
It was a long time coming even though it happened overnight. I can still recall the evening when my now ex first contacted me to start an affair.
Looking back on it now feels weird and stupid because, at that point, I never imagined that I could ever get involved with a married man.
I naively believed that was a line no one could easily cross, like a built-in boundary. But I was wrong.
Watch: Emotional v.s. Physical affairs. Post continues below.
Our affair led to his first divorce and the birth of my only child. It was also a very toxic relationship that impacted my mental health in a negative way. There are lots of different kinds of affairs and not all of them are very dramatic, but ours really was the bad kind.
Like a soap opera at every turn.
Over the years, I’ve had to reflect on what happened and how an otherwise “good girl” even gets herself into such a f***ed up situation in the first place.
She’s lonely.
Unchecked loneliness is one of the most dangerous emotions in the world. That’s not to say a lonely person’s pain isn’t real — part of the problem is that her loneliness is so real it gets in the way when she makes her choices.
Even if she knows she’s lonely, she doesn’t know how to manage those feelings. Eventually, she finds herself saying yes when she should have said no, simply because she doesn’t know what to do with all of her lonely thoughts.
She ducks out before the loneliness can consume her.
She’s got an external locus of control.
Clearly, she’s not the only one, but it’s not helping her one bit. She can’t seem to understand what her life is really all about. In her mind, life is simply what happens to her. Not what she chooses or makes happen.
Maybe, for a brief moment, she gets the sense that she needs to take control of her choices. But it’s like sailing a rudderless ship. She doesn’t know where she’s going and she’s got no clue what she’s doing.