Girl Anachronicles

I confess I have dated married men before; three, to be exact. I am not one to generalize, but I have to say that every single fucking dude was exactly the same as the last. The stories might have been different, but they all work the same.

Now I see friends in similar conundrums. Ah-ah! Yeah, the guy might be “separated”, or maybe “not yet married” (living with a partner), but the mechanics work the same. My intention is to expose the inner workings of these men for these friends (and any other interested parties).

How it pans out

1) He might start slow and easy. A bit of flirting here, some friendliness, nothing you’d deem offensive or dangerous. He will mix in a few heart-to-heart talks, in which he will soulfully confess that he and his wife are not getting along anymore. He might even come as far as saying that they don’t sleep in the same bed anymore either. He will make a point of emphasizing how lonely he feels, and in the process he will make his wife look like a devilish bitch of huge proportions (he doesn’t even have to say it, you women will inevitably think it!)

The truth: He’s lying. If his wife were to hear the sludge that’s coming out of her husband’s mouth, she’d have a fit. For her, life at home is going on as normal. They may have noticed a bit of distance, maybe even him falling asleep on the couch while watching TV, or in the computer room (because poor baby has so much work!). They’d never think he’s “at the end of his rope”.

2) We women are fucking nurturers by nature. We see a living creature in agony and our first instinct is to pick it up and nurse it back to health. The married man knows this and he will become the helpless, poor animal just for you. Most will say that even if he’s felt very lonely, he’s never ever thought about cheating on his wife… until he met YOU: now YOU are all he thinks about, YOU are special, YOU are THE ONE making him reconsider. This flatters you to no end, and if you’re feeling lonely / unloved enough, you allow yourself to get involved.

The truth: He’s done this enough times to hone the craft. He sees you as someone vulnerable, someone who listens, someone who will give him the time, someone – in short – desperate enough to go to bed with him. You’re new blood, that’s all he craves: someone new in his bed. Why they crave this: I don’t know. Maybe they need to feel they “still got it”. Maybe it’s a pathological thing. In any case, girl, it’s not YOUR fault that he wants this all the fucking time. But it IS your fault if you fall for the line: “Oh, I’ve never done this before!”.

PS: Some will even be inane enough to add that they were virgins before getting married to their wives. Believe me! I had one like that.

3) So you get involved, and everything is beautiful: you make love until the wee hours of the morning. He tells you how beautiful you are, how much you two connect, how you make him forget about his problems at home. You date surreptitiously, sometimes in great fear that people will find out. This fear will be doubled if he’s a coworker. However, he makes a point of sharing things other than a bed with you: he takes you to hidden places, creates an environment that will be special and memorable for you. He turns into “the guy you’d share your life with”.

The truth: They need you to fall all the way head over heels for them. They need you to be all there for them, and it makes sense: if their plan is to string you along as long as they please, they should have you hooked, line and sinker! So this is it: they’re assuring your unconditional surrender to their being. They’re showing you how “awesome” they can be, securing your selfless adoration for their consumption later on.

4) At this point, two things might happen: he separates from his wife for real (less likely) or your relationship with him turns into an official affair.

If it’s an affair that it turns into: eventually, like all relationships, this one turns into a routine. Gone are the magical days of doing things other than stealthy visits no-longer-than-long-enough-to-fuck. You start getting depressed, and obviously you make demands, because 1 hour a week just to fuck is not enough for you to go on! You need some tender loving care. Thing is, you’re already hooked with this guy, and for every three or four months of the same ‘ol, same ‘ol, he will feed you a night of wondrousness, something to keep your hopes up that “things will someday change”. He also feeds these hopes with snide comments about things his wife says or does. However, he will never take the offensive in leaving her because: she’s too sick / the children / she wouldn’t be able to survive without him.

The truth: You’ve become his masturbator, and he won’t leave his wife because he doesn’t love you enough – and face it, he still loves her. This thing is just a symptom of his sickness. He might love you like a child loves his toy, but believe me: the moment you opened your legs to him, he lost all respect for you (I know this because one of the married men I dated was candid enough to confess this upon our breakup … charming!) To sum it up: he believes you’re not, and will never be, marrying material … because you’re “one of those girls that sleeps with married men”.

If he leaves his wife: you will think you’ve got it made. Believe me, it’s a celebratory feeling! You feel like you’ve actually got a shot to a normal relationship in the open! Love has finally arrived to you! Of course, he says, you can’t simply start dating normally, not yet. Not until the divorce is final. You don’t want him being sued by his wife for adultery, do you?

The truth: He finally found the perfect excuse to move out. These episodes are akin to midlife crises. They feel the need to live the bachelorhood they never had. They may have been virgins when they married (though I doubt it), but I’m sure these guys got married very young and never had a shot at fucking it up. So what they’re doing: finally, they’re able to fuck it up! And they’ll fuck it up with YOU! So, you’ll eventually find out he’s fucking around with other girls, or – like it happened to me – he’ll become chickenshit and confess to you that he still cares for his wife, that he misses her. Some very daring assholes will even go for both!

On the breakup

They won’t like it, invariably, not a single one of them will like it. They will make you feel guilty about dating them, they will play the SORRY card, they will threaten you (“I’ll kill myself” comes to mind). In any case, they will not go silently or peacefully. Some women will stand their ground, but most will have a relapse or two (or ten, in my case). For you: it’s a relationship that’s being broken, you feel that you’re tossing away an opportunity at being loved. For them: their toy is getting feet and walking away from them. Obviously, they will do all in their power for you to stay. Some will be forceful, some will be subtle. None will understand the need for you to keep your fucking dignity, to be loved like a human being, to be respected.

My advice: Don’t even begin an affair with a married man. It’s not because of “the sanctity of marriage” (those that know me well know I don’t believe in that). It’s because you’re getting into a situation with 2 people. Doesn’t make sense? You see: your relationship with this man is pretty much the direct result of his relationship with his wife. All you do or say will be in direct contrast with her (albeit what she does or say stands by itself, that’s the Wife Privilege). The way he reacts at you? Total reflection of how it is with his wife. Not to say he treats you the same, he treats you like he wouldn’t treat her: like a sex object, like a plaything, like a whore. He will say things to you that he would never tell his wife, he will do things to you that he would NEVER do to his wife …

…and you know what? If he “confides” so much in you, but can’t bring himself to confide in the woman he chose to be his life partner… doesn’t that speak volumes of who he is as a man? A man who can’t see his wife as a peer? A man who cannot show her his true colors? This is a man that holds women in such low regard, he can’t even see them as beings worthy of dignity and a voice. Do YOU want a guy like this to be YOUR life partner?

Think about it… you may think you’re not lonely when you’re with a married man, but truth be told, you’ve become the loneliest of them all.