TL;DR: High School sweethearts go to seperate colleges and the inevitible happens. Hamstering ensues

NB: I tried posting this yesterday but got auto deleted because I linked to the Huffington Post. If you want to read the original text, Google the headline.

Body: It's a tale as old as time. It's so full of RP truths that it's almost satire.

All of high school I dated the same guy. He made everything seem like a fairy tale. It basically was a dream come true...

Awww, how sweet. Until...

guys stopped acknowledging me as a girl because I wasn't available. It sucked.

So our special little princess has found her Prince Charming but struggles to deal with the fact that other guys have stopped checking her out.

At first I started to dress nicer and I did my hair and makeup entirely for school, but it wasn't working, I was still the girl with a boyfriend.

So, she's given up on making an effort for her boyfriend, her motive for looking good was to get validation and attention from other men. Then it comes to college time, and they head off to different schools which gives her the opportunity to become her "own" person. And how does she do this? By not telling people that she had a boyfriend.

I never just came out and said I had a boyfriend. I know that isn't right, but at the time it seemed right.

Once again we see that, for the hamster, feelz > realz. And, as predictable as night following day, along comes Chad.

He was kind, smart, and hot. It was hard to not be into him; every girl was into him. I think that is what made it a little more exciting.

Which proves something TRP keeps telling us: that high SMV + social proof = tingles. She must have been soaking wet on her way over to his dorm room when he invited her over to "study." An hour into "studying" he tells her she's pretty, that it's a shame she was taken, and her immediate response is to say that they were on the rocks.

He responded with a smooth answer like he would never treat me how Thomas does... and just like that he leaned in a kissed me.

Hamster wheel spinning over time. In her mind she's already rationalised that her and her boyfriend are practically over anyway and is keen to tell Chad so he knows that she's more or less on the market.

During the hookup I felt a whirlwind of emotions: disgusted with myself, angry, excited, needed, and then finally content with what was happening. It finally made me realize that Thomas wasn't the person I wanted anymore.

Branch swinging in action. She wanted to test the waters and see if she could still get laid before deciding to take Thomas off of the backburner and toss him away. But now she's feeling guilty (sure, right, uh-huh) and decides to fess up during the break up.

Once I did, I learned he had been cheating on me for months. It was heartbreaking and painful to hear

Even though I cheated, how dare you do the same! Still, they have a history together so they decide to remain friends. In other words, she gets the best of both worlds - they chance to hop onto the CC guilt free, plus she gets to demote her former boyfriend to orbiter status. Score!

I often think about it and question why I didn't feel guilty about cheating on Thomas. My answer is the same every time: it was something I wanted to do for me.

There we go. Cheating is utterly justified as long as it's done purely for selfish reasons. Are you fucking shitting me?

After cheating, I learned I would much rather be casual than being tied down in an unhappy relationship.

Gotta take as many spins on the CC while you can. The unhappy relationship can come later, with her post-wall beta bucks.

I also realized that cheating is not for me either; it's something I could never do again.

We all know, though, that she failed to finish that sentence with the more truthful "unless I get bored, or unhappy, or feel like I'm not getting attention...."

Cheating on him also opened up my eyes to see that there is better people in this world for me other than Thomas.

Hypergamy in action.

Conclusions:

There's a whole bunch of things that we can take away from this.

-- A loving, fairytale relationship is simply not enough for the modern girl. Regardless of how "perfect" everything may seem on the surface, she will still crave the sexual attention and validation of other guys.

-- Hypergamy is real. She'll gaze lovingly at you with one eye while the other is looking for the next, better guy. The only way you can stop her from branch swinging, or at least delay it, is to continuously work on your own self-improvement and raising your SMV and status, while not getting complacent and making sure that you continue giving her the tingles.

-- The most important thing is her feeeeeeeeelings. She will throw you under the bus in a minute if it helps to make her feel better about herself.

-- Girls, especially those fresh off to college, will use any excuse as a reason for hopping onto the first available cock. "Discovering myself," "exploring my sexuality," "becoming my own person" and any other reason the hamster can vomit up are all perfectly valid motives, regardless of how nebulous they may be.

-- There is no such thing as a Long Distance Relationship. You either have long distance or you have a relationship. You can't have both.

-- Social proof is important. If other girls find you hot, she'll start seeing you as hot too.

-- AWALT. But you already knew that.

Edit: archived version courtesy of babydocnorman