@BishiBashiSpecial That is why it is valuable to take in the whole picture of what this person revealed himself to be. The initial shock reaction, even with the puking in the toilet, was one thing, and if it had only been that, I might have pointed out to the OP, "You did cheat on him in a non-open relationship, so what did you expect? A cookie? A pat on the head?" but his follow-up demonstrates that it is not safe for her to have this man in her life at all. This is not a matter of who is right or who is wrong. It is a matter of whether or not it is safe for this person to continue being in her life. Based on the evidence that he has produced by all of his follow-up behaviors, this man should not be in a relationship with anybody. He is dangerous.
The time when you criticize someone who cheated is when that person's partner dumped them, and they acted like they were victims over it.
There is also a good way to handle being the guilty party in a cheating situation. Okay, maybe it's never really NICE to do, but the follow-up that makes you sound like you are otherwise an okay person is, "I was really becoming dissatisfied with the relationship. I realize I was wrong, but I am really glad he decided to leave me. I needed to move on."
Or in the case of being a zoo, maybe add, "I never really trusted my partner well enough to talk about my sexual feelings toward dogs. There was never really all that much trust in the relationship. I feel I was never really dating him for the right reasons. I am sorry for what I did, but I am really also sorry for the entire relationship. I feel like I wasted his time and mine. I am ready to start fresh with a man that understands me and whom I know appreciates this part of me."
Maybe it's better to not resort to getting out of a relationship by cheating your way out, but you can follow it up by behaving like a mature and responsible adult about it.
But the problem is that he did MORE than just leave her. He acted out in a malevolent way, and because of this, I suspect that there were pre-existing problems with this relationship that
@KendallRae is not ready to talk about with us and should not feel like she has to talk with us about. Considering how badly this guy has behaved since the incident, I feel like the cheating was just the climax to a litany of issues in a relationship that was definitely not going to work out and probably was not likely to end well.
The fact that my husband's relationship with his ex-husband ended in cheating by his ex was due to serious problems with his ex-husband's level of maturity. The problem was that his ex-husband had never really been alone in his life. He went straight from being under his mother's protective wing to being very prematurely married to my husband with almost no intervening period of playing the field or doing something fun and creative with his life or building up his career. Because of this, his ex-husband was ALWAYS going to feel like a prisoner in any relationship he was ever in. He was always going to deal with romantic partners in the same way that he dealt with the parents that used to ground him to his room, by rebelling and complaining and behaving like an ungrateful child like all children do to a certain extent.
After his ex-husband got into so much trouble that he had to change his name, I told the poor doofus, "You need to spend a while striking out on your own. Define yourself on your own terms. You have never given yourself time to finish becoming you, so you really don't bring a whole person to any relationship you ever get into. What did you expect?
My husband was at fault because he did not accept that his ex was not done growing up and never really let his ex finish growing up.
I was the one my husband's ex finally listened to! He got onto PrEP, had some very good guilt-free casual sex with lots of good-looking men that never even wanted to know his name but were good flings in the sheets and made a huge number of friends that only really cared about him as a face on their Instagrams but were at least Platonic, and he built up his sense of independence and self-confidence to such a point that, when he finally applied for his dream job, he went in standing tall and self-confident, and he landed it. He now makes more money than my husband and me put together. He also ended up with a really hot looking husband that is compatible with him. Last I checked, it's working out great.
But my husband was not blameless in their original break-up. He went into that relationship with a "savior" mindset, and because of that, the relationship was really degrading and claustrophobic for his ex-husband, who finally rebelled by cheating. His ex was wrong to cheat, but my husband was wrong to make him feel like a child who needed to ask for permission to piss.
Therefore, cheating is not nice to do, but it is usually just one sin in a long-term ongoing exchange of sins, and in most cases, it is an act of mercy if the cheating leads to the relationship coming to an end.
Neither my husband nor his ex-husband were ever really dangerous people. There is a difference between being at fault in a break-up, which both of them really were, and being a dangerous person. The two concepts are on different planets from each other.
@KendallRae's ex-boyfriend had a chance to see the cheating as a rude awakening that the relationship was dying and to peacefully leave that relationship. Unfortunately for him, his follow-up behavior revealed that it is probably his fault, to begin with, that the relationship died.
Maybe she never trusted this man enough to talk about her zooeyness because, deep down, she knew she could never trust him. Maybe she instinctively knew that he was too unhinged of a personality to ever let everything out to. Not telling him showed that she did not really trust him, and we now know that that lack of trust was justified.
The bottom-line is that this guy has exposed himself as someone who is dangerous, and it is unsafe to keep him around.
