1 week ago
23
Every so often, you'll come across an incident that will make you test your morality. To me, cheating is one of those things. I don't condone it, obviously, but it does make me wonder why someone would do it. It's pretty damaging to be on the receiving end of it, especially in the context of a marriage, but knowing that also doesn't stop some from indulging in it. When I came across this Reddit thread: "Women who had an affair with a married man: why did you do it?", it made me reflect again.
37 women share why they slept with married men, and these answers range from sad to straight up infuriating:
1. "Probably be downvoted, but having been that woman once, I didn't give a shit enough to think about anybody else. It was pure selfish, narcissistic behavior."
2. "I doubt anyone will admit it here but from being (ex) friends with women who did this, they clearly loved the feeling of being chosen over the wife. Especially if the wife was obviously more beautiful or accomplished or had a seemingly better home life where she was being taken care of.It made them feel superior that they were being “chosen” over her because they didn’t realize their only value to the man was their novelty and a warm, willing body."
"This is it exactly, but some are more unhinged than others. I had an acquaintance who only slept with married men. She thought the fact that they were married but wanted her meant she was irresistible. If she could get them to buy her stuff that was the ultimate power trip. She bragged one had paid for her abortion. She burst into tears cause one of them refused to buy her a washing machine." — StayAwayFromMySon
3. "I knew someone like this. She was only interested in married or attached men. It was pathological. She was an absolutely gorgeous woman, like supermodel stunning. From what I could gather, I think she just loved the feeling of superiority, conquest and emotional detachment with married men. She would date multiple attached men at a time, and was never short on interest. No one in our friend group ever brought their partners near her. I saw her her like some toxic disease and avoided her every chance I got. To me, she became some hideous thing, even though she was aesthetically beautiful. She apparently had BPD too, so that explained some of her psychology."
4. "I went through a really bad time after my divorce, I had a breakdown, lost my job, and rather than turning to alcohol or drugs or whatever, I turned to sex. I often fucked married dudes because they were there in the bar I was at, they hit on me, and I knew they didn’t want more than just meaningless sex. I didn’t give a shit about their wife and clearly they didn’t either. I wasn’t making good choices but at no point did I feel superior to anyone."
5. "My ex best friend started a relationship with a married man at work. She justified her choice by saying it was the same thing her mother did with her stepdad, and they were still together so it was meant to be. It just grossed me out; she has no remorse whatsoever and never expressed sympathy for the woman she was fucking over. To their credit though, he did end up divorcing his wife and I think they're still together a couple of years later, but the whole situation caused me to lose so much respect for her that I couldn't remain friends with her anymore."
6. "He told me his wife was dead. We didn’t go his place because he had young twin girls and he still felt weird about having another woman in their space. Okay, understandable, I thought. I can respect boundaries. Seeing him was a bit infrequent because he was a full time dad—again, understandable. I sent him a really heartfelt message on Mother’s Day letting him know I was thinking about him and his girls knowing it must be a difficult day for all of them and I hope they were able to still find joy in her memory. He talked about how hard it was being a widower, how out of depth he felt handling "girl issues", I gave him advice. He cried about losing his spouse so unexpectedly due to complications from a routine surgery and what a shock it was."
7. "I was 23 and he was 47. I was a very naive stupid kid who thought at the time, I wasn’t the one cheating so therefore, I wasn’t doing anything wrong."
"And partially you are correct but it's 100% more his fault than yours. He was the one who took the vow and decided it was ok to ignore that vow and disrespect someone he claimed to love." — Colonel_Pusstache
8. "Young and dumb. Insecure. Had no morals. Did what I wanted to do because all I wanted to do was to please me me me. Pure selfishness."
9. "I’ll reply honestly. He was my boss, I was a young 20-something and he was older. At the time she was only his gf. But he pursued me. Hard. Making inappropriate comments while I was working, touching me in places he shouldn’t and I’d ask him to stop, coming in to purposefully just see me, following me into the bathroom, cornering me in spots he knew people wouldn’t see. He was the COO of the company, he was relentless. And then eventually, I relented. I kept trying to end it, he didn’t want to. I should’ve put my foot down but I didn’t. I saw him get engaged, eventually married. It was when I left that job I stopped it. He even tried to reach out and continue it after they had a kid."
