After three years of dating Manuel, I started asking the necessary questions. We had been happy. There hadn’t been a fight or any cheating incidents. He was there for me, and I was there for him.

His parents were very affectionate. They had started calling me their in-law long ago, even before the relationship got serious. I was with him when he bought his car. I remember the night drive to nowhere.

We kissed in the car for no other reason than to just say, “We’ve baptized the car with a lovely kiss.” Everything was going on well in the relationship, but I needed to see direction and tune.

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I asked if he had plans for marriage and what I should do to help move that plan forward. Most of the time, he didn’t want to give me an answer. When he tried, the answer was so vague I couldn’t make head or tail of it. He would say, “Let’s see the plans God has for us first before we make our own plans.”

Or, “God has the master key to our lives, so let’s see when He decides to turn the key and open our future up for us.”

All these answers didn’t help the tune and rhythm of my emotions. We started dating when I was twenty-four. I wasn’t growing any younger. So one day, I sat him down and told him I needed a concrete answer. “See, you have everything, including the love you need to make future plans concerning us. I’m not asking you to marry me tomorrow. All I’m asking is, do you even have plans of marrying me? If yes, how does the plan look?”

He decided to get angry and assume things that were not there. He said, “If there’s someone out there giving you pressure to marry, let me know the person so I can talk to them.”

I said no one was giving me pressure, and then he said, “Or you have a new man who wants to marry you and you want to know my answer so you know what to tell that man?”

By the end of the conversation, nothing new had come out of it, and that disturbed my heart. I advised myself to go with the wind and see where it would blow me.

Then Albert came along. He had been there in the shadows. He said hi and hello whenever he had the chance. Nothing serious. One day, he came to my church for a wedding and we met. At the end of the day, he asked if I had a boyfriend, and I said yes. He asked, “A serious one, or you’re just having fun?”

That was the beginning of his pursuit. I used to spend my weekends with Manuel but when Albert came along and the conversations got intense, anytime Manuel asked me to come around, I gave him excuses. Just like Manuel, Albert had everything. In his own words, he said, “What’s left is a woman to make it all make sense.”

Manuel had never told me I made everything make sense in his life. There was no sense anywhere that I could even pinpoint because he wouldn’t give me answers. I ended up sleeping with Albert. Not once. Not twice. It was when Albert said we should meet his parents that, suddenly, I became aware that this thing was getting serious.

I went to Manuel and confessed to him, “I’ve cheated on you. I slept with him a few times. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what’s happening.”

He asked if I was alright, and then he called me crazy. He called me cheap. He called me a harlot. The names kept coming, and for some reason, I accepted all of them, but I was waiting for that one statement that would put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. Then finally, it fell from his mouth: “Why are you telling me this? You think a confession would save you? It’s over. I can’t lie in the same bed with a snake like you.”

I left with a smile on my face but an ache in my heart. Four years of a relationship doesn’t end without hurt just because someone else came along. I went home, assessed my choices, and asked myself if I had really made the right choice by telling him. I was texting to apologize when I realized he had blocked my number. I called. My number had been blocked.

I told myself, “So this is where it ends. To God be the glory.”

I had met Albert’s parents, and they too were equally affectionate, but it represented the beginning of the same cycle I’d been through with Manuel, and it felt boring. But Albert had a plan. He said after one year or less, we would be married. I didn’t even know if I wanted to marry him, but I was sure time was going to do the magic.

A few weeks ago, after almost one month of silence and spreading my cheating episode to everyone, Manuel reappeared. It was his mom who called first, advising me to give the relationship another chance. I said, “Mom, Manuel won’t do it. He was the one who blocked me and said it was over.”

She said she was going to talk to him. Later, Manuel showed up at my door. He said, “It’s my fault you cheated, but be honest with yourself. Do you love him just as you love me?”

The long and short of it all was that he had realized his mistakes and was taking all the responsibility for my cheating. He told me I was a good woman, but it was his own bad character that pushed me to cheat, so we should come back together again.

I was watching him with regret all over his face as if he was the one who cheated and was coming to apologize. I asked if he was sure about what he was saying. He said he was ready to even give me the answers I sought about the roadmap of our future.

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It felt like a dream watching him talk the way he did. I told him I wasn’t sure what to say, but I had to think through things and get back to him with an answer. He screamed, “What answer? You’re my girlfriend, remember? I came so we could continue from where we left off. What’s there to think about again?”

He makes it look so simple, but I’ve also learned that men don’t forgive infidelity. So why is he making it look like it doesn’t hurt to be cheated on? Why is he making it look like one month of silence is all it takes to heal from this kind of ache? Should I believe him? Especially when Albert is not ceding ground in what we’ve started building?

—Marie

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