The Unexpected Downside of Infidelity

I was chatting with a dear friend this morning and he reminded me about one of the downsides of infidelity that we rarely talk about and that most never see coming.  It's not getting caught, although that can be, and usually is, pretty bad. It's something that is brought on by the experience itself.

Most of us who cheat are looking for something that is missing from our relationship at home.  It's usually intimacy and/or sex, but it could include many other things, too. If you're lucky, you'll meet the right person and find what you're looking for. At that point, all you see is the upside.

If everything clicks, you experience intimacy like you never have before, maybe not even with your spouse in those flush early days. The sex is great.  You feel alive. You wonder why you waited so long. You find that feeling so connected to another human being on so many levels is amazing beyond description. In a nutshell, for the first time in a long time, you feel complete. All of your needs are being met and you're happy.

What could be bad about that?

Well, nothing.  As long as it lasts.  The problem is that, unlike marriage, affairs are not intended to go on forever.  That's generally speaking, of course.  Some can go on for years or decades, but those are the exceptions.  Most affairs end. In the best of situations, they end well. The affair has run its course and you both agree that it's time to move on or that it's time to attempt fidelity again.  Maybe you end on good terms because you just drifted apart. The time between meetings just got longer and longer until *POOF*you just weren't seeing each other anymore. That's pretty much what happened between me and JJ.  There was no decision to end it, no falling out.  It just fizzled out due to lack of attention.  That doesn't mean we don't care about each other, just that the affair is not active (I'm hesitant to say "done" because I don't know what the future holds, even though it looks like it's done).

But maybe your affair ends on bad terms.  Your wife finds out or your partner's husband finds out, and things turn very, very ugly. Maybe you can salvage your marriage, but that was only possible because you agreed to end the affair. Maybe your partner just decided she wanted to end it or she found someone else. Regardless of how you feel about it, it's over.

The ending, though, isn't even the bad part I'm talking about. It's worse when the affair is over, and you know it's over forever, and you're still with your spouse, and you're faced with the heart wrenching knowledge that you have experienced indescribable intimacy with another human being, and now it's gone.  And you may not have that ever again.

I'm a believer in Alfred Lord Tennyson's assertion that " 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved," because I honestly believe that connecting with our fellow human beings is part of why we're here. Loving others, in all the possible forms that love takes, is how we live to the fullest.

As long as I'm quoting literature, let me add another. "A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are for." This is attributed to William G.T. Shedd as well as to several other people (that's what the internet does to authors who don't copyright their work; eventually, everyone claims it). Some people, most notably those who obviously can't read, claim that Theodore Roosevelt said it first in his 1901 State of the Union speech, saying that "ships are not built for a harbor."  Of course, he was actually talking about real ships and the need to get them out of the harbor so peacetime crew can get adequate training, not ships leaving a harbor as a metaphor for courage and risk taking. The funny thing is that he never really said it.  What he said was, "Our ships must be assembled in squadrons actively cruising away from harbors and never long at anchor." Even poor Teddy Roosevelt can't escape bad reporting.

Wow.  My inner nerd just jumped out at you.  Sorry about that. However,  if you're ever in a nerdy mood, read Roosevelt's speech in its entirety. He talks about the importance of building the Panama Canal and the cavalry, basing U.S. foreign policy on the Monroe Doctrine, and changing the way recruits are addressed at Annapolis. Good stuff...and kind of amusing given today's context.

But I digress....again.

The point was that I agree that knowing there will be pain in the future is no reason to avoid living and loving fully today. Still, it's painful to have what you were craving and then have to face a life without it again.

Before you experience it, you know you're not happy, not content.  You know something is missing, but it's only when you have it in your life for a period of time that you fully understand the depth of the hole in your life without it. Yes, you can go to counseling with your spouse and if you're both willing, things can definitely get better, and that's awesome! But it is unlikely that your spouse will ever be able to fill that void for you completely.

I know that some of you may be thinking, "Hey! It's not your spouse's job to fill that void!  You need to fill it yourself by growing spiritually and learning to appreciate what you have."  Ok, there's some truth to that. One of the secrets of a happy long-term marriage is appreciation.  Another is for each spouse to be on his/her own path of growth and self-actualization (did you ever think you'd see that word again after the 70's?). I have to tell you, though, that my first thought when I hear someone say something like that is that they have probably never experienced the intimacy I'm talking about.  If they had, they'd know that one person can't recreate that alone just by concentrating on being grateful. It's like magic. It's illusive and addictive......and sorely missed when it's gone.

This morning I told my friend that he should never say never because it's possible that he may find that lost intimacy with his wife. We don't know what the future holds. If they are both working on it, it's possible.

But we both knew the truth.  It's unlikely. So how do you live with that?  How do you happily stay on the farm when you've seen Paris, so to speak? I don't know.  I know it's difficult, and I know that life is full of trade offs.  Maybe we have to let go of the magic to keep the family we love whole. Maybe we have to go back to settling for something that doesn't fully fulfill us in exchange for a chance at another kind of happiness. Maybe we just have to hope that as we age it won't really matter as much to us.

Warning someone about this downside of infidelity before they cheat won't do any good because it will just make them want to find that magic and have the experience themselves.  And then they'll know. Unfortunately, at that point, there's going back.

Is it really "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved?"

Infidelity

I've been thinking about this concept a lot lately.  Unfaithfulness. Infidelity.

Essentially, it means not keeping your promise, and it has come to be used almost exclusively with the act of not maintaining sexual fidelity.

Marriages split up because one spouse had sex with someone outside the marriage. It has come to the point where it is almost the single most valued thing in a marriage. "I can put up with anything as long as he doesn't cheat on me."  Really?

I've been told many times that if I'm going to cheat, I should just end it, as if sexual fidelity is all there is and if you don't have that you have nothing. That's just bullshit.

A long term marriage is a very complicated thing. It involves being with someone day in and day out, often while raising children, and doing your best to support, not squash, each other's hopes and dreams.  It involves sickness and puke and seeing your partner in the most physically unattractive ways and still trying to maintain a sexual attraction. It involves a massive amount of forgiveness and humility. And love. Especially love.

I've shared with you before that my marriage vows were rather unconventional and didn't include most of the typical language of marriage vows, but the point was the same. I promised to be his partner in life, no matter what. That's it in a nutshell. I promised that nothing would ever make me walk away from him. Nothing means nothing. I promised to be in it for the long haul - in sickness, health, good times, bad times.While our vows didn't include a sexual fidelity component, most do, and it was pretty much understood in ours.  We just didn't say it.

The core of my commitment - and his - was that we would stay together no matter what. I would consider my husband truly unfaithful if he walked way from the marriage.  Anything short of that may fall under the "sickness, worst of times, or poorer" part, but it's certainly not cause to leave the marriage.

A word to my divorced friends....I'm not judging you.  To make a long term marriage work, both people must be fully committed and do their part to make the marriage work. If one party has checked out there's often nothing the other can do.

For those of you thinking, "What about abusive relationships?" I'll admit that my "no matter what" promise has two conditions - physically abusing me or abusing our children in ANY way. In those cases, I would leave immediately, but I can't say what would happen in the long run.  I've seen many families recover from such awful situations.  Each has to judge for him/herself.

But I digress.....again.  What I'm trying to say is that sexual infidelity does not erase years of fidelity to all the other promises. My husband has been with many other women during our marriage, and I didn't know about it until fairly recently. Should that outweigh everything he's done to honor our marriage over the past 27 years? Of course not. He's been my partner through thick and thin for a long, long time.  He's the father of my children.  So what if he likes to fuck younger women?  If it were a problem for me, we'd have to deal with that, but if it were so much of a problem that I'd throw everything away because of it, I'd be an idiot.

The opposite is also true.  If he was so twisted up over me having sexual encounters with other men that he couldn't see all the good in our relationship, he'd be an idiot.  But he can see beyond it.  He doesn't like it, and it was very upsetting for him when he first discovered it, but it's not going to destroy the marriage. Our marriage is about much, much more than sex. Most married couples understand that, but then they turn bat shit crazy over a single incident of cheating. It's illogical and shortsighted.

Let's look at it from another angle. If a marriage is reasonably good in most respects (or even if it isn't right now, but you believe in staying together no matter what), but the sex life is dead and there is nothing you can do to revive it, is it so bad to have those needs met elsewhere?  Obviously, I don't think so, but I am aware that I am in a minority. Does it make any sense at all to let sexual dysfunction or the lack of marital sex cause the downfall of the whole relationship?  Not to me.

I'm not saying that all marriages should be open relationships, but it's silly to let lack of sex poison things. It's just one piece of the marital relationship, after all.

Yes, I do think that the best case scenario is to have a healthy intimacy with your spouse that includes an awesome and ever-exciting sex life. If you've been married over 20 years and you have that and neither of you has cheated, God bless you. You have life's golden ticket.  Don't take it for granted.

