The great questions:

Can a person both be in love and cheat at the same time? Does the act of cheating contradict their love? Does all state, even love, change over time?

(All “Love” in this post refers to Romantic Love)

The terrible news:

The inspiration came from a story I recently read:

One day, a woman felt unwell, so she had a check-up at a local hospital. The result was devastating: she had been diagnosed with colon cancer, and she had to start treatment such as chemotherapy immediately.

The treatment was brutal, causing her to have endless vomiting, uncontrollable bowel movements, never-ending nightmares that woke her up every 10 minutes. She didn’t know if she could endure it all without her boyfriend, who stayed by her side and took care of her in the finest ways day after day and night after night. He endured everything. The mess, the mood swings, the lack of sleep, and much more.

Fortune favors the brave. She managed to beat cancer. So once again, she was alive without a countdown over her head. When the doctor officially announced she was cancer free, she was ready to marry her boyfriend and give everything of her to her life saving partner.

Then he cheated on her. Not before her cancer, not even during her cancer, but AFTER she recovered. Had it started while she was sick, she would be more understanding.

Needless to say, this was an earth-shattering experience and she was completely destroyed by the news, much worse than the day she learnt she had cancer. She questioned everything, if he ever loved her, did he play pretend with her? Is there any love at all in this world?

What is love anyway?

Before we go on to answer our questions, we have to establish a premise, to define what is even love.

The exact definition of Love is muddy and it varies from person to person. If we collect the most commonly accepted requirements for the “perfect love”, we can say:

Perfect love is when:

1. You feel emotionally, physically and sexually attracted to that person, you wish to talk to them, spend time with them, you want them to love you, and of course you want to have sex with them;
2. You care about them, and you want the best for them without looking for return. Even at your own cost, spending your precious resources on them, such as a poor man’s money or a rich man’s time;
3. It is exclusive. You do not have the feelings listed in number 1 and 2 towards other people, nor do you act them out even if you can’t help but to have these feelings.

Perhaps there are more bespoke needs based on individual preferences, but this should suffice for 99% of the population. When a love ticks all three boxes, we call it the perfect love, the ideal love.

The question that becomes immediately obvious is: Where is the line exactly? There are so many situations that would break this list:

1. What if I feel so attracted to someone and 100% exclusive, yet I want them to enjoy the same drug as I do?
2. What if I am exclusive, care about them deeply, but I am no longer interested in having sex with them?
3. In fact, the definition of “wanting the best for them” is so vague it is impossible to follow. Is this “best” based on their opinion or mine? Is there a universal truth and good?

Before we get distracted by the unsolvable issue of universal morality, we should see how fuzzy the line is.

To add insult to injury, nothing in this world is unchanging. What if I have the perfect love in the morning, but it changes by the night? Do I stop loving someone? What if it changed back the next morning? Do I all of a sudden re-love someone or is that bridge burned?

To define love, we must first reconcile with these two facts :

1. The Imperfect love
2. The changing love

We shall accomplish this using the story above to illustrate.

The Imperfect love

Nobody is perfect in this world, we are filled with greed, hatred, envy, lust, selfishness, and much more. So we argue, cheat, fight, assault, manipulate, and so on. To be a human is to be flawed. This means our love is often flawed also.

Is imperfect love still love?

When a man beats his wife, when a woman manipulates her husband, when a couple cheat on each other – do they not feel love for the partner? Is there not a single drop of love in that person’s heart?

I would argue against that. Imperfect love is still love. In fact, I would go as far as to say that, if imperfect love is not love, then there is no love in this world at all. Because nothing and no one will ever be perfect no matter how much effort we spend on pursuing them. They exist in fantasy, in books, in movies, but not on this planet.

So the next question is naturally – but there has to be a limit right? At what point do we say the love is gone? The fact of the matter is that, this is a 100% subjective decision. Some tolerate cheating while others don’t. Some can stand dead bedroom, yet some would rather divorce. We pick and choose based on our own personal preferences.

It seems to me that, there are no universal deal breakers in this world, at least I cannot think of any. There are people who are extremely physically and emotionally abusive, there are criminals, there are cheaters and rapists, they are a disgrace to the human race, yet, perhaps the victims of their action do sense a tingle of love? I do not know. To make things worse, the feeling of being loved is told from the perspective of the loved, and this perspective is often twisted and turned by mental health issues, circumstances and social conditioning. Therefore I must admit I do not know if there are universal deal breakers that we can impose on everyone.

