[M4F] Married, Looking for Explorer Partner In Affairlandia
Will an adulteress understand what it feels like to be an adulterer?
I handed her my phone. “You decide,” I told her.
Alex* looked down at my phone “I don’t know…” she trailed riddled in curiosity.
What she held in her hand was a choice. Lyft, a ride-sharing app, set to a route from my hotel back to her place. If she decided, she could be picked up within minutes. She just needed to make a choice.
“If you stay, I am going to fuck you.” I confessed.
We had met earlier, a date, at a local bar. I was in town for a couple of weeks for work. Prior to arrival, I had created a Tinder profile. “Out of state” I thought, “should be safe.”
My profile was generic, detailed, and a lie. What I like, what I don’t like, some photos of me doing fun things. A semi nude to show physique (mostly healthy).
What I didn’t admit was that I was married.
So the question is: did she ever really have a choice?
There was a period of time when I dismissed Ashley Madison as a choice. Every profile that I created was immediately deleted. Affairs happen naturally, I told myself. A chance conversation, a face to face exchange, serendipity. Chemistry.
Magic.
And for me, Ashley Madison felt like it’s antithesis.
I think it was because I was scared to find my equal. I felt like going through an Ashley Madison success cycle was to look in the mirror and accept myself as a cheater.
That the only place I could feel accepted was a land full of cheaters.
I saw the canvas that is Ashley Madison from up high, riding a Picasso-esque moral high horse, looking down on a surreal landscape without admitting that I was part of it.
Before she decided to come back to my hotel, Alex and I spent our date chatting, about what I don’t remember. What I do remember is that we laughed and flirted until the wait staff unapologetically cleaned around us to let us know that they had closed.
“My hotel is around the corner,” I explained. She decided to come over. Then stayed the night. Then spent the rest of the weekend with me until her flight back home.
“Are you peeing?” I asked behind the bathroom’s closed door.
“Yeah?”
“Is it ok if I come in?” I asked, turning the handle. A sliver of neon light swept the room catching angles of clothing scattered across the room.
“Sure?” More of a question than an answer. I came in, filled a glass of water, and stood across from her while she sat.
I leaned over and kissed her.
“You’r weird” she said and cleaned up. “Isn’t that gross?”
“I was just in your mouth” I responded “come shower with me.”
“Ok.”
We showered. We had breakfast together. We sat on the balcony and smoked cigarettes talking about life. I listened. I asked questions. We fucked.
It felt like a real connection.
A golden hour between two perfectly matched strangers.
When she left we kissed goodbye. “Safe travels,” I said to bookended our time together.
“You too,” she responded, and closed the door. The reverberant click signaled she was gone, and from the deepest recess of my brain, a single neuron fired a thought that echoed through every pleasure center in my brain.
Her scent, the texture of her touch, the way she moved. Her taste was on my lips. The sounds of her moans. It was all real because of that single thought: no one will ever know.
Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth.
Affairs are lies we tell… others? Yes, and it’s also lies we tell ourselves.
Sooner or later that debt is paid.
“No one will ever know” is not true. I know. I know about my affairs. I know about the lies. They are pieces of me that have been abandoned in hotels and bedrooms. Bars, backseats, and restaurants.
Golden moments turned to fools gold.
Recently, I made a promise to not lie about not being married. Creating an Ashley Madison account, and keeping it, feels like opening the door, stepping out, and meeting my Affairlandia neighbors. There are a lot of us here, we are not broken.
But I still have hesitations. Maybe I don’t know if I am ready to meet myself. I don’t know what I am waiting for.
Maybe we are all waiting for something. For the fish to bite, for the rain to come, for a phone to ring or the snow to snow. Just waiting around for a yes or no.
Maybe an Ashley Madison affair might help me feel more real, I don’t know. Maybe it will be a chance to connect with someone about being in an affair while being in an affair without the pressures of being in an affair. Maybe it’ll be a chance to piece back the parts that I’ve left behind.
Maybe I am lying to myself. Maybe I need Ashley Madison to explore Affairlandia and discover my truth.
**All names have been changed to protect privacy.
