Relationships with people who for some mysterious reason give-off vibes that make it just so difficult for one to trust them is just too emotionally and mentally stressful.
Not that you’re terribly insecure and can’t just trust them to never stray away from their fidelity (again if you recently caught them cheating.)
But there’s this thing about them that makes it simply too hard to brush off the doubts, fears, and thoughts of them breaking your trust all over again. Perhaps they’ve always been the types of people with little to no sense of guilt and have always betrayed people who love and trust them.
And truth be told, such a situation can overwhelmingly consume one with stress and leave her swimming in a pool of doubts, fear, and uncertainty about what might become of the relationship soon.
No doubt, we all at times, feel stressed, doubtful, and uncertain about so many things in our relationships including our partners’ faithfulness. There’s no point pretending that even the best relationships are sweet and cool all the time.
But there’s a clear-cut difference between temporary and easy-to-overcome fears and doubts — because they don’t just add up. And the types that’ll never go away — because something is wrong somewhere.
For instance, you might be worried about your partner’s commitment when they hang out with one or two attractive opposite sex and other colleagues when they’ll only be out to harmlessly celebrate a major win at work. Or if your partner comes home later than usual which turns out to be because they had to work extra hour(s) at work and even happens once or twice.
In any of these scenarios, your feelings of stress, doubts, and uncertainty are quite normal and more instinctual than a real cause of alarm.
But that’s not the kinds of stress, doubts, and uncertainty we are talking about here.
We are talking about extreme and endless feelings of doubt and fear that a partner will always break your trust with their serial and never-ending unfaithfulness no matter how many times you’re willing to forgive and trust again — because they’ve always been shameless and ruthless cheats long before they met you.
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1. They’re Attention Whores
We all are social creatures who crave attention and want to feel loved, special, and cared for by friends, family, and romantic partners. However, some people are so obsessed with getting attention and validation that they’ll go to any length to get it whenever they’re out of the supply of it.
Because they are never satisfied with what they have and will do crazy things or put on any show to get the attention they crave. Worse, they get bored easily and feel guilty or insecure about who they are.
That’s why they’ll likely not respect you enough as their partner to be ever faithful because they’ll do so many things in your present to attract the attention of others. To put it bluntly, even if it means ANYONE’S partner. They have options, so they probably only have you around because they haven’t gotten the attention they want from other people they perceive to be better than you.
But the harsh reality is that relationships require commitment, loyalty, trust, and integrity because relationships simply don’t work without these basic foundation principles.
So, if your partner is constantly needing new attention from someone new and other than you, they’re a serial cheat who is often very insecure and needs the excitement of new attention and acknowledgment that they are desirable and validated, which is a deep-seated lack of self-worth and value.
Hence, I see no reason to be with a partner who is interested in other people, won’t commit to the relationship and feels the need to attract other people’s attention because you’ll never be happy and at peace in such a relationship.
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2. They’re Excessively Flirtatious without Restraints even
Instead of being at least half-heartedly respectful of their partners enough to be a little more friendly than flirtatious, serial heartbreakers often flirt around with people right before their partners and even go overboard with it.
They oftentimes blatantly connect with other people across the room or around them. And go beyond engaging them in conversations to becoming obviously flirtatious with them while acting as if their partners can’t see or understand what’s happening. Worse, they behave as though, their partners are just too dumb to understand anything.
We are living in an age where we are often cautioned about jealousy and over-possessiveness when it comes to romantic relationships. That’s actually a great piece of advice, only that some shameless serial unfaithful people often use it against us. Making a lot of us helpless towards their cynical and disrespectful acts that often leave us with nothing but deep resentment for them as we try hard to cope with their incessant violation.
The problem is that when you can barely relax whenever you’re out with your partner due to their highly flirtatious nature which might make you feel diminished and rejected as a person and a partner, although, this might not always be the case, there are high chances that your partner might not just be a serial cheat but also someone who can never be loving enough to be ever faithful. Especially if they’re still being flirtatious after you’ve severally complained and told them how it makes you feel.
In fact, you should be more worried if every time you confront them about their indiscretions, they get defensive, deny, and even label you extremely insecure, untrusting, and crazy without any attempt to tune down their behaviors henceforth.
If your overly flirtatious partner has cheated on you in the past, is still flirting around, and often denies or get defensive of their behaviors, you’re obviously in the hands of a serial cheat.
You might have a bad gut feeling about your partner’s flirtatiousness and would still want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you should be careful not to get your heart brutally shattered by someone who doesn’t see it as a big deal to do so.