10. "He didn’t tell me he was married and I found out about his wife when he died and I googled him and a news article mentioned a wife (and his real age)."
"We were very casual and he lived a state away. He was a trucker and drove to my city three days per week and that’s how we met. He would call me regularly and always answered when I called. I wonder now (seven years later) if he had a second phone or something and what shift his wife might have worked because I assumed he lived alone. I think this lie only worked because we didn’t feel obligated to see each other every day and we lived in separate states. Had we lived in the same town I would have found out and cut him off within the first month or so.
His first name could be a last name (think: Mr. Jackson Washington) and when I googled him and read the news report, they listed his last name as his first name (Mr. Washington Jackson) and his correct age PLUS wife so I thought it couldn’t possibly be about him. But he always answered my calls and hadn’t answered or called me back in almost a week. Found his coworkers on Facebook and they confirmed it was indeed him.
I went to his funeral and stayed in the back. I coincidentally ended up sitting in the same section as his coworkers so it didn’t look weird and I was respectful and didn’t say anything or call attention to myself. I honestly felt like shit for being with a married man and attending his funeral but I’ve since forgiven myself and I would never knowingly mess with a married man so my conscious is clear.
Men lie a lot lol he was sweet as pie to me but I still struggle to trust and believe people.
He would spend his lunch breaks with me when he was in town. It made me a little insecure because even though we were never intimate on his lunch breaks, he still shouldn’t have been on a “date” with me while married.
And at his funeral, everyone kept calling her his “loving wife of X amount of years” and idk if they were just being polite since he was dead or if they were truly in love and happily married." — cherry-gram-888
11. "Drugs, alcohol, and getting out of a toxic relationship really clouded my judgement and 13 years later I still feel like the biggest piece of shit for it."
— sadgouda
12. "Not sure this counts as an affair, but technically yeah. After he drove her to a clinic to have an abortion from her who-knows-how-many extramarital affairs, he and his wife decided to have an open marriage. I knew him for 20 years before we got together, and he had to talk me into it and I did NOT like the circumstances of the relationship. But sometime while helping her with her emotional collapse after her fourth or fifth boyfriend in the time we were together, I stopped worrying about the situation. They never divorced due to financial reasons and also... they were both marriage counselors and shared a practice. We were together for 16 years until he passed away."
"I'll add that when we did get together I was still legally married but separated for two years and living away from my ex. I was still legally married because my ex was refusing to sign the papers, and it wasn't until his fiance put down her foot and demanded him to sign that he finally did. Apparently I have a penchant for complexity." — UnlikelyRegret4
13. "My friend (in her 60s) freely admits to sleeping with married men in her 20s and 30s and she sees nothing wrong with it to this day. She said they were the cheaters, not her."
"I used to know someone like this. She seemed to have a special interest in attached guys like winning them over to seduce them made her feel extra powerful and attractive. She’d often start a new friendship with the female partner first, then start making excuses to hang out with the dude etc and then try and justify the sex by saying she had a different emotional connection with the guy that he couldn’t show his partner blah blah blah. It was a pile of dog shit and she left a lot of destruction in her wake." — bloodymongrel
14. "Im going to tag onto a reply above. I felt superior to the wife. I have terrible abandonment issues, an fearful anxious attachment style and I know I'm not a good lover because of it. I have never felt chosen in any of my relationships that have happened in my life. When a married man decided he wanted to sleep with me it made me feel chosen and wanted. Even though I know and they know, if they ever got caught they would never choose me in the end. It's self abandonment at its finest too. I know my flaws, don't have enough money for therapy — and the cycle continued. I am not proud of it by any means. I still fight with myself every day knowing what I did was wrong, knowing I need to correct it and not knowing how."
"I'm terrified to love someone because I know I am not a good lover because of how anxious and triggered I am. I'd rather be alone than have someone have to deal with me. Its easier to "love" someone I can't be with 100% because if they leave and choose not to deal with me it hurts less because I knew I was never going to be chosen over their wife. It makes it hurt less in my mind... but really it all hurts the same. I am a 32F." — lurkeldurkel
15. "I knew a girl in college who had no issue sleeping with married guys. I think she had five of them over a couple of years. When I asked her about it she said, "If they don’t respect the relationship why should I?""
