Did i deserve it?

[VogueVVague]

Theres a chapter in my life that has really bothered me for some time and i was hoping to get your thoughts on it.

It happened 10 years ago now. I was 20.

To cut a long story short, I was in a really happy relationship with a guy and I decided i wanted to work in the south of france. I got myself a job on a campsite there and I managed to get him one too.

I was due to start a month before him so I went down alone.

I cheated on him with another guy on the campsite and me and this other guy started going out.

I feel fucking awful about it. I dont know what i was thinking. I had some major fucked up stuff happen when i was a kid that had led me to choose really bad boyfriends up until then. So this nice guy i was going out with, it was almost like it was just too happy and good. Thats not an excuse, but just to explain - i was quite a fucked up teen and young adult.

The worst part is, i didnt tell the nice guy until he physically arrived at the campsite. I just didnt know how, although before he arrived he sensed something was wrong and kept asking me to talk. The new (horrible) guy told me to just lie to him. But i couldnt. So on the very first day the nice guy arrived, in fact the first hour, i broke down and told him.

Initially he was heartbroken, and then he became fucking furious.

Rather than go home or find a different job (which is what i would have done), he stayed and basically told everyone. Which is fair enough.

What bothers me is that for the next 5 months i was basically punished by everyone else on the campsite. For those who dont know this kind of setting, you work long hours and live in really close quarters with your colleagues. So there was basically no escape.

The nice guy was really verbally aggressive to me, tried to stare me put of places if we found ourselves in the same place, and when i arrived at the beach bar one night pushed me and i fell, nobody really responded. The other guys continuously made comments to try and bring me down, pretty much every day - stuff about my appearance, humiliating me, trying to ridicule me, sometimes in front of clients.

I find it interesting in retrospect that it was all the men who were essentially bullying me. The women just kept their distance from me, except for one girl who was brilliant and we've remained friends since.

I always beat myself up about this time in my life, because not only was it a really dickish thing for me to do, the cheating, i also handled it incredibly badly by not telling him straight away.

But this time has always made me feel really dark and uneasy for some reason and i think its because i was actually bullied. What made it worse was the new guy (we didnt stay together, naturally) had none of this, even though he had cheated on his girlfriend too (i know - what a couple!). In fact, nice guy and him actually started to get on. I cant help wonder if theres something a bit sexist in that.

So i guess i wanted to qrite this to get it off my chest and also to ask you - do you think i deserved it?

I’d not be thrilled if any of my dcs did the same (the first bit), but meh, I did! And I’d be really angry if they were involved in that sort of bullying. And yes, there was definitely a sexist angle to it.
Forgive yourself 💞

You know no-one's going to come here and say you deserved to be bullied and physically pushed etc.

But what you did to that poor guy was nasty and cowardly (which I expect you know).

Neither of you deserved the awful treatment you got.

You were twenty years old and you behaved badly. At that age I had a boyfriend come to visit at my mum's to meet her and a friend. I got up and left him there half way through because I'd decided I didn't want to be with him anymore. I look back at myself and cringe because what a stupid and rather nasty thing to do. But I was an idiot and I was very young and I forgive myself. He, of course, took it and never tried to spread the story or make my life difficult. I worked where he studied so we did see each other after my idiocy.

If he had, I'd have thought I probably deserved it at the time, but now? Not so much. You absolutely did not deserve to spend five months of your life being bullied and then physically assaulted by this so-called good guy. He was horrible, spiteful, and a huge bully. And not a nice guy. It was a long time ago. Forgive yourself for being a bit of a dick. Stop calling him a good guy. Live your life knowing that you're a grown up now, wouldn't do anything like that again, that you made a mistake and paid a price that no one deserves. No one.

nobody comes out of this story in a good light.

Letting him build up to that and go all the way there just to rub his face right in it was particularly cruel. He shouldn't have bullied you either but I don't know what I would've done if I'd been ditched and humiliated like that.

Ultimately it was 10 years ago though. Forgive yourself, forgive him and move on.

What you did was awful, but you know that. If I was working at the campsite I wouldn't have directly bullied you (name calling, humiliation etc), but I would certainly have had a low opinion of you and wouldn't want to hang around with you.

BUT I would have felt just the same about the guy that you cheated on your boyfriend with and I would have treated you both the same. The double standards are pretty shitty.

Sounds like everybody acted badly to be honest and it would have been better to have just left the whole toxic situation rather than try to tough it out.

I agree with this.

I also agree that women who cheat are seen in a worse light than men who do.

Of course you didn’t deserve it. Why on earth would you think you deserved to be bullied and hurt? You are as valuable and precious as everyone else.

You had a lucky escape from this man, get over it and get on with your future.

In these type of working abroad set ups, nobody deserves to be bullied and excluded as it’s a million times worse in a foreign land away from your usual support networks.
And let’s face it, half the people working away are young, getting off with each other, go to escape their ex etc.
You did the wrong thing, you cheated. You didn’t tell him before he set off for the trip. Fringe, that’s not great. You would never do that again would you? So you learned a lesson. You didn’t deserve to be bullied.

The 'nice' guy (only using that adjective so that you can identify him!) wasn't nice, because he ended up showing his true colours.
And bear in mind that even if you hadn't cheated, those true colours would have surfaced at some other point.
What you did was shitty (wish you'd told him he'd cheated BEFORE he came over, as you'd have saved you both a lot of heartache) but you know that now, and have taken total ownership for it.
They treated you really badly and yes, you're right, it was bloody sexist/double standards.

But clearly he wanted to stay, because he did. Just because it was your idea and he was joining you doesn’t mean he had no right to stay.

BlueEyedBengal
You had a lucky escape from this man,

sounds like she wasn't the only one that had a lucky escape.

You should have told him before he came all the way out there, but you didn't deserve to be bullied and physically assaulted.

You shouldn’t have been pushed. But the humiliation was your own fault really. Yes people shouldn’t have got involved etc but he must have felt so embarrassed so got his own back by telling people what you did. The fact you knew it was wrong but carried on baffles me. The audacity to expect him to leave makes you seem ridiculous. I wouldn’t have touched it out though, I’d have left and avoided such hostility. I wouldn’t stay in a scary situation if I could leave.