I love my husband but I can’t stop cheating
Today, I had an unbidden thought about a comment that was once made by my dear friend Jane. Paraphrasing here, “Engage in bad behaviour long enough, it becomes normal.” That comment stung but I brushed it aside because I was caught up in the pleasures of my sins. I neither cared for the comment nor tried to counter it because I knew it was true. I’m living proof of that but it was a choice I made; it was a choice that could potentially cost me my marriage, my job and my reputation. I care very deeply about all these things and the last thing I want is to hurt my husband, Nady. But I’m afraid that has been exactly what I’ve been doing for several years. He doesn’t know it yet, maybe he will never know it because even though I’m confessing my sins here, I have no intention of opening up to Nady. That will kill him. I’m not exaggerating.
But this post is not about my husband or my marriage or my career or any of the myriads of things that are important to me such as my relationship with my children and our circle of friends. I do love my husband very much and I can’t imagine being separated from him for any reason. We have been married for 16 years (we got married 8 months after we met) and still going strong. My husband believes that he is because I am his. He calls me “My soul”, “My Eve”. In my husband’s view, I am the only reason he was born. He says his only prayer was to die with me; it doesn’t matter what kind of death it was as long as he went with me. My husband says it will be a curse to be alive if I were no more. He loves our children but only because I bore them for him. My husband didn’t want children until he met me and I wanted children. He said yes. We have three. Nady believes he knows everything about me, but could that be possible? I didn’t even know everything about me. I didn’t know that I could live a double life. Never knew I could be so wicked to the man who can literally kill for my sake.
So, this post is not really about Nady or me for that matter even though I’m central to the narrative. I’m not a moralist and not given to philosophical contemplations but Jane’s comment came unbidden to me this afternoon as I freshen up after yet another illicit pleasurable encounter with my lover. Cheating has become normalised in my case. A few years ago, I would have felt disgusted at the mere idea of messaging with another man without Nady’s knowledge. A thought like that would have filled me with repulsion. Yes, I would have gagged, literally thrown out because that was not who I was or the morals that I was taught. How it happened that I did a complete 180 degrees is something that deserves a serious study because there was nothing that called for it. Nady remains steadfast in his love and fidelity for me as far as I can tell and sometimes I feel a little anger that he seems so oblivious of what has been going on. Sometimes, I almost judge him by my standard because I am a cheater and I cover my track so well that I can’t help but wonder if he does the same. If he were as devilish in his approach as I have been in mine, then there is no way I will ever find out, unless fate. And so far, fate has been kind to me.
I loved Nady and still love him. We do have fairly regular amazing sex and with him, I’m totally wanton because Nady is mine and I am his. It gives me pleasure to please him. His moans are my aphrodisiacs and heaven is to have him shake inside me and after to bask and luxuriate in the fold of his arms. Nady is my nirvana. With my lover it is another kind of experience; even in the throes of pleasure, there’s a holding back. I can never wholly give myself because Nady holds my core. I don’t even try and I don’t want to try because it feels like a betrayal of he who holds me in such high esteem. Don’t try to understand the logic. Yet, my comment is true even if it appears contradictory. To give myself wholly to my lover will be the ultimate betrayal of Nady and that I cannot bear to think about and never will do. Never.
How did I get into this quandary?
Cast your mind back to 2015 if you can, precisely around July — August 2015 when news broke that there was data breach on Ashley Madison marital website. I don’t remember the specifics but it boils down that this website dedicated to cheating partners was hacked exposing the information of users. That incident was the turning point of my morality. No, I was not a user prior, so I wasn’t scared that I was affected or anything like that. They say knowledge is power but they should have warned that not all knowledge is worth having. I could have done without the knowledge that Ashley Madison and its likes exist. My ignorance would have been bliss — no betrayal of the one that loves me, no living a double life no battling with my conscience, no writing these words, the benefits go on.