16. "Not excuses, but where I was at (emotional affair, not physical but I probably wouldn’t have stopped it from going there). My ex-boyfriend wasn’t sharing a bed with me anymore. Would pick on me and get insecure and berate me in public. I was in an intense X-ray program five days a week and working a restaurant late five nights. Studying for exams between tables. Falling asleep driving. No day off for months. I was in burnout hell. This older bartender at work would give me attention, support me, call me pretty, tell me to stop talking bad about myself…everything I needed to hear but wasn’t from anyone else. I began looking forward to our conversations. We had so much in common. He even studied medicine! Everyone said he was a family man and perfect husband so surely my crush was innocent. Well, then he started poking me, touching my waist, getting more intense with his flirting."
"I became a limerence-fueled addict, because he’d go from one shift ignoring me completely to borderline chasing me around the restaurant the next for my attention, leaving me confused and near a heart attack. I was thinking of him all the time, he was an escape from my stress. Long story short, his wife got a call that “a pretty young girl was visiting him at the bar,” (he got fired for giving out free drinks so I visited him as a customer at his new job), she DMed me on Facebook…the manipulative twat used my manager and his friend to guilt me into lying to her (shocking news, he’s a repeat offender). I got fired from my job and kicked out of school (doing bad in everything due to burnout). He also obviously ghosted me when his wife found out. So altogether karma’s kiss for me hit hard. But I learned a harsh lesson about boundaries and taking care of myself." — No-Chance-1502
17. "I was a shy, chubby teenager all through high school and never dated. After I started working my first real job, I slimmed down and got hit on by a married 34-year-old man when I was 18. He was a neighbor btw, not a co-worker. I was flattered by the attention but ended it before actually having sex. It was more an emotional and flirting situation than anything physical but I'd still consider it cheating."
18. "I was 19, he was 45, and no one had ever paid attention to me before."
"Some men have like a radar for women who feel like this and know exactly how to exploit it. There is something very powerful about someone who can make you feel like they—finally—understand you like no one else does.
I have come across a couple of women like this in my life, usually somewhat younger than me. I've thought that they looked like they needed encouraging so I've gone out of my way to tell them that they're doing a good job at something. I find the reaction quite frightening—sometimes it feels like they latch on to me in a way that I find quite unpleasant. I back off there. I don't have anything like the charisma to exploit this even if I wanted to, which I don't." — Conscious-Ball8373
19. "I had a friend who had a thing for sleeping with married dudes. She said basically that they were experienced, they could last, and this was basically their few chances to just release and they did it by fucking the living shit out of her multiple times. They were always excited and looking forward to it. Meanwhile they were also super chill and interested, and paid for stuff, all with zero strings."
20. "He didn’t tell me he was married. I was going through a nasty divorce, he said he was separated. I own my own business, work full-time, school and mom life—only when I got divorced two years later did he start acting weird. Literally would call me and text me normally. When I had windows of free time he’d come over. I got that weird feeling, posted him in the AWDTSG page—turns out he didn’t even give me his real name, and to really add the cherry on top—turns out they just had their final baby the week he and I went on our first date. Talk about barf city. According to some women that commented on the post obviously knowing him, he’s been doing this since college."
"They’re in their early 40s. I told the wife once they gave me her info and she came at me. It was wild. Then she didn’t even do anything with it I’m guessing, because a few months later I saw him at the grocery store with another woman. They didn’t get a divorce or anything so I’m assuming she must be okay with it or something. I don't know, but it was WILD." — Redheadbabe22
21. "I was that girl, and it was inherently wrong and therapy helped me unpack a lot of it. I fell in love with my best friend. He was separated, we started dating, she gave him an ultimatum he went back. We stopped being physical but still had an emotional affair. Then they moved across the country, I had a mini mental breakdown, went to EMDR therapy and realized how fucked up my behavior was. I thought because he was picking me, that's what love is. It's not."
22. "I was 19 or 20. He was approaching 40. I was very naive and fell for his act. He made it sound like they were getting a divorce and not living together, said she was evil and cold, etc. The usual. I genuinely loved him, but when he cheated on me with another coworker, I realized that he wasn't a victim at all, he was a selfish asshole. I felt so stupid for falling for it. I learned that him and his wife were not going through a divorce, she had no idea he was cheating, and it made me feel absolutely horrible. I learned a lot from that experience, it helped me to grow up. I still feel really guilty to this day."
