"I slept with someone else. It was a mistake."

Your body goes into complete paralysis. Your teeth clench, your jaw gets tight, and you squeeze your fist. You feel your blood pulsing, and you start to go numb. You fight and scream, maybe hit something. No, you're not sad or crying right now; you are angry. Furious even. You're too pissed off to cry. You manage to keep it together, if only for a short time. It isn't until you find yourself alone in your room, in complete silence, when everything starts to slowly sink into your body like a 70-pound weight. Your head falls into your hands, and you begin to cry. You find yourself crying for a while. Next thing you know, you can't even move. You sit there in your deafening silence.

For a long time you are mixed with emotions. You are angry, confused and sometimes sad. You see other couples doing fine, and you wonder why that can't be you anymore. Why can't you be happy like that? Why did this have to happen to you? They say time heals all things, but that's not exactly true. It takes work on yourself. You have to learn to love yourself before you can let someone else love you. No one said this was easy and I'll tell you straight from the horse's mouth — it's not.

To someone I called Mr. Right:

Somewhere along the lines of our relationship, I wasn't enough for you. I hate that you couldn't come to me and tell me this, instead taking my trust for granted and betraying me. I can't ignore what you did and look past it. This will haunt me and will probably affect the majority of my relationships to come. I won't be able to think of you without thinking of her. This alone gives me every reason to hate you or want to set you on fire. But I won't. Instead, I'll pray for you. Clearly you have misguided views of trust or what it means to be in a relationship. Whether you learn from these mistakes or not, I'll also pray for the next girl you encounter. I won't let your actions turn me into a monster like you. This was your fault, and I hope you can live with that. I can't find it in my gut to hate you. I still have all those feelings that I have always had for you, and I will for a while. But that will go away eventually, and before long, you'll be a memory.

To the other woman:

I'll admit, I can't stop thinking about you. I hate that I've stalked all of your social media accounts. I don't exactly know what I was looking for, maybe a hint if you ran into him before you slept with him or that maybe this wasn't the first time. I'm not proud to say that I sometimes blame you for what happened to my relationship because you're such an easy target to pin this on. But I want to thank you. Thank you for capturing him in a weak moment and exposing him. Thank you for bringing to my attention that this was not the man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. But don't get me wrong — I don't want to be your friend, and I certainly don't want you to talk to me about what happened. It happened and it hurt, but I need to move on. You did me the service of helping me remove a toxic man from my life. Thank you.