If you're unmarried, or if you've been married for less than 18-20 years, you need to stop pushing morality that you can't possibly understand onto other people. I often wonder how many marriages split up because one spouse cheats and the other is pushed and prodded into divorce by well meaning friends and family members who don't truly understand the value of a long term loving, albeit imperfect, relationship with another human being.

Too often, we try to make very complex things simpler by narrowing them down to a few simple rules. That's what has happened with marriage and infidelity. Unfortunately, no matter how much you try to make it simpler, marriage isn't so easily "managed," neither is anything truly valuable in life.

If someone were to ask me if my husband has been faithful to me over these past 27 years, my answer would be, "In almost every way, and certainly in all the ways that really matter. I'm a very fortunate woman." His answer would be the same.

Ouch

10 Tips for the Post-Discovery Talk

It's difficult to even think about this, but what happens in the post-discovery talk can make the difference between your marriage surviving the affair or crashing and burning in an ugly divorce.

So, you've been caught. She wants to talk.  What now?

I've addressed most of my tips to men, but most also apply to women and I'll share some examples from a woman's perspective.

1. There are two sentences that have only one answer - NO. No matter who you are, whether you want to salvage your marriage or run away with your sweetie, it doesn't matter.  The answer is still NO. The first question is "Do you love her?"  To a woman, her husband having sex with someone is bad, but loving another woman is devastating. If you admit that you loved your lover and you manage to stay with your wife, it will haunt her forever.  For her, it will always live in the present tense. "He loves someone else." This will make it nearly impossible for her to move beyond it and it could come back to bite you at any time over the next 30 years. Any why would you want to hurt her anymore anyway?

When I got caught, Hubby asked me if I loved JJ, and I quickly said "No." The sarcastic bitch in me wanted to say something like, "Gee, I've been seeing him for two years and we've met for sex over 50 times.  Don't you think it might be more than a casual relationship?" Of course I didn't say that, thank goodness. I didn't want to hurt him and it was clear he was looking for ways to forgive me.  He wanted to hear that there was no love in the picture.  That's what you wife wants to hear, too.

The other question is, "Did you ever have sex with her in our bed?" I don't care if you screwed an entire sorority in the bed you share with your wife.  The answer must be "No." After I caught Hubby, I was ok with most of what I learned, but the fact that he brought several 20 year old bimbos into OUR bed made me crazy.  Our bed. The bed where we conceived our youngest son, where we talked and laughed and sometimes cried.  The bed where we had sex. Here we are a couple years after that post-discovery talk and the only thing that bothers me about his cheating was that he brought them home to our bed. It's pissing me off as I write about it now, so I'd better stop.

But first let me say that I had several opportunities to bring someone home, but I wouldn't do it. That's a line I couldn't cross. If you tell your wife that you had sex with your mistresses in your marriage bed, it will probably be a long, long time before you have any sex in that bed again.  Understand?

2. Answer the questions and only the questions. She's going to start asking you questions. Imagine that you are giving testimony in a legal deposition or lawsuit. Answer the questions briefly and directly without adding anything.  For example,  Hubby asked me where JJ and I "did it."  My answer - "Hotels."  Notice I didn't say, "Hotels around town and the next town over. Once we went to the Bay Area.  Remember that cute little place that you I went to for our getaway last Valentine's Day?  We went there, too." There's no way to win by giving too much information. If I had named specific places, he'd be reminded every time he drove by one of those places. Leave out the exotic or unusual places completely.  A brothel, a hot tub, a restaurant bathroom, his car, my car, late at night on County Road 97. It can only end badly for you if you go there.

3. Don't take your lover down with you. Your wife will probably want to know who it is, but what she doesn't know is that she'll probably be sorry that she knows if you tell her.  Give a first name only. Hubby asked me for JJ's full name, where he lived, where he worked, etc. I simply said, "No." I wasn't going to take JJ down with me. Period.  Why bring the storm down on his family, too?  And Hubby didn't really need to know.  He was operating on the assumption that the more he knew, the better he'd feel. The truth, though, is that nothing I said on that day would make him feel better.  Only time and love could do that. Oh yeah, and a lot of blow jobs.

The other reason not to take your lover down with you is that it can come back to bite you. Do you really want your spouse and your lover's spouse talking to each other?

4. If she'll let you touch her, do so. If she won't, don't push it, but if you can make a physical connection while you're talking it will help her to feel that you love her and care about her when her brain is sending her messages that you don't.

5. Be prepared for the toughest question - Why? The answer I gave to Hubby was simple, "Because I wanted to." It worked at first because he's used to very brief, simple and direct answers from me, but a few days later he asked again  and again and again. I didn't answer it until I was ready and had a reasonable answer that was somewhat honest but that wouldn't devastate him. I went with this: "We both know that the fire in our sex life fizzled several years ago and I was craving passion, variety, adventure." You know why that worked?  Because he could relate.  He craved passion, variety, and adventure, too.  Here's another tip.  Do not make it your spouse's fault. "Well, you never want sex." "You henpeck me all the time." "You won't try anything new with me in bed."  No, no, and no. Those things may be true, but you need to give her a little space before she can hear them.  Besides, you know it's not her fault.

6. Postpone the discussion if she's really angry or crying hysterically.  She may tell you she wants to talk about it, particularly if she's angry, but she won't really hear anything you say when she's in that state.  As for her being angry, if she's angry at the beginning, she'll be angrier as your talk continues, and that's dangerous.

7. Do not talk about it in front of the kids - ever. This may seem like a no brainer to you, but if it's the two of you at home with the kids you might be tempted to send them to the other room assuming they can't hear. They don't need to hear the details of your marital dysfunction. It will scare them. They won't understand what's going on.  They may assume you're getting divorced.  Don't say anything to the kids unless both you and your wife agree on a message.

But what if your spouse can't help him/herself and brings it up in front of the kids? Two or three days after our post-discovery talk (the one about me), we were driving through town and ended up stopped briefly in traffic in front of a hotel, a Comfort Inn, to be specific. Hubby turned his head toward our son in the back seat and said, "Look, Little TommyKat.  That's probably one of the hotels where your mommy plays with her friend." I cannot describe how angry I was at that moment. It just so happened that I had never used that hotel, but that was beside the point. He involved our son. Before I could say anything he gasped and said, "Oh my god, Kat, I'm so sorry.  I don't know why I said that." He went on to apologize profusely and promise me that he would never do it again and he never did. Why did he do it?  He was hurt and angry and it just came out at the wrong moment. A really wrong moment.  It was easy to clean it up with our son who didn't understand what he was talking about anyway. Maybe the point here is that your spouse is human, and feelings of anger and insecurity don't just disappear because you talked things over. It takes time.

8. If you want to stay married, say so directly. Your wife will automatically think, "He's cheating.  He wants to leave me." Look her in the eyes and tell her you love her and you want to stay together (assuming that is true). Do it several times during the conversation.  Once won't be enough.  She probably won't hear it.  Once she can hear it, she needs to internalize it, and that takes repetition.

Remember, there are at least two conversations going on at once - the one that the two of you are having and the one that's going on in her head. The one going on in her head is a whirling mass of fear, insecurity, confusion, and anger. You need to make sure that the most important things you have to say cut through her internal dialog. You do that through repetition, sincerity, and physical contact.

9. Don't leave your bed or your home. I guess this is a post talk tip. If you want to stay married, stay. If she asks you to sleep on the couch or in the guest room, refuse. Sleeping side by side after the discovery and the talk may seem difficult and uncomfortable, but guess what? It's going to be difficult and feel uncomfortable no matter where you sleep. If she leaves to sleep in the other room, fine.  That's her call, but you stay put because you can't hold her if you're in the other room.  Even touching toes in bed is progress because physical contact is bonding. Now what if you want to sleep in the guest room because it's really stressful with her and you need to sleep?  Don't do it.  That confirms what her head has already been telling her that you don't want her.

Just as you should stay in your bed, stay in your house. I know a guy whose wife asked him during the post-discovery talk to please stay somewhere else for a few days so she could calm down and process everything. Being a basically nice guy, he agreed.  That was 18 months ago.  He's living in a dingy rented room, paying the mortgage and all of her expenses while she enjoys having the whole house to herself. He even goes over to the house every weekend to do the yard work.  And he's still waiting for her to "process everything" and let him come home. Guess what?  That marriage is toast, but it might have been saved if he had just stayed home.

Generally speaking, for a couple to stay together, they need to be together.  Simple, no?  That doesn't mean that they shouldn't have time to themselves, but keep in mind that working out your problems is unlikely if you're staying at the Comfort Inn (alone, or not) while your wife listens to her girlfriends vilify you for days. I'm just sayin'....

10.  Beware the flurry of dangerous questions. I already warned you about the two questions that must be answered with a NO and the big WHY? question. But those aren't the only questions you'll be faced with. It will start with the post-discovery talk, but they will continue to appear for days after the talk, maybe even a few weeks. Some of them will make you cringe.

