He Cheated And You Didn’t Know. Maybe She Didn’t Know Too

There’s nothing worse than being cheated on. The hurt you cause another person by cheating is unforgiveable, and yet it happens. I know many people who have cheated and been cheated on; the pain on both sides is very real, but it still doesn’t excuse the act itself.

When you find out that your partner has cheated on you—or perhaps still is cheating on you—it’s easy to vilify the other woman. After all, what kind of woman would knowingly cheat with someone else’s guy.

The keyword here is “knowingly”. Not all women—or men for that matter—who get involved with people who are already in relationships know that they’re doing so.

I certainly had no idea.

Let’s call him John

I met John online. We seemed to hit it off really quickly, and would often chat throughout the day and late into the night. He was funny, charming, smart and had the most piercing blue eyes I’ve ever seen. I fell for him quickly. There were no red flags, and I had no reason to doubt him.

He told me that he had been divorced for two years. The story was that his wife had cheated on him, fallen pregnant (he was sterile—or so he said) and left him for the other guy. He seemed sincere and genuinely heartbroken when he spoke about his “divorce”.

In reality, he had only been married for seven months at the time that we started dating. I probably would never have found out if I hadn’t tried to look him up online after he went back to the U.S.

We broke up just before he left Korea. I had always known that our relationship had an expiration date on it simply because that’s how the expat community works here. I would never have guessed that it had an expiration date because he was already married.

Did his wife know?

I have no idea if his wife ever knew about me (and possibly other women he was seeing while with me) or if she even suspected anything. I don’t know if it was the first time he cheated. I don’t know if she ever cheated on him. It wouldn’t matter to me if she had.

I was furious when I found out that he was not only married, but that he had fabricated such an elaborate lie about his wife of just a few months. I was angry that I’d unwittingly helped someone to cheat—so angry that I considered contacting his wife and letting her know what had happened.

I didn’t contact her. Instead, I settled for emailing him in my shock, anger and confusion and left it at that. I still don’t know what I hoped to accomplish with that email.

Time doesn’t heal all wounds

It’s been three years since I learned that John was actually married while we were together. To be honest, I still wonder if he ever thinks about me. It’s selfish and I have no claim to him, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love him. As far as I knew, he was unattached.

Even in hindsight, I can’t see any red flags. When I knew that our time together was coming to an end, I tried to break things off and prepare for the split. He responded by telling me that he loved me, and continued to stay in touch until the day he left the country. Finding out that he was married felt like I lost him twice even though, in reality, I never truly had him to begin.

I’ve had no contact with him since that final email. I mourned the end of the relationship like I would any other while simultaneously being disgusted and disappointed both with myself and John.

I didn’t do anything wrong. I was single when I met John, and I believed him to be the same. I had no reason not to believe him. The disappointment and disgust, however, remain.

The irrationality of feelings

I felt disappointed that things worked out the way they did and disgusted because I felt some irrational claim to a man who already had a wife. That I never knew about his wife until things ended between him and me is irrelevant. I hated him for putting me in the position of having helped him to cheat, and I was disappointed in myself although I still have a hard time explaining why.

I know that John’s marriage has since ended. Part of me will always love him—the side of him that I got to know, at least. While I’ll never reach out to him, I do wonder how he’s doing. I still think about the time we spent together and how happy I was with him, but there’s a bittersweet shadow of distrust that darkens the memories a little.

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t the slightest bit curious about his wife. I’m curious what she’s like, what their relationship was like and if he cheated on her with other women besides me.

I’d also be lying if I said that I’ve never wondered how much truth, if any, there was to the story that he initially told me about their relationship, but that doesn’t make the feeling of helping someone cheat any easier to accept. It simply offers a brief respite from the feeling that I, too, was cheated by him.

If cheating were as black and white as we like to believe it is, I’d be the woman to vilify. After all, I was “the other woman”; the one who helped him to cheat—I just didn’t know it at the time.