Should You Forgive Her Infidelity?

What do you do when you catch your girlfriend with her pants down?

Your girl and your neighbor, a massage therapist, are going at it on the new tuck-and-roll pleather couch you two just picked-up at TJ Maxx last month on your anniversary. How could she? And why didn’t they put down a sheet, so you could take the couch with you in the divorce settlement? Now it’s all coated with slut DNA, yuck.

Infidelity in dykeland is rarely exposed in such a sudden and dramatic fashion. In real lesbian life, the discovery is usually slow, predictable and painful. It goes something like this: Your lady has been acting strange for several weeks (or months, depending on how long you two have been together). She is remote, brooding and secretive. When she does talk, it is about what you do wrong and why she is unhappy. She wants more space and more time to do things on her own. No matter how much space you give her or how many of her demands you give in to, her mood does not improve. She doesn’t want to be defined by her relationship with you anymore. She has mentioned this other woman a lot lately. In fact, the only time she seems happy is when she is talking to or about this other person. You have a sick feeling in your stomach that never goes away. You have been trying to ignore the signs for a while. One day you can’t take it anymore, so you ask her if she is having an affair.

If your girl is already deep into a relationship with the other woman—that is, they have already picked out a wedding date, they just need to convince you to give the bride away—she might cave in and confess.

But you usually have to work a lot harder for that bit of bad news. You must earn that heartbreak by crying alone for hours, getting into fruitless confrontations with her and engaging in unproductive begging. Not to mention confirming your suspicions daily with friends and relatives until they start screening their calls.

After all, your lover needs time to figure out whether she is really in love with this other woman or just wants to be away from you. And you keep distracting her with your pesky need for the truth. The cheater doesn’t want to tell you anything because she wants you on reserve, just in case she is making a mistake. And you don’t push too hard because you don’t want her to go. This stage lasts anywhere from a week to a decade.

In the end, she will leave.

Which leads me to my point: If you have a cheating lesbian on your hands, get rid of her!

Forgive her? No. I say unload her.

So, what if your girl is the one dyke in the world who really did just make a mistake and is sincere about wanting to get back into your good graces?

Forgiveness is like swing dancing: It is hard work and more people think they can do it than actually can.

Step one is to decide if forgiveness is something you really want to do. After several painful months that end in nothing but more pain, most women realize that forgiveness plays a small and insignificant role in the post-cheat drama. The fear of being alone often disguises itself as absolution.

I am not the Dyky Lama, so I am not the best person to ask about finding your way back to nirvana with a two-timing partner. Everything may happen for a reason, but you won’t find me hanging around in the Downward Facing Dog position trying to figure out why I am with a louse. If you have it in you to incorporate infidelity into your life plan, then you are a far better dyke than I am.

Forgiveness means that you have to stop thinking about what the two of them looked like having sex together. That film will play over and over in your head and no amount of gin or sudoku will be able to stop your mental projector. Even if you think you’ve gotten over it, you haven’t. You will be talking to her about the grocery list and one of those horrific scenes will pop into your head and you will instantly become angry with her. She will explain that it isn’t that important to have the whole wheat dinner rolls, but you won’t be able to stop yelling about what an inconsiderate shopper she is.

Even if you do manage to compartmentalize her indiscretions and move on, your friends will not allow it. You are going to have to explain to them that you are OK, and you’ll spend way too much time sticking up for your cheating girlfriend. You will eventually have to accept the fact that even if you forgive her, they never will, and they certainly won’t allow you to forget about it.

The worst part about forgiveness is having it rejected. What if she makes firewood out of your olive branch? Overlooking her transgressions in the hope of reconciliation is not forgiveness; it is foolishness.

Did you hear her say that she is never going to cheat again and wants to be with you forever? Or did you hear a bunch of bullcrap about her being confused and needing time to sort it out? And don’t let a few tears convince you that her dastardly ways are behind her. She could still be plotting her next act of treason while she is leaking from the eyes. She ain’t crying because she wants you back—she is crying because she got caught. And she is crying so she won’t look like the creep she is to the rest of the lesbian world. What you think of her is not nearly as important as what her next five wives will think of her. Hell yeah, there are a lot of dykes in Hollywood. There is no shortage of talented actresses in our community.

I remember one of my own episodes of dyke drama with a cheater who told me that she would try to forgive me! She went on to explain that I had created an environment where cheating was her only option. She assured me that she was doing her best.

Luckily, my self-esteem was already at an all-time low, so I couldn’t really sink any further.

But your two-timing woman is different. She is sorry and she does want to stay together and she isn’t just acting the part to get away with another crime of passion.

If you just know that she is sincere and think you have the stomach and the energy for the relationship to continue, then you are going to have to set some new boundaries and guard them like a breakaway Soviet republic.

Women who have made a “mistake” know that there is no such thing as privacy for a long time. They will not need alone time, or extra screen names with secret passwords. One-time cheaters who want to be forgiven don’t erase text messages or call logs. Women who want to save their marriage don’t need to have private conversations with the women they have slept with behind your back. This one really kills me. The number of doormat dykes who allow their cheating wives to “meet” with their mistresses to “explain” things to them ought to be zero. Funny, the tramp didn’t make time for your wife to explain anything to you while they were rolling around behind your back? Are you, the victim, supposed to feel sorry for the poor woman who slept with your girlfriend? The fact that you let her walk the earth with a full head of hair should be consolation enough.

The gal who made a stupid mistake and will do anything to make it right knows that her life will be an open book for years to come. She will not be trusted to so much as pee on her own for generations. And she won’t complain about it either.

Like I said before, forgiveness is hard work…for both parties.

Maybe it is best to forget about forgiveness and move on to vengeance. Maybe have a little fling of your own. But in my experience, retaliation sex is only slightly better than rebound sex and not worth forfeiting your position of righteous indignation over.

Chucking a two-timing girlfriend right after you discover her misdeed really is for the best. We lesbians don’t do well with infidelity. I don’t know why it is such a big deal to us—it just is. I couldn’t tell you why women sleep with other women to get out of relationships—they just do. Should you need more encouragement to make the break, remember that the sooner you get rid of her as a lover, the sooner you can have her for a best friend.

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