Is she prettier than me?  Is she better in bed than me?  Are her boobs bigger than mine? What sorts of things did you do in bed? How many times did you fuck her?  Did you give her any gifts?  Does she love you? Is she married? Were you thinking about her when you and I were doing it? Are you going to keep seeing her?  Do you want to?

If you're a woman, expect questions that come from the other side.  Did he buy you gifts?  Did he give you money? Do you think about him when we fuck?  Does he have a bigger dick?

Uuuuuuuugggghhhhhhh.

Here are some guidelines to help you.  If it's a comparison question, don't answer it because it's a lose-lose.  For example, if she asks if your lover is prettier than her and you say yes, she's hurt and her insecurities just heard you say that she's not pretty enough.  No, that's not what you said, but that's what she'll hear. If you say no, she'll want to know why you were with her if she wasn't as pretty.  Do you really want to get into a conversation about how sexually uninhibited your lover is and how much she makes you laugh and how you really "get" each other? I didn't think so. So, politely and lovingly disengage with comparison questions if you can.

Hubby and I have a deal that we won't ask any question that we don't want the answer to. I reminded him of that when he started the interrogation. Then I answered every question he asked.  Some of them came after a moment of silence and I could tell that he as weighing if he really wanted the answers.

On the other side, when I was interrogating him about his decade of floozies, I intentionally asked him a string of very personal questions because I knew they would make him very uncomfortable.  Someone asked me recently if I'm passive aggressive. Uh, yes, apparently so. I asked him questions like,"Is Suzi shaved? What did her pussy feel like?" "Tell me what you did with her in our bed. Did you change the sheets every time or did you make me sleep in the same sheets that were messed with her cum?" I was ruthless. It didn't take long for me to see that he'd been punished enough and I stopped.

I guess the point is (besides the fact that you don't want to piss me off - Haha!) that there's a lot of talking that you have to go through that really has nothing to do with repairing your marriage.  For some reason, though, getting through the dangerous questions phase is necessary for getting to an initial level of closure.

After all is said and done, though, you need to assess the situation yourself. Every woman is different and responds differently to difficult situations. The important thing is that you be prepared.  Think about how you might handle it in advance. You may think you'll never be caught, but no one does. You'll fare the best if you're prepared.

It's Just Not That Simple

This morning Ryan Beaumont sent me a link to a blog post he thought might interest me:

Here's How to Cheat Proof Your Relationship - Stay Attractive, written by Amy Glass.

Essentially, she blames the non-cheating partner in the marriage for not being more attractive and desirable.

There are several things in the piece that I can agree with. Have more sex, keep yourself physically and mentally attractive, be nice, prioritize the romantic side of your relationship.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  These are good tips; however, they fall way short of actually helping someone.

My biggest beef with Amy's post is that it oversimplifies the whole issue. This is likely because she doesn't fully understand the issue. It's pretty clear that she's either unmarried or very newly married and what she knows about infidelity and its causes she has learned from the older men she knows. She doesn't seem to understand the biological issues that work against fidelity. She doesn't understand the nuances of the issues that impact people involved in long term marriages.

Here's the line that proves it.  "Cheating is a sign that you picked the wrong person and stopped caring."

Whoa there, cowgirl!

In most cases, if the cheating spouse had really stopped caring, he/she would have left. As for picking the wrong person, that's just crazy.  Most folks who cheat don't want to leave the spouse because they genuinely love him/her.

No matter how much you may want to make infidelity a simple issue, it's not. The challenges that couples deal with over decades are staggering, if you really think about them. There are money issues, children (with new challenges at each stage of development), mid-life crises (for both men and women), and the hormonal roller coaster that women experience at all stages of life that puzzles both genders. There's the loss of friends and sickness and the death of parents, and more and more often there is the long term care of an aging or disabled parent. There are new jobs and job losses and natural disasters and, god forbid, the death of children. There are broken down cars and teenage drivers. There are religious differences,  mental health challenges, and legal issues. Sometimes there are drug and alcohol problems in the family, with the couple or their children or both. And the bills! There's daycare and insurance, and the mortgage, and car payments, and taxes, and college, and weddings and.......the list goes on and on and on. And then there's the big X factor - the fact that people change and you and your spouse may or may not change and grow in the same direction.

If your marriage makes it over 20 years, surviving all of that, cheating or not, I don't know how it could be said that you picked the wrong person.  I love my husband of 26 years.  We have dealt with just about all of the issues I just mentioned.  I am 100% certain that I picked the right person. I'm also certain that neither of us stopped caring.

And we both have cheated.  I'm currently cheating.

And we're still together with no plans to separate.

Keeping a marriage together is about much more than going to the gym, putting on makeup, and reading books so you have something to talk about.  Yes, it is also about much more than blow jobs and hot sex (although who doesn't love those?!).

If you want to think about how to prevent your spouse from cheating, I have written 10 Tips for Wives to Keep Your Husband from Cheating which is much more nuanced and realistic than Amy's suggestions. Still, no matter what you do, you cannot stop a spouse who wants to cheat because it may be much more about them (the cheater) than you.

Human beings are complex.  When we enter into lifelong commitments with others, the complexity multiplies. Preventing or recovering from infidelity is not simple, but being serious about "'til death do us part" is.

Male Chastity Devices...I Promise Not to Tell Your Wife

For centuries, if hubby wasn't behaving, wifey just denied sex. It works until hubby finds another woman to satisfy his needs or until he just decides to pleasure himself.

All that is over now.  Now there is a male chastity device that prevents the wearer from touching himself or dipping his stick in another woman. Apparently, it fits over a flaccid penis and locks into place, only to be opened by the Keyholder, presumably the wife or Domme or whoever.

While I think it could be fun for sex play, it will never work as a fidelity protection device because you guys would all just learn to pick the lock......or to pick each other's locks, but that just brings us back to sex play, doesn't it?

I can see it now....a bunch of guys out at a club, all locked up by their wives so their night out with the guys stays that way.  They gather in the restroom, pulling down their pants and kneeling in front of each other one at a time, picking locks.  Within a few minutes, success! They disburse and separate, each going his own way in the club to pick up women. One who wants to remain faithful to his wife just rushes back into the restroom every now and then to jerk off, which he finds immensely satisfying. The others find some prey and find a place to satisfy their urges - the restroom, the parking lot, the cheap hotel next door. At 2:00 a.m., they gather again (so they all leave at the same time) and reattach the devices before going home.

It works great until one of the wives suspects something.  Maybe it was the scent of woman on her hubby's underwear.  Maybe it was hubby's moaning "Melissa" in his sleep. Unbeknownst to her spouse, she splurged on one of the expensive, high-tech locks that sends her a text message when anyone tries to open the lock or if the lock is ever more than 1 centimeter away from the device. For $100 more, she can have a GPS chip installed.  Why not? Now she really has him by the balls, so to speak.

The next time the guys go out, that wifey shows up and catches her hubby in the car with his dick in Melissa and his chastity device in his pocket. You know how it goes from there.  There's lots of begging. There may or may not be lawyers involved, but the word spreads fast to the other wives and their hubbies who swear they didn't know their friend was doing that. Soon, all the wives have the new locks, but it's only a matter of time until one of the nerdy hubbies figures out how to disable the text alarm and the GPS, and instead of just using it himself, he starts selling his fix to men everywhere, making enough money to buy his mistress lavish gifts and take his wife on enough exotic trips that she doesn't even notice or care where the money is coming from or where it's going.

The moral of the story? There is no device known to man that will keep a married man from cheating if he wants to.

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I learned about these male chastity devices on the Huff Post. Read more here if you'd like.

The Fuck Buddy Discovery

I took my son to an activity last night and when I got there I realized that I had left my cell phone at home. I couldn't go home to get it because I was leading the activity and 10 other boys were showing up, so I was stuck.

For the next hour and a half, I didn't think anything of it.  When I got home, there was my phone, right where I'd left it, plugged into the charger.  Great, right?

Not so fast.

Hubby wasn't speaking to me...at all. When he finally did speak to me as we were going to bed, it was to kick off the inquisition - Why hadn't I wanted sex for the last 48 hours?  Had I been getting it somewhere else? Was I no longer attracted to him because he was old?

The tone of his questions became angrier and angrier, until he finally screamed, "So, do you want to have sex now?!"

Normally, I would refuse under these circumstances because that's not exactly a romantic proposal, but he had me a bit annoyed so decided to call his bluff. I pulled off my nightie and said "Sure, sounds great!"

He hemmed and hawed, but what man wouldn't take advantage of that situation?

The sex was better than average, more passionate. When it was over, he rolled over and went to sleep.

I took advantage of the opportunity to check my phone and see what he might have seen.  I started with my text messages. I scrolled through several that were just friendly texts.  No problem.

Then I saw the one from Single Guy. Ugh. That little exchange didn't seem as dirty at the time we had it as it did now. And then there was the string of texts talking about arranging to meet. Sigh. This was bad.

