The truth behind the tired trope.

If you’ve ever heard someone tell you the story of an affair, you’ve heard the words:

“We didn’t mean to have an affair.”
“We didn’t mean to do this.”
“We never meant for this to happen.”

It’s probably true.

It’s likely true.

While there are people out there who go after married people or look for a secret lover…(Ahem…Ashley Madison…ahem…)

Most women, especially single women, would be morons to actively hunt for a married man to have a relationship with.

Because another truth is, there are just as many single men you can go after – there’s no good excuse for willingly entering into an affair as a single woman.

If you do it, like I did, you know it was wrong.

You knew it was wrong when you were doing it, but for whatever reason, you did it anyway.

It’s okay. Ish.

It’s why we’re here, at any rate.

We all have to accept that what’s done is done and it can’t be taken back, because no matter how hard you hope for a time machine, they don’t exist.

You can’t go back and change the past, you can just decide what you’re going to do with your future.

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Don’t choose to spend your life in a sea of guilt and shame.

It’s as simple and as hard as it sounds.

If you’re the Other Woman and you have compassion for other people, you are going to feel guilty, ashamed, distraught, and morally dragged in a million directions for the choices you have made that led you to be where you are.

I’ve been through it, I’ve been through it in all sorts of ways, and I’ve learned a few things for sure.

The only things you can control are the decisions you make and how you choose to think about them.

If you’ve chosen to be the Other Woman, how do you feel about that?

Do you feel like you made the right choice, in hindsight?

Do you wish you could go back to the day you met and just not get out of bed in the morning?

Do you look at other couples and wish you could have what they have with the man you’re with, but you can’t because he’s already had all that with someone else?

When you choose to be the Other Woman, you are signing up for heartbreak, at least some, no matter what.

You are choosing to miss out on an awful lot of life experiences that you otherwise may have had if your relationship didn’t start out as an affair – that is, if you make it.

Things like a wedding that all of your family members will be happy about attending, or holidays when the one who strayed feels the nostalgia and yearns for the past he thought he had.

My point is – no one expects they’ll have an affair, especially the Other third party.

Except for people who I believe are straight up sociopaths, no one wants this.

Having an affair is never a good idea.

So why does this happen anyway?

Why do single people find themselves in affairs when it’s clearly such a bad idea?

Because they’re human, that’s why.

It’s because despite the fact we actually do have moral compasses that are trying to point us in the right direction, we are vulnerable to our emotions and the way others manipulate them.

Sometimes the gratitude we have over a person seeing and understanding us can be confused for loving emotions, and despite knowing it’s wrong, we let this married person make us feel so good, we choose to do bad things like have an affair with them.

I think most of the time affairs start out quite innocently.

They start over shared small talk at work, stolen glances at parties, helping out a friend’s partner with a chore…

The moment we meet someone new, we don’t know what they are going to end up meaning to us, or how they will affect our lives.

You can start an innocent conversation on social media, and then months later realize you’re in love with the person you’re talking to… even if one or both of you are married.

We didn’t mean for it to happen.

But there are a lot of reasons why it could have happened, and a lot of ways that it could have been prevented.

Keep reading, and we’ll figure this all out together.

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