I Was the Other Woman. Here’s What I Want Wives to Know

Part of the reason I was fooled was because his behavior didn’t track with what I had always imagined an affair to be. It wasn’t only about sex, and the sex we had was more intimate than anything, not passionate, reason-defying Fatal Attraction-type lust. We talked and texted — not sexted — constantly, about our jobs, our kids, his soccer games.

He insisted on taking me on dates and sent me flowers and gifts — the Monday after his confession, I got a delivery he must have arranged beforehand: a Valentine’s Day bouquet of red roses and chocolate-dipped strawberries with his nickname as the signature. (Entirely disgusted, I marched down my block and gave these gifts away to the first people I saw, some neighbors and a crossing guard.)

Although I was devastated, I learned a lot from this unpleasant experience. I now recognize the red flags that someone is not as single as they claim (and yes, other men have tried to fool me since). The most important thing I learned is that I will never stay with a cheater. Here are the reasons why. And here’s what I want wives to know.

It wasn’t an accident. We met online but not on a dating app. A married man can’t just go posting his photo on a dating app. This guy posted on a community forum on Reddit and mentioned his location, which happened to be close to me. He claimed he was looking for “friends,” but that was only to ensure he had plausible deniability every step of the way if he got caught. 

It wasn’t just about sex. When I discovered I had been dragged into an affair, I was furious, not just for myself but on behalf of this guy’s wife. She didn’t blame me, but she asked me what was clearly the most important question to her: “Did he ever tell you he loves you?” I replied honestly that he hadn’t, but I could recite a number of things he did say that would break her heart, and I’m convinced he would have said those three exact words to me if I had ever brought it up. He was clearly as enamored of the attention and affection and intimacy and friendship as the physical stuff; if anything, sex was secondary.

The sex was unprotected. I still cringe thinking about it, but I didn’t make him wear a condom. I was battling depression from my breakup and generally not caring about much. I had an IUD, so I wasn’t concerned about an accidental pregnancy. I believed that he hadn’t had sex with anyone other than his wife for years, but he put both of us at risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

They will never tell you everything. I understand the immediate need you have in the wake of discovering an affair to know everything, but you never will, and that’s probably a good thing. Cheaters minimize their actions to avoid the fallout. From subsequent conversations with his wife (she called me to gain clarity), I could see how he was trying to save his marriage and put the blame on me. She asked for emails and texts as evidence, but I had deleted almost everything. A lot of it is still seared into my brain, though: how he criticized her performance in bed and spilled other personal details to me. He sent me photos of their daughter (as a mother myself, this makes me livid). He spent money that should have gone into her college fund or toward their new mortgage on dinners and gifts for me.

He would have kept it up. I don’t even know how this idiot got caught, but the second I got that phone call from him and his wife, I was done. I cried, then deleted everything and threw every gift or reminder of him in the trash and blocked his number. I smashed the earrings he gave me — they had our shared birthstone because we had the same birthday to the year — with a hammer. A few weeks later, I got an email from him. I ignored it. I got another. Ignored that. On our birthday that March, I got a birthday text from an unknown number with the same area code as his. The same day, his wife texted me, asking if he had been contacting me. I called her and gave it to her straight. He had contacted me three times, and I was done. I didn’t want to hear from either of them again. I answered her questions, sent her anything I had left as far as proof, wished her well but told her I was blocking them both and wanted to be left alone.

I have never looked back, but if I had to bet, I’m almost positive she ended up staying with him. They had two kids, a new home and years together. Leaving someone you love is hard; you want to believe them. I wish her well, but having been on the other side of an affair, knowing what I know now, there is no way I could ever stay with a man who cheated. No amount of therapy or act of contrition could ever make up for the lies, the invasion of privacy and the disrespect. That’s a lesson I never wanted to learn, or thought I would have to, but now that I have, there’s no unknowing.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.