I continued my search through the phone and that was all that was there that was incriminating.  I usually deleted things like I should.  I have no excuse for why I didn't do so with Single Guy's texts. I deleted them right then. I know that's kind of like closing the barn door after the cows have all escaped, but what else could I do?

In the morning, he was still crabby and not speaking to me. The only way through it was to take it on directly, so I asked, "Is there a reason why you decided to go through my phone last night?" I decided to dispense with the whole, "Why are you so upset, Dear?" routine. We both knew why.

He was shocked. After a moment of silence, he replied, "How do you know I did that?"

"Your behavior," I responded.

Then he started telling me what he saw, and he asked more questions.  Who is this guy?  Was I really going to see him? And have been seeing JJ lately?  How many "Fuck Friends" did I have? And on and on and on.

I wanted to correct him and say, "The correct term is "Fuck Buddy," but I thought it might be the wrong time. Timing is everything, ya know.

I tried to answer his questions as directly and honestly as I could. It progressed into a long discussion, a progression of the one we had almost two years ago.  I didn't use the words "Open Marriage" this time, but I told him it would be ok with me if he wanted play with another woman, and it would be great if we could just tell each other about it and be honest.

He's skeptical, although he did say he'd be ok with me inviting another woman in for a threesome.  That's progress, right?

We talked a lot more and things are going to be ok. However, I'm pretty sure I'll be on lock down for a while....again. He'll monitor my comings and goings and he'll eye me suspiciously whenever I text anyone. And if we go more than two days without having sex, he'll accuse me of getting it elsewhere.

Things will eventually settle down because, in spite of all the distractions, he knows I love him and I don't want to spend my life with anyone else.

The Intimacy Challenge

There's no rule book for this lifestyle.  I wish there were. I've written a whole bunch of tips and I still believe they are valid, good guidelines, but there are still parts that I haven't been able to master.

Intimacy is one of them. It's not that I haven't had intimacy with anyone other than my husband.  To the contrary, I've been blessed with a number of intimate relationships, and I am grateful for every one.

The problem is that I tend to give away too much of myself in pursuit of intimacy. I charge right in and give my heart away freely and am more than willing to do my part to maintain and grow the relationship, but when it becomes clear that the other person isn't, I just keep giving and giving and giving, hoping that he'll figure it out and come around. You know what? They never do.

Don't get me wrong.  Not every prowling relationship needs to be an emotionally intimate one.  I've had some fantastic fuck buddy relationships that were absolutely wonderful...for what they were. You can read about a bunch of them in the archives. J, P, and C were/are all great examples of this type of relationship.  It's fun. It's exciting. But it's not intimate.

When I say I need a rule book, that's not to say that I haven't learned anything, because I definitely have.  For example, if your lover says he wants an emotionally intimate relationship with you but he rarely, if ever, has time for any substantive conversations or email, he's showing you what he really wants - and it's not intimacy. If the only time he has time for you is when it's time for fucking, he's made it very clear what he wants, regardless of what he says. So why do you keep trying to push him toward intimacy? He wants a fuck buddy. Accept it. Be a fuck buddy or move on.

Here's another example. If a man tells you that he doesn't love you and he's not going to, what should you get from that? That he doesn't love you and he's not going to. I can't imagine why someone would say that in that way to someone they claim to care about, but that's beside the point. Here's what I tend to hear - that he doesn't love me, yet. However, when he continues by saying that he's not going to, that pretty much negates the possibility of "yet." This man either wants to be a fuck buddy or a friend. The conundrum I have is that my close friends, the very few I have, love me. Do I even know how to have a close friendship with someone who says upfront that he's not going to love me?  I don't know. Yeah, it confuses me, too.

Want another example? What does it mean when a very close intimate friend quits communicating with you? No, this isn't a trick question, but it seems to be for me sometimes. The answer is: The relationship is over. If the communication is only one way, it's not communication. If the intimacy is only flowing one way, it's not intimacy.

Now that I've said all that, here's a very important thing to remember - None of those guys are wrong. Maybe they could have expressed themselves better or more directly, but they each made their intentions clear either through what they said or through their actions. They didn't lie. They didn't intentionally try to be hurtful, even if they were. They did their best. That's all we can really ask, isn't it?

They just suck at intimacy. Just like me, only they suck at it by not giving enough of themselves and I suck at it by giving too much.

This is just general relationship stuff.  It has nothing to do with prowling.  When you add the infidelity dynamic it just stirs it up so what was a little messy becomes mud.

The bottom line question is: How much of yourself are you willing to give away in pursuit of intimacy? If the other person has made it clear they don't want that with you (like my examples above), the answer should be NOTHING. If it's the right person and he/she is capable and willing of giving as much a you do, my answer is EVERYTHING because it is, without question, worth it.

The Thing About Marriage Vows...

When you get married and you say, "I do," that's a response to a "yes or no" question.  Are you in this thing 'til death do you part, or not? It's not conditional.  You are typically not given the option of saying, "I do, as long as she keeps all of her vows perfectly and as long as she doesn't get fat. Otherwise, I can jump ship if I want."

No, each of you affirms vows to each other, but independently of each other.

So, what happens when one of you breaks your vows?  Does the other one have the right to leave? I don't think so.  They have no more of a right to leave than if their spouse never cheated. Why? Because of their own vow not to leave.

If my husband cheats on me (which he has), that's one issue, but I made my own promise to him never to leave. That's sort of what that "in good times and bad, for better or worse" part was about.

I know there are lots of folks out there who believe that infidelity is sufficient reason to break that vow and take off. Heck, even the Bible says it's o.k. to get divorced over infidelity, not that you have to, but you can if you want. Clearly, though, I don't believe in that tit for tat perspective, especially when it comes to marriage, families, and children.

To those people who use the argument that if a spouse cheats it's o.k. to divorce them because they broke the vows first, I ask you this: What about the other vows? Most marriage vows include a promise to love,  honor, and cherish your spouse.  Well, I have seen many men (and women, for that matter) treating their spouses in a way that is demonstrating that they clearly don't honor and cherish them.  It should be o.k. to get out of the marriage because that was a break of the vows, right?

No?  Where are the Marriage Vow Police when you need them?

Apparently, it's only that pesky sexual infidelity issue that gives you a "Get Out of Marital Jail Free" card. But only in the minds of those who are unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions and their own promises. I wonder if they operate that way in the rest of life.  Is the value of their word always contingent on the behavior of others?

Human beings are just that - human.  We don't always "cherish" our spouses as we should. We're not always faithful. But families stay together because we depend on our spouse to honor the "'Til death do us part" part of the vows even when we fail, and our spouse hopes that we'll do the same when they fall short.

My belief is that the contingencies should have been reviewed prior to the marriage, at least for those things that could reasonably happen. If she becomes permanently disabled, will you stay? If she cheats, will you stay? If not, maybe you shouldn't get married. Or add that to your vows.  Make a promise to stay with her 'til death do you part, unless she's unfaithful.  Say that while you're in the church, in your tux, in front of your friends and family. No?  You don't want to do that?  Huh.

Now I'm not finding fault with anyone who is divorced.  People get divorced for all sorts of reasons and they usually think their reasons are good enough. That's not my business. But to the folks who think that infidelity is a no questions asked release valve, please tell yourself (and your spouse and your children) the truth - regardless what your spouse did or didn't do,  you made a vow that you're not willing to honor, and that's why you're leaving.

As for me, the "'til death do us part" vow was, and is, the most important one.  It means that I'm in it for the duration. It means that Hubby knows I'll be there for him when he falters, intentionally or not. When I found out about Hubby's cheating, I knew I wouldn't be leaving, and that's the first thing I told him in response. I said, "I'm not going anywhere.  This will all be o.k."  When he found out about mine, that's what he said to me. You're either in this thing together or your not.

Someone who is looking for an excuse to leave the marriage will find one, regardless of what his spouse has or hasn't done.

Is Sex Important?

It seems like a silly question, doesn't it? Of course sex is important.  The problem is how important it is.

Most men think it's more important than it really is, and most women think it's less important than it really is. It's that gap that leads to a lot of unhappiness in marriage and a good portion of the infidelity in the world.

On the other side of the coin, most men think that sexual infidelity is much less significant than it really is and most woman think it's more significant than it really is. It's that gap that leads to a lot of divorces.

So how do men and women who stay married for decades navigate these murky waters? Some stay together in an unhappy and often sexless (or sexually unsatisfying)  marriage.  Some cheat. Some decide to try the open marriage option. Some hang on as long as they can before eventually divorcing. Some choose to talk about it openly, acknowledge the difficulty, and work constantly toward a resolution that is not just acceptable, but satisfying for both of them. No matter how you slice it, it's not easy.

I think the trick is to remember that your spouse sees it differently than you do.  There is no point in trying to convince him that sex shouldn't be as important to him because you will fail. Why?  Because it is important to him! And there's also no point, Gentlemen, in trying to convince your wife that sex should be more important to her.

