I don’t mean this to be insensitive toward people that have been cheated on. For what it’s worth, I’ve been cheated on twice. Once when it was at the beginning of a relationship, and once when I was with someone for four years and I broke up with her because I found out that she had started something with a mutual friend. Both hurt, and I mean they really fucking hurt, but after a few months I had moved on. I also don’t mean for THAT to be insensitive either; I’ve been married for ten years now, and truthfully I don’t know how I would act if I found out my wife was cheating on me. We have a kid and a mortgage, and it would really fuck things up. But that also isn’t the situation my friend was in.

We all handle things differently. Don’t get me wrong. I was there for him when it happened, and for about a year afterward I listened to him when something reminded him of the event, but I’ve also seen him destroy good relationships since due to his trust issues. The girl who cheated on him was someone he was with for about a year and a half. It was a serious thing. I get the lingering pain. But at this point, it feels like continuing to sympathize is actually kind of being complicit in his lack of moving on.

I feel like cheating just happens sometimes. I don’t mean to make light of it. I mean that it’s so common that you might as well just accept that it will likely happen at some point. What I learned from being cheated on is that I missed some signs of the relationship not being what I thought it was and what I wanted it to be, and I could say all day that they should have just broken up with me, but I don’t know, maybe they felt like I was really intense or something. I look back at myself and how I was with relationships when I got cheated on, and I’ve never cheated on someone, but I get how someone would have felt inclined to cheat on me. I should have let go more. Ever since I learned that, and learned to relax a bit, I haven’t been cheated on.

So at this point I’ve tried sympathizing, I’ve tried distracting, I’ve tried tough love, and he thanks me each time I listen to him and offer him what I do, and I am NOT trying to solve his problem, but I’m losing some serious bandwidth, and I think maybe him losing a friend will spark something in him that will make him think that yes it’s not ok that he was cheated on, but it’s also not ok that he’s doing this to himself and others.