I Don't Believe My Own Promises Anymore

I’ve cheated in every serious relationship I’ve ever been in.

There isn’t a nicer way to say it. I could tell you that some relationships were already falling apart, that I was young the first few times, that alcohol was involved sometimes, or that I wasn’t getting what I needed at home. I’ve used every one of those excuses before.

The truth is much simpler.

I cheated because I wanted to.

And then I did it again.

I’m thirty-six now. I’ve had four relationships that I would consider serious, including the one I’m in now. Every one of those women has eventually discovered some version of the same person hiding behind the man they thought they knew.

Sometimes it was messages. Sometimes it was someone I met while traveling for work. Sometimes it was a woman I already knew and had been telling my girlfriend was “just a friend.”

I became very good at separating things in my head. I could spend Saturday afternoon with my girlfriend, cook dinner with her, lie in bed watching a movie, tell her I loved her, and somehow put what I had done two nights earlier into a completely different compartment.

That’s probably the part I’m most ashamed to admit.

Because I did love some of them.

I know people will read that and say you don’t cheat on someone you love. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know anymore. All I know is that I felt love for them. I missed them when they were gone. I worried when they were sick. I remembered their birthdays. I knew how they took their coffee and what made them laugh.

And I still cheated.

Every time I got caught, I became the person I should have been before I did it.

I cried. I apologized. I handed over my phone. I deleted numbers. I unfollowed women. I promised there would never be another secret conversation, another hotel room, another lie about where I had been.

And in those moments, I meant it.

That’s what makes this difficult to explain.

I wasn't standing there thinking, I'll tell her whatever she needs to hear and then do it again.

I genuinely believed I was going to change.

For a while, I usually did.

Three months. Six months. Once, almost a year.

Then somebody would flirt with me. Or I’d be traveling alone. Or I’d download an app just to “look.” I’d tell myself that messaging wasn't cheating. Then I'd meet someone for a drink and tell myself a drink wasn't cheating.

Eventually, I'd cross the same line again.

I've wondered whether I'm addicted to sex. I don't know if that's actually what this is. Maybe I'm addicted to being wanted. Maybe it's the secrecy. Maybe I need the validation. Maybe I'm just selfish and have spent years trying to find a diagnosis that sounds better than that.

Friends have told me to go to therapy.

I don't believe in it.

Maybe that's stubborn. I've always had this idea that I'd sit in an office once a week, pay someone hundreds of dollars to ask me how things make me feel, and walk out exactly the same person. I keep thinking I should be able to fix this myself.

Except I've been saying that for years.

My current girlfriend caught me eight months ago.

She found messages on my phone while I was showering. I remember walking into the bedroom and seeing her sitting on the edge of the bed holding my phone.

She didn't scream.

She just asked, “How many times?”

I lied.

I said once.

She asked again.

I admitted there had been more.

Then she asked me something none of my exes had ever asked.

“Do you actually think you're going to stop?”

I immediately said yes.

She looked at me for a long time and said, “That's not what I asked.”

I still think about that.

She stayed.

I promised her everything I've promised before. I gave her my passwords. I stopped going out without her for a while. I told her she could check my phone whenever she wanted.

And I haven't cheated on her again.

Yet.

I hate that I added that word.

Because that's the confession.

I want to tell you I've finally learned my lesson. I want this story to end with me saying losing people I loved scared me straight and I'm a different man now.

But I don't know if that's true.

The thoughts are still there.

I still notice opportunities. I still feel that rush when someone new shows interest in me. Sometimes I catch myself beginning the same little negotiations in my head that have always come before the cheating.

It's only flirting.

I'm not going to actually do anything.

She'll never know.

And that's when I realize how little I trust myself.

So this isn't really an apology where I'm asking anyone to forgive me.

Especially my ex-girlfriends.

Some of you gave me another chance after I swore there would never be another woman. Some of you blamed yourselves. One of you asked me what the other woman had that you didn't.

I told you that you hadn't done anything wrong.

That might have been the most truthful thing I said.

You weren't missing anything.

I was.

And to the woman I'm with now, I'm sorry because you've already heard every promise I know how to make.

You deserve certainty from me, and I don't know how to give you that.

I don't want to keep living like this. I don't want another woman sitting on the edge of a bed holding my phone. I don't want to keep hurting people and then becoming devastated when they finally stop believing me.

But I'm also tired of saying, I'll never do it again, as though saying it strongly enough will somehow make it true.

Maybe the thing I need to admit isn't that I can't change.

It's that whatever I've been doing to change clearly hasn't worked.

And after all these years, I'm finally scared that one day I'm going to meet someone I truly cannot imagine losing.

And I'm going to lose her anyway.