23. "I was 23 he was 39. He told me they were in the process of separating and that she was in the process of moving out. Turns out, she was pregnant. I found out later that when the affair started, they thought she was going to lose the baby and she went out of town to be with family. That's when he had me over, using that as an opportunity to cheat rather than being there for her during an incredibly difficult time. He told me he loved me. Months later he has something to tell me and it was the fact that she was about to give birth. We worked together and I had to watch people give him gifts for the new baby. I was so heartbroken."
— joker33
24. "My ex-friend slept with her best friend's husband. He convinced her that he wasn't getting what he wanted from his marriage and that he "loved" my friend. She thought he was going to leave his wife for her. She had been lonely for a long time and he said all the right things. Once the wife found out, he went crawling back. My ex-friend was angry at him and the wife. I distanced myself from her after that. Who the fuck sleeps with their best friend's husband? Not someone I want in my circle."
25. "I can tell you this. I was divorced at 22. I chose to have an affair with a married man because it was safe. I never went out in public with him, never called him, he didn't spend money on me, he scratched an itch and we could talk about anything."
27. "Alright I'll bite. His wife was very abusive and 20 years older than him, together since he was 19. He was hot. I hate abusers, so I also hated this bitch. She was hitting him black and blue, extremely controlling, all that. We were both late 20s. Of course she figured it out, she came to my job to threaten me, he panicked and then begged me to apologize to her so she would calm down. What. No, I'm not going to apologize when I don't mean it. At that point I was like "What am I actually doing anyway, this shit is toxic, I need to get out of this mess". Not my greatest moment, but I also don't regret it. They did divorce eventually, I ran into him some time ago and he seems happy and relaxed. No hard feelings. Never again. ETA: There was also definitely some revenge by proxy going on. My childhood was traumatic. I was severely abused. Ialso wanted to hurt an abuser, any abuser, because I wasn't able to punish the ones who hurt me."
28. "Attraction and then fell in love. It's painful to fall in love with someone who isn't yours. It's not right either to cheat with someone. Life is complicated and it can happen."
29. "I was 20, going through a lot of shit, on drugs, and stupidly believed him when he said they were separated. I also confirmed they had separated from his mom and his friends, so a bunch of people were hiding it from me. He was also much older too. I found out they were actually still married and together because he told her that he loved me and she went batshit insane and started harassing and stalking me."
30. "Rampant uncontrolled severe mental illness that came with hyper sexuality. Which believe me sounds like a lot more fun than it is."
31. "I was freshly 18. He was like 26 and swore his female roommate was…well, just a roommate. Then it was she cheated on him and they’re only together for his green card. I was so fucking stupid dude lol."
32. "He told me he was separated and I had no reason to disbelieve him. His brother also told me the same thing. Then in the space of a week he came to dinner and my aunt told me "that man is married." I’m like WTF? No, he’s separated. She gave me a knowing look. Then I went out on the Friday night with him and his brother and the bros GF, who pulled me into the loo and asked if I knew I was seeing a married man. Broke up with him on the spot and was lucky enough to have two taxis, a pizza guy and three fire engines and an ambulance turn up at our house that night all sent by him. The police were very unhappy the next day, and he was charged with making a fraudulent 999 call. £150 per appliance in 1987 was the equivalent to around $5k each now. Bastard, but karma man."
33. "I was under the impression we were both ending our relationship to be together. Turns out only I ended my relationship."
34. "His marriage was essentially over for 10+ years, but they were still together because of a high needs child still at home. We fell into an affair after developing a friendship. It wasn't malicious intent. He was lonely. I was lonely. We provided comfort for each other. Years later, I still look back on it fondly."
35. "My best friend had an on and off affair with a married man for a whole decade. She was single at first, then married. Both were married, just not to each other. She said she liked their chemistry and at some point in the affair, she actually said she was in love with him. As far as I know, he never fell in love with her. He was just a player. Both are divorced now, and not together."
36. "I felt very low, just ended a relationship of eight years. Felt disgusting, undesirable and like the future I had planned just crumbled at my feet. He offered support and a friendly word and I fell for it. Not proud of it at all."
37. "He gave me money, that’s it."
— mcnuggg8
I...don't know how to feel after reading these. I may be able to understand why they did what they did, but something still doesn't sit right. If you have confessions like this, tell us in the anonymous form below.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
English (US) 