Women/Relationships

Why Single Women Stay Faithful To Their Affair Partners

The idea of exclusivity within an affair may sound preposterous.

I’ve previously written about my experience being a mistress as a single woman. My married lover was insanely jealous even though he was committed to a marriage with someone else.

I’ve also written about how, in my personal experience and opinion, serial cheaters are usually the ones who are prone to making accusations that their lovers are the ones cheating on them.

In all of this, there remains one thing that always stands out to me: For years, I was completely faithful to my married lover.

And I’m not the only one.

Why many single women remain faithful to their married lovers — sometimes for a significant amount of time — can feel like a perplexing conundrum to many on the outside looking in.

It seems logical that if you’re canoodling with a married person all bets should be off as far as seeing other people, especially if you’re single — right?

Well, not quite.

Plenty of single women are staying forever true to affair partners.

Is this uniquely a woman thing? Possibly, although I’m sure there are men out there having affairs with married people who remain loyal to them as well. It could also be the fantasy of a married lover eventually leaving their spouse. I know I had that fantasy for quite some time.

The idea of exclusivity within an affair may sound preposterous to many, yet it’s totally normal for lots of people engaged in these types of relationships.

I’ve searched for the answers in my mind and, looking back, I think the main reason I never slept with anyone else during the entire length of the affair was that I was afraid. I was afraid of the consequences if I strayed and my married lover found out about it.

This married ‘family man’ was abusive — verbally, emotionally, and in the end — physically. He abused me and he probably abused his wife when he wasn’t out having affairs. Just the act of having an affair was a form of abuse, in my opinion.

He would call me from payphones or a friend’s cell phone just to check up on me when he wasn’t around to make sure I wasn’t out on a date or having wild sex with some other man.

He essentially terrorized me just to make sure I was being faithful to him.

But why? He had no intention of leaving his wife for me so what would it matter if I was faithful to him or not?

Ego? Pride? An absolute lack of trust because he couldn’t be trusted himself? All YES.

The saddest part of all this was that my married lover would threaten to leave me if I ever looked at or talked to another man — and I would feel fear over that.

I was afraid that he would leave me. I thought I loved him. We had this insane sexual connection that — at the time — I didn’t want to give up for anything. It was an addiction.

The fear of losing someone who had so little integrity and compassion certainly seems foolish now. Looking back, I am amazed at how an independent, single woman like myself who had an apartment and endless opportunities in life could have fallen into this dark trap of a relationship.

Alas, could we go back in time and shake some sense into ourselves?

The bottom line is that although I consider myself to be a loyal person even to those who may not deserve my loyalty, the main reason I was faithful to my married lover was that I was afraid of him and also afraid of how I would cope with life if I didn’t have the relationship anymore.

Fortunately, once the affair finally ended and I eventually picked up all the broken pieces, I realized how much better off I was both mentally and emotionally.

Although being faithful to a person who was betraying their marriage vows won’t earn me any virtue points, it ultimately taught me that those who make those virtuous vows don’t always have the best intentions and those who thought they were virtuous can make substantial mistakes that cost them greatly.

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