Men are also at a disadvantage because women talk to each other.  And what do they tell each other about sex? That their husbands want it too much, that they think it's more important than it really is.  As they talk, they reinforce their own perspectives and miss the obvious - No matter what your girlfriends say, if your husband says he needs more sex to be happy and you want him to be happy (which you do or why would you have married him?),  then you should be having more sex with him.  It's pretty simple, isn't it? Unless his dick is chasing you several times a day, every day, what's the problem?

Remember my friend, Steve? He told me once that he was having a discussion, again, with his wife about the frequency of sex. He wanted it three times a week, but he could he happy with twice. His wife told him that she had talked about it with her friends and they told her that he was being completely unreasonable because no one who had been married as long as they had been married (40 years) had sex that often. She actually put the opinion of her friends ahead of her own husband's happiness, mostly because it reinforced what she wanted anyway. She also told him that women her age shouldn't have to have sex anymore. Seriously.  And then she wondered why he cheated.  She thought that because sex was unimportant to her that it shouldn't be important to him, either.

What women like Steve's wife don't understand is that women generally enjoy sex more if they have an emotional connection with someone.  Men, on the other hand, are more likely to slide into, or stay with, an emotional connection if they have their sexual needs met. Both parties have to give in order to get what they want. Do you think this is an accident?  I don't. I am pretty certain that we were made this way. Men and women complement each other physically (insert tab A into slot B), emotionally, and in many other ways. The more a wife tries to make her husband like her ("once a month should be enough") or the more a husband tries to make his wife like him ("I don't care if you worked all day, made dinner, cared for the kids and cleaned until 10:00 pm., let's get it on!"), the more trouble they will encounter.

The real danger comes when each starts to think there is something wrong with the other for not having the same needs. A man wanting to have sex is perfectly normal.  And if your husband wants to have sex with you after decades of being married, count yourself very fortunate, Ladies. If you give him grief for it, you're just pretty stupid in my opinion, or you really want a divorce.

I've known women who were unhappy in their marriages and they pushed their husbands away sexually.  Then, when he cheated and they ended up divorced, the women acted like the victims. I'm not saying that infidelity is morally defensible, but there are two sides to every divorce and the sad "victim" is usually not a real victim at all.

If you're a woman and you don't want your husband to cheat, you need to recognize that sex matters to him and you need to give him some good sex. Notice I said "good sex."  You may also want to read 10 Tips for Wives to Keep Your Husband from Cheating. There's no guarantee that he won't cheat, but the odds are better if you take the suggestions I offer in that post.

If you're a man and you want your wife to give you more sex - and good sex - you need to back off a bit and come in from a different angle. Remember that she doesn't understand the how and why of how important sex is to you. Court her.  Make that emotional connection and then go for the sex.  This is a much more complex topic than this post can cover, so I'll write another. In the meantime, read What Women Really Want in Bed, and remember that to a woman, pressure is the anti-aphrodisiac.

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Don't forget to check out this month's Sex Blog Chain post.  It's about Holiday Sex!

Let's Cut Mrs. Patraeus Some Slack

I know you've been waiting for my thoughts on the Patraeus scandal.  I've been meaning to write about it, but the story keeps changing and more dirt keeps surfacing. It's a sex blogger's dream.

So, yes, I'll be sharing thoughts about it in several posts to come, but I wanted to comment now on how the blogosphere is treating Mrs. Patraeus.

I've read everything from rating her a "1" compared to the Broadwell being rated a "10" to many commentaries arguing that her husband wouldn't have cheated if she were better looking or more in shape or hotter or gave better head or....or.....or....

Bullshit.

The romance started when Patraeus was in Afghanistan.  He was away from his wife for a long time.  She could have been Jennifer Lopez and it wouldn't have mattered.  She wasn't there, through no fault of her own.

Then he was back in the country, but the relationship with Broadwell was already established by then. Mrs. Patraeus didn't have at chance at that point.

Other things to remember:

Mrs. Patraeus was in her late 50's when the affair started and Broadwell was in her late 30's. The Patraeus' had been married for over 30 years. Mrs. Patraeus could have been Ann Margaret and it wouldn't have mattered. There's no way she could compete with fresh, young pussy.  Period.

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A little sidebar here.  Most of you know that my Hubby did a fair share of cheating over a recent five year period.  My Hubby adores me. We get along very well. We're good friends. Yeah, I could be in better shape, but sex is not bad between us.  Sometimes it's downright amazing. He loves it. I'm the one who gets bored.  I give the world's best blow job. I don't deny him anything he wants to try in bed. Nothing. But he's a man, and he has a penchant for 18-25 year old women. I'm 48. There is absolutely nothing I can do to compete with new, young pussy - at least in the sexual arena. I can't be what I am not. I can be a lot of wonderful and sexually satisfying things, but I'm not 20 anymore. Is that my fault? Of course not. Is it his fault that he's attracted to that?  No. That's how men are made. Does it mean he doesn't love me? No.

Ok, back to the story.....

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Then there's the ego stroking. Holly has known her husband for almost 4 decades. She knows just about everything there is to know about his habits, character, strengths and weaknesses. Paula, on the other hand, was just discovering him and telling him how wonderful he was. That would be almost irresistible to most men in his situation, but then add to that the flattery of being attractive to and desired by such an attractive younger woman.

Add all of this to the fact that men are biologically predisposed to cheat and there's no way you can blame this on his wife. You know that I don't believe there is ever a truly innocent party in an affair.  A marriage rarely splinters unless there is something missing that both parties in the marriage have some power to change, but even given that, we should remember that the odds of a man being 100% sexually faithfully over the life of a long term marriage are very slim.

You can argue about whether it's right or wrong, but you can't eliminate the reality that a majority of married men cheat at some point in their marriage.

David Patraeus did what men do. He fell for the charms of an attractive younger woman who made him feel like a god - both in bed and out of bed.  He made that choice. I'm sure he enjoyed it for most of the affair. If he hadn't enjoyed it, he wouldn't have kept doing it.

Back to his wife....My heart aches for her. She has, by all accounts, been a good and faithful wife for over 35 years. It's true that men have a tendency to cheat, but it's rare that it becomes international news and, literally "everyone knows about it."  She has to put her marriage (and her self-esteem) back together in the midst of an unbelievable level of media attention and jerks who think they are being funny by poking fun at her appearance and implying (or saying directly) that she is responsible for the affair because she somehow wasn't good enough to keep her husband faithful. It's just wrong.

David Patraeus was and is 100% responsible for where he puts his dick.

Let's cut Mrs. Patraeus some slack.

Would You Tell?

I made a big mistake with a friend recently. Her marriage has been in trouble, since...well, since it began. Her husband has been physically and verbally abusive to her and her children for years. Their most recent argument had been particularly bad, and she sought me out to talk.  As she was talking with me about  how she had finally had enough, she slipped in, "...and I think he may be having an affair, too."

I have heard the he's-abusive-but-I-love-him story  many times over the past 12 years or so, but this was a new development and, as the infidelity goddess, my interest was piqued.

"What makes you think he's having an affair, " I asked as casually as I possibly could.

She went on to tell a very familiar story. He flipped out if she attempted to touch his phone. When she did get her hands on it late at night while he was sleeping, it was completely blank - no texts, no emails, no phone call history - even though he was always using his phone. He went out a lot in the evening and at least once a week he would suddenly get mad about something - anything - and he'd stomp out of the house and be gone for hours. If she asked him where he had gone or where he was anytime he wasn't at home, he'd get very angry and she'd back off in fear, and he'd never tell her where he was. Their sex life was not good, as you might expect.  He constantly complained that she wouldn't give him enough sex, but whenever she offered when he came back from one of his evening "outings," he always declined.

Wow, I thought.  This guy was barely even trying to hide it.

I've been around long enough to know that nothing strains a friendship like unsolicited advice, so I just looked sympathetic, adding in a gasp to indicate my shock every now and then. If she didn't ask the question, I wasn't going any further.

But then she asked.

"Kat, do you think he's having an affair?"

My answer was swift and definite, "Yes."

She looked like I had slapped her in the face.

I wanted to say, "Hey, don't be mad at me.  I'm not the one cheating on you," but I chose instead to ask her a few questions. Did he clean up just before he got mad and stomped out?  When he came home, did he head straight for the shower? Did he ever whisper into his phone when he was talking?  Did he excuse himself to go into the bathroom a lot (presumably to text her)?

I asked her several other questions, and pointed out that the signs she had been noticing on her own were common signs of infidelity.

She was appalled. Shocked. She talked about how she wanted to handle it.  Given his propensity for violence, I suggested that she not accuse him directly.  I also suggested that she consider getting a restraining order if she was going to actually attempt to leave him again.

She left and I heard from her again the next day.  She told me that she went straight home and confronted him about it. So much for my advice, I thought. Then she told me that I should know that he had a perfectly good explanation for everything and he was definitely not having an affair.  She had overreacted and I had convinced her to interpret things that way because I never liked her husband.

Wow.

How did I manage to get such a stupid friend?

