'What sleeping with married men taught me about infidelity'

[da man]

People panic and marry someone they aren't compatible with. I remember the insecurity of dating, especially for men. Better hang onto this one. Who the fork knows when there will be another?

Looking back, I see this is exactly why I got married.

The divorce should be final next month.

 

[poindexter]

You could start a whole ' nother thread about adults with grown children who remarry. I am not talking about second marriages with small children.

God what disasters I have witnessed trying to integrate adults into new families when mom or pops remarries later in life.

 

[typefitter]

You could start a whole ' nother thread about adults with grown children who remarry. I am not talking about second marriages with small children.

God what disasters I have witnessed trying to integrate adults into new families when mom or pops remarries later in life.

I have good friends—man and woman, married to each other—who met, at 30, when their widowed parents got together, and later married. So... technically... they are step siblings. Who are married to each other. And whose children have one set of grandparents. I always joke about their family tree having no branches.

 

[MisterCreosote]

She was hot. We get it.

Vapid relationships with hot girls can be great, as long as you don't marry them.

They usually don't say "Yes!"

 

[doctorquant]

I get the whole idea of "compatibility," but then I think about all of my Indian colleagues who are in family-arranged marriages and they seem reasonably content. When one such colleague of mine was finishing his PhD, he let his family back home know that he was about ready to marry and to go ahead and work something up. So a few months later he flew home to meet his wife-to-be ... she turned out to be a doctoral student in another program at the same university (whom he'd never met). Unbelievably, they flew back to India (to meet/marry) as total strangers on the same plane. Been married a nice long time, seem happy.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I get the whole idea of "compatibility," but then I think about all of my Indian colleagues who are in family-arranged marriages and they seem reasonably content. When one such colleague of mine was finishing his PhD, he let his family back home know that he was about ready to marry and to go ahead and work something up. So a few months later he flew home to meet his wife-to-be ... she turned out to be a doctoral student in another program at the same university (whom he'd never met). Unbelievably, they flew back to India (to meet/marry) as total strangers on the same plane. Been married a nice long time, seem happy.

I'm merely hypothesizing here, but perhaps culturally, they are not entering their marriages with the same crushing expectations about the relationship that we do here. As I stated many pages ago, the modern American spouse is expected to be your best friend, your confidant, a passionate sex machine, a business partner, your handyman/housekeeper, and coax straight A's and a plum travel ball appointment out of the little ones. Or this pairing has been a failure.

 

[freqposter]

Reporting for duty.

What makes an attractive good girl go bad for a few years?

That was always the hard part to pin down. Some had husbands who worked all the time and never sent flirty texts throughout the day - that would have completed them. Even though these women knew their husbands loved them.

Some just wanted the adventure. The danger. The corn field.

They didn't all come from the kids section at B&N. Some were from parks. Some from civic luncheons. Some from, gulp, church.

Eventually, the affairs all flare out. Talk about being "on" - in an affair, you're always on. Scratch that - in an affair, you try not to see the other person's faults.

Thinking back of the women I got to know... a few got divorced but most didn't and considered those affairs a bad patch of their marriage. Bad until they think about the best sex they probably had for fifteen years and may never have again.

When you're having an affair that is charged up as most affairs are, the sex itself is usually off the charts. You can be selfish but also in a manner where she benefits as well. You can do all sorts of stuff that you'd never do with a spouse, especially if that spouse is vanilla. Want a threesome? Your spouse will freak out but an illicit girlfriend probably won't.

All of them cried at one point. All of them were scared what their children (grown or little) would think about it.

One of them nearly got caught when I was at her house and her husband came home without warning. I hid in a seven-year-old's closet for seventy minutes. Second floor, too.

He fell asleep on the couch watching Walking Dead. Then I get home and realize I left my belt and my socks. By the bed but she got rid of them.

Took a city bus six miles home - always carry cash. No Uber. No trail.

I'm still friends with all of them, even if we are on inactive status. Even meet some of them for a covert coffee once a year to catch up. Only coffee.

They were all part of my life when I felt most alive.

 

[Big Circus]

 

[Dick Whitman]

All of them cried at one point. All of them were scared what their children (grown or little) would think about it.

Sounds fantastic!

Where do I sign up?

 

[da man]

We were at a wedding this past weekend. Really small wedding. Woman on her third marriage -- a whole other story, because I can't imagine being married to this woman. It would take a novel beyond my typical post to explain. So I digress. Actually, before I finish digressing, when I found out I had to go to this (because Ms. Ragu said we were going), I was like, "It's your third wedding. Just go to the justice of the peace."

Anyhow, at one point, the DJ did this thing where it was, "Everyone married get on the dance floor." He then goes through different anniversaries. ... If you have been married less than 5 years, leave the floor. ... Less than 10 years, leave the floor. Etc. etc. He wheedles it down so that the last couple dancing has been married 49 years. Sweet, older couple.

Later on, Ms. Ragu and I take a walk around the grounds (it was an old estate), and walking back in we see that couple and their sons and we stop to talk. ... and in the course of the conversation, the woman asks how long we have been together, and Ms. Ragu says, "10 years."

To which I said, "But it feels like 49, so I can relate to you." I got kicked hard under the table.

The single mother friend I mentioned awhile back got married for the third time two years ago -- to a man who was also marrying for the third time. They had a tiny, private wedding -- then had a BIG party on their first anniversary.

She told me, "Any idiot can get married. It's staying together that's worth celebrating."

To which I replied, "Any idiot can get married. It takes a special kind of idiot to get married three times."

 

[MisterCreosote]

To which I replied, "Any idiot can get married. It takes a special kind of idiot to get married three times."

Hey!

 

[justgladtobehere]

Why marriage is both anachronistic and discriminatory | Aeon Essays