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The first thirty minutes after she discovered her fiancé was cheating on her were a blur, recalls Tanaya Narendra, better known on the internet as Dr Cuterus. She has spent the last seven years educating people online about sexual and reproductive health, garnering an audience of almost two million on Instagram. Yet recently, she found herself at the centre of conversation for more devastating reasons. “I was in Thailand for a conference. We’d just wrapped up our day, so I’d called my partner from the hotel room. We were laughing about something when my best friend texted asking me to urgently pick up the phone.”
Screenshots followed soon after. Narendra learnt that her partner of two years had been unfaithful—suggestively texting other women while sitting across the table from her, going on a date the evening after proposing—through a series of lucky coincidences. “He used to encourage me to cover his face in photos for privacy, but this girl he went on a date with happened to follow me on Instagram and recognised him by his wristlet,” she reveals. Serendipitously, the girl also knew one of Narendra’s friends. “That first half hour, I was screaming, howling. I texted his entire family to let them know. And I called off the wedding,” the 33-year-old recounts. Momentarily, there was a stab of self-doubt. “My first instinct was to ask him, ‘Was there anything missing from our relationship? Why were you forced to do this?’ But then I realised it didn’t matter if something was wrong. He could’ve talked to me. I got cheated on because the fault lies with him.”
Unsurprisingly, Narendra is not alone in questioning herself upon facing infidelity. Since posting about her experience, she’s received over 11,000 DMs from women who’ve been through something similar: “A lot of them say the same thing: ‘I gave that relationship my everything, I was a good partner, and I spent so much time questioning where I went wrong.’”
My DMs, too, are flooded with horror stories when I open them up to women with cheating exes. There’s 29-year-old Cassandra*, a Mumbai-based editor, whose boyfriend suddenly revealed he’d been unfaithful after constantly slutshaming her for having too many exes. “I mostly felt relieved because I could finally dump him after two years in the most torturous relationship,” she shrugs. Education consultant Isha* was only 14 when a 17-year-old boy started courting her: “That should’ve been my first red flag.” What followed was a harrowing years-long relationship that only ended when Isha’s best friend intervened, reproaching her boyfriend when he wouldn’t agree to a breakup despite cheating on Isha. In a scene from a Bollywood drama, 19-year-old Kavya* in Ahmedabad found out at a family Diwali party last year that the man her cousin was marrying was…her boyfriend. “My uncle showed us a photo of the groom, and it was my boyfriend,” she cries, still baffled. Despite filling her cousin in on their two-year-long relationship, the family still went ahead with the wedding. “In fact, she found a way to somehow blame me.”
Historically, women have always been blamed and shamed for being cheated on, as if this act performed by someone else is a reflection of our insufficiency rather than the other person’s. Take the relentless trolling of actor Jaya Bachchan, who is frequently mocked online for her short temper, even when she’s only sternly reinforcing her boundaries. Social media users sympathise with her husband for apparently making the tragic mistake of marrying her, gushing over fancams of him with Rekha. On the other hand, they are bewildered that Charles picked Camilla over Diana, as if there’d be no problem had he chosen someone more conventionally attractive. “Why the fuck would someone even think of cheating on Shakira??? There is literally no upgrade over Shakira!” reads a tweet with 35,000 likes. Another popular sentiment online is “If Beyoncé can get cheated on, then there’s no hope for us.”
The point these conversations miss is simple: cheating has nothing to do with the victim. And when the deceived is more scrutinised than the actual traitor—when who was cheated on and who the other woman is becomes more important than the cruelty of the act itself—it almost implies that it’s okay to betray people who aren’t as hot as Shakira or Beyoncé and don’t meet the internet’s standards for goodness like Princess Diana. Maybe this is why it feels embarrassing to admit you were deceived: to say it aloud feels exposing, like opening yourself up to inspection, admitting you weren’t enough for someone you trusted without inhibition and naively allowed yourself to be vulnerable with. It reminds me of an episode from the first season of Friends: “I feel so stupid,” Rachel groans after finding out her hunky Italian boyfriend Paolo groped Phoebe. “I think about the other day with you guys, and I was all ‘Oh, Paolo, he’s so great’... I’m so embarrassed.” It’s a particular brand of heartbreak many of us have felt before: a pang, a stomach drop, followed by the mortifying realisation that you now have to tell others how this man you were raving about only two days ago has done this horrible thing. As if you’re the one at fault for not realising something was wrong, for not noticing the red flags.
But women online are now flipping the script, refusing to direct their distress inwards and feel ashamed of something that clearly has nothing to do with them. Instead, they are outwardly raging like Olga, the deserted ex-wife in Elena Ferrante’s The Days of Abandonment (2002) who attacks her adulterer husband when she sees him with a girl half his age, or Preity Zinta in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), whose response to finding out that Shah Rukh Khan has been unfaithful is thwacking him across the cheek. I’m not condoning violence, but all these women—previously determined to be the perfect partner—learn that there’s a certain freedom that comes with allowing yourself to rage, to be petty, in no longer trying to be the bigger person. In keeping a lookalike of your traitor ex-boyfriend tied up in the back of a pickup truck with Dolly Parton like Sabrina Carpenter, or revelling in your ex’s public meltdown like Chappell Roan. In openly posting a reel exposing your serial cheater ex, full government name and all—as many Indian women today are doing. Local Facebook groups titled AreWeDatingTheSameGuy have cropped up across the world for women to warn others off deceitful and abusive exes. “There are these horrible patriarchal constructs around gossip being bad, but gossip is the way you learn about the world,” Narendra points out. “Had people not been gossiping—had this girl not been gossiping with her friend, they would never have found out this is my partner.”
To any woman going through something similar, Narendra has just one piece of advice: “Keep reminding yourself this isn’t about you. Even if you weren’t the perfect partner, being cheated on is never your fault. Nobody deserves it.” There is something brave, after all, about loving somebody wholly, without holding back, despite knowing it could end in flames. There’s also nothing wrong with taking them down with you if it does.