One is the asshole who cheated on you, in all their flawed, unfaithful glory.
The other person you must get over is the person you thought they were.
The relationship you thought you had.
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The trust you so carefully built, not knowing that the foundation was made up of quicksand.
The one you built a life with.
The one you poured your trust into.
The one you thought was always going to be there, until they werent.
You hate the person they turned into, but love the person they were.
Love the way things were.
Love the memory of each blissfully ignorant day with them, so fiercely that it tears you to pieces.
It is hard to get over a cheater because you never get the closure you need.
You didnt pay enough attention.
You didnt make enough time.
With every magazine title screaming Ways to c’mon your lover!
You know logically this is not true, but itfeelstrue.
The harder you search for a reason, the more the truth evades you.
A simple lapse in judgment doesnt seem like an adequate explanation for the hell that youve been put through.
So you search for a bigger, better reason that is not there.
Its hard to get over a cheater because the only person you hate more than them is yourself.
You hate yourself for falling for them.
For investing in them.
For turning a blind eye to every red flag that was a clue along the way.
You scorn yourself for believing every lie they told, and letting it all come to fruition.
You hate yourself for not putting together the puzzle pieces that you were never actually holding.
It is hard to get over a cheater because we are seldom given the chance to properly mourn them.
Cannot miss them.
Cannot mourn the loss of that love because we should be too angry to feel sadness.
And because we have a go at deny ourselves this process, we exemplify the pain.
We feel ashamed for still loving them.
Ashamed for still needing to grieve.
Ashamed because it must make us weak to feel anything other than hatred.
We have to forgive ourselves for missing the signs that we couldnt possibly have seen.
For losing a game we never signed up to play.
We dont want to accept that bad things can happen to us without precedence.
That we can be fooled and treated unfairly and still end up the loser in the end.
It is hard to get over a cheater because a betrayal of trust turns your world upside down.
And the only way to flip it right-side up again is to give ourselves permission to work through it.
To accept what happened.
To mourn someone we hate.
To grieve a relationship we walked away from.
To work through every paradoxical situation we encounter, until we come through on the other side.
The side with a clean slate.
The side where we dont just suspect that we deserve better weknow.
And the side where we are proud of ourselves for never accepting any less.
