Cheating and Broken Trust.

Cheating refers to an immoral way of achieving a goal. It is generally used for the breaking of rules to gain advantage in a competitive situation. The rules infringed may be explicit, or they may be from an unwritten code of conduct based on morality, ethics or custom, making the identification of cheating a subjective process. Cheating can refer specifically to marital infidelity.

TRUST assured resting of the mind on the integrity, veracity, justice, friendship or other sound principle of another person.

Lies break trust, and don't think that just because you only tell part of the truth that this means you are not lying. Telling someone what they want to hear - or what you want them to hear, however founded in the truth, if it is not the complete truth, it is still a lie.

Cheating breaks trust. Cheating is the ultimate trust breaker - one it is difficult if not impossible to come back from, because not only was there a lie, but there was a total and complete abuse of faith and trust placed in a person.

Cheating usually comes with lies too - so not only does one cheat, but one lies about the cheating to cover up the indiscretion. And then the lies get bigger and the trust gets more abused - and this snowball effect comes into play - and it's nearly impossible - if at all, to recover from cheating. No trust. No faith.

No chance to "allow without fear."

If they have cheated - do you want to know? Is ignorance truly bliss this time? Can you ever look at the past the same if you realize that there was a break of trust there...will the memories ever be the same again? Would you want them to be the same?

When it comes right down to it - it's not the cheating that hurts. It is the break of trust, the loss of faith, the changing of perspectives that destroys the heart and brings the anger. It is the realignment of perceptions that really stings the most, when you go back over everything that happened and wonder what was real and what was illusion. That's what hurts.

It's when the good memories are stripped from you because the truth changes the perspective that hurts. The cheating doesn't hurt - it's the loss of the dream, the loss of faith, the loss of trust - it's seeing someone you love in a light that makes you hate what they've done...and the duality of holding the love and the hate in the same place in your heart at the same time.

Hating someone actually hurts less than saying, "I don't love you anymore." Saying that hurts less than saying, "I trusted you and now I don't."

 You can't come at a perspective when someone has cheated on you and ask, "What did I do wrong."

There is nothing you did so wrong that warrants someone cheating on you. If the relationship is bad, if you did do something wrong, then the other person has the right to talk to you, to confront you, or if worse comes to worst, to leave you...but he or she doesn't have the right to cheat.

Cheating is the cheater's mistake - not yours. You did nothing wrong that deserve you having been cheated on. Even if you made mistakes in the relationship, even if you withheld intimacy, even if you and your partner fought constantly, there is nothing that justifies cheating - period.

Nothing.

The other party can leave, break it off, ask for a divorce, or do any number of other things in response to a relationship gone bad, but cheating is never an acceptable solution.

But the question I have to ask is - can you recover from the cheating - yes. Can you recover from the loss of trust and ever be able to extend it - to "allow without fear" ever again?

I don't think so, at least not to that person. But one cannot judge other people by the mistakes that the people from our past have made. That isn't fair.

Barbara De Angelis was once quoted as saying, "If he cheats once, get help. If he cheats twice get out."

Not bad advice, really, because sometimes one can make a mistake and realize all they stood to lose in choosing to cheat. When that happens, if the party who cheated realizes this, makes amends, and comes back together to the relationship with total honesty, that relationship could actually become stronger than it was before, because they will realize just what they stood to lose and will do everything in their power not to lose it again.

However, if the cheater cheats again, then it's time to let go and move on to better relationships. There can be no trust without faithfulness, no trust without lies, no trust without cheating, and where there is not trust, there is no chance to "allow without fear" again.