The truth, though, is that many people just don't want to accept the reality that their spouse is cheating because then it means they either need to do something or accept it, and they don't want to do either. What they want is for it not to be happening, so they think like a small child who doesn't think something exists if he just pretends it's not there.

I don't believe in forcing anyone to accept it. There's something to be said for the, "ignorance is bliss" approach.

As for my friend, she's right that I don't like her husband.  How could I like a man who treats his wife and children like that? But that has nothing to do with the fact that I am 100% certain that he is cheating on her.  I probably never would have told her if she hadn't asked me directly.

My question for you today, Prowlers, is would you tell?  If you knew a friend's spouse were cheating, would you tell your friend or would you keep it to yourself?

Doubt

One of the things I've known for a long time is that I had no doubt at all if this prowling lifestyle was right for me. Some things were missing from my marriage - mostly sexual, but not all sexual - that I could get outside the marriage.  When I had those things, I was happier with my life in general, including with my marriage.

The things that were missing were not an indication of a shortcoming on my husband's part at all.  They are just the natural results of many long-term marriages - lack of passion in the bedroom, boring sex, a sense of suffocation from being fused to another human being for so long. There was no "my life" anymore; it was "our life." I didn't have friends; we had our friends.

Our names start with the same letter so half the time (literally, about half the time) people call me by his name. But most people who know us both (which is almost everyone we know) don't even both to call me by an individual name.  It's like we are one unit and our name is a run together version of what used to be our individual names (Mr.-Kat-and-Kat) or just the initials, "Are K&K going to be there?"

When I started prowling again a couple years ago, after an 8-year hiatus from the lifestyle in an attempt to "be good," what I really wanted was some breathing room. I loved my husband (I still do). The lack of passion between us left me wondering what kind of love I had for him, but there was never any doubt that I wanted him in my life.

But after that 8 years, the lack of passionate sex and the K&K straight-jacket were killing me. What happened is exactly what had happened before. I went outside the marriage, found what I needed, felt great, and all was well. For a while. Then I found out about hubby's cheating. And he found out about mine. My reaction to his was to ask for an open marriage.  His declined my request.  Apparently, he was ok with sex outside of the marriage as long as it was for him and not for me.

His reaction to learning about me was to have a breakdown. Knowing I cheated (and he has no idea of the extent of it) pulled the rug out from under him and rocked his emotional world. It has taken many months for him to regain his footing.  In the meantime, I've been on a very tight leash, which of course has made me feel more confined. What he was doing as a way to cope with his feelings and hold onto me was exactly the thing that made me want to get away from him and get some space.

And while I'm getting some space, why not have some fantastic and passionate sex at the same time?

There's a reason I'm recapping this story.  Stay with me.....

 Things are changing. He's trying to give me some room to have at least a little bit of a life of my own. He's trying very hard to make sex more satisfying for me. Is it all that I want? No.  Not even close.  But it's better. When I look into his eyes now, I don't see him looking through me. I see him looking at me. Unlike in the past, when he's with me, he's present. And lately, I have been, too.

This man has been with me for 25 years, through good times and bad.  And I mean really bad. We've hurt each other. We've helped each other.We've got a quarter century's worth of shared history between us. He's willing to let me call the shots. I can have whatever freedom I want. All he wants is for me to stop having sex with other men. That's it.  That one thing.

He won't leave me if I keep having sex outside the marriage, but it makes him terribly unhappy and anxious.  It makes him terrified that I'll meet someone else I like better and leave him. So, if I can just do that one thing for him, he'll work on the rest for me. Specifically, he'll take off the leash he's had on me for 25 years.

What does all this mean?

 It means that, for the first time in the 20 years that I've been prowling, I have some doubt. My certainty that this prowling lifestyle is right for me is wavering. For the first time, I'm considering if I can give my husband the one thing he wants.

 Can I look at fidelity as a gift rather than as a noose?

Can I be happy with a life of mediocre sex?

Can I stop looking at men as potential sex partners?

If he gives me what I want most (some freedom and independence), will I be able to give him what he wants (fidelity)?

I don't have any answers. I only have doubt.

The Other Husband

I knew it would happen eventually, but I wasn't prepared for it. Hubby did all of his fooling around locally - with women I know. These are women I see around town regularly.  One is the mother of a child at my son's school.  Others attend my church.

There's really nothing to say or do when I have a "slut sighting," as I call it, except smile sweetly and get the hell out of there as soon as possible.

What I wasn't prepared for was an encounter with a husband or boyfriend of one of Hubby's playmates.  I was innocently walking around the block at lunch time to shake off some work stress and Mr. M walked out of a business onto the sidewalk and right into my path.  I stopped for a moment, startled. he said, "Oh! Excuse me!" and then he looked up and saw who I was and then he looked startled, too.

It was one of those slow motion moments - two people staring at each other for what seemed like forever but it probably was only a second. I turned away first, said, "Sorry" quickly, and started walking away.

What is the polite thing to say in such a situation?  As some of you will remember from some earlier posts, I have been to charm school three times. I know the rules of etiquette.  I've read all the famous books on the subject, but I don't remember a chapter on "What to say to the husband of the woman your husband was fucking for several years." The only thing I knew for sure was that when such a moment arrived, I was not going to let myself say "I'm sorry" as a reflex because I don't owe an apology for my husband's behavior. Ok, I might say "I'm sorry this happened to your family," but that's it.

I was two steps away, thinking I had made a clean getaway when I heard, "Excuse me, Kat...."  Damn. I turned around and raised my eyebrows, giving the nonverbal "what can I do for you?" signal. All I knew for sure at that moment was that speaking as little as possible was probably my best bet.

"Mrs. M told me what happened," he said. "With your husband, I mean."

Gee, I'm glad you clarified that, I thought.

"Oh. Okay," I said.  So far, the 'woman of few words' plan was working well.

"Are they still.....involved?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I answered,"but I really don't know." I tried to turn and walk again, but then he said, "I didn't know, you know.  I had no clue. Did you know?"

That's when I saw the pain on his face, in his eyes.  My heart broke for him. Damn, I thought. There's no clean getaway here.


"No, I didn't know. I didn't have a clue, either.  In fact, a couple of friends of mine asked me if I thought he was fooling around and I swore that I was sure he wasn't, so that shows you what I know. It wasn't just you."

He asked me to sit with him on the nearby bus bench and talk, and I agreed.  I'm not sure why I agreed.  I felt badly for him. I felt like I owed him some time, although I don't know why. He told me what he knew about it and he asked questions.  He was unaware that his wife wasn't the only one.  He was unaware that to Hubby it was not an emotional affair at all, that it was only sex. He was unaware that they did their fucking in my bed. He was unaware that his wife had taken money for her "services."  I was unaware that sometimes her child was with her, sitting on the couch in my living room while mommy and her friend played in the back room.  I was unaware that to his wife it was most definitely an emotional affair and she thought she was in love with my Hubby. I was unaware that Mr. and Mrs. M were struggling to keep their marriage together and it didn't look like they were going to make it.

Thirty minutes later, I think we both felt like we'd been put through an emotional wringer. I couldn't believe that I had been afraid of an attack.  This man wasn't on the offensive at all.  He was simply trying to make sense of it all and keep his family together. He was broken.

He asked, "Have you ever thought of cheating, too?"

I hadn't lied yet.  This was no time to start, but I kept my answer simple.

"Yes."

"Me, too," he said, "but then I'd be just like her."

I smiled and said, "Only if you did it for money in my bed."  We both laughed.  He cocked his head a little and looked at me. I think he was trying to figure out if I was just trying to lighten the mood or if I was flirting. It was a little of both, to be honest.

We chatted a little more and then I told him I had to get back to work.  He asked if we could get together for lunch next week. I told him that I was busy at work and wasn't available, but then he asked about the following week.  As I agreed, I already knew that I'd probably cancel. Unlike my Hubby, I don't play with folks from town (Okay, there was Young One, but he was an exception - in several ways). I don't think that's what Mr. M had in mind, but it was a chance I didn't want to take.

We said goodbye and I continued my walk. I wanted to slap Hubby at that moment and tell him, "Look what you did to that man?!" But that would have been a bit hypocritical, wouldn't it? I was going to go home later and tell him about the encounter and ask him if he ever thought about Mr.M, the other husband.

Infidelity and A Biology Lesson

Infidelity is fairly common.  Studies estimate that between 50-60% of married men and 40-50% of married women, have at least one extramarital affair. The majority of those men have more than one affair.

As you might expect, I read a lot about infidelity and I listen to what people have to say about it. What perplexes me is how men who have multiple affairs are characterized.  The author of one famous sex study speculates that men who have  multiple sexual extramarital affairs throughout their life probably suffer from "deep emotional pain and dysfunction."  

Seriously? That's just crazy.

