I hope you’ve spent your morning in a state of meditation, stopping at Starbucks after yoga and enjoying a nice iced pumpkin spice latte, or sat watching videos of cute puppies this morning because after you read today’s latest scathing tale of infidelity, your blood pressure is going to skyrocket.
A woman whom TikTok now adores and cherishes, Ellen, shared a recent dating story that made us want to hug her, put on our detective cap and monocle, and figure out the identity of the jerk she was dating. I often joke about dating being unnaturally tricky in today’s society, but give me a break — stories like this are almost a show of the selfish seeing what levels of despicable they can reach next.
While she took the high road, and didn’t sell him out to the masses asking for the registry for… “a friend,”she did leave a few hints: the wedding website/registry is hosted by Zola, and she’s in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area. We hope there aren’t too many of you who feel the need to check on your fiancé after hearing her story, but if you do — she’s provided the basics.
Upon reading the comment section of her video, we were shocked but not surprised to see how many people were feeling deja vu at hearing Ellen’s story. If you want to play Olivia Rodrigo’s tune on repeat this afternoon in solidarity — we’re right there with you.
Also, go, Meg!
The audacity of this guy — see, we told you your blood would be boiling.
To anyone who can relate to stories like Ellen or Jessica but is too afraid to answer the influx of questions that come with it, I challenge you to change the narrative: it’s not about asking girls why we pick “bad suitors” — why aren’t we asking the suitors why the challenge of staying faithful is such a complex idea that they’re incapable of wrapping their minds around? I’ll wait. We’ll all wait.
Alison notes it’s also terrible to be the fiancée in this situation, and to find out she’s being cheated on thanks to her own wedding website.
After scrolling through countless Tweets of similar experiences, we decided to do a little research, and thanks to the Institue for Family Studies, we were met with some statistics, the most prominent hitting home in this sentence:
“In general, men are more likely than women to cheat: 20% of men and 13% of women reported that they’ve had sex with someone other than their spouse while married, according to data from the recent General Social Survey(GSS).”
There are factors like age, identity, family background, etc., that link some groups as those “more likely” to cheat, but people in Ellen’s comment section aren’t looking for “excuses” or “reasons why,” they’d just like it to be known that they wish they could start new relationships without the fear of infidelity.
There are quite a few people who commented something along the lines of Renee’s statement, “because men.”
Listen, I know, not all men. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we’ve met some great ones, but the dating pool these days? It’s like tiptoeing into too warm and stagnant water; you’re risking a lot.
There is another person we feel terribly sorry for in this situation — his soon-to-be wife.
There’s a woman out there who will soon be experiencing the “best day of her life” or has recently done so, and she has absolutely no idea that the “man” she’s in love with isn’t who she thinks he is. Instead, he’s a cheating coward who will likely never tell her the truth — and she deserves better.
Maybe I sound like a woman scorned; that’s a crown I’m willing to wear and with more pride than wearing the cloak of shame of a spineless man.
Oh, and speaking of spinless? This winner of a man sent her a few cute texts after she discovered his engagement, and one of them was two words, three letters, and one punctuation mark, and we just threw up in our mouths about it.
That’s right, some poor woman’s fiance sent the “u up?” text to the woman he’d been seeing behind her back. Gross. At the very least, he could have rendered a genuine apology, but that would likely require some honest, thought-provoking self-reflection, and I doubt he’s capable.
Here’s to Ellen. May she belt out sad Taylor Swift lyrics for the duration of only a few of her most heartwrenching tunes, and then may she pick up her crown and remember who she is and how much weight is off her shoulders now that the joy-stealing man is out of the picture; unless he gets brave enough for another “u up?”
In which case, Brock (Kyle, Brandon, Tommy, etc.) just don’t.
