A Different Angle on Infidelity
How some of us reconcile with extramarital affairs
We see it on TV all the time, scandalous women who chase married men down, seduce them, and create all kinds of problems in the married man’s life.
But do scandalous men and women actually conspire this hard in real life?
I think the percentage of people who purposefully plot to become the other woman, or the other man, is relatively low. Sometimes things just happen, even if that does sound like a lame excuse.
We’re all grown-ups who make adult choices, and choosing to insert yourself into a married person's affairs should feel nothing short of shameful, am I right?
However, maybe there’s a subsection of society that sees things in a completely different light. In fact, there is a subsection of us who approach infidelity from an entirely different angle.
We are the detached ones. Not detached from partners or spouses per se, but detached from the role we play in someone else’s story. We’re able to see it clearly from an outside point of view.
I recently wrote about an experience in what I first thought was bad decision making on my part. I became the dreaded other woman in a relatively new marriage. In fact, our indiscretion happened only one week prior to his first wedding anniversary.
While I know I could have done a lot more to dissuade a married man from having sex with me, I didn’t. Why? Because I ultimately saw it as his indiscretion, not mine.
Sure, I did nothing to discourage his behavior but I also did nothing to encourage it either. So the thing happened and I have no feelings about it except for this:
It was his journey, not mine. I was just placed into the middle of it. I was his opportunity.
If a married person is likely to cheat, they’re going to cheat no matter who the temptation is. It’s not the temptation’s responsibility, the onus falls on the married person. They make the choice to be involved in extramarital affairs and therefore, they are the shot callers in their own indiscretions.
People like me just end up along for the ride. It’s not my job to teach someone how to stick to their wedding vows.
On the other side of the coin, I understand how you may look at someone like me and paint me as a homewrecker. But consider this for a minute — what if I didn’t know the guy was married?
That would change the entire scenario, wouldn’t it? Immediately, you would have to reframe the blame solely onto him because he made the choice and I would have been the innocent party.
I’m not saying I’m a heartless human being. I was once a married woman too and would have died if I ever suspected my husband was being unfaithful. The truth is that I never once had a single doubt about my marriage. It was as simple as that.
Whether that was an airy-fairy fantasy, I’ll never know for sure but I know what I know, and I didn’t doubt my relationship.
I can’t claim to know why a spouse would look outside the marriage for sex. It’s not my business to analyze relationships. While there must be a reason, the reason certainly isn’t the other person — the temptation in his path.
What’s going on in the marriage is the catalyst. The other person is just the opportunity being presented. Will your spouse jump on the opportunity or decline it?
It would be easy to chalk the whole cheating issue up to men and women being jerks and bitches but the truth is, it’s not a simple breakdown. There are a million reasons why a married person could be looking for extramarital fulfillment. Reasons no one can ever speculate.
The key is to get honest and get real with your partner if you either have suspicions or an urge to be unfaithful. No one outside your marriage has the answers for you, they just provide the opportunity and the warm body.
The real question to ponder is why your spouse is looking for that warm body in the first place.
I happen to be very good friends with the married man I slept with, meaning I do have a feeling or two for how he may feel about what happened. I still have no feelings about it, I was just there and it was a great time.
He and I are still friends, there’s no awkwardness, and I can’t predict whether or not a similar situation will arise again. I also can’t predict whether or not I’d take him up on it if it did.
What I can predict is that if another opportunity does present itself, I may be inclined to ask him why. Not because I’m curious about his marriage but because maybe he’s not curious enough about it.
Many thanks to Average Don Juan for our always enlightening conversations behind the scenes.