At the age of 26, I had a six-month affair with a married man.
As an aside: I’ve always wondered if the “other woman” is having the
affair, per se, or if it is just the man. If I am single, can it be an
affair? Is one person having the affair and the other person having a
relationship? Perhaps that answers my question; it definitely wasn’t a
relationship.
We met at work and became close friends. It’s hard to look back and see the
truth of why that was, what we had in common. It would be easier to say we
became friends because we were falling for one another, and friendship was
the door that led me to the best — and worst — six months of my life. But
that wasn’t it.
Before the first night we kissed and went home together and had terrible
drunk sex — sex that was not worth the strife or the guilt or the
embarrassment — I can say, hand on heart, I had never thought about being
with him. He was married, more or less happily, as far as I knew, and I was
not the type of girl to sleep with a married man.
In a way, the affair marked a split in my sense of self — or, at the very
least, in how I viewed the world. Before, I thought there were two types of
women: those who had affairs — desperate, lonely, pathetic women — and
those who didn’t. I placed myself firmly in the second category.
For the six months we were seeing each other, I believed in pretty much the
same basic structure, but with one significant difference: I had moved from
the second category to the first and was, therefore, desperate, lonely, and
pathetic. But I now know that women who have affairs can be pathetic and
desperate, self-respecting, careless with their bodies and feelings, or all
(or none) of the above. There is no common denominator.
No relationship in my life has made me feel more alone than this one. It
took over my life. It eclipsed all others.
I became, for the first time, a liar. It wasn’t so much compulsive as
necessary. I lied to everyone about everything — about who I’d had lunch
with, about where I was going that evening, about whether I was single (was
I?), about what I’d be doing this weekend or the next.
He would come over and I would put my phone on flight mode and tell my
friends I was out with other friends or at the movies or a concert (and
hope they’d never ask for details). We’d eat takeout and have sex, and
later — but never too late — he’d get up and get dressed and go home. I
would tidy up, removing the takeout containers and the condoms and folding
the blanket we’d been lying under while on the couch. I’d reactivate my
network and wait for a flurry of texts. The silence would always be
ever-so-slightly disappointing. I’d told them I was busy, but it still
rankled. I felt like Lucy in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, escaping
my everyday life and stepping into a kind of fairy tale, but I had no one
to confide in.
The lying, aside from being an isolating experience, added to my sense of
being split. I had never been someone who lied. I had never been someone
who could lie. I told the truth, for better or worse. I was — I am — an
excessive oversharer.
I was someone who would call friends and give them a blow-by-blow account
of my day or night. I would tell them the details of my other friendships
and my work relationships and talk about what book I was reading and what
film I had seen. I spared no details in my confessional chats.
During the affair, there was no point in calling anyone. I couldn’t tell
them about my life. What would I have to talk about? Discussing made-up
events is incredibly boring for everyone involved. If I couldn’t talk about
him, I had nothing to talk about. He was all I wanted to talk about, so he
became the only person I spoke to.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, because it felt like we were both in
this relationship we’d made in my house, but I was the only one who was
truly alone. He had his family and his friends and a life with his wife. I
had pulled away from friends and family so that I could protect my secret,
while he had to stay close to his for the exact same reason. In my
isolation, I needed him. I think he liked it that way.
I tried to end it a couple of times, halfheartedly, like I tried to quit
smoking. I knew it was bad for me. I knew it wouldn’t end well. I knew I’d
be better off without him and that he needed space to deal with was going
on in his life. He wasn’t sleeping; he had chronic back pain; he’d had a
headache for weeks. His body was, I thought, manifesting the symptoms of
his guilt.
I wasn’t feeling guilty. I’ve always thought the married party should feel
the guilt, and any shame is theirs alone. I do feel ashamed, now — less
because he was married and more because, with the benefit of hindsight, my
motivations are so transparent. I was incredibly flattered that someone
like him — someone older, smarter, someone more popular and better known
and more sociable and ultimately better than me — would risk disrupting his
life. For me. At the time, it felt like a compliment. I drank it up.
When things finally did end, I had spent six months avoiding my friends. I
had spent six months lying to my parents and my sister about what I was
doing. I had spent six months hiding away with this man who told me
something had to change; he didn’t want the life he had built for himself
and he wanted something else. Something more. I thought that included me.
