Dear Alejandra:

I re-read all your posts in two page thread, and this is what I understand (using quotes from what you shared):

“Don’t think I’ve experienced heartbreak like I did that day. I’ve never been cheated on, so I didn’t know how to react”- even though you were not cheated on by a boyfriend before, you did experience a heartbreak as a child, within a relationship with a parent,  and that heartbreak got activated when he cheated on you, old pain added to new pain.

Looking back at  your childhood,  you may not see a big event of being deserted or abused by a parent, but for a young child, it doesn’t take (what we consider later in life) a big event to feel deserted and betrayed. A child feels/ reacts intensely to any experience of being deserted. For example, an adult may look back at having been in daycare as no big deal, nothing exceptional about a child being left at daycare. But  a child who cries hysterically every morning, for weeks, when left at daycare, experiences intense desertion every single day. As the child grows up, she forgets that experience, but the fear and hurt and pain of being deserted doesn’t go away. It’s always there, but it gets activated mostly in the context of a romantic/ love relationship.

“6 months in and I honestly felt things were going great, trust was growing”- you were relaxing into this relationship, dared to believe that he was worthy of your trust.

“there was real love there”- real love as in you becoming emotionally attached to him, similar to a child who is naturally emotionally attached to a parent.

“I had this whole idea inside my head of you, that you were just different and that you really cared”- as a child you felt that a parent didn’t really care about you, and you were hoping that this man was different, that he really cared.

“felt like I was falling from the top of a mountain”- during the time you felt that he is different, that you can trust him, you felt the most intoxicating feeling that a child who fell off a mountain, so to speak, feels at the thought of being back up  on that mountain, feeling like before that first (original) betrayal, that feeling of unquestionable trust and complete safety.

Your ex boyfriend has his own childhood experience and therefore, his own experience of the relationship he had with you. Plus, he is a man, and biology and society leads to many men having a different attitude toward the issue of sex and love. Many men are able to have sex without emotional attachment. For your ex boyfriend, having had sex with that woman was not a big deal. If it was a big deal, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it from you Nov- Feb, when you found out.

For you, it was a huge deal.

The good news is that there are men out there who are trustworthy, who will not cheat on their girlfriend/ wife. Either because they feel singularly attached to the one woman in their lives, not wanting another, or because they pride themselves at having the character to not cheat even when they feel like it. And because they don’t want their girlfriend to hurt, and their relationship to be in danger.

anita