My Ex Cheated On Me 8 Times But I Still Can’t Get Over Him

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I am bitter. So bitter. It has been over a year since we broke up but every time I think about him I get so incredibly mad. My anger takes over my body and consumes my mind and Dementor-kisses away every last bit of happiness in my body. My barely rational mind jumps out of my body and watches my physical being get consumed by this rage which is like a big scary pyrotechnic spectacle that keeps swelling and swelling for I don’t even know how long, till all that’s left is my ashen body – tired, defeated, disappointed.

I’m tired of feeling this anger and pain so long after the breakup. I feel defeated that my sense of self is still so reliant on his validation of our relationship. I am disappointed in myself that after an entire year of Googling “how to get over ex”, “how to stay whole after he cheated on you”, “my ex cheated on me 8 times with 8 different girls but I still love him – do I need help?” and “how to be fun single independent.”

I still think about the guy that ruined the plans I had for our shared future. I feel this dead and numb pain in the bottom of my heart; it’s like a pile of rocks that has made a home in my body and I now carry it everywhere, constantly projecting my grief and anger that seems to perpetually be bubbling underneath my happy and calm exterior.

How did he manage to cheat on me 8 times? I was so oblivious and plain stupid! Why didn’t I have the guts to walk away after the first, second, or even third time? I was such a broken human and he was my best friend and I couldn’t imagine being broken alone. So I stayed with him letting him break me because I needed his whole being for my negligent self to complete me even though my self was negligent because his actions and words kept chipping away at it. So complicated. I’m so bitter.

He made me feel like an awful person for feeling insecure and so I shut the door on insecurity permanently and never reopened it. So insecurity started getting bigger and badder outside the door and kept huffing and puffing to make my house made of lies collapse. But insecurity left after a point because it realized I let another bigger, badder wolf inside my house. This wolf hid everything from me.

When I tried to make conversation he accused me of prying. He would openly go out with other girls and be flirtatious and when he came back to the House of Lies he would give me annoyed reassurance that I was being “Crazy” and that I should “get a life.” We stopped fucking. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The only time he would “want” me was when he was drunk. One night he came back from one of his parties and he kissed me in a way we hadn’t kissed in a very long time.

I thought “finally! I’m glad I waited for him to come back to me!” He smelled rotten – all I could think of was how he smelled and how Jack Daniels got the better of his smell that night. But who cares?! Well I care. I cared once he called me by someone else’s name. I was shattered. I truly don’t know how I spent the rest of that night and the 2 months that followed. I was too scared to tell him the next morning that I knew about another one of his affairs. I went with the flow. I stopped hanging out at his house, not that he noticed.

He came over every Saturday to drunken fuck me because the girl whose name he called me by had a rotation and my boyfriend was not on this girl’s Saturday schedule. I was his last resort. I was his fuck buddy and breakfast chef. He would refuse to be seen with me. He didn’t have to say it for me to know it.

Obviously the break up was bad. Too suddenly but too late I just broke and exploded. We “broke up” countless times before but this was bad. No one said the word “break up” all that happened was that accusations were thrown around willy-nilly. I couldn’t stand to be around him. I was not the other woman for fuck’s sake! I gave him 5 years of my fragile adolescent life! I lost myself trying to find myself with him. I only have myself to blame for that. I am so bitter. It’s my birthday today and the entire day I have been thinking about how bitter I am, but that it’s the first birthday that he won’t even possibly wish me! But does that matter? Will I be less bitter? How do I forgive him? How do I forgive myself for taking that shit from him?