just “Doing my own thing.” and that “I never made anyone any promises of fidelity.” But in truth, if I had made these promises, I would have broken them. I would have broken them all.
I also feel that it is likely that it will come as no surprise, that in every other aspect of my life, I am a stand up guy. I am true to my word and my friends and family, neighbours, and stagers would all come to my side and say similarly positive things about my behavior and about my character.
I cheat. In every way imaginable I cheat. At least, I did cheat. Why?
I used to say it was cool to have many, many lovers. I was being an Alpha Male, getting women into bed all the time. I loved it when every woman who said something about sex with me said, I was the best they had ever had. But it was still never enough. I had a job that allowed me to be around many single or sort of single women and I took every advantage to get as many of them into bed as possible. The only consequences I ever worried about were sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies. I have never had any STDs, lucky and prepared, and I have only had one pregnancy, my lovely daughter. Her mother had told me she was on the pill, but her mother had wanted to get pregnant. She had her own level of deceptions that she put on me. But either way, I am speaking about my addiction.
I have been in therapy for years about any number of issues. But the main focus of the past few months has been on me learning the reasons I needed to cheat, the reasons I needed ruin my relationships. Why did I feel the need to take the chance to destroy the happiness that was given to me? For decades of my adult life, I had avoided committed relationships. When I found myself close to someone and it ended, I always blamed the other person. I never looked into myself for any blame, for any guilt. I would just feel badly for a while and move on toward the next, new pre-romance, romance, break up sequence that I know so well. I hate myself for bringing myself so frequently to “Rock Bottom,” but I have never been able to stop myself. I see what Im doing. I hate the feelings it brings up in me. But I know that it is only a matter of time, before I start looking up old phone numbers and preparing new dialogues for old flames about “How much fun we had when we were together.” It was all a lie. I used to have a lot of long and very long distance partners, who were never a threat to my autonomy or my cheating. And since there was never a conversation about commitment, I was always OK in my own version of this truth.
Finally, at the beginning of June 2015, I met someone. I was scared. This person made me feel unlike any other person I had ever known. The sex was good. It was not the most exciting. I never had the desire to race toward her and have the regular physical contact with her. Instead, I found myself wanting to be with her, honestly and completely. After two months, I introduced her to my daughter. She introduced me and my daughter to her mother and family. We had met a lot of each other friends. I was thinking to myself, I want this relationship to work. But I still found myself not cutting all ties to other women completely. At first, I thought I was just being careful. Maybe she was “The One” and maybe she was just another pretty face, another temporary pretty face.
When all my conversations about her to my friends, became conversations about her and me and our future together, I realized, she was not just another pretty face, another temporary pretty face. When I would talk to other women, in the standard way I had of implying a chance to meet up in our futures, when the time was good for both of us, I would leave the conversations feeling sick to my stomach. I felt a desire to not hurt my current partner. And yet, I was worried that it would only be a matter of time before I did. This wonderful girl told me very early on in our relationship that infidelity ruined her first marriage and she would never tolerate it again. I did not know when we were committed to each other and only each other. She is now 37. I am now 47.
The only defense I have is pathetic. We never had the “Let’s be boyfriend/girlfriend” conversation. We never had the “Let’s be monogamous” conversation. But it was implied. And I knew it was implied. She said to me just the one time, “I love you.” It was about 6:45 AM on the morning of July 29, 2015, as she kissed me and got out of our bed, my bed. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “I love you, baby.” I played like I was still asleep, and I didn’t respond. I was scared. Did I love her? If I loved her, then she could hurt me. Everyone else who ever said she loved me had hurt me. But there it was, out there. And I chickened out. For weeks, we never mentioned it. She never said it to me again. She stayed at my house close to 100 of the 130 nights we were together. The only nights she didn’t stay at my house were the nights that my daughter stayed at my house. As we both thought it was inappropriate for a child of 12 to see her and me together without being married. Yes, it was completely implied that she and I were together as a
couple. And I was terrified. Please, please don’t backslide into cheating on her.
It got even more serious to me, when one evening about 10 weeks into our dating, at the end of August, she said to me, as an answer to my question about why she didn’t have any children, “I do want children.” And then, it hit me like a ton of unavoidable bricks. This wonderful woman, the most wonderful woman I had ever known was wanting a family. And she was wanting a family with me. What did I want?
I needed a moment to process this information. I didn’t know, if I wanted to have another child or more children. And now, this woman who clearly and truly loves me is implying that she wants to have children, and she wants to have children with me. Now, we’re off to the races. Can I be a loyal and good husband to her? As far as being a father goes, I am exceptional. But then, there is the lingering anger at myself, What would I think if my daughter were dating someone like I am, or like I had been? I would hate this guy. It was the love for my daughter that finally pushed me toward demanding better relationship behavior from me. And here I was facing its first true test. I kept saying, “This is a man’s decision. I need to take a moment to really think about whether I want to have more children or not. And if I don’t, then i don’t want to waste some of my girl’s “baby making years” wondering if I wanted to grab hold of her hand and jump off a cliff together in to the unknowns of parenthood.” There were other concerns that were not as important. But there were other concerns.
There had always been shadow women in my life. Women, who if all the stars lined up perfectly, then I would have taken advantage of the situation and had a quick and maybe in a few years, a repeatable fling or affair. But these women were not my concern. This new nearly girlfriend of mine had removed all or most all of the temptations of other women, merely by how much she showered me with love, regularly and consistently, and how strangely wonderful it felt to feel so much love directed at me, all the time. The only fault that I can give her is that she did all this very quickly. I had no frame of reference for such happiness. It scared me, threw me off “my game,” and swept me off my feet. But I was getting used to it. And it was wonderful. The hitch came with a woman. This other woman was a very good friend of mine. She had known me through some of the most dark and sad periods in my life post divorce and terrible custody battle issue with my ex-wife. She was a long distance and every few months friend with benefits. This woman loved me and I loved her. But when i met my new girlfriend early in the summer, I could no longer see my long distance friend as anything other than a distraction and shamefully on my part, I began to see her love and emotion to me as an annoyance. Over this past summer of 2015, I tried on several occasions to tell my long distance friend, that things had changed and that we should see other people, and that I had started to see other people. i never mentioned that I was seeing only the one other person. I was trying to spare her feelings. I was trying to spare both of their feelings.
After four months of a wonderfully growing relationship with my near girlfriend here in New Orleans, and blowing off offers to visit and come to visit my “special friend” in Florida, I knew I needed to end things with her. I felt I needed to end things with her face-to-face. I thought that an email or telephone call would have been the coward’s way out of doing the man’s thing of facing my situation and giving her the respect and courtesy of a face-to-face goodbye, and I do hope we can remain friends, but knowing that retaining a friendship was unlikely. I was saddened by this decision I made and the drive i was going to take, but I had made up my mind. I wanted to be with my near girlfriend. I wanted to come to her with a clear heart and conscious and ask her to be my girlfriend, knowing that this decision would lead to her becoming my fiancee, wife, and mother of our children and step mother to my daughter.
I didn’t tell my near girl friend what I was planning to do or why. I just told her I was going out of town for a few days. I needed some time to think, The open road has always been therapeutic for me in this way. When I arrived in Florida, we began a three day conversation of “Goodbye.” On several occasions, she tried to convince me that we could stay long distance friends and she would take whatever love I had to spare for her and she would be happy with whatever I had to give her. I felt that this exploitation was completely unfair. She tried very hard to convince me, and I nearly let her. I did break her heart. My idea was not to tell my near girlfriend, who is warm and sweet and with a kind and loving heart that I was going to Florida to tie up some loose ends, which would likely involve breaking a girl’s heart so I could be with you freely and clearly. I didn’t want her to think that there was any negativity attached to our relationship. I never wanted her to feel badly about anything that had to do with her and me. It seems like I managed to screw everything up completely. The best laid plans of mice and men. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Insert third generic literary cliche here.
