What makes it even more humiliating is not just that your man is humiliating and degrading you, is that everyone else would find it shameful and humiliating too. Like how embarrassing would it be to if everyone knows your man cheated but you stayed? There’s so much feminist on social media that’s focused on how women need to have higher standards, need to leave men who embarrass or otherwise aren’t good to them, how women need to demand better for themselves.
I like to imagine a scenario where I don’t even have a fetish for it yet, my boyfriend cheats and i’m devastated but i’m pathetic enough to stay. I open up to a friend or coworker about it and she is appalled and tells me I need to stand up for myself. She talks shit about me for repeatedly defending a man who’s clearly terrible to me. I open up to my boyfriend about it, trying to be the sweet forgiving girl, trying to communicate and work through things instead of punishing him. Then, a few weeks later I glacé at his phone ( I’d never go through it <3 how else can we rebuild trust ) and see him texting her. I try not to think anything of it, we are in the same friend group after all. I shouldn’t assume so poorly of him, he’s told me he’s been doing his best! The next day, he doesn’t come home till late. In the spirit of fixing our relationship, i’ve baked cookies for him, thinking that after a long day at the office it would cheer him up to come home to cookies. I’m waiting for him at the door, wearing a new set of lingerie, I look great, ever since he cheated i’ve really tried to put more effort into my appearance. He comes home at 9, looks at me in my lingerie and walks straight to the couch. Confused I ask what gives, he tells me he fucked my friend. Goes into full detail all while I break down, sobbing. He tells me he messaged her initially to confront her, but she was always so much hotter than me, and hearing that she was being mean to me just drove him crazy. He had to have her, he does on to tell me that after talking for a while, they decided if you haven’t left by now, that maybe this is actually what I want deep down. That even though this is all new, I will learn to love it. And that maybe this will be better for us, especially considering how much better of a girlfriend I’ve been after he cheated. I can’t stop crying, I can’t believe what i’m hearing. A small apart of me almost wants to believe it’s true, have I really been a better girlfriend lately? The sliver of praise makes me want to fall into his arms for comfort. He holds out his arms and pets my head. He hasn’t been this affectionate in a while. He whispers praise, telling me it’s going to be okay, that he still loves me, that this will be good for me. That i’m not like my friend, i’m not a girl with self respecting women and that’s okay. I can be a pathetic girl, who gets cucked instead. That i’ll be good at that. I hate myself for it, but his comfort helps. My crying stops and I relax in his arms. Maybe this could be okay…