So yes, imperfect love is love. Not only is it common, it is the default.

In our story, the man did not keep his loyalty towards the woman. He was not exclusive. This, however, does not erase the fact that he had sacrificed a great deal to care for her, to be with her. So in my opinion, he did love her, and maybe he still does, nobody knows, perhaps not even himself. But his love is imperfect, and it failed her expectation, and that was the deal breaker. Note, I am not defending the man, but merely stating that his imperfect love is still love.

The changing love

Love is corruptible. Too easy to corrupt, in fact.

“They had a change of heart” is a common phrase we use, because it is a common phenomenon we notice. Everything about a man changes as they move across time, space, and society. Love is no exception.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man. Much like the weather, love fluctuates in unexpected ways. Perhaps a man is loyal, then he met the woman that ticks all the desires he had at that moment. Perhaps someone is selfish normally, but at that critical moment, they remembered a great movie they watched once upon a time that taught them about sacrifice, so they gave their all to the partner.

The point is, we cannot fathom how many times we change our mind on everything, thus it is silly to claim love is the only exception. It is not.

Let’s suspend our disbelief for a second here. Let’s say God came down from the heavens and granted directly the man in our story the only perfect love in this universe. What now? There is only downhill from here, and there is more than one way to degrade.

For example, during the time of crisis, he was her caretaker and savior. He did a great job, however, this does not mean he was happy about it. It is totally possible that he had a terrible time carrying out these duties, yet out of sense of responsibility, he continued. But such burden eroded his feeling for her.

Or maybe, he became accustomed to the fact that she was completely reliant on him, then when she recovered, he was agitated because she was a free and independent person again, which removed his sense of omnipotent power.

Regardless of the reason, his love became corrupted. It was no longer enough for him, so he had to find a new outlet to fulfill his desires. So he cheated.

The grave result

Given the frame work above, we can make a final judgement on their relationship and answer her questions.

1. If he ever loved her – Yes, with imperfect and changing love;
2. Did he play pretend with her? – Loyalty wise perhaps, but not with love in general;
3. Is there any love at all in this world? – If by love she means perfect love, then no, otherwise yes.

He did love her, just not in the perfect way she assumed it to be. She made two assumptions: his love was perfect, and unchanging. Neither is correct sadly.

However, there is more to this than just love. There is also an issue of broken promises, hence the breach of trust. The trust of having a partner that does not meet her deal breakers. Perhaps a great deal of her emotional drain came from this instead of a simple matter of love.

She was ready to marry him, that implies commitment. She was ready to build a skyscraper on the foundation that is known as love. She thought the foundation was rock solid because the commitment she thought he had shown during the time of crisis. Everything was good.

When she found out he cheated on her, not only did this horrible news shatter her love and expectations, it completely destroyed the foundation of everything she believed about relationship and future. That once solid concrete foundation became a mushy pit of swamp and she was being swallowed alive. She started to question everything.

Trust is to our emotions as glasses are to our eyes. It adjusts the signals we receive. When trust itself is proven to be faulty, it implies ALL emotions they felt up to that point had been manipulated, just like a pair of tainted glasses would make you question all the colour you had seen throughout your life.

Nothing is pure again. She starts to question their every single interaction from the beginning to the end.

This is why betrayal in general is impossible to forgive. It is not just an action that hurts now. It also retroactively destroys all the memories you once held near and dear, and it will also corrupt all your future interactions.

It will haunt her for the rest of her life. In fact, not only will it uproot all previous interactions she had with her boyfriend at the time, it will completely change how she views all future men as a whole. It is a paradigm shift.

Conclusion

We often look at love as a boolean question: you either love or you don’t love, but this is counter productive. Love is more akin to an ever-flowing river.

Sometimes the water level rises, sometimes the water level drops, sometimes it breaches the dam, and sometimes it dries up.

Sometimes the reason behind changes is obvious, sometimes the change happens so far upstream so we can never find out.

Love changes, often unexpectedly and outside of our control. Just like the river. You cannot step in the same river twice, because neither you nor the river are the same.

Instead, we should build ourselves a raft to change with the flow, and do our best to survive.

Finally we answer our own questions at the beginning:

Can a man both be in love and cheat at the same time? The answer is yes.

Does the act of cheating contradict his love? The answer is, it really depends on what you mean by love, but in general no.

Does all state, even love, change over time? The answer is yes, the only thing that is unchanging, is the fact that all things change.