please cheat on me

because not wanting you is a harder truth to live with

There’s something uniquely cruel about a guy who does everything right.

He’s good. In the unremarkable, steady, makes-you-feel-safe way. He texts back. He listens. He remembers things I mention once and never repeat. He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t disappear. He doesn’t make me guess.

He loves me plainly. Earnestly. Without theatrics.
And I wish I loved him the way he loves me.

That sentence alone makes me feel horrible.

If he were careless, this would be easy. If he were inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, vaguely allergic to commitment, I’d already be gone.
I’m very good at leaving when guys give me reasons. I have a well rehearsed exit strategy for bad behavior. I know exactly how to pack my dignity and go.

But what do you do with someone whose only crime is not being what you want?

There’s no socially acceptable breakup script for “you’re wonderful and it still isn’t enough.” No applause for walking away from kindness. No communal nod of understanding. Just the quiet implication that you’re broken, ungrateful, afraid of love, or secretly addicted to chaos.

Maybe all of the above.

So sometimes, in my darker and more selfish moments, I wish he would cheat on me.

Not because I want to be hurt. But because I want clarity. I want a clean reason. I want a story that makes sense to other people and to myself. I want to be able to say “of course I left” instead of “I left because the love didn’t land where it was supposed to.”

If he cheated, I could be righteously angry instead of unbearably sad. I could be betrayed instead of confused. I could be the girl who was wronged instead of the girl who simply didn’t feel it.

There’s a strange comfort in being disappointed.

Because disappointment implies expectation. It implies that you wanted the thing badly enough for its failure to matter. Right now, I’m stuck in a worse place. I’m not disappointed. I’m unmoved. And that feels far more damning.

He’s the kind of person people say you should marry. The kind your friends would defend in your absence. The kind your mother would love. The kind who makes you question your own instincts because surely, if this isn’t love, then what is?

But desire isn’t democratic. It doesn’t care about résumés. It doesn’t respond to effort alone. You can’t negotiate your way into wanting someone more. You can’t gratitude yourself into passion.

I’ve tried.

I’ve waited for the switch to flip. For the affection to deepen into hunger. For the certainty to arrive late like a delayed train. I’ve been patient with myself and unfair to him at the same time.

And the cruelest part is that he would never cheat on me. He’s not that person. He’s too decent, too consistent, too emotionally intact. Which means when I leave, I’ll have to do it without a villain. Without a scandal. Without a single screenshot to justify myself.

I’ll have to leave knowing that love, when offered freely, isn’t always received the same way.

I wanted him to be like every other guy. I wanted him to disappoint me in a familiar way. I wanted him to give me the kind of pain that feels legible, narratable, almost comforting.

But instead, he’s good. And I’m the one breaking the story.

Not all endings are caused by wrongdoings. Some things end because the love is real but asymmetrical. Because wanting someone to be enough doesn’t automatically make them enough. Because staying out of guilt is its own kind of betrayal.

There’s no villain here. Just two people loving at different volumes.

And maybe that’s harder to explain than cheating ever would be.

This can’t just be me. Right…? If everything is a universal experience, I need to know if at least a few of you have been here, staring at a perfectly good person like they’re a beautifully wrapped gift you don’t actually want but feel insane returning.

Have you ever tried to explain this out loud and immediately sounded ungrateful? Like the words themselves were betraying you? You start sentences with “they’re amazing, but…” and everyone braces. You lower your voice when you talk about them. You soften your complaints. You pre-defend them before anyone can misunderstand you.

You don’t want to make them the bad guy because that’s not what they are. And somehow that makes it worse.

It’s so easy to leave when someone hurts you. When they embarrass you. When they mess up publicly. There’s a guide for that. There’s language for that. There’s a group chat consensus and a clean emotional arc. You’re sad, then you’re angry, then you’re free.

But what do we do with the men who don’t, and we still don’t want them?

That’s where the silence is.

This is murkier.

This is leaving someone you still like. Someone you still respect. Someone you still hope does well in life. Someone you’d defend in a hypothetical argument you’ll never have again.

No one prepares you for how much guilt lives there.

So you start negotiating with yourself instead. You tell yourself that wanting more chemistry is shallow. That stability should be enough. That attraction grows. That love is a choice. That maybe this is what healthy feels like and you’re just too dramatic to recognize it.

You stay a little longer. Then a little longer than that.

And late at night, when you’re being honest in a way you’d never be out loud, you wish he’d just do something wrong. Not because you want him to suffer. But because you want permission.

Permission to leave without having to explain yourself fifteen different ways. Permission to be sad without being the villain. Permission to choose yourself without it being framed as self-sabotage.

We don’t talk enough about how many women are trapped by decency. How often we confuse being treated well with being right for each other. How kindness can turn into a cage when you stay out of guilt instead of desire.

And no, this isn’t about chasing chaos. It’s not about wanting toxic men. It’s about admitting that goodness alone isn’t compatibility. That safety isn’t the same thing as wanting. That peace without pull can still feel like absence.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can say is “this doesn’t feel right” without waiting for proof.

