He’s cheating on you, with his wife.

My writing style lends itself to the creation of ambiance, which I attempt to manifest through some slight of hand, maybe the telling of a personal life story, and in some cases vicariously through the beautiful disasters of another. I find that using real world illustrations help me to stay on point, not confuse the reader entirely, and hopefully keep them awake.

But this post will have none of that.

This change is primarily to protect the innocent or the guilty but more precisely to keep from embarrassing the utterly stupid. Unfortunate as it is, the moronic have yet to discover their current station in life and I don’t wish to ruin the surprise for them. So with that being said I’m going to forego pulling out my paintbrushes and get right to the point.

•♦•

It doesn’t matter when it is or where I am at if I see a blog post, article, or television episode concerning infidelity, cheating, or sleeping around I have to investigate further. Like the driver who slows traffic so he can get a better look at the car wreck, I just can’t help it. Undoubtedly some of it has to do with my own ass kicking at the ugly end of an affair, but also so many of these stories are just too fascinating to pass over. In most cases the anecdotes are little more than a 1000 word bitch sessions about how some husband left his wife and marriage of 10, 20 or 30 years for the hottie clerk in accounting who is young enough to be his daughter. Bearing no blame in the affair, the shunned wife professes she was the perfect spouse while he was and is nothing but a scumbag. Yet as sad as these tales of woe may be it’s far too cliché and candidly bores me.

But every so often I’ll stumble across a random article slanted towards ‘other woman’. In an almost court transcript like fashion, the writer starts by confessing she was involved with a married man, that it wasn’t the right thing to do and swears she tried everything she could to end it but she just didn’t have the strength to walk away or did but quickly came back. Retold with emotion and regret the reader  almost empathizes with her and concedes to her notion that love doesn’t always make sense.

But notice I said almost feel sorry, that is until this paramour commences to rip the married boyfriend apart after he maliciously broke her heart by deciding to ‘work it out” with his estranged wife even though he swore they were totally finished. She points out all of the promises made during their pillow talks and how he claimed she was everything his wife wasn’t. She talks about how he promised they would be together forever as soon as he ’finalized the papers’ and how he wished they didn’t have to sneak around so much. It’s after giving this play-by-play of how wrong she was treated that she finally declares, “love is dead”, “all men are liars”, and lesbianism or a nunnery might be the only viable option.

This is usually the point where I’m gasping for breath between my outbursts of uncontrollable laughter.

•♦•

I’ll admit that I grew up quite cloistered and will even confess that my naivety has been a character downfall in the past. I don’t claim to be extremely street smart and often hold individuals in higher regard than they warrant. And maybe I’m not the most in-touch with the times and possibly there are parts of this current culture that have gone over my head. But while my perception of reality may be a bit Leave it to Beaver, for the life of me I could never have imagined the ‘mistress’ actually existed – as in real life here in the 21^st century.

Now let me be clear I’m not talking about the term used loosely as mistress for a hooker or the one client call girl both of which are ultimately out to pay the rent. Instead, I’m talking about the mistress who seems in it for the long haul, she’s there for emotional reasons. That ‘other woman’ who is patiently waiting for her man to abandon his wife and children so they can finally start the family of her dreams and in the mean time would rather have him part-time than not at all. I’m talking about the one who knows full well, whether admittedly or not, that he is married but has convinced herself “they’re almost divorced anyway, they don’t sleep in the same bed together, and he’s getting ready to file the paperwork”. All kidding aside people, I honestly thought this was just a reality TV story line to hook in bored housewives and bitter divorcees.

But the numbers don’t seem to lie. Think about this, it’s been estimated that over half of all married men cheat while less than 30% of married women cheat. That 20 point spread means prostitution is more prolific than I think, dad is hooking up more than his college aged son, or there are an abundance of lonely sad desperate single women in the world who can’t seem to find any legitimately available men.

•♦•

I’ve always prided myself on seeing things from the other person’s point of view. I totally get both sides of the gay marriage debate and I can sympathize either way with the