If he doesn't believe in "the one" should I still marry him? Is it silly to wait six months to sleep with a guy? Why do guys who were cheated on turn into cheaters? Should you keep exes as friends or cut them off completely? And if an ex treated you terribly, will karma deliver revenge? It's a cheating fate edition of GuySpeak's Best of the Week!
Funny Guy says:
It's not the most romantic notion; I'll give you that. To have your boyfriend drop to his knee, open up a ring box and say, "Baby, you're one of the ones I could marry," isn't the stuff of fairy tales, but maybe that's ok. We want to believe that in the history of human kind -- through time, space and chance, you and your partner are singularly meant for each other. Is it likely?
After reading How Many People Do You Know?: Efficiently Estimating Personal Network Size by Tyler H. McCormick CK, Matthew J. Saliganik and Tian Zheng, we can assume an average personal network size is 750 people. What's more the probability of two randomly chosen Americans knowing each other is only about 0.0000025%. So given these facts, perhaps we can say your man is simply a pragmatist. Given all the people he knows, you're the one; at least he should be able to proclaim this.
But putting all that aside for a moment, you want to feel your man's piercing love and certitude that you are right for him; that your uniqueness is what is right about you. I'd tell him as much and see what he says. Remind him: love and perfection is a feeling not a fact. Something that reveals itself from the heart not the mind; it is the stuff of magic 8-balls, not calculators.
Gal Pal says:
Is your sole reason for rejecting him the fact that he refuses to believe his singular soul mate exists at the same small moment in human history, speaks the same language and also happens to live around the corner? Because if that's all you've got against him, I'd say your real beef is with logic. If you both love each other - more than anyone else you've met in this tiny moment of space and time - then that's a very good reason to marry him. And hey, you might just balance each other out. You can dream big for the two of you - he can keep you both real.
Girls' BFF says:
Sista girl...there is no right or wrong time or any particular indicator that you should use to help you determine when to smack bellies with a suitor. You go when it feels like the right time for you. Any man you're dating will just have to deal with that.
I do wonder why you wait a specific set amount of time though? What does the amount of months matter? Is it a "getting to know him" thing? And you feel like you can get to know somebody well enough to get into your skivvies after three months with minimal worry about them breaking your heart?
Either way, point is, engaging in relations with anybody is a very personal decision and there's no golden rule or grandiose statement that a man can make that makes him deserving of such. Once you decide you want to put it on him and you're comfortable with your decision enough to be good with it the next day, then do it. Or don't do it. Or whatever.
Gal Pal says:
I think the right time to sleep with a guy is two drinks in, after he's taken the action of removing my dress. Kidding! Mostly. Seriously, I'm wondering why your friends are even teasing you about this? And why their opinion on this subject matters more than your own? My guess is your hiLOLarious BFFs are ribbing you in a loving way (we all get teased for something...at least they're not attacking something serious, like your taste in rompers.) Or they might be jealous of your willpower in the bedroom. Who cares, though? If it's really bothering you, stop passing out your sex schedule to your friends...if they bring it up, just wink, giggle and don't give them a bit of ammo.
Mystery Man says:
I have said before, several times, I am good friends with all bar one of my ex's. Good enough friends in a few cases to stand as Godfather to their first born - in one case to stand in for her brother at the last minute and actually give her away in church to a brilliant, gentle and noble man. Which was about 17 different shades of awkward since I ain't none of those and normally have to be forced into a cheap rented suit at gunpoint.
Yes, it is unusual. Hard work too, but them's the breaks. Things worth doing usually are hard. You have a choice when you break up. Stay friends, with all the heartache, sorrow and wild rages that entails, or cut them out of your life completely.
To me, cutting them out of my life totally feels too much like cutting part of my own life out and throwing it away. Plus, all bar one (guess which one) of the break-ups was by mutual agreement and pretty amicable.
You may well feel different. It is your call. Your heart, your mind, your sanity. Don't let anyone tell you what you should feel or do - not even me. If you can't be friends with your ex - well you can't, simple as that. No huge fuss.