So if you’ve ever loved someone gently but not fully, stayed longer than you should have because leaving felt cruel, or secretly wished for a reason that would make the ending easier to explain, I see you.

You’re just honest in a world that only understands women when they’ve been wronged, not when they’ve been clear.

And maybe that’s the part we only admit to each other. Quietly. Casually. Late at night.

The kind of truth that lives in the group chat and never quite makes it into the official story.

And before anyone starts drafting think pieces in the comments, yes, I know how this sounds.

I know how bad it looks to say you wanted a good man to cheat on you. I know how ugly that sentence is when you strip it of context.
Screenshot it without the nuance and I look like a cartoon villain. Fine.

But let’s be real.

Have you ever been so bored by peace that you started resenting the person giving it to you?

Have you ever looked at someone who treated you beautifully and thought, why doesn’t this feel like anything? And then immediately hated yourself for thinking that?

Because no one tells you that being loved properly can feel suffocating when you’re not in it the same way. That being chosen gently can still feel like being chosen incorrectly.

So yes, sometimes I wanted him to mess up. Sometimes I wanted him to give me an out that didn’t require a PowerPoint presentation of my feelings. I wanted him to ruin the fantasy so I could stop pretending.

And that’s when people start diagnosing you. You must have daddy issues. You must be avoidant. You must be traumatized. You must be addicted to drama. You must be scared of healthy love.

Or maybe you just don’t want him. Which isn’t always the case. And even when it is, no one likes that answer.

So you stay. You perform gratitude. You over-explain. You convince yourself that desire is optional and that chemistry is a luxury. You start shrinking your wants until they fit inside what you’re being offered.

And the resentment creeps in quietly.

You don’t hate him. You hate yourself around him.

You hate that you feel ungrateful. You hate that you can’t reciprocate at the same volume. You hate that he’s doing everything right and you’re still mentally checking out. You hate that leaving will make you the story’s antagonist.

So yes, in those moments, cheating feels like mercy.

It feels like someone else making the decision for you. It feels like being released instead of choosing to go. It feels like being allowed to want more without being morally prosecuted for it.

And if that makes you uncomfortable, good. It should.

Because I think a lot of women are walking around in relationships they don’t actually want, held together by decency, optics, and fear of being seen as ungrateful. I think a lot of us have mistaken being treated well for being right together. I think we’ve been taught that leaving requires justification, not just truth.

Sometimes there is no lesson. No villain. No betrayal.

Sometimes the most radical thing you can admit is: nothing was wrong. I just wanted more.

And we don’t have enough stories for that. So we fantasize about worse ones.

That’s the part we don’t post. That’s the thought we swallow. That’s the sentence we only say half-joking, half-serious, to our closest friends and immediately follow with “I know that sounds insane.”

It’s not insane. It’s just impolite.

And maybe that’s why it feels so dangerous to say out loud.

And here’s the part I’m not supposed to say.

If he had cheated, leaving would’ve been easier than staying ever was.

Because staying required me to keep pretending that love is something you can grow into if you just behave correctly. That wanting someone is optional. That being chosen should be enough even when you’re not choosing back.

Cheating would’ve made him smaller. Staying made me smaller.

I didn’t want him to hurt me. I wanted him to free me from having to admit that I wasn’t moved.

I wanted a reason that would absolve me. Instead, I got the truth, which is less forgivable.

The truth is that some people can love you perfectly and still not be the person you want. And no amount of kindness makes that cruelty disappear.

The truth is that I didn’t leave because he failed me. I left because I didn’t want him enough. And that sentence is harder to live with than any betrayal.

This even had me thinking about cheating in a whole different light. What if this is why some women cheat in relationships they should’ve left?

Not because they don’t care. Not because they’re reckless or cruel. But because cheating turns an existential truth into a contained mistake?

Because “I cheated” is a confession people recognize. It’s ugly, but it’s legible. It has consequences, remorse, a beginning and an end. You can point to it and say that’s what went wrong.

“I just didn’t want him anymore” doesn’t have that luxury.

That truth doesn’t feel like a mistake. It feels like a character flaw.

The guilt of cheating is heavy, but it’s finite.

The guilt of staying with someone you don’t want is slow, shapeless, and corrosive. Infinite.

One can be apologized for.

The other just sits in your chest and eats at you.

I’m just saying I understand the math.

Because we live in a world that forgives women for doing something wrong more easily than it forgives them for wanting something different.

We talk so much about being chosen. About being loved well. About not settling.

But no one tells you how devastating it is to realize you are the one who would’ve been settling.

Jeez this one ran long. Your girl had a lot to say.
If you’re still here, thank you for listening and for letting me be honest on the internet. I love you for it.

First 10 people to comment get a free one-month upgrade. Just DM me your email.

---

Thank you so much for reading! If this resonated and you want to help me keep writing, consider becoming a paid subscriber. I’ll be posting more soon, some of it free, some of it behind the velvet rope.

And if you’re not ready to commit to a subscription, you can buy me a matcha at the overpriced café where I pretend to be extremely mysterious while staring at my screen. No pressure. Just eternal gratitude :)