By: Alaa El-Attar
What are parents? Parents are two people who meet and decide they can spend the rest of their lives together for any kind of reasons. A parent is someone’s mom or dad. Someone who you depend on, trust and feel safe around, someone to raise you. Yet, what happens when one is a cheater? Cheating doesn’t have to mean cheating on your other parent. Being emotionally unavailable is cheating, preferring someone else is cheating, thinking about someone else is cheating, and even having distorted ethics and double standards are cheating.
When you find out that one of your parents is actually a cheater, a strange pain hits you. Even though it’s not about you and in many ways you shouldn’t even feel hurt, still something in you breaks. However, like everything in life, it’s a half full half empty glass. So what are the perks of being raised by a cheater?

1- It sharpens your investigating skills

Knowing that someone is cheating nurtures the curiosity in you; being raised by one makes a CSI agent out of you. By now you probably know where, when and how to look for evidence. You also know all the passwords, names and dating apps. One day, you might become a hacker!

2- It opens your eyes

Once you find out a parent has been cheating, it makes you take a good hard look at your relationships. Maybe it’s your relationship with them, with your partner or even a friendship. Automatically, all the little problems you’ve been ignoring jump to your conscious. Then you go through a long assessment of who is worthy of what. It may be a little isolating at first, but it’s definitely going to be the loyal ones who will stick around in the end.

3- It changes you

You might temporarily feel jaded, like you can’t trust or love anyone, but eventually those feelings will grow into something useful. I guarantee that you will love and trust someday, but you’ll do it with more wisdom and experience. You’ll be that much more in touch with what you want and what you will or will not tolerate.

4- It leads you to something better

After spending several years in this whirlpool, you can smell cheating from a thousand mile. Spotting a cheater becomes so easy for you; you know all the hints, you’ve heard all the excuses and you’ve seen all the signs before. A person who isn’t a 100% loyal is not even an option. You know way better!

5- You have plan A, B and C if you got cheated on

If for any reason your radar didn’t work and you did fall for a cheater, you’ve seen it happen before and you already have it figured out. You have it all planned out.

6- You never take family for granted

Being a part of a family, you learn that whatever happens there is still an unbreakable bond between you and your parents. You might fight and oppose each other a lot but it takes real s**t, like cheating, to break this bond. Some families recover, some families don’t, but a family never goes back to the way it was. It makes you appreciate all the small things, the family dinners and the boring traditions, and long for them once more.

7- Getting your heart broken is nearly impossible

No one can break your heart, as it was never whole from the first place!