Hi, I’m 27, and there’s this lady, 25, whom I’ve known since my campus days. We’ve been great friends, and we know each other so deeply. From our failed relationships, weaknesses and so forth.
Besides friendship, we have had sex on several occasions, cheating on our respective partners. At the moment, we are both single, and I am thinking of marrying her. Maybe she is the one I have been looking for all this time.
Do you think our relationship and past entanglements will pose problems to my proposal? Will our marriage work?
If she cheated with you, she’ll cheat on you. It’s her nature to do that.
‘But I did it, too. Doesn’t that mean we’re both cheaters then?’ Sure, it does. But why are you seeking to get married? Do you intend to change your ways and be loyal?
You got away with cheating last time, and that is very rewarding. It prompts you to continue rather than stop.
Have you undergone a personal change? If so, at least you know that you’re a different person than you were with this person.
My point is that you cheated together, and that rules out your expectation of loyalty from her just as much as she can’t expect it from you.
What you did also means that there’s a level of trust you’ll never have for each other because you know each other’s potential.
It’s not a small thing to see someone violate a commitment they have with someone else and feel nothing about it. There’s something morally wrong when someone can do things that would potentially shatter the world of someone else and act as if it’s nothing. You’re not safe with that kind of person.
Even you, until you change, you’re not safe for anyone.
That said, let’s explain the differences between a woman cheating and a man cheating. When men cheat, it shows. They’re poor at multitasking, and so their energy shifts noticeably. When a woman is keen, she will notice the prolonged periods between calls and delays in getting home.
That other relationship takes a bit of his time and energy, and he can’t hide that too well.
What I’m trying to say is that you should not think you’ll continue getting away with cheating once you marry her. Men are never that good at hiding affairs unless you put a very loose foundation from the beginning. She will know you’re hiding something, of course, and the other woman may decide to break the silence herself.
When it comes to your wife and women, however, they can cheat smoothly, and you’ll never find out.
She can even get children with other men, and you won’t suspect it.
Why? You see, women are punished more for cheating, and so they don’t brag about it. Men have more leeway to stray in most cultures as opposed to women, who must be paragons of virtue and loyalty.
A group of men caught two people having illicit sex, but they only arrested the woman and brought her to Jesus for judgment on capital punishment.
As it was in Israel, so it has been in many cultures. There’s a strong bias against a woman’s cheating.
It’s a matter of shame when a man forgives his wife’s cheating, but when a woman forgives the same thing from her husband, she’s applauded as being mature and a homemaker. These things motivate women to hide their cheating more.
There was a scandalous incident in Equatorial Guinea where one man cheated with hundreds of women, but they all kept it secret, except the man himself. He filmed the action, and the clips leaked. Men have that element of wanting to review the activities as if they were conquests.
But a woman knows that she’ll be termed as a prostitute, and not only she but her entire family will be deeply embarrassed.
I suggest that you start dating on a clean plate. It was a bad idea to have premarital sex with anyone, even if you were in a relationship. It poisons your prospects of ever marrying right by giving outsiders ammunition to use against your future relationship, as well as teaching you indulgence instead of self-control.
It also makes you trivialise the importance of self-control and personal discipline in building a healthy marriage. This makes you overlook celibacy when evaluating women because you’re not practising it yourself. As a result, you’ll easily settle for a serial cheater.
I suggest that you reform your entire conduct as you go on to date for marriage. Set the bar high and filter people based on character and preparedness for a journey of fidelity. That’s how you’ll establish a marriage that lasts.
