Yep, it could have been anyone.
Affairs aren’t like dating, when you are out dating, you are available, they are available, everything is on the up and up. Affairs happen with people who are easy and convenient and willing to sleep with someone else’s spouse. A lot of the time, it’s a matter of opportunity combine with an unhealthy mental state.
When you date as a single person, things are more intentional. You are discerning compatibility and trying to get to know the other person.
In affairs it’s often more a hyper fixation on how that person makes you feel rather than really caring about them. And you will mold who they are based on who you want them to be- which is usually an audience to the role you are playing. Affairs are often the product of someone wanting to play at a different version of themselves. The more into you they seem the more you can believe that you are this other version of yourself.
But for whatever reason you are blind to the idea that this role you are playing is not a better version of yourself. I wanted to believe I was younger, sexier, more vibrant. I wanted to seem clever, funny, interesting. I was really none of these things, I was only living out a day dream to escape the mental hell inside my head created by a lack of self awareness and unhealthy coping.
My AP was 20 years older than me. We probably looked to have an age gap of more like 30 years. In meetings, his mouth hung open. He was a serial cheater, and often hurt my feelings because sometimes the mask would fall and I would know in that moment I meant nothing to him. Yet, I could not let go of my pursuit of having that audience. I knew he was not the man my husband was, but at the same time I had this crippling underlying belief that my husband was better than me. He came from a better family, he was far less complicated, and such a good person. Being with someone that I felt more equal to or even maybe a little superior to felt like it should have yielded me more adoration than I was actually getting.
If it’s not clear, his purpose was solely to boost my ego. You don’t really get to know the real person because they too are playing a role a lot of the time. And, what, I was going to run off from a faithful husband and go be with a serial cheater who handed me nothing but false promises so that he could put another notch on his belt?
Truly, the only reason he was my AP is proximity, opportunity, and because he knew the game and how to play it.
Same goes for my husbands AP. She was someone who had worked for us for years. She was a chain smoker, and was loud and rough around the edges. We used to kind of get annoyed with her together, rolling our eyes when she would go in and on about stuff we didn’t care about on the phone. There is no way in. A million years he would have actually picked her out somewhere and said, oh it’s her. Nah, instead it was she was around during the day when I was at work, she sensed there were issues, he started opening up to her because he wasn’t talking to anyone about it. She saw her opportunity to upgrade her life. The shit this woman did for him was desperate and sad. Much like my own behavior.
She had some better body attributes than me. I am shorter and more compact. She was taller, curvier, with perky little breasts. Dressed sexier. She had those tiktok leggings that were viral at the time and even I thought her ass looked amazing in them. They left nothing to the imagination. But a life partner? No way. Even I found that idea laughable.
Affairs are not where you find your dream person. It’s where you dream about who you could be. The other person is just an audience and you make them out to be better than they are because if you didn’t then the validation they are giving can’t be as valuable. And it’s not like all that is conscious thought, because the state someone is in while having an affair is just making up the story as they go along.
Your husband picked someone the opposite of you. Someone trashy, because a) he could feel superior, falsely ensuring him that he was the catch in the situation (which was opposite of how he felt about himself in your marriage and b) because it was apparent she was willing to not have morals and couldn’t judge him for the lack of his. If he was single and intentionally dating, he would probably pick someone much more like you. He would get to know her and court her. Not take her somewhere in the woods or in a car.
Her specialness to him is that she was willing to look at him starry eyed to help him feel like less of a piece of shit. You didn’t make him feel like shit, but part of him felt deep down that he wasn’t the man you needed him to be. He used her to feel better about himself. That was sort of the point with picking up someone trashy. He could live up to her much lower expectations. And that isn’t a statement about you. You were a loving wife even though he was failing you in many ways. It was how he felt about himself that drove that.
[This message edited by hikingout at 11:10 AM, Friday, September 6th]