The Reality of a First Affair

First, I wanna give Rougedmount props for the inspiration for this writing and her heart-wrenching blog, The reality of His first affair.  Now, hang on for a bit a of a ride…

I’ve said it before and I have to keep on saying it:  Everything looks good on paper but practical application can be very different.  Having an affair for the first time just might make sense; you’re unhappy with your partner for one or more reasons and maybe you’ve tried to work around the issues or you’re at the point where you’re ready to give up, maybe not on the whole relationship, but you need to do something that goes along with Rule Number One:  Take care of your own ass first – and an affair sounds like the best way to handle things.

That first affair might not even start out as a sexual thing; a lot of folks wind up having an affair because of emotional needs and while some folks might have a case of the jitters knowing that they’re now being emotionally unfaithful, this is one of those things where “actions speak louder than words” comes into play, the thought here is that you aren’t fucking the other person so you really haven’t done anything wrong.  Whether you agree with emotional infidelity or not isn’t really the issue here – that would probably make a very interesting blog for some other time.

While some “emotional affairs” can be quite sexless, at some point, one or both people will figure out which way the wind is blowing; the more they share things with each other – and the more the resonate with each other – the chances of sex happening increases… and now you have something to think about and whether you’re thinking with the, ah, correct part of your anatomy is debatable but it is easy to sit and think of all the justifications that can pop into your head that says that taking the next step – from emotional to physical – is warranted.  You know that what you’re thinking about isn’t a cool thing to do, to put it very mildly; you might even think about what might happen if your partner ever finds out that you went behind their back and went outside of the relationship – but you’ll also rationalize that if your partner was giving you that which you needed, you wouldn’t have a reason to go outside of the relationship for anything.

You might even be smart enough to come up with an elaborate plan to cover your activities, thinking that if you do this like that, your partner will never be the wiser.  You realize that, yeah, something could go wrong and being discovered could happen… but I know a lot of people have thought, “I’ll worry about that if I have to…” because who wants to spend their time thinking about worst-case scenarios when they could be thinking about this new person in their life and the prospect of adding to their personal happiness?

You can sit for however long it takes, searching your heart and soul and even trying to find reasons to not do what you’re getting ready to do but since humans have that remarkable ability to justify anything that they do, well, this “final self-check” confirms that, yes, they need to do this – they have to do this – because if they don’t, some very bad shit is going to jump off in their heads that is a direct threat to their existence and sanity.  Besides, promises have been made and must be upheld to the best of everyone’s ability so a date and time gets set to take things to the next level and consummate the extramarital affair.

I’m not gonna lie to you:  Sometimes, this goes off without a single bad thing happening, well, not right away and maybe even not for a very long time even though you’re usually always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen that will end the affair and immerse your now-cheating ass into a pot of boiling oil.  There are a shitload of reasons why the worst-case scenarios never appear… but I’m not here today to talk about the very strange upside to doing something so immoral – I’m here to talk about the one thing that a lot of people might give some thought to… but not as much as is really needed.

Guilt.  The emotional state that can hit you like an asteroid landing on you, that moment of absolute clarity that first knocks you down and then stands you back up so you can see that you just fucked up and more than you thought was possible.  It is an ugly, terrible feeling that, at first, makes you ask a stupid question:  “What did I just do?”

Your rationale, your justification has left you and perhaps you are only now just discovering that you really and truly don’t have what it takes to have an affair, that there’s more to it than just finding succor in the arms of someone else, and that you have probably and truly fucked your life up… and all because you didn’t think about this aspect or, if you did, you foolishly thought that you could handle any feelings of guilt.  That you may feel this way isn’t really unusual and, yes, some people get through their consummation and are able to shove the guilty thoughts and feelings to the back of the bus.

So now what?  The guilty feelings have made you paranoid, making you feel as if everyone who sees you knows what you’ve done and being in the presence of your partner, who so far knows nothing of what you’ve done, is enough to make you want to experience projectile vomiting.  While you fight down the urge to hurl, you look at your partner and maybe realize that, shit, things with them weren’t really that bad, that your justification for going outside of the relationship was flawed, and that the grass may look greener on the other side… but it’s artificial turf as far as you know.

