Infidelity

Hello there!  It's ya girl, Pseudo Postfeminist Witch.  Hollaaaaa!

Bringing to you today: the topic of cheating.  Yessa!

There's three things that I hold sacred while treading this earth, interacting with my brothers and sisters globally: loyalty, truth and respect.  (Which are actually one and the same if you think about it, really.)
No surprise than, that the lack of the above in my previous relationship because of the relentless infidelity (in every possible interpretation of the word) from his part, led me to one of the darkest hours of my life.
(You know, the on your knees howling on the floor kinda thing whilst thinking: please please please do not let a free downloaded app on my phone secretely activate my cam and speaker right now or I'll spend the rest of my life trying to proof my sanity to my boss at work or to ANYONE for that matter.)

Just the other day, my sweetest friend Evy, sent me a short video of Esther Perel addressing the topic  (link as per below, as sharing is forever caring) and although I find the title poorly chosen, I do think that it has some interesting conceptions:

- 'The people who have fun don't go to psychologists.'  *Some harsh truth, no?

- 'Cheating is hurtful not just wrong.' (Can I get an 'Amen!!'??)

- 'A suspected 80% of the people have been affected by it, not only the couple itself but friends and family, especially THE CHILDREN, get affected as well...' *preach, sistah!

- 'Affairs are about desire, about feeling important, feeling seen, feeling that you matter, ... all the stuff that often gets depleted inside the committed relationship.'

- 'Often it is not about leaving the person you are with but leaving the person that you yourself have become, you don't want to meet the other but a different person of yourself.'

- 'Both men and women lie, men lie by boasting but women lie to minimise because that is what is expected from them culturally worldwide.' *A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK, PLEASE!

- 'How do you manifest your love, your appreciation, your admiration on a daily basis for your partner? How do you show up?  Are you the blinding ray of sunshine at home that you are at work or do you bring the leftovers home?'

- 'Some affairs invite the relationship to rise and create something even better than was before.'

- 'The principal condition (which decides if the relationship will make it or not) is for the betraying partner to acknowledge how badly they hurt you.  The condicio sine qua non for a relationship to make it, is for the partner to be genuinly sorry for the hurt they have caused you. However, if they just go and make excuses for themselves, if they minimise or try to justify it, or if they tell you that you made them do it, you are done.'  *Hasta la vista, baby!

Now, I figured out the above by myself since quite a while now as an emotional mutilating relationship tends to teach you a thing or two (if one's willing), but isn't it a shame that we 'need to be taught' though?  The things stated above should be obvious to us but they aren't and I'll tell you WHY:

I cannot speak in the name of the guys who have been cheated on (I do see you, though) but as a girl I can only see how we females are being stripped of our inner lionness, our inner Goddess and our inner scholar as early as from the baby cot.

We grow up hearing, experiencing, that cheating is solely about beauty or more correctly: lack there of.  That we as women need to live up by a certain concept of beauty, exclusively invented and enforced by men.  That if we do not dress a kind of way, if we do not paint our faces with the 'mandatory' kind of colours or if our hair is not 'beauty standard' long, men will probably pass us by and have all the right in the world doing so.  Strong opinionated females are perceived unattractive, sois belle, tais toi.

Even my own woke ass, was lured into the trap of thinking that I was aesthetically insufficiant for my personality disordered ex boyfriend (needless to say he did not comply with the previously mentioned sine qua non).

We are not brought up to reflect upon how we maybe are part of the issue, or to think of how maybe the other is just an effing douche and we deserve way better than that.
We or drown in sorrow and/or pity ourselves as this is what we have seen around us and this is what we most of the times have been (sub)consciously learned.

Ladies, we do NOT have to undergo the disrespect of ANYONE, nor do we on the contrary need to point the finger at the other.

We need to take our power back.

We need to see how beautiful our smile is.
How stunning we are when we are showcasing kindness.
How radiant we are if we are doing what we love.
How attractive we are when we are standing our ground.
How knowledge is power.
How listening, travelling and reading are KEY.
How the first amendment should be: 'love thyself.'
How love comes back to you.  (Always.)
How love is the bridge between you and everything. (Also always.)
How one is like pineapple: some people can have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and some can not even stand the smell of it but ain't nothing wrong with the yellow interior fruit.
How to leave the table when love is not (longer) being served (praise to Nina!) and just look for a more appreciative audience to sit by.

And most importantly: we need to teach our kids.

When my son asked me to pick the most beautiful kid from his class picture, I said to him: 'I'm sorry hon' but I cannot tell you who is the prettiest child as it is impossible to see on a photograph the beauty of one's heart'.

Look at that, turns out that one of my darkest hours made me see the brightest of stars.

Turns out that the whole time it was me being unfaithful to myself.

(A nice way for saying that I actually hate the cheating motherfucker but thank Mother God for the cheating motherfucker as the cheating motherfucker made me realise so much and made me change myself and I have never been happier so I absolutely LOVE the cheating motherfucker, I owe my life to the cheating motherfucker and so I can not keep on calling him a cheating motherfucker because I need to stay focused on the blessings the experience brought me.  (Addition inspired by my today-i-am-not-taking-any-crap friend: Sophie (love you).))

x

Esther Perel video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmiKAoAmYSg