Infidelity

Life is ever so much eas­i­er when you’re able to think in black and white.

There was a time when I was absolute­ly sure that not only would I imme­di­ate­ly walk away from any part­ner who was unfaith­ful to me in any way. I did­n’t want to have any­thing to do with any­one who was so dis­hon­or­able as to be unfaith­ful to any­one else.

I did walk away from unfaith­ful part­ners. No sec­ond chances, no oppor­tu­ni­ty to explain—it was over. Peri­od. But I was also hold­ing a lot of myself back from those rela­tion­ships and was­n’t involved near­ly as deeply as I am with part­ners now. Is that matu­ri­ty? I don’t know.

I still feel very, very strong­ly about infi­deli­ty. I would still find infi­deli­ty to be an absolute show­stop­per in the ear­ly stages of any rela­tion­ship. I’m very cau­tious about ever get­ting involved with any­one who has been unfaith­ful to oth­ers in the past. Any­one with a pat­tern of that kind of behav­ior is just not of inter­est to me.

But I can’t be black and white any­more. Where­as there was a time when I would have respond­ed to news of friends break­ing up due to infi­deli­ty in the rela­tion­ship by shun­ning the per­son who was unfaith­ful, I’m less quick to cut those peo­ple off now. I know more. I love peo­ple who have been unfaith­ful, and I know they’re still good people. 

I’m def­i­nite­ly not say­ing that I think infi­deli­ty is EVER jus­ti­fi­able. The act is still absolute­ly wrong. But the peo­ple mat­ter more than right or wrong to me right now. And I hate to see them hurting.