Here’s the rub. My near girlfriend, who is not just loving and kind , warm hearted and beautiful is also smart and scarred. She added up the possibilities of me being a cheater and the motive and opportunities i had created and came up with a logical, and if she had known about my past, historically accurate assessment of what I may have been doing when I left town on any of my road trips, and specifically this road trip. Her feelings were crushed. Her heart is broken. She will not speak to me. She has even let me off the hook for blame, citing that “You never made any promises to me. I just thought this was going somewhere and clearly it is not.” I am sure there is some huge Karma that I am paying for here and now for all the lies and cheating I had done in the past. But truly, and with all the love in my heart for this girl, my hand to God, I was trying to set things straight, do the manly thing, save my long distance friend some integrity and give her proper closure. I was just a big dummy. Had I known that what I was doing would have had the exact opposite effect, for which I was aiming, then I would have never done it. I did lie or at least mislead my current partner. But I rationalized that it was the kind of lie like, “I’m not planning a surprise birthday party for you.” Rather than the lie, that ‘I’m not driving to Florida to cheat on you.”
She has broken off all communication with me. Refuses to see me. Has blocked my number from her phone. She and her friends have ‘unfriended” me from the Facebook. I have tried every avenue to reopen communication with her, writing a letters to her, a letter to her friend, even a letter to her mother, but nothing has worked. I feel now, as she has put it to me that any further attempts to contact her are frightening her that I must let her be alone, either permanently or for a good few weeks. The irony of this result from what I had hoped would be a new start with a woman I would love for the long run is crushingly sad. And now I hear that she is back with her old, ex boyfriend, only three weeks after this transpired between her and me.
I hope that in a few weeks or a month or so, she will speak to me and I will be able to explain what I did and why. Right now, She doesn’t hear anything I say. I am proud of myself for the way I did handle the situation. The outcome could have been a lot better. She taught me that it is OK to be vulnerable and to open myself up to love and being loved. Because for most all of my life, I have never felt worthy of love from a romantic partner. It is a long shot that she and I will be able to mend this fence and move on toward a life of happiness and fulfillment together. But it may happen, if I don’t make things even more of a grand mess. Yet, if it doesn’t work out with her, then I do know that I have grown, somewhat, in baby, baby steps to becoming a man, who deserves to be loved well, and who in turn can openly and without fear, love someone else. Maybe in a few weeks or a few months, I will be in a happier place. I know that I need to stay in therapy, to keep talking about what triggers or what used to trigger my poor behavioral choices. And if I can sit in another welcoming group again, then I will do that as well. The worst thing for me right now, is that I hurt someone who clearly and truly loved me. Even though my intentions were good, I didn’t know yet, how to be honest with her about who i was and what I was working through. I mean seriously, how do I tell your partner, who is scarred from infidelity, which broke up her first marriage that I struggle impulse control. But with her with me, it was easier than ever before. I should have had the courage to talk to her. I love her. She loves or loved me. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. “Hey, I’ve cheated on every girlfriend, whether real or implied, I’ve ever been with, but I’m in therapy now, I’ve recognized I have a problem, and I am working to manage it. Please, trust me not to break your heart. Damn…
Thank you for your time and attention.
Never is enough enough. I have ruined every relationship I have ever been in, because of my addiction to sex. I rarely find satisfaction mental or physically from a sexual relationship or affair. I used to say that it was because she wasn’t good enough, experienced enough, or whatever. But the truth is, I wasn’t good enough. I didn't feel like I was loved or able to love myself enough to let someone love me.
I am an expert at not getting caught.