Anyway, following the brouhaha that the data breach generated on news and social media, I logged into the website out of curiosity and registered on the site, thereby birthing an addiction to immorality and the betrayal of the one who loves me the most. Probably because of the data breach, my sense of security was heightened, I used a new email address and uncharacteristically did not tell Nady that I visited the site. If I remember correctly, I felt mildly disgusted with it and logged out almost immediately. Then one day, a website I visited demanded that I provide an email address before I can access some content or something. I didn’t want to give my usual address, so I gave them the one I used to register on the Ashley Madison website. Also, because I needed to confirm my email, I was compelled to log into the email. That was when I saw some message notifications from the marital website. Curious me wanted to know what they were all about and curious me landed in my present quandary.
What marvelled me was that I did not breath a word of what happened to Nady even at those early stages. If I had, I would have deleted the account and moved on. Till today, I can’t explain the secrecy because it was uncalled for and so uncharacteristic. Until then I had never cheated on a partner, never contemplated it; so why didn’t I tell Nady? I don’t have the answer to that question. As it were, while some of the messages were foolish, a couple or so of them got my attention. I probably replied intending to find out why their writers were using the site. If that was my intent, it got eroded over time. Still, I didn’t have any definite plan to cheat until Justin arrived in my inbox.
He was charming, educated, handsome with a very responsible position. Like me, he had a partner that he adored, had no intention to hurt nor to leave. Justin was the male version of me. He had been using the site before the breach and had gone on a date with a couple of ladies but no sex, or so he said. He had other interests beyond cheating. He loved the outdoor and was an amateur entomologist. I mean how many times do you meet someone who tells you things about insects? Anyway, the bottom line was that I was attracted to his intelligence, his sense of humour and his personality. Initially, that was all it was and I must confess that I loved his sexual allusions and innuendos in seemingly innocent comments. Justin was also a pro at the game of cheating. We rarely ever chat on the phone. There was never an exchange of photos. We saw each other on Skype to ascertain we were who we said we were and that we liked what we saw. Most other conversations took place on Hangout. On his advice, I use Google incognito mode to log into my secret email and if we were to chat, it was pre-arranged and only on Hangout. On his advice, I always log out of Hangout immediately after a chat and log back in with my normal email.
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We met for the first time around October 2016 almost 8 months after the first email exchange. It was a leisurely meeting at a coffee shop. There was no awkwardness. We were like two old friends and knew quite a bit about each other by then. We also prepared a likely story should we bump into someone one of us knows — a coffee meeting with a potential client. The meeting went well. We were enamoured with each other and agreed to chat soon on Hangout. “Are you sure you want to do this? I want you to be certain,” he told me. I answered in the affirmative. We both deleted our accounts on Ashley Madison as we decided to move our affair forward. My work schedule was fairly flexible and I could take a few hours ostensibly to be with a client.
Justin became a client of the company. He brought his business to my organisation and he was important enough to ask that I am the only person he wants to deal with. The thing is that despite our illicit affair, Justin handles his business with my organisation strictly as a business. Justin told me that he took the risk because he was convinced that I was good at what I do. But that was not all, he trusts me, he said. He also did it because he was convinced that I have a stable and happy home. He didn’t want someone who will make emotional demands on him or someone looking for an excuse to leave her spouse. He said that was why he took his time to find his affair partner, ME. Although, I don’t love Justin, neither does he love me, we have grown to care about each other. We hardly ever talk about our partners except in the context of big announcements. We share parenting tips, our kids’ progress and we rail about killings of innocent people, political divisiveness and racism in the world today, and of course, insects.
With the coronavirus and the world turning upside down, we’ve kept in contact virtually as we usually do. The only impact as far as our relationship goes was that we’ve gone longer without meeting. I’ve been working from home most of the time just as he has been managing his business from his virtual office. So, we both know that the risks of us having the virus was very low. Justin arranged our meeting today. It was a pleasurable even though an illicit encounter. As I freshen up, Jane’s words came unbidden to my mind — “Engage in bad behaviour long enough, it becomes normal” That certainly has been the case here.
