I’ll never forget finding the Grindr app on my boyfriends phone.
How could I? It wasn’t like it was a one time thing. Several times, I sat, tears in my eyes and read his messages to other men.
Trading pics, talking of meeting up, and, finally, the message he sent telling one guy who lived a mile from our apartment, “I’m here”.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t yell. I just knew at that moment that there was nothing between us. There had never been anything between us.
Would it have been different had he cheated on me with a woman? I would like to say that it wouldn’t, but I would be lying. To say ones long time boyfriend cheated is one thing. To say ones boyfriend fucked other men behind her back is a totally different animal.
I still can’t accurately describe the cross between anger, nausea, and pain that came over me at that moment. I know I needed to know, but I hated everything about knowing. It was a knowledge I couldn’t give back, I couldn’t look past. I had to acknowledge it, and I had to excise myself from this poor excuse for a relationship.
All those times I had cried, feeling like I had done something wrong, wondering why he didn’t want to sleep with me anymore. All of those times I thought I was the problem.
But, there was no vindication to be had. Somehow, although I now knew the root cause of the issue, there was no “Aha, I see” moment. There was no moment of everything snapping back into place, taking all the painful knowledge and filing everything away.
I was left with the fact that I had been repeatedly cheated on, and that it had occurred with multiple men. I don’t know how to process everything about that knowledge. I think I somehow managed to hide it away somewhere for now, hoping a stronger me in the future will sort it out for the me that is heartbroken in the present.