INFIDELITY

Sometimes Good People Have Affairs

When love gets messy and muddy.

Cheater. Homewrecker. Seductress.

A lot of mud is slung at those who have affairs. And it’s understandable. There’s a boatload of pain and hurt feelings around infidelity.

Although there are serial cheaters, players, and people who are downright malicious, many people who have affairs are none of those.

Sometimes good people have affairs.

I know. Because I am a good person who had one.

To many people, this may seem incongruent. How could I be married, be involved with a married man, and still be a good person?

We live in a very dualistic world where things are seen as either right or wrong. Our minds often want to pick sides and to be right in our choice. We thrive on certitude and clarity. But sometimes things are complicated. Sometimes good people do things that may seem wrong to others.

But that doesn’t make them bad people.

It just means sometimes love is messy and muddy.

I’m a kind and positive person. I try to see the good in people. I give others the benefit of the doubt because I know that in the big scheme of things, everyone’s working on something. To be this way in the world, I need to have good boundaries. But at the time I was married, mine were paper thin.

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

I came across this quote after spending many years in an unhappy marriage. I’d like to think that if I’d found it before I got married that I may have heeded its advice and made a different choice.

I’ll never know for sure, but I do know after reading it that it changed the way I saw my ex. I repeatedly gave him the benefit of the doubt when he was clearly showing me he had no intention of meeting my needs.

So often, he’d say one thing and do another. His actions spoke louder than his words. I just chose not to listen. I wanted to believe he was different than what his actions were showing me.

This was a big mistake on my part.

A stick in the mud

Although this pattern showed up in many different ways in my marriage, one of the biggest was in the bedroom. When it came to sex and intimacy, he never seemed to be interested. He’d stay up late and watch tv.

For years, this baffled me. I’d hear stories from friends of how their husbands couldn’t keep their hands off them.

This wasn’t the case for me, and I was embarrassed to tell anyone.

Then one day I found a stash of porn in the basement. Now it made sense. All those times he’d stayed up late and didn’t come to bed, he’d been taking care of his needs by watching porn instead.

When I tried to have an honest conversation about it, he lied and told me someone gave the stash to him as a joke. He said he was going to throw it away. But he never did.

Many people say that porn isn’t cheating. But I would argue otherwise. When he chose to watch it in secret instead of being with me, I’d call that cheating. It cheated me out of intimacy with the man I married. It robbed me of touch and affection. And it’s incredibly painful when you are asking for sex and your husband chooses porn over you.

I felt undesirable, unlovable, and neglected.

And when you feel that way within what’s supposed to be the most intimate and loving relationship you‘ll ever have, it’s a mind f*ck. It messed with my head.

My self-worth took a nosedive.

Clear as mud

People often ask why I just didn’t get divorced. They throw that word around like it’s an easy answer. But it wasn’t. The thought of it was big and scary.

I’d guess that most people who have made the difficult decision to divorce would agree with me. It’s not easy. There are so many people affected by it from your kids, to extended family, to friend groups. How all of this will end up when it’s over is often as clear as mud.

Also, I didn’t want to wear that label. I didn’t want to be part of another failed marriage statistic. I wanted to show my kids that you work through adversity. I wanted to honor my vows of staying together for better or worse.

Problem is, sometimes it takes being with someone better to show you how bad things really are.

You gotta go in the mud sometimes to figure who you are.~ Andy Irons

Mudding the waters

Sometimes we have to go down the wrong path to see the right one. Sometimes we’re trying to do the right thing, but have unmet basic human needs. Sometimes we are so starving for love that when someone shows up and is willing to give us what we’ve been missing, it’s hard to resist.

I believe people come into our lives for a reason. I believe the Universe will use different means to nudge us on the right path. And I believe my affair was just such a nudge. He changed the trajectory of my life for the better.

Sometimes the most effective learning takes place by contrast. To finally feel loved, desired, and understood when for years I felt the opposite both muddied the waters and made things very clear.

To feel what a loving relationship could be like helped me to see I needed to be with someone very different. It took feeling what could be possible to show me that what I had wasn’t ever going to work for me. I’m not sure how else I could have learned this.

Happy as pigs in mud

This may seem odd coming from someone who was involved in an affair, but relationships matter to me more than anything else.

I want people to have great relationships.

I want people to be able to openly communicate their needs and desires.

I want people to be willing to both listen to and provide for those needs and desires.

I want people to have their needs and desires met within their committed relationships.

It all starts with having open hearts, open minds, and open communication. And it can only happen when all three are present and both people are on board.

For people to be happy as pigs in mud, basic human needs must be met. I believe if mine had been met within my marriage, I never would have done what I did. I’m betting that most other good people who have affairs for the same reason would agree.

Basic needs and desires must be met somewhere. And if they aren’t met within the relationship, they may be met outside of it. That’s when love gets messy and muddy.

That’s why good people sometimes end up having affairs.

Kasey Sparks, © 2021