Gal Pal says:
I am friends with several of my exes, but only after a lengthy space apart. (And I'm only very close with one or two - the others, not so much - one in particular, never in a million universes over a trillion billion million times infinity years). It sounds to me like you have zero interest in being friends with your ex. That's a self-protective instinct and I think you should go with your gut on this. If you're hesitating, there's probably a good reason and it's probably advisable to keep your clean slate. BTW, Chic Geek tackled a similar question this week (exes must be on all of our minds!) Scroll down for his take on ex-communication.
Reformed Player says:
In a word: bitterness.
No matter who you are, and the cheatee becoming the cheater isn't limited to guys, being cheated on hurts. And it's not the kind of emotional hurt that you get over easily. That kind of pain tends to change some aspects of your personality, not least giving you a nasty dose of trust issues.
The basic thought is "I'm going to get cheated on, so I'll beat him or her to it!" It's not smart, or logical, but that's the process. Which is why I call out cheaters harshly on here: the damage they cause tends to radiate well beyond just one person.
Gal Pal says:
I don't buy a bit of this. I've been cheated on before and I would never in a million years cheat on someone as preemptive revenge. After you've been through that pain, it simply doesn't make sense that you'd want to inflict it on someone else. If some guy is using this as his excuse for cheating on you, I'd drop him ASAP. There's always an excuse for cheating - none of them are worthy of you.
Chic Geek says:
Unfortunately, if he's ready to move on, no amount of "absence makes the heart grow fonder" game playing will work. Also, are you assuming he's still interested, or do you know for a fact? Because he may not be sitting around waiting for you to call. It's like when you had drama with someone in middle school, but they had no idea there was any drama going on. "I'm going to totally avoid Becky all day. She knows what she did." And of course Becky goes about her day, blissfully unaware that you've been plotting her doom and waiting for her to come over and apologize.
You can avoid contact all you want, but it might backfire. While you're imagining him making you mix CDs and balling his eyes out while watching "The Notebook," he'll actually be going out with friends and meeting new people. The no contact rule works great if you want to get over someone. If you're hoping they come back, not so much.
Sure, you could play hard to get and show off your new haircut on Facebook in the hopes that he'll notice and comment and suddenly want you back. But is that really what you want? To sit around and wait for the hopes that he might suddenly want you back? The break-up happened for a reason. That's not to say he definitely won't want to get back together. But if he does, it really won't have anything to do with whether or not you guys have been Gchating or not. Usually when someone misses you, you know. When they don't, you know because you suddenly stop hearing from them.
The best thing you can do is to make your intentions clear. Let him know you want to get back together. You miss him, and want to give it another chance. If he wants to stay apart, at least you know for sure. This way you don't have to waste any time. Also, why play games at this stage? If you can't be honest with each other at this point, then it isn't a relationship worth pursuing.
Gal Pal says:
Some people take the opposite tack - from hoping for no contact, to hoping for really, really bad things to happen to their exes. Keep reading...
Wise-Ass says:
I believe that people who consistently mistreat others will get a taste of their own medicine sooner or later. Whether that's karma or just the natural consequence of being an asshat, I don't know, but it happens. I also believe that most evil people live miserable, joyless lives, which is its own punishment.
It would be nice if we could always witness karma in action, but we can't. The person's fate is out of our hands at that point, which is as it should be. Justice is best handled by the universe, not by us. The moment we take it upon ourselves to dispense justice, it becomes revenge, not justice, and revenge has a way of staining our hands and damaging our souls.
Do I think your ex will get what's coming to him? Maybe. Perhaps even probably. But then, do we all get punished for every bad thing we do? No, and thank goodness for that, because we all make mistakes and do bad things sometimes, intentionally or not. If every sin were punished, we would all be in deep doo-doo.
My advice to you is to let it go. I know you're angry, but who is suffering more from your anger, you or him? Karma may or may not get your ex. You might never know. Forget about him and focus on making yourself happy, treating people right and creating your own good karma. This is the definition of living well, and living well is the best revenge of all.
Gal Pal says:
Cary is dead one with this answer. We all pine for sweet revenge when someone's done us wrong. But karma is wonderful that way - it takes care of things for you so you don't have to waste more precious time and energy plotting and planning over a loser. Let him go...wish him as well as you can...and let yourself move on.
That's it for this week. Thanks for playing, guys and girls!
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