10 Surefire Ways to Ruin Your Affair

You've done all the searching.  You've found someone. You have an affair.  It's fantastic! But then it all blows up in your face.  What happened? We tend to focus our time and attention on finding a partner, but that's just the beginning. If you're not careful, it can end as quickly as it began.

Here are 10 surefire ways to ruin things.

1. Be uncommunicative. You wooed her with your witty repartee and sensitive, insightful emails, but once you caught her, you became silent or very close to it. You told her you're busy, but it really doesn't matter why.  If you stop communicating, she'll be gone. How long it takes her to walk away depends on many factors, including how much she likes you, how desperate she is, how good you are in bed, and probably one or two other things. Eventually, though, she'll go.
2. Treat her like a booty call. In the beginning you romanced her and seduced her, but now you don't talk to her much at all, except when you want sex. So you call and act like everything is exactly as it should be and you try to set up a date.  She'll go along with it for awhile, but eventually you'll be shocked when she's always too busy to see you, especially when she had no problem making the time before. Even a fuck buddy needs some friendly communication in between fuck sessions.
3. Lie to her.....and get caught. Face it.  We're all liars.  We lie to our spouses and, yes, we even lie to ourselves at times. Still, we don't want to believe that a lover would ever lie to us. You tell her you're not looking on AM anymore, but she catches you. Now she says she can't trust you, which is odd because you really weren't too trustworthy before because you're cheating on your wife with her, but she didn't count that in the trustworthy equation (there's that lying to ourselves thing again).
4. Start to fantasize (and talk) about being together full-time. The majority of prowlers never leave their spouses, and those that do very rarely end up with the lover they were with when they split. You have a deal. You're both married and you're planning to stay married.  If you start making noises about changing the plan, your lover may disappear very quickly.
5. Tell your friends. You think it's safe.  You think your friends would never, ever tell anyone that you're having an affair. Until they do. Of course they're not trying to hurt you, but the intention doesn't matter when your spouse finds out.
6. Start getting sloppy. After a while, you think you've  got your spouse totally hoodwinked so you don't delete messages and email like you used to. You forget to clear your browser history. You wear perfume or scented after shave to a meeting with lover, leaving him/her smelling like s/he was inappropriately close to someone of the opposite sex. It's only natural to let your guard down a little after a while.  Maintaining constant vigilance is difficult, but if you get sloppy, you'll slip up, and the affair will be over.
7. Get selfish in bed. There's nothing wrong with being selfish in bed every now and then and just letting your lover please you, but remember that s/he has a spouse at home who probably does that all the time. If it becomes a regular thing, why would s/he want to be with you? S/he could be stay at home and be completely unsatisfied without risk of divorce.
8. Be emotionally unavailable. Let me be very clear on this.  An affair is about more than sex. It's about friendship,  emotional connection, mutual support, and sex. If all you want is sex, you don't want an affair.  You want a fuck buddy or a prostitute. If you go into the relationship saying you want an affair and then you shut down emotionally, she won't stay long, or if she does, she'll also be looking for someone else. If you can't be at least a little bit emotionally vulnerable, just call a hooker.
9. Talk only about yourself. Don't forget the 'mutually supportive' part of having an affair. If you're talking all the time and you don't know much about what's going on in her life, you won't be able to be very supportive at all. Why should she stay? I've been in relationships (both long and short term) with men who could not tell you anything substantial about my life because the topic of conversation was always their lives, their needs, their struggles. I've even been told by someone that he didn't want to hear about anything related to my family. What the fuck?! Try this test. Let's imagine that someone were to ask you about your lover, "Hey, what's going on with (your lover) these days?"  Would you know what to say?  Would you be able to say anything more than, "Oh, uh, she's great!" If you can't, she's either on her way out the door or she's unhappy and thinking about it.
10. Take her for granted. Things have been going so well for so long that you don't feel the need to be as diligent about the niceties. You may go for days without contact because you're really busy. Come on, how long does it take to send a two sentence email saying that you're busy but you care about her/love her and you miss her? You start forgetting to send her a thank you text or email after playtime. You just assume she'll show up for playtime, so you quit asking her. All the little acts of appreciation you showed in the beginning are long gone. Basically, you treat her like you treat your wife, or worse. Remember, she's already taken for granted and under appreciated at home.  Why would she take that from you? And when she leaves, you'll probably be shocked because you didn't see it coming.

Now, take a look at this list again. Except for numbers 4, 5, and 6, these are also ways to ruin your marriage. If you recognize yourself in any of these, there may still be time to change.