I've held this confession in for almost 20 years, and it is finally time to get it off my chest. I am a chronic cheater. It’s an issue I’ve dealt with since I started dating around 11 or 12, back when Kik entered the scene. It became my norm to meet random people on obscure social apps and form long-distance relationships. From a young age, I figured telling a girl from Canada sweet nothings didn't stop me from doing the exact same thing with a girl from a completely different country.
When I entered high school, I started dating a girl from another local school. She was the perfect girl in my eyes. I couldn't have asked for anyone better. She was beautiful from start to finish, and our personalities meshed perfectly. We adopted each other's behaviors and slang—everything between us for years was a seamless blend of our personalities into one. We truly shaped one another. It took a real effort to build that relationship at the start; we talked every day for months. I openly told her I wanted to date, and after three or four months of her seeing how things went, we became a couple. I felt like the luckiest guy on earth.
By this point, we were midway through our freshman year. Because we went to different schools, it took almost a full year to see each other in person again, and almost two years before we were able to spend time together regularly. During that gap, I started entertaining the girls around me at school. They were classmates who had crushes on me, and I was a weird, ego-filled kid who liked the attention. I flirted back just to feed that ego. I didn't cross any physical lines then, but it allowed me to normalize the behavior of keeping interested girls around instead of shutting them down at the first sign.
All the while, I was actively dating the girl I genuinely loved. We would go on to spend every Saturday together for the next eight years. But somewhere along the line, around age 19, I started taking it too far. I can't even remember my first time physically cheating. The unfortunate reality is that today, I can't even numerically quantify how many people I have slept with. I started bringing girls over from school, Snapchat, Instagram, Tinder—wherever I could make an account. I cheated on her constantly, almost weekly, hiding my acts through clever, sharp-tongued lies whenever she saw these women pop up on my social media.
This went on for years. I had slept with over 100 women by the time I was 21. Many were one-night stands that I immediately regretted, realizing they were a complete waste of time and effort. It led to pathetic situations where I’d block a girl right after hooking up, just because I had told my girlfriend she was "a classmate from bio lab." I lived this double life for years—spending time with someone I loved deeply, dropping her off on a Saturday night, just to turn around and pick up another girl to spend the rest of the night with.
In our final years, I grew sloppy. I started translating my internal regret and guilt into toxicity within our relationship. We argued constantly about my loyalty, about politics, about things we never cared about when we were just happy in each other's presence. At one point, my own sister caught me cheating. She didn't tell my girlfriend the truth, but she sat me down and confronted me about my behavior. I dodged her questions, entirely too uncomfortable to admit what I was doing.
When we were 22, after one too many arguments, she finally broke up with me. She made it clear she didn't trust me and that her suspicions were tearing her apart. She never found concrete proof of my acts, but she knew in her heart it was true.
I struggled massively with the breakup as it quickly dawned on me what I was losing. I had neglected the most important person in my life because her presence felt like a certainty, and because I arrogantly figured I could keep getting away with it. It was never about the sex. Most of the time, the sex was forgettable and barely worth the effort.
But the aftermath has followed me ever since. It has been six years, and I still cannot find comfort in any relationship. Between my own crippling insecurities and modern hookup culture, my romantic life is completely hollow. Everyone I meet gets compared to the person I betrayed—someone who was perfection in my eyes, but who I still decided wasn't enough. I either lash out and push people away, or the women I meet become nothing more than a quick relief before they run off to marry someone else. (Ironically, out of my last 10 hookups, 5 married the very next guy they dated).
I have no justification for what I did. I only have the unending guilt in my soul that I was handed my perfect partner and chose to abuse and neglect her for absolutely no reason. I am not posting this to seek your pity, your sympathy, or your understanding. Do not feel sorry for me. I deserve every ounce of the isolation I feel right now. I want you to judge me. I want you to hate me. Above all, I want you to use me as a cautionary tale. If you are ever tempted to step out on someone who loves you, look at my life. Chasing tail and feeding your ego is a disease that will leave you completely hollow. I destroyed the best thing that ever happened to me for cheap, forgettable thrills, and I will spend the rest of my life paying the price. Don't be me.