Let's back up a bit and take a look at biology.  Men have a biological need for regular sex. It has been scientifically validated.  It's not a myth, it's not speculation, and it's not just something the teenage boys say in the back seats of cars (right after, "I love you" and "Of course I'll respect you tomorrow") to get their girlfriends to put out. There are many sources that document this, but here's a decidedly unscientific one that explains the biological process in layman's terms from a Christian perspective. I picked this one so my Christian friends will understand that faith does not exempt you from the demands of biology.  Yes, this is how God made you. On purpose.

Why? It's about preservation of the species. It's much more complicated than I have space to explain here, but if men had the same sex drive as most women, the species would likely have become extinct long before now.

That's not all.  Men are drawn to healthy, young women because of a reproductive instinct, whether or not they intend on reproducing. Men in their 40's or 50's who go nuts over women in the 20's are biologically predisposed to this.  It's not a failing of society or due to the ugliness of their wives or due to the fact that they are sexually deviant perverts.

Women don't want to believe these things.  We want to believe that if our husbands want or (gasp!) have sex with another woman (god forbid a younger woman) that there must be something wrong with them or with us (no, not us, it's them). If they have multiple sexual affairs, they must have a sex addiction and they need treatment to cure them of this abnormality. 

That thinking is completely and totally off base.  I'm not saying that there is no such thing as sex addition, and I'm not saying that men are incapable of controlling themselves.  What I am saying is that men who are monogamous are fighting against their own biology to stay that way. Those who don't get their sexual needs met at home will probably try hard to hang in there, but the odds are very high that they won't be able to fight the urge to get sex somewhere.

Women think, "If he has sex with another women, that means he doesn't love me." Bullshit. When we're teenagers, the message that "sex isn't love" is forced into us as a technique to try to keep us from having sex as teenagers, but when we're married, suddenly sex is love?  Nope.  Last year around this time, I wrote a post called 10 Tips for Wives To Keep Your Husband from Cheating. For the most part (except for tips 9 and 10) it's about sex.  Why? Because for the most part, the reason he stepped out was about sex.  For most of the others, it's about tip #9. 

Not only do we women tend to make men feel like perverts because of their natural sex drive, but we work hard to "tame" them, then we complain that they are not "real men."  We want to be in control at home, then we complain that he won't take charge. We swoon over their aggressiveness in the pursuit of us when we're courting, then we spend decades trying to squelch that aggressiveness. In our early years of marriage, we complain that "all he wants is sex" and we push him away repeatedly and then in the later years of our marriage we complain that "he doesn't want me anymore." 

We fall in love with and marry a man, then we spend the rest of our lives doing our best to make him as much like a woman as possible.

And then, after all that, we expect him to stay faithful when everything in him (biologically and emotionally) is screaming at him to go out and fuck the shit out of a young honey who treats him like a man and who lets him behave like a man (and likes it).

Wake up, Ladies.

And as for you men.... Stop letting your wife beat you into submission.  Educate her. Love her enough to push back and not let her be fooled by what the women's movement and the media have told her for years. Taking charge is not abuse.  Whoever got women believing that should be publicly flogged for it.  

We are all paying for it.

10 Simple Truths about Marriage and Infidelity

I was reading a blog today that got me thinking about some simple truths about marriage and affairs that people often get wrong. Okay, I'll admit that I was inspired because so many things I read today on that blog were just flat wrong, and I felt the need to set the record straight.

So here they are.  10 Simple Truths about Marriage and Infidelity:

1. It takes two.  If there are problems in your marriage after many years, it's not just your spouse's fault. It takes two to build a strong relationship and it takes two to let one deteriorate. I completely understand that after a while you just get tired of pushing a boulder uphill when it seems like your spouse is pushing it downhill, but if you quit you are just as responsible for the state of things as s/he is.
2. Infidelity doesn't automatically mean the marriage is over. If it does end the marriage, it's because one or both of you doesn't want to be married anymore. Many marriages survive infidelity.
3. You either take "for better or worse, until death do us part" seriously or you don't. If you have a list of conditions that you won't tolerate, you are hedging your bet against "the worse" part and you're not all in. If your spouse has an affair and is sorry for it and has asked your forgiveness and you  choose divorce, the divorce is not your spouse's fault. She may have cheated (probably a violation of the vows), but you chose to cut and run (also a violation of the vows). Remember your mom saying that "two wrongs don't make a right?"
4. No one has an affair because everything is fabulous at home. This goes along with the "it takes two" truth. If your spouse has an affair, you are not an innocent victim.  I'm not saying that it was right for her to cheat, but if she was getting her needs met at home, she probably would have stayed there. It's easy for the non-cheating spouse to feel like, and thus play, a victim, but there are no victims here -just two people trying to lead a fulfilling life while dealing with the challenges of life and marriage.
5. It is possible to love two people at once. I'll hear people say, "Well, if you love your mistress, you must not really love your wife."  Bullshit. We have a huge capacity for love. There is no doubt that I love my husband. I also love JJ. 
6. Having an affair does not necessarily mean that a person wants out of the marriage. To the contrary, it is usually a way of trying get some needs met so he doesn't have to leave the marriage. How do you know that a person wants out of the marriage? It's when they either say they want out of the marriage or they leave.
7. Affairs almost never end well. There really isn't a "happily ever after" in the world of infidelity. It is extremely rare for affair partners to stay together in the long run, whether or not they get caught. This reminds me of a joke I like to tell about marriage. Well, it's sort of a joke, but not very funny. While affairs almost never end well, marriage never ends well. Why? Because marriage always ends in divorce or death.Get it? Death or divorce are the only choices....haha....Of course, there is nothing funny about either death or divorce.  Moving on...
8. A wife who is "frigid" does not want to be that way. Women want to please their husbands. They either want to have a vibrant and passionate sex life or they want to want to. For a woman, desire is about hormonal balance, emotions, energy, and many other things. Sexuality is a much simpler formula for men. Daunt reminded me recently that "women need to feel loved to have sex; men need to have sex to feel loved." Okay, it's not a perfect statement because I have no problem having sex without feeling loved and I know men in sexless marriages who are certain they are loved, but the point is that most women can't just have sex without dealing with other conditions - most in her own body. A woman may act like she doesn't need or miss sex, but there is sadness and an awareness of something important missing brewing under the surface. She probably needs help, but is too embarrassed to ask because she doesn't know what is wrong.
9. In a long term relationship, talking about sex will lead to better sex. I didn't say "arguing about not having sex," but talking about sex itself. In the beginning, you don't need to talk about it much because it is new and hot and exciting, but as the years fly by, talking about it is how you'll keep it fresh. I know. Talking about sex isn't easy.  I'll give you some suggestions in one of my upcoming posts. Here are some things to consider - most women who give lousy head and most men who suck at giving oral sex will say they don't like it. Researchers who went further learned that most don't like it because they don't know what to do or how to do it, and they are too embarrassed to ask. Talking about it and learning more would make all the difference.
10. Marriage isn't easy. The payoff comes in day-to-day victories and in looking at the person across the table from you decades after you were married and realizing that there is someone in this world who knows you better and loves you more than anyone else on the planet. Those who advocate for giving your spouse an ultimatum over sex just don't understand that marriage is not supposed to be easy. Hormones fluctuate wildly through a woman's body over the course of her life. There will be good times for sex, and bad times for sex. Children require different levels of care at different times of their lives.  This affects sex, too. While building their careers, many men (and sometimes women) work longer hours than are best for a marriage. Family members die.  Depression or other mental illness strikes. Stress and advancing age make it harder for a man to perform sexually. So?  Life happens. We don't get married so we can avoid dealing with life.  We marry so we can have a partner to go through life with us.  If we're lucky, it's our best friend.

When the Spouse Suspects. . .

So, what do you do when it becomes clear to you that the spouse has suspicions about your extramarital activities? I'm not talking about when you have been caught, but when your spouse is still at the suspicion stage (I'll write about what to do if you've been caught in another post).

If you find out that your spouse is suspicious, it's time to circle the wagons.  For those of you not familiar with that American old west reference, it means to focus on self-preservation. In the context of prowling, it means that it's time to focus on your marriage and cover your tracks.

Here are my tips for smoothing things over before they get out of hand:

1. Stay calm.  If you start deleting email and taking other actions without thinking, you are actually more likely to get caught. Stop.  Take a deep breath.  If your spouse is there with you, give her a hug and tell her that you love her.  I assume this is true.
2. Think about your recent behavior.  What have you done to cause her to be suspicious?  Don't kid yourself.  She didn't get suspicious for no reason. Take an honest look at your behavior and try to pinpoint where you went wrong (besides cheating in the first place).
3. Stop all current cheating behavior. I'm not saying you have to stop it forever, but at least until things calm down at home. Your sweetie will understand (unless you picked a young single woman; in that case you're beyond my help).
4. Don't immediately contact your lover unless there is an imminent threat.  Remember that your spouse will be watching you closely (and she'll probably have her friends watching you, too). You may have to wait a few days before making contact with your lover.  You'll live.  So will she. (Don't I sound authoritative as I say that?  Sometime I'll tell you about how I melt down and call Daunt crying like a baby if I don't hear from JJ for two days. Daunt should get an award for putting up with me.)
5. Spend more time with your wife. She needs you.  Be there for her.  Assure her. Do some things you enjoy doing together.
6. Have sex with your wife -- or at least try to.  She needs to know that you still want her.  Don't pull away now.  In fact, in many cases it's a change in the sex life that makes a spouse get suspicious in the first place. If you're the wife, do not stop having sex with your husband.  It's both wrong and stupid.
7. Make sure you get rid of any evidence.  Do this calmly and only when it is safe. If you just can't bear to delete those emails, you'd better secure them somehow so your spouse will never be able to get to them. And then, pay attention to #8....
8. Always remember that your spouse is smarter than you think she is. If you think your online activities are safe because your wife is not computer literate, be aware that she will find someone who is computer literate to help her snoop. People who feel that their marriage and family may be threatened become very creative and ingenious. When my husband suspected me, he did some things to check up on me that I never thought he'd be able to do.  Oops. 
9. Don't admit to anything! If your spouse is truly only suspicious and she doesn't know about your affair for sure, do not admit to an affair. It will hurt her necessarily. I know some people disagree with this, and choose to take the opportunity to admit things so they can move forward with trying to fix their marriage.  I respect that view, too, but it's dangerous. Don't do it unless you're ready for a divorce because that's where you may be headed. My advice is a bit different if you have been caught, of course.  You'll get that post soon.
10. Consider ending the affair, or at least taking a break.  You have the option of thanking your lucky stars that it was just a close call and ending the affair before you do irreparable damage to your marriage. The truth is that suspicion leads to more monitoring, and your chances of getting caught are higher if your spouse already has strong suspicions. If you decide to end it or take a break, please tell your lover and tell her the truth.  Just disappearing is cruel. Trust me.  I've been there.  It's no fun at all.

Any other tips for this situation, Prowlers?

Newt Gingrich and Open Marriage

Well, well, well....

It seems that Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, is reporting to the world that Newt came to her about 12 years ago asking for an open marriage.  He told her that he wanted to stay married to her and continue his affair with the woman who later became wifey number three.

Let me stop here and say that I'm putting my political opinion of Newt aside for this discussion, and I hope you can, too.

I am very interested, however, in how it will be handled by all of the folks who screamed that Bill Clinton's affair with Monica had no impact on his ability to lead or his moral judgement (but we did learn that he really pays attention to the definition of words, didn't we?).

Of course, we knew that Newt's definition of "family values" was a bit interesting already.  He married one of his high school teachers.  Then he cheated on her with Marianne and eventually married Marianne.  Okay, we also know that Marianne is not very bright because their relationship started with him cheating with her and then she expected that he would remain faithful to her for the rest of his life.  He had already demonstrated that he was a cheater. She had already given tacit approval and understanding of the fact that Newt was not a one woman man.

Ohhhhh......I'll bet she thought she could change him. Hahahahahahahahahaha.

But don't you have just a little, teeny tiny bit of support for the fact that he told her the truth and asked for what he really wanted? Then she had the option of staying or leaving.  She chose the latter. I can tell you from personal experience that it takes a certain amount of courage to look your spouse of many years in the eye and ask for an open marriage.  It's scary.  It's difficult to do.

Ok, it's a bit troubling that he was having this affair at the same time that he was trying to get Clinton impeached, but does it really shock you that a politician would have a double standard?

Sadly, such a thing has become the norm.

I think this news will actually make some people like him more because he even had the courage to discuss open marriage with his formerly-other-woman wife. Others will point at the hypocrisy and like him less.  Some will not have any change in opinion - they either like him or don't and this news doesn't matter.

What say you, Prowlers? Does this news make you like him more (even a little, regardless of whether you like him overall or plan to vote for him), like him less, or does it not change your opinion of him at all?

Vote below, and feel free to leave a comment in our main comments section.  I really want to hear your thoughts.






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Don't worry. The new Cara pic is coming very shortly. ;-)

Heartache

I should warn you.  Infidelity rarely ends well. It almost always ends in heartache.

I'm referring to affairs here, not one night stands that are just about sex.  I'm talking about real relationships in which you come to care about each other.  Sometimes it's love; sometimes it's not, but it usually ends badly nonetheless.

I used to say it always ends badly, but there are a few very rare exceptions, so I can't be so absolute anymore.  There's the rare case when the affair turns into a friendship and that friendship lasts for a long time.

But that's about it.

The usual scenario?  Pick one:

1. One or both spouses find out about the affair and there is a lot of pain and anguish.  Sometimes divorce ensues. The best case scenario is that feelings are hurt. The worst is that someone kills someone else in a jealous rage. Both of these are extremes. Divorce and/or a long period of painful rebuilding are closer to the norm.
2. Spouses don't find out, but one or both of the cheaters decides to stop cheating or moves on to another lover.
3. One or both of you are filled with guilt, which is no fun at all and usually leads to scenario #2 (above).
4. Fill in the blank with any one of many tragic endings - disease, death, etc.

I wish I could tell you that post-affair heartache goes away quickly, but I can't. I'm learning first hand that rebuilding a marital relationship when an affair has been discovered is a long process.

As for heartache, I'm still heartbroken about Webcam Guy who cut off all communication with me months ago, even though the relationship had transitioned to a friendship level several months before. I didn't see it coming and I don't think I could have prepared myself for it if I had. I still miss him.

Now that I have thoroughly depressed you, you may be wondering, "Why is Kat telling us this?"

I want you to go into it with your eyes open, if you go into it at all.  You read about the up-side of infidelity here a lot, but it's not all sunshine and roses. An affair is a relationship just like other relationships, except that it's much more complicated and the potential for hurting others is much higher.

That said, is it worth it?

That depends on what you're willing to risk.

My answer is - Absolutely! I wouldn't trade away a single moment with some of the extraordinary people I've met. I've built a life that reaches beyond the borders of the conventional.  I've risked a lot, and I've gained a lot. I appreciate my husband in a way I never would have if I had made different choices. I'm not tortured with thoughts of "what if?" and "the road not taken."

I've shared before that one of the things I was looking for when I cheated the very first time was to feel something.  Anything.  My life had become black and white and I was dying for some color. I have always loved my husband, but the feeling of being penned in and isolated by my marriage was suffocating me.  I needed to breathe.

I got exactly what I asked for. I got some room to breathe. I have become much less isolated.  I've made some great friends. I've experienced some mind-blowing sex.  I've fallen in love. 

And I've had my heart broken.

Both the pain and the joy in my life are deeper and more textured. My life is no longer black and white.

I didn't know what I was getting into the first time, but since then I have known exactly what I was reaching for - and risking.  I chose to live out loud, so to speak, to experience life along a different path than many other people, to be judged by others. I chose my marriage - and more.

In order to get the rich taste out of life, I also chose the heartache.

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Related Posts:

To Our Friendly Neighborhood Kat Haters

Why Kat Prowls

11 Things I Learned from Watching Cheaters

I was on vacation for a week over the holidays.  One day when I was home by myself (a very rare event), I watched a few episodes of the T.V. show Cheaters. It was purely for research, of course.  To be honest, I really couldn't stand the show, not because it showed cheaters getting caught, but it was displaying - in a very crude and cruel way - peoples' pain, and pandering to the desire of others to see people in pain.  I am not into that sort of thing at all.

But I did learn a few things while watching those episodes.

1. "Motherfucker" seems to be a much more commonly used word than I thought.
2. Most of the folks on that show go bat shit crazy when they get the proof that their partner is cheating. Hubby and I were quite civilized.
3. You can always count on reality TV to show the worst possible side of humanity.
4. There are no truly innocent parties in that show.  The most guilty?  The creators, crew, and cast of the show.  I saw one woman (the cheater) who was so distraught when she was caught and shamed publicly that she almost jumped off the roof of a building.
5. Apparently, when I learned about Hubby's cheating, I should have screamed at him, "What now, Motherfucker?!!!!" My approach of holding him, telling him it was ok, and telling him I loved him seems not to be the popular response.
6. Apparently, when Hubby learned about my cheating, he should have screamed at me, "You fucking whore!!!"  His approach of holding me, telling me it was ok, and telling me that he loved me seems not to be the popular response, either.
7. People who really want to cheat will find the most creative ways to be together. I picked up a few good ideas. ;-)
8. Apparently some people think that the car wash is a good place to clean up after a rendezvous.  Eww.
9. Most of the female cheaters on that show look and dress like hookers.
10. Some people seem to think that exposing their young children to the "gottcha!" moment is appropriate. (I don't.)
11. The show hosts a social network for people looking for partners who don't cheat. Of course, you have to take a pledge swearing that you're single and not in a relationship, and that you won't cheat. Whew....I'm sure that pledge makes sure no one ever lies about that.  Check it out: http://www.nocheatersdate.com/ .

As I watched that trash, I thought, this is emotional pornography. Relationships - even the ugly and troubled ones - shouldn't be broken down into violent entertainment like that.  Who thought that making a show like this was a good idea?