For years, and years, I would always be in relationships with people that were loose and non-committed. But that really didn’t matter. If the relationship got too real or committed, then I would just cheat on the person, sometimes for year snap dryers with multiple partners, sometimes multiple partners in the same evening or afternoon. It never made me feel good about myself, except in the most passing minute of feeling like a Grand Male Sex God. It was all a lie. I was lying to myself. I was lying to whomever my partner or partners was or were. But the hardest thing was that I was lying to myself.
I couldn’t understand how so many of my friends could be with only one person. How could they get married and be satisfied with only one person? I dated a lot. I often dated people who shared my polygamous ideas. But rarely would any of these women feel the same extreme pull that I had with me all the time. I would tell myself and whomever was supporting my behavior that I was just “Doing my own thing.” and that “I never made anyone any promises of fidelity.” But in truth, if I had made these promises, I would have broken them. I would have broken them all.
I also feel that it is likely that it will come as no surprise, that in every other aspect of my life, I am a stand up guy. I am true to my word and my friends and family, neighbours, and stagers would all come to my side and say similarly positive things about my behavior and about my character.
I cheat. In every way imaginable I cheat. At least, I did cheat. Why?
I used to say it was cool to have many, many lovers. I was being an Alpha Male, getting women into bed all the time. I loved it when every woman who said something about sex with me said, I was the best they had ever had. But it was still never enough. I had a job that allowed me to be around many single or sort of single women and I took every advantage to get as many of them into bed as possible. The only consequences I ever worried about were sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies. I have never had any STDs, lucky and prepared, and I have only had one pregnancy, my lovely daughter. Her mother had told me she was on the pill, but her mother had wanted to get pregnant. She had her own level of deceptions that she put on me. But either way, I am speaking about my addiction.
I have been in therapy for years about any number of issues. But the main focus of the past few months has been on me learning the reasons I needed to cheat, the reasons I needed ruin my relationships. Why did I feel the need to take the chance to destroy the happiness that was given to me? For decades of my adult life, I had avoided committed relationships. When I found myself close to someone and it ended, I always blamed the other person. I never looked into myself for any blame, for any guilt. I would just feel badly for a while and move on toward the next, new pre-romance, romance, break up sequence that I know so well. I hate myself for bringing myself so frequently to “Rock Bottom,” but I have never been able to stop myself. I see what Im doing. I hate the feelings it brings up in me. But I know that it is only a matter of time, before I start looking up old phone numbers and preparing new dialogues for old flames about “How much fun we had when we were together.” It was all a lie. I used to have a lot of long and very long distance partners, who were never a threat to my autonomy or my cheating. And since there was never a conversation about commitment, I was always OK in my own version of this truth.
Finally, at the beginning of June 2015, I met someone. I was scared. This person made me feel unlike any other person I had ever known. The sex was good. It was not the most exciting. I never had the desire to race toward her and have the regular physical contact with her. Instead, I found myself wanting to be with her, honestly and completely. After two months, I introduced her to my daughter. She introduced me and my daughter to her mother and family. We had met a lot of each other friends. I was thinking to myself, I want this relationship to work. But I still found myself not cutting all ties to other women completely. At first, I thought I was just being careful. Maybe she was “The One” and maybe she was just another pretty face, another temporary pretty face.
When all my conversations about her to my friends, became conversations about her and me and our future together, I realized, she was not just another pretty face, another temporary pretty face. When I would talk to other women, in the standard way I had of implying a chance to meet up in our futures, when the time was good for both of us, I would leave the conversations feeling sick to my stomach. I felt a desire to not hurt my current partner. And yet, I was worried that it would only be a matter of time before I did. This wonderful girl told me very early on in our relationship that infidelity ruined her first marriage and she would never tolerate it again. I did not know when we were committed to each other and only each other. She is now 37. I am now 47.
