Here’s the thing about love: it’s unselfish
Love is not something that makes you want to meet your own selfish wants and needs because, in most cases, that selfishness is at the expense of hurting someone else.
Love is selfless. It does not urge us to chase temptation that we know will hurt the one we are with. Love means putting someone else’s needs and feelings before your own. It means protecting someone, gaining their trust, treating them with the utmost respect and care and showing them with your actions how much they mean to you.
None of that involves cheating!
I understand cheating is a mistake. We are all humans and we were never wired to be perfect. Sometimes we screw up, and that’s okay, in fact, that’s part of life. Screwing up makes us better because if we learn from our mistakes we grow as individuals. Still, cheating is not just any mistake. It is a compilation of several mistakes.
In order to cheat on the person you are with you have to engage, flirtatiously, with someone else. Mistake number one. Then, you have to go even further and make them feel that you want them and you want them to want you. Mistake number two. Then, you have to get physical, which is mistake number three, which will lead to sex or a straight up affair, which is mistake number four.
Whether it happens once or it happens a hundred times doesn’t matter. It’s still cheating. You are still being selfish. You are still breaking every promise you made when you committed to someone else. That is not love.
Of course, you can care about someone that you cheat on. You can be fond of them and care about their feelings. They can still be very special to you. But that isn’t enough. That is the overall point here. You don’t care enough. You don’t value them enough. And in turn, you are not enough for them. You fall short in your promises and your duty as a partner.
It’s about your lack of respect for them.
If you are willing to break a commitment for a few moments of selfish pleasure, what does that say about how much you respect your partner? If you are willing to risk losing their trust and breaking their heart then you clearly don’t respect them. The only thing you are respecting is your urge to give into temptation. And you are doing it at the expense of someone else.
You don’t value them enough.
You can definitely care for someone that you hurt, but it doesn’t mean that you care for them the way that you should. I remember the first boy I ever loved. We were in high school, and it was the kind of love that was so passionate and crazy. My skin would ache for him and I couldn’t even imagine myself without him to complete me. I was madly in love for three years. Then, when our last year together started crumbling, he cheated on me. Not once, and not with just one person. I remember him telling me-
“Just because I don’t love you like you love me, doesn’t mean I don’t love you with all I have.”
Wrong, jackass. He didn’t love me anymore. He wanted me. He was afraid to let go, hell, I was all he knew about love at that point. But he did not love me. I realized that, even then. I knew because when he did love me he never would have hurt me so intentionally. He would have never valued a night with another girl the way he valued being with me. He would have never put my heart on the line for a few minutes of selfish pleasure with a girl he barely knew.
So, when he told me he loved me with all he had, I replied-
” All you have isn’t good enough. You might think you love me, but obviously you don’t love me enough.”
The bottom line is, if you cheat, you don’t value your relationship enough to not risk ruining it.