To the girl who broke the cardinal rule,

I came across your article, I Broke Girl Code's Cardinal Rule and I Don't Regret It. Of course, you aren’t the girl my ex-cheated on me with, but I feel you have a much bigger presence. Although I don’t know you personally, I know you.

You, in some way, are the same girl who my ex-cheated on me with. You’re the same girl every girl’s ex (or current) boyfriend cheated on them with.

First off, I want to thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. This isn’t sarcastic, it’s not meant to be snarky. I truly want to thank you.

I know you’re probably expecting the standard, “He’ll cheat on you too,” “You two deserve each other,” or “What goes around comes back around.” But none of that has even crossed my mind since I found out about you.

I don’t know if you knew about me. I presume you did since I was on his social media and we had been together for quite some time, but I can’t be certain.

When I first found out about you, my heart shattered. How could this be happening? What would possess another girl to do this to me? How could HE do this to me?

I don’t hate you. I wanted to hate you, but I never could. You didn’t do anything wrong. Whether you knew about me or not, it didn’t matter.

You never made a promise to me. You never swore you’d be faithful to me. You never made me fall in love with you. You never made any type of commitment to me. You didn’t owe me anything.

In fact, you did me a favor. No, not in the backhanded compliment “He didn’t deserve me” way. You sincerely did me a favor. You did something I was too scared to do on my own. I hated the idea of losing him, but more importantly, I hated the idea of being alone. That's not a good reason to stay with someone.

For that reasons, I stayed in a crappy relationship. He wasn’t a crappy person. He made me happy for many, many months and gave me a plethora of memories. The relationship, towards the end, was just crappy. We fought constantly, neither of us was happy anymore, and neither of us could see a future. For no other reason aside from the comfortability of the relationship, we stuck it out. Until you came along.

From my understanding, you were around for the last few months of our relationship. Maybe it was longer, maybe it was shorter… I was never told much about you. This was the greatest gift you could ever give me - even though you owed me nothing.

You gave both of us the courage to go our separate ways. If it hadn’t been for you, I may not be with the wonderful, amazing man I’m with now. I could very well still be in that perpetual cycle of fighting that we called a relationship.

Whether or not you end up with him in the long run, know that I wish you all the best. I don’t hate you, not even a little bit. You gave me the courage to walk away and for that, I will be forever grateful.

Sincerely,

The girl you helped