So, I was dating this guy for over 5 years to the point where you could say we were practically married (albeit a long distance marriage). We met through mutual friends, but at the time we lived in different states. How we made it work in those critical first few months, I can’t even tell you. I guess it was the wonder of those frequent flyer miles.
Anyway, at one point he lived in Los Angeles (where he’s from) and I lived in Atlanta (where I went to college) and he was very upset with me for choosing to go to college there instead of Los Angeles to be more close to him at the time. At the time, I was just a young woman chasing the dream of making it big and getting my education was my top priority, not my man.
We discussed that for a while before coming to some kind of compromise: I would spend a year or so in Atlanta and end up in Los Angeles. Sounds reasonable? It seemed that way at the time. Also, we decided to take a little break from flying around the coast and do our own thing for a year. I mean it wasn’t necessarily established that we would see other people. It was simply agreed that we would take a break back and forth.
Anyway, a year later, I’m in Los Angeles and I met my man. Everything was going well until I found out that he had become the father of a little boy by an ex of his (and I didn’t find out about this right away because he didn’t tell me right away). Needless to say, he wasn’t happy about it. But what could I do? The boy was here now.
At that time, I felt that he cheated on me and of course I was angry with him. And, of course, he would rationalize it by saying, “Honey, it wasn’t a setup. We weren’t together during that time.” She wasn’t trying to listen to him then and as much as she loved this boy, she couldn’t get past the fact that he had a baby…with someone else. I mean, I wasn’t stupid to think he was going to be celibate all year, I knew he was going to have sex with anyone, but I didn’t expect him to have a baby. Neither does he apparently.
But anyway, we’re not together anymore even though at some point we tried to make it work. He just couldn’t accept the situation as it was. But now that I’m older and looking back, maybe some of this was my fault and maybe he was right, that he really wasn’t cheating if we weren’t together at the time (on and off). What do you think?