There are some moments you are so caught up in it, you don't even care if your husband would magically warp into the room. You look at your lover's clock glowing in the darkness and will its changing numbers to slow down. You leap on every opportunity to see him, eagerly but worried to appear too clingy. You play songs that have significance regarding him with regularity, sometimes crying, always wanting. You read online posts about cheating, wince when you see the blanket-statement harsh judgements: Bad Person, Liar, No Morals, Unforgivable. This makes you feel more like a flawed failure than you already do, because you do strive to be a good person. You have admirable goals, you sometimes volunteer at the local soup kitchen, you take it straight to the heart when you inadvertently hurt someone; it tears you up inside. And yes, you realize what you're doing has the strong potential to be incredibly hurtful to someone you love, to the best friend that you entered into a legal contract with, to the person whose financial, social, and personal life is so entwined with yours, it's difficult to fathom how it could ever be distangled (who would keep the living room table if we split?, you think, insanely)."
She then says that it makes her sad sometimes too.
"You know your husband had a difficult life; you wanted to save him, to be for him that shining, perfect person you knew he deserved, to lift him up above those pitfalls. You realize now that you're just another horrible tiger-trap for him, covered with leaves, hoping he won't stumble in. You feel preemptive dismay at this. You can't tell yourself now that sex isn't so important, because having felt it again, it's like the moon pulling the tide out from the beach; you realize you need it, my god, you really do, before you're wrinkled and old and at life's end. Cheating is sad and beautiful, distressing and wonderful, the biggest dichotomy you've ever felt. It cuts into the vision of your future with a looming question mark, brands you forever with that big scarlet A, makes you question everything."
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