Member-only story
My Relationship with My Affair Partner Was Doomed. Yours Probably Is Too.
I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking I’d somehow be the exception, but more often than not, I’ve been the rule.
I recognized he was being pushy, but I excused it. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? I couldn’t say so myself.
I didn’t intend to embark on an affair when I met the man who would become my affair partner. Though I had filed for divorce from my husband three months earlier, I didn’t plan on meeting someone for whom I’d eventually leave my husband. My husband had betrayed me, and I’d filed for divorce, but then he’d told me he’d make it right, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to let him. I was lost and navigating new terrain, and then I met a man.
The affair began with sharing. Overnight, he became a delicious secret, someone with whom I could share things, real things I told myself, who could listen to and validate me. We didn’t even touch until I left my husband, but if you tell your husband, “We can work it out,” while texting another man, “If I was single, would you date me?” you’re a cheater. What mattered was that, when it came down to it, I continued to let my husband think there was a chance when, as soon as I met my affair partner, there wasn’t one at all.