So now what?  You can find yourself in quite the quandary and uncertain of what to do.  You could confess to your partner but odds are that’s not going to go over very well.  Do you continue with what you’ve started?  You’re beginning to understand that if you do continue, you’re going to have to have a crash course in burying those guilty feelings you have, to reestablish your rationale and justification, to convince yourself that even though in the eyes of many you’ve made a near-unforgivable mistake, to continue is still the best thing for you to do… and even if you know that the only time two wrongs make a right is in mathematics.

Should you talk to the person you had the affair with and tell them what you’re feeling and why?  Yeah, you should but you also begin to see that by sharing this with them, they could take it the wrong way and see this as cowardice, a betrayal, and a few other negative things that now has them thinking that they made a huge mistake in trusting and believing you:  Your credibility could take a tremendous negative impact and to the extent that you’re going to be branded a liar and deceiver and all because you can’t get your head around the implications and the consequences of your actions, things you should have thought of way before you consummated the affair and, yeah, successfully gotten someone’s hopes up that you can do all of that shit you said you can do.

I’m not saying that you couldn’t go to your “partner in crime” and tell them how you’re feeling; I’m not even saying that something bad is always going to happen because there’s a chance that your partner in this can understand the way you’re feeling – maybe they’re feeling the same way – and that despite all of the negativity running through you, this can be salvaged; the situation can be worked through so that the affair can continue.  Alas – and as Rouged discovered – some folks cannot mitigate the guilt that’s kicking their ass and then they tell the truth of it – not that they may have been lying before the fact – that, shit, they can’t deal with any of this.

Bad move, huh?  Maybe the person you did this with understands and is willing to help you work through what you’re feeling and simply because you are what they need and they still believe that you can bring happiness to their life if you can work through the guilt.  Maybe the person you did this with just decides that you’re an asshole and it’s not worth their time or effort to help you get through this because now they’re feeling some kind of way due to the fact that they have good reason to believe that they’ve made a terrible mistake, allowing themselves to be so vulnerable and setting themselves up to have their feelings crushed.

If this sound like a very fucked up situation to be in, be assured that it is; there have been failures all through this and the greatest failure is not being able to think, predict, or even anticipate that this might not be a good thing for you do to.  You didn’t play the “what if” game as completely as possible, failed to take into consideration that you could undergo a major change of heart after the rush of orgasm starts to fade.  You failed to consider that if there was a weak spot in any of this, it was you.

Having an affair might sound like a good idea but unless you can fully understand the reality of it all, it’s no wonder why most people who try to have one fail almost in the very beginning or even right at the moment of consummation.  You not only have to convince yourself that doing this is necessary for you and the person you’re doing this with, but you have to be very damned sure that you can, in fact, go through with it.  You’d better know that some thoughts of wrongness are going to pop into your head and then you’d better be able to deal with them and with the understanding that those feelings are going to be intensified:  You have to be very damned sure that you can not only finish what’s been started but you have what it takes to keep things going, that you’re not going to cave in under the weight of any guilt you may feel.

I’m not saying having an affair is right or wrong – that’s up to the individual to decide and it’s up to whoever’s reading this to decide, if they care to even think about it.  I am saying, however, that the reality of having that first affair can be something very, very different from what you might have going on inside your head.  I know, because I’ve been there, that even if you’re able to take a great many things into consideration before the fact, there is that moment when you are so very much aware of what you’re doing and what the implications of it are, that while you’re making yourself and someone else happy, you could very well be setting the stage to destroy your relationship with your partner and your partner right along with it as well as your children, if you have them.

In that moment of truth, in that moment of total clarity, I’m not saying or suggesting that one should continue or not; I’m just putting it out there that having that first affair is harder than you can imagine and in ways you may not be prepared to deal with.  You can think that you’re prepared to deal with shit but the reality of it all may say differently.  And it’s the reality you really have to prepare for more than worrying about getting caught.