Dear Emma:

You are angry at his girlfriend for dismissing your feelings for her boyfriend- but it is not reasonable to expect a woman who was cheated on by her boyfriend,  to care of the feelings of the woman her boyfriend cheated on her with.

I am sure, like you wrote, that for you the affair with him was not “purely physical”. But it was physical, and it shouldn’t’ve been physical.

In your original post, you wrote that when you found out that he has a girlfriend,  you “asked him what made him cheat on her”- as if it matters why. What matters is that for as long as it is possible for a man to end a relationship (he is in not being held hostage/ in prison), then he doesn’t have to cheat, happy or not.

After all, no man (or woman) in a relationship is always happy. If being unhappy meant that cheating is justified, then there will not be a single faithful/ monogamous relationship on the face of the earth!

“I made it clear to him that if he was in a happy relationship and loved her, then we should not continue and that he needed to go be with her”- and if he was not in a happy relationship… then he should continue with you and with her?

“But if a man has the intention to cheat, if it wasn’t with me then it would have been with some other victim”- you are not taking responsibility for your part in the affair: for having chosen to remain in, and chase in a relationship with a man who has another woman in his life.

“I agree that I played a part in the infidelity, and that was wrong”- this is lip service, you don’t really mean it: you feel like you are The One Victim/ the Loser,  and this man and his girlfriend are Winners (“they seemed very happy”). In reality he victimized you and his girlfriend, you victimized his girlfriend, and what his girlfriend is really like- I don’t know.

Human relationships are complex and we humans too often hurt each other. Each one of us has to look at our own behavior and take personal responsibility to do no harm to others, no matter how we feel.

anita