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3. They’re Damn so Organized with Their Lies and Acts
If you’ve ever wondered how and why your partner seems to be nothing but a practiced liar who knows how to lay them out with grand style convincingly, even when you feel or know they’re lying, then it’s probably because of a few related reasons:
- They’re one of those people who are just so good with their words that they can talk their way out of almost everything
- They’re practiced liars and as in all things, consistent lying breeds perfection — They’ve been literally lying for ages
- It could be a sign of their long-running serial dishonesty, cheating, and familiarity with similar situations
In this current day and time, lying and dishonest behaviors are just so easy for a lot of people. Cheating partners and spouses are at an all-time high — making it a kind of perversive and a new normal for people to shamelessly lie after lie to cover their despicable acts of betrayal.
No doubt, we all lie and aren’t always honest all the time, but for the most atrocious serial cheaters, their minds and brains are wired like that of serial killers to always betray, cheat, and break their promises and commitment while always having the perfect answers to questions directed towards their whereabouts, suspicious actions, and what have you.
They’re always organized with their acts and lies leaving little to no chance for mistakes that might lead them to be caught.
This effortless smoothness to executing and covering up their disgraceful deeds is what they’ve acquired over a long time experience — they’ve been cheating and lying endlessly to God knows how many partners before you.
The thing is if your partner has been all along behaving overly suspiciously especially when it comes to their whereabouts, who they hang out with, how long they stay out, and even the kinds of calls they take or make. While always having elaborate stories and explanations waiting for you to ask, your constant response might always be as simple as buying their stories even though a better part of you knows they’re lying. Besides, it’s not like you’ve got concrete evidence or have caught them red-handed.
But the following might not be very far from the truth:
They might just be “smart and intelligent” serial cheaters banking on their long-acquired experience to manipulate, fool, and deceive you into thinking that all is well. But it’ll definitely take one, or a few mistakes and also time for you to eventually catch them.
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4. They’re Flakey and Inconsistent as Hell
Some inconsiderate and irresponsible serial heartbreakers can be just terrible enough to be the most inconsistent and unreliable people one can ever meet in a lifetime.
They’ll endlessly break promises, change their minds, and avoid any form of commitment at all costs, no matter how small.
The problem is not just that such kinds of unreliable people never consider a romantic partner a priority in their lives. They’re simply the kinds of people that naturally don’t take social commitments any seriously. In fact, Susan Winter — NYC relationship expert, love coach, and author of Breakup Triage: Cure for Heartache considers this a huge relationship red flag that can make up for a whole lot of frustration if ignored.
Hence, if you don’t want to subject yourself to a never-ending roller coaster of stress and frustrations inflicted on you by the incessant empty promises they’ll never follow through with, bailing on or canceling plans with you, habitual blow-offs, disappearing and leaving you waiting, then you should know that your time is just too precious to waste on unreliable flakes who are putting up such behaviors because they can’t afford to commit to you and miss out on other people they can be with.
You don’t have to be endlessly waiting on the edge while they keep jumping from one bed to another with different people — you can’t afford to wait for them to change either ’cause they’ve been like that for God knows how long.
Sure, people do change and I’m a firm believer in the law of constant change. That’s why the main purpose of this whole post isn’t to proclaim that cheaters will always be cheaters or that a leopard can’t change its spots. But to give whoever cares to listen a glimpse of what unrepentant repeat cheaters look like. And flakiness is one of their many characteristics.
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5. You Were the Other Person with Them at one Point
Despite this not being what we all want, falling in love and being in a relationship isn’t a guarantee of loyalty from a romantic partner especially when you’re in a relationship with someone who has cheated on his or her ex-partner with you. Sure, there are exemptions to this but it isn’t that hard to tell the difference.
Because the problem is that if they can do it so easily to them, what makes you think they won’t do it to you? Particularly if they tried too hard to paint the said ex black — making everything seem like it’s totally their fault and hence, their conscience is clear enough to cheat without feeling an ounce of guilt.
If this is the case, they may not have intended to stop cheating anytime soon because this type of person makes no effort at growth other than a brief period of being extremely sweet to you to make up for it.
They’ll definitely be so good at hiding their tracks, so you don’t realize their disgusting piece, knowing fully well that they’ve done the same thing with you before. But if you pay a little more attention, you might find out that they’re repeatedly flirting and even hooking up with other people while you’re still together like they did to their ex-partner.
Unless their behavior towards their ex-partner has a lot more to do with them (their ex-partners), there’s no guarantee that they’ll treat you any better. And personally, if I ever discover that the person I’m seeing is in a relationship with another person long before we even met, I’ll simply cut my losses and move on no matter the reason why they’re willing to do so. Because if they can’t be honest enough to end things first with the other person, I don’t think I can trust them with my heart and time.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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