My ex and I were together for almost a year, and it wasn’t until after we broke up that I learned he’d been married the entire time. It took me months to get over the loss of the relationship, but I’m still not over the betrayal. Here’s why I still haven’t been able to move on.
- I no longer trust my intuition about men. I was totally in love with my ex and thought he was the most amazing man I’d ever met, so when I found out he wasn’t just cheating on me but actually had a wife, I had to come to terms with the fact that my intuition was dead wrong. Now whenever I meet guys who seem amazing, I always second guess myself and hold back, assuming I must be wrong about them too.
- It makes me question every relationship I’ve ever had. I was in the most intimate relationship of life with my ex, and when I learned he cheated, it felt like my entire world had fallen out from under me. If our entire relationship was based on a lie, what about all my other relationships, romantic or otherwise? It made me really mistrustful of even my closest friends for a while, and I’m only just now getting out of it.
- I feel like heartbreak is inevitable. After watching what I thought was a perfect relationship crash and burn in front of me, I now feel as though miserable breakups are a foregone conclusion to every partnership. With that mentality, I don’t want to get anywhere near a guy ever again, especially not one who’s capable of hurting me emotionally.
- I’m terrified of committing to anyone again. The heartbreak might have been easier if my ex and I had been more casual, but we’d gotten in pretty deep. He talked about “forever,” which is pretty crazy in retrospect, but I believed him. Now I’m scared that anything I commit to will fall through just as spectacularly.
- I just assume every man is a liar now. My ex was the first guy I was ever really serious about and he turned out to be a complete liar. The entire experience has made me so disgusted with men and convinced of their lack of morality that I can’t trust any of them now, which makes dating pretty impossible and even friendship a challenge.
- I’m so afraid of being hurt that I leave any relationship before it starts to get real. Commitment seems like a guaranteed method of getting my heart broken again, so whenever something starts going a little too well, I call it off, preventing myself from experiencing any real happiness in the process. While I understand how self-defeating this is, I’d rather be lonely than heartbroken at this point.
- It made me feel like I could never be enough for anyone. It’s difficult to come out of a relationship in which your partner was married to another person and feel adequate. Clearly I wasn’t enough for him if he needed to continue his marriage, right? While I know in my head that this is dead wrong and I’m so much more worthy of love than he is, I still feel like I’ll never be enough for anyone.
- I don’t want to fall in love again. My biggest takeaway from the relationship was that love is incredibly painful and destructive and therefore it should be avoided at all costs. While I realize how crazy and dramatic that sounds, I still can’t get it out of my head and worry that I’ll waste some really great years of my life avoiding love for fear of getting hurt like that again.
- All my friends were just as shocked as I was, and now I don’t trust their intuition either. My friends were very enthusiastic about the relationship up until we broke up and learned the backstory, and they were almost as surprised and heartbroken as me. I always trusted their opinions about the guys I dated, but ever since we found out that all of us were wrong about my ex, I feel like I can’t trust anyone’s opinion about anyone.
- I’m so jaded about men that I don’t even try on dates anymore. Most of my dates are failures before they even begin simply because I expect the person to be a future cheater and a waste of time and make sure the date goes nowhere. I try to be civil and get on with my life, but I can’t help sabotaging every potential relationship out of fear that it will come back to hurt me.
