“If you love two people at the same time, choose the second. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn't have fallen for the second." - Johnny Depp
It's easy to blame the cheater.
I was cheated on two years ago.
My boyfriend at the time had started seeing someone else while we were dating. 'That asshole!' I would chant, over and over. Till this day, I still hold him in contempt for hiding a second girlfriend from me for an entire month. I would tell anyone and everyone that would listen about how horrible my ex was for cheating on me. Even after I had moved on and found myself in a relationship with someone else, I still talked about my horrible, cheating ex.
Then, to my (and my current boyfriend's) surprise, I found myself falling for someone else five months ago. 
"What? You must not have loved your current boyfriend then if you started having feelings for someone else!" is what I imagine you would say.
But before you judge me too harshly, let me shed some light on the state of my relationship five months ago.
Due to very unfortunate circumstances, my boyfriend and I were forced to enter a long distance relationship (we used to study in the same country before) and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I found myself breaking down every day after class and it was especially hard on nights when we couldn't talk to each other. It was weird to start sleeping on my own after so long. To put it simply, I was lonely.
And it turns out that I was not the only one. A freshman had just started at my college and he too had just left his girlfriend back home and was finding it hard to cope with the long distance.
Somehow or rather, we started bonding over this. We would spend time with each other during the day and immediately dump each other when our significant others were free to FaceTime.
I know. We were weak, the both of us. Instead of learning to cope with the loneliness like any normal person, we used other people. And I found myself falling for him and enjoying his company. I didn't like that I did and I knew that liking him was wrong. Yet, I started treating him like he was my boyfriend.
And by doing so, I was emotionally cheating on my poor boyfriend back home.
Did I love the fresher? No. Everytime I compared him to my boyfriend, my boyfriend was always 10x the man this fresher could ever be. I didn't love the fresher - I was using him.
I had exactly 10 lunch dates with this guy before I cut ties with him completely. And I only told my boyfriend three months later.
Why am I telling you all this?
My boyfriend has since forgiven me and I'm forever grateful. I won't go into the details because it was a painful two weeks but I'm just grateful that we're moving on from all this. Slowly but surely. The whole ordeal has given me a fresh perspective on cheating.
Cheating is a symptom. Developing feelings for someone else is a surefire sign that there is something very wrong with the relationship.
If I'm honest with myself about my previous relationship, our relationship was dying and showed no signs of recovering. My ex cheating on my was a symptom of that.
In the case of my relationship, my cheating was the symptom of (a) having to suddenly deal with not talking to my guy everyday when it had become part of our routine for almost a year and (b) not getting my emotional needs met. We realised that we had to fix the way we communicated with each other and our relationship was in a much better place after that. Our relationship is a lot stronger than it was two years ago but that took me being stupid and two people that genuinely wanted to make the relationship better for it to happen.
Basically, don't judge cheaters too harshly.
Sure, some cheat over and over and don't seem to know when to stop. But there are some that do it once, learn their lesson, and never do it again.
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