The only defense I have is pathetic. We never had the “Let’s be boyfriend/girlfriend” conversation. We never had the “Let’s be monogamous” conversation. But it was implied. And I knew it was implied. She said to me just the one time, “I love you.” It was about 6:45 AM on the morning of July 29, 2015, as she kissed me and got out of our bed, my bed. She kissed me on the cheek and said, “I love you, baby.” I played like I was still asleep, and I didn’t respond. I was scared. Did I love her? If I loved her, then she could hurt me. Everyone else who ever said she loved me had hurt me. But there it was, out there. And I chickened out. For weeks, we never mentioned it. She never said it to me again. She stayed at my house close to 100 of the 130 nights we were together. The only nights she didn’t stay at my house were the nights that my daughter stayed at my house. As we both thought it was inappropriate for a child of 12 to see her and me together without being married. Yes, it was completely implied that she and I were together as a
couple. And I was terrified. Please, please don’t backslide into cheating on her.
It got even more serious to me, when one evening about 10 weeks into our dating, at the end of August, she said to me, as an answer to my question about why she didn’t have any children, “I do want children.” And then, it hit me like a ton of unavoidable bricks. This wonderful woman, the most wonderful woman I had ever known was wanting a family. And she was wanting a family with me. What did I want?
I needed a moment to process this information. I didn’t know, if I wanted to have another child or more children. And now, this woman who clearly and truly loves me is implying that she wants to have children, and she wants to have children with me. Now, we’re off to the races. Can I be a loyal and good husband to her? As far as being a father goes, I am exceptional. But then, there is the lingering anger at myself, What would I think if my daughter were dating someone like I am, or like I had been? I would hate this guy. It was the love for my daughter that finally pushed me toward demanding better relationship behavior from me. And here I was facing its first true test. I kept saying, “This is a man’s decision. I need to take a moment to really think about whether I want to have more children or not. And if I don’t, then i don’t want to waste some of my girl’s “baby making years” wondering if I wanted to grab hold of her hand and jump off a cliff together in to the unknowns of parenthood.” There were other concerns that were not as important. But there were other concerns.
There had always been shadow women in my life. Women, who if all the stars lined up perfectly, then I would have taken advantage of the situation and had a quick and maybe in a few years, a repeatable fling or affair. But these women were not my concern. This new nearly girlfriend of mine had removed all or most all of the temptations of other women, merely by how much she showered me with love, regularly and consistently, and how strangely wonderful it felt to feel so much love directed at me, all the time. The only fault that I can give her is that she did all this very quickly. I had no frame of reference for such happiness. It scared me, threw me off “my game,” and swept me off my feet. But I was getting used to it. And it was wonderful. The hitch came with a woman. This other woman was a very good friend of mine. She had known me through some of the most dark and sad periods in my life post divorce and terrible custody battle issue with my ex-wife. She was a long distance and every few months friend with benefits. This woman loved me and I loved her. But when i met my new girlfriend early in the summer, I could no longer see my long distance friend as anything other than a distraction and shamefully on my part, I began to see her love and emotion to me as an annoyance. Over this past summer of 2015, I tried on several occasions to tell my long distance friend, that things had changed and that we should see other people, and that I had started to see other people. i never mentioned that I was seeing only the one other person. I was trying to spare her feelings. I was trying to spare both of their feelings.
After four months of a wonderfully growing relationship with my near girlfriend here in New Orleans, and blowing off offers to visit and come to visit my “special friend” in Florida, I knew I needed to end things with her. I felt I needed to end things with her face-to-face. I thought that an email or telephone call would have been the coward’s way out of doing the man’s thing of facing my situation and giving her the respect and courtesy of a face-to-face goodbye, and I do hope we can remain friends, but knowing that retaining a friendship was unlikely. I was saddened by this decision I made and the drive i was going to take, but I had made up my mind. I wanted to be with my near girlfriend. I wanted to come to her with a clear heart and conscious and ask her to be my girlfriend, knowing that this decision would lead to her becoming my fiancee, wife, and mother of our children and step mother to my daughter.
I didn’t tell my near girl friend what I was planning to do or why. I just told her I was going out of town for a few days. I needed some time to think, The open road has always been therapeutic for me in this way. When I arrived in Florida, we began a three day conversation of “Goodbye.” On several occasions, she tried to convince me that we could stay long distance friends and she would take whatever love I had to spare for her and she would be happy with whatever I had to give her. I felt that this exploitation was completely unfair. She tried very hard to convince me, and I nearly let her. I did break her heart. My idea was not to tell my near girlfriend, who is warm and sweet and with a kind and loving heart that I was going to Florida to tie up some loose ends, which would likely involve breaking a girl’s heart so I could be with you freely and clearly. I didn’t want her to think that there was any negativity attached to our relationship. I never wanted her to feel badly about anything that had to do with her and me. It seems like I managed to screw everything up completely. The best laid plans of mice and men. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Insert third generic literary cliche here.
Here’s the rub. My near girlfriend, who is not just loving and kind , warm hearted and beautiful is also smart and scarred. She added up the possibilities of me being a cheater and the motive and opportunities i had created and came up with a logical, and if she had known about my past, historically accurate assessment of what I may have been doing when I left town on any of my road trips, and specifically this road trip. Her feelings were crushed. Her heart is broken. She will not speak to me. She has even let me off the hook for blame, citing that “You never made any promises to me. I just thought this was going somewhere and clearly it is not.” I am sure there is some huge Karma that I am paying for here and now for all the lies and cheating I had done in the past. But truly, and with all the love in my heart for this girl, my hand to God, I was trying to set things straight, do the manly thing, save my long distance friend some integrity and give her proper closure. I was just a big dummy. Had I known that what I was doing would have had the exact opposite effect, for which I was aiming, then I would have never done it. I did lie or at least mislead my current partner. But I rationalized that it was the kind of lie like, “I’m not planning a surprise birthday party for you.” Rather than the lie, that ‘I’m not driving to Florida to cheat on you.”
She has broken off all communication with me. Refuses to see me. Has blocked my number from her phone. She and her friends have ‘unfriended” me from the Facebook. I have tried every avenue to reopen communication with her, writing a letters to her, a letter to her friend, even a letter to her mother, but nothing has worked. I feel now, as she has put it to me that any further attempts to contact her are frightening her that I must let her be alone, either permanently or for a good few weeks. The irony of this result from what I had hoped would be a new start with a woman I would love for the long run is crushingly sad. And now I hear that she is back with her old, ex boyfriend, only three weeks after this transpired between her and me.
I hope that in a few weeks or a month or so, she will speak to me and I will be able to explain what I did and why. Right now, She doesn’t hear anything I say. I am proud of myself for the way I did handle the situation. The outcome could have been a lot better. She taught me that it is OK to be vulnerable and to open myself up to love and being loved. Because for most all of my life, I have never felt worthy of love from a romantic partner. It is a long shot that she and I will be able to mend this fence and move on toward a life of happiness and fulfillment together. But it may happen, if I don’t make things even more of a grand mess. Yet, if it doesn’t work out with her, then I do know that I have grown, somewhat, in baby, baby steps to becoming a man, who deserves to be loved well, and who in turn can openly and without fear, love someone else. Maybe in a few weeks or a few months, I will be in a happier place. I know that I need to stay in therapy, to keep talking about what triggers or what used to trigger my poor behavioral choices. And if I can sit in another welcoming group again, then I will do that as well. The worst thing for me right now, is that I hurt someone who clearly and truly loved me. Even though my intentions were good, I didn’t know yet, how to be honest with her about who i was and what I was working through. I mean seriously, how do I tell your partner, who is scarred from infidelity, which broke up her first marriage that I struggle impulse control. But with her with me, it was easier than ever before. I should have had the courage to talk to her. I love her. She loves or loved me. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. “Hey, I’ve cheated on every girlfriend, whether real or implied, I’ve ever been with, but I’m in therapy now, I’ve recognized I have a problem, and I am working to manage it. Please, trust me not to break your heart. Damn…
Thank you for your time and attention.
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