A Cheater's Guide To Love By Junot Diaz

Cheaters and Love Actually

In Junot Diaz’s short story, “A Cheater’s Guide To Love”, Diaz goes through his main character’s, Yunior, journey after his fiancé finds out that he has been cheating on her with fifty women, through email during a six year period. Throughout this story, Diaz makes Spanish references and uses Spanish slang, this goes back to where the Author himself was originally born in the Dominican Republic. Diaz’s heritage and his experiences while pursuing an education in the states is reflected through his main character’s trials in “The Cheater’s Guide To Love”. Following Yunior’s fiancé’s discovery, Yunior starts his journey to recover from his broken heart due to his reckless decision. Diaz’s main character goes through

a five-year period in this short story, where he meets many trials and some might even say Karma catches up with him. While a Cheater has the ability to love, recovering from the results of their infidelity proves to be difficult during their cycles of being up and down, this prevents recovery and doesn’t allow them to truly ever love again. This short story proves the theory that while cheating cheater’s do not think about the negative consequences that follow. In Yunior’s case, he did not think once about life after losing the person he loved most.
A Cheater’s journey to recover from the results of their actions is very difficult, because of the repeated cycles that take place after losing the one they love.

After Yunior’s fiancé found out about the emails, she sticks around for a while according to Yunior, “Because you’ve gone through so much together-her father’s death, your tenure madness, her bar exam. And because love, real love, is not so easily shed.” (Diaz, “The Cheater’s Guide To Love”) Yunior says it himself in that line, real love isn’t easy to let go of. Then Yunior tries showing his love in a number of ways trying to fix what he broke. Yunior and his fiancé do the things she always wanted to do, such as traveling from the Dominican Republic to Mexico, but her broken heart still pushed him away. He admits to “…trying every trick in the book to keep her.” (Diaz, “The Cheater’s Guide To Love”) He changes everything from changing his phone number to claiming he is a sex addict and attending meetings, all these things hoping for the end result of forgiveness. All these efforts make his heartbreak even worse when she asks him to move out and ends their relationship. This is where the ups and downs of his break up begin, as the cheater he tries to justify his actions and say the negative things he thought about her. He is trying this tactic in hopes to trick his mind into not missing her. Then He starts up with all his old habits and hanging with the guys, and moves to

Boston.
In Boston, Yunior starts experiencing some racism, where some white drunk guys try to fight him. In an interview Diaz is asked if he got into any fights, he says, “All the Time. I even fought when I was in graduate school at Cornell’s creative writing program.”(Fiction Is the Poor Man’s Cinema: An Interview with Junot Diaz, 895) This shows the relationship between Diaz and how he incorporated his experiences while in the state with his main character. After this encounter, Yunior gets lonely and starts making up with some of his old girls he cheated on his fiancé with. He then goes through a series of mood swing from crying to his ex-fiancé’s favorite song and avoiding anything that has to do with her. Soon depression is in full swing and Yunior keeps getting drunk while Elvis watches over him. Yunior goes through suicidal thoughts, stops doing anything from personal hygiene to daily activities. This is all just year one, in year two Yunior still isn’t his old self but suicide tendencies subside. He gets cleaned up and throws away all pictures of the ex. Throughout Diaz’s story, Yunior takes one step forward to fall two steps back, it is repeated in year two, three, and four following the break up.
The struggle when Yunior was dealing with little break up cycles that in Diaz’s short story supports the idea that, cheaters can’t truly love again. In year two, Yunior tries cleaning up his act by dating a Dominican girl named Noemi. Noemi was a sweet mother of a four-year-old son but Yunior ruined it by thinking with his man parts. This resulted in the Noemi hanging up on Yunior and deleting him from everything. He was unable to execute true feeling for Noemi because he is still stuck in regret and trying to find outlets into forgetting his ex-fiancé, instead of facing his decision. This is just one of many other cycles of ups and downs he goes through. During year number three He starts out getting serious with school and improving his health. This repeats the theme of cycles, by starting with and focusing on something new. He takes up a new hobby of running because it helps his physically push himself and pushing his mistake and loss out of his mind. Then true to this cycle, he injures himself and is unable to run for months. Yunior tries to fill the void with a young law student and she leaves him for a younger guy who is her classmate. This girl however comes back and breaks his heart even in year four. In year four, after a traveling for a presentation Yunior comes home to the law student all packed up waiting in the lobby for him, saying she is pregnant. Through this year he holds some hope in the child whom he thinks is his. When the law student starts to deliver the baby, Yunior is kicked out and although he waits he never hears from the law student again just from her friends get her things. This is another break up in which Yunior has completely went full circle to hit rock bottom again. Also in year four, he receives wedding invites from “ex-sucias” as Diaz refers them too. “Arlenny turns over the cards, quotes Oates: Revenge is living well, without you.” (Diaz, “The Cheater’s Guide To Love”) This quote without proper quotes is something as a writer Diaz likes to do a lot in his writings. During an interview he says, “…I’ve quoted from people’s books in my own works without even referring to their texts.” (Fiction Is the Poor Man’s Cinema: An Interview with Junot Diaz, 900) This reckless and kind of arrogant way of writing is reflected in his characters in the story. This cycle of break ups and mention of revenge presents the theme that Yunior is paying for his mistakes and all his sucias want him to know how they found love. This repeats this theme that a Yunior is still without love and struggling to find love again.
Finally, cheaters don’t think before acting and forget that the ultimate result, in Yunior’s case specifically, was losing and living life without his fiancé. Throughout this short story Diaz describes, from Yunior’s point of view, what life after cheating looks like and how relationship between love actually and cheaters is distant and rarely recoverable. Yunior goes through trials in life, describing experiences similar to those of the real world moving and growing around even when he feels stuck in his feelings. Diaz successfully puts the reader in Yunior’s life. Diaz says in one interview, “To understand race relationships, you can read history all you want, but you’d be better off in America reading some of the genre stories, looking at some of the fantasy novels.” (The Lens of Genre In Diaz’s Oscar Wao, 95) In “The Cheater’s Guide To Love”, the reader is placed in Dominican’s life and learns thoughts and perceptions of the world around him. In some parts of this story Yunior experiences racism by being called a towel head or getting diet coke bottle thrown at him. He is constantly showing his ID and being pulling over. Diaz as the author expressed that reading stories is better to really learn about race relationships, which is why it is included in Yunior’s struggle. All these factors and trials, as well as the highs and lows prove to that the journey back to love for a Cheater is a series of cycles including low highs in life and very low lows. Yunior in year five has more health issues and complaints about his language while he teaches. Yunior searches for knowledge on when he will stop thinking about his ex, but doesn’t find an answer. In the end, He opens the doomsday book, which is filled with all the old girls he cheated with and starts writing the cheater’s guide to love. “It’s a start, yousay to the room. That’s about it. In the months that follow, you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace-and because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.” (Diaz, “The Cheater’s Guide To Love”) Yunior admitted in this line his reason for writing because of the hope and grace that this makes him feel. Ultimately Yunior found something he could start over with and admit his wrongs too. This is what helped him forgive himself for losing love. Cheaters have the ability to love, yet struggle with life after cheating.