This is a pretty long story so what I have decided to do is to break it into parts and give "advice" at the end of each segment. This is a true story. The names of the people involved in this story have been changed to protect their reputation and identity, of course, but this really happened to me and my friends. I'm sharing this in the hopes that if you are personally dealing with a friend who is a cheater you can learn from my mistakes. Remember, friends who cheat on their boyfriends (or girlfriends,) that they supposedly "love," are completely untrustworthy. There is nothing to say that they wouldn't sleep with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Even if you think that your partner would never do something like that to you, it is still a danger, everyone has their weak spots. Eventually, after throwing themselves at your partner long enough it could end up happening. On to the story:

For privacy's sake let us call my friend, (who sadly has passed on, now,) Lizzy. Her boyfriend we will call Timmy. Eventually Timmy and Lizzy broke up, but at the time when this event occurred, they were very much still together, “living in sin,” to use the parlance of our times.

Lizzy was a compulsive liar. I met her at the swimming pool the summer before I went into junior high school. It wasn't as much that we were good friends based on mutual respect and a genuine desire to spend time with one another, there was a vein of convenience running a mile wide through our friendship. I knew instinctively that I couldn't trust Lizzy with anything important, she was a fair-weather friend who just needed a shoulder to cry on. Our mutual friends, however, were so highly intertwined that it was impossible for the two of us not to spend time with one another until late into our high school career when Lizzy joined the work-after-school program and I didn't see her much at all for almost another ten years.

During that time I lived my life. I moved to Chicago from the suburbs, made new friends, lost touch with people from high school... it wasn't until after I moved back home to live with my parents after a bad break-up that I regained touch with some of my friends from high school, one of whom was a good friend with Lizzy. We will call her Sheila. Her husband, also named Tim, and her had an open relationship. We all would go over to Lizzy and Timmy's place and play cards, drink and act like impoverished miscreants without anywhere else to go. Good times!

During this time I actually grew a begrudging respect of Timmy. He was a hard man, not the nicest man in the world, but he certainly didn't deserve to date Lizzy, since it was well known that she cheated on him whenever she had the chance. I wanted to tell him that she was stepping out on him, truth be told, we'd grown into more of a friendship than I had with Lizzy. I held my tongue, though. Sheila and Tim also knew that Lizzy was cheating on him, and after talking to them about it they told me it really wasn't my place to tell Timmy about Lizzy's infidelities.

At first, I tried to convince Lizzy to tell Timmy about what she'd been up to. They lived together, though, it became obvious that she wasn't about to give up her home and the man she loved sharing it with. Eventually, the best I could do was to tell her that I didn't want to hear anything about her dalliances with men other than Timmy, it was too hard on my moralities.

About three weeks before Timmy found out, (in the worst possible way,) that Lizzy was cheating on him, she called me to brag about her latest conquest. I had a brief knowledge of the young man in question, (I knew him “around,” from school,) and tried to cut her off at the pass. “Look, Lizzy, I really don't want to know.”

“But, Nicole he was... oh, my god, just so incredible.”

Insert any of the incredibly fantastic sexual fantasies you can imagine into the next 45 seconds of our conversation... that's about as far into as I was willing to get.

“Lizzy, I'm sorry, I got to go. I don't need to hear any of this. You should really tell Timmy what's going on and if you're not willing to, I just don't know if we can be friends anymore if you're going to continue telling me about cheating on him.”

This is where I throw in my two cents... I feel that if you cannot break off your relationship with a friend who is a cheater there are boundaries you need to set. Don't live vicariously through their infidelities ... make it known that you do not want to hear about their cheating, otherwise you're sending a message that you approve of their behavoir on some level.

If it is possible, try not to make friends with the person your friend is dating. (And respectively cheating on.) Believe me, it is just going to make you feel lousy when you have to keep your mouth shut about your friend and her/his dalliances.

If you are friends with the person, or you do like them, don't tell them your friend is cheating on them. It's just not your place.  Try to put up some boundaries to protect yourself.  If at all possible, don't hang out with this person unless your cheating friend is around, too.  Cheaters are notoriously jealous and they will accuse you of trying to steal / sleep with their partners.  (I think it's because they feel bad about what they're doing on some level and want to off-put the blame onto you and their partner.)

This is the first segment of this story.  Be sure to check back now and then, I'll post links to the next segments here.  I'd also love it if some of you would leave your own personal stories in the comments section.  It'd be best if you left them in the first segment... that way we can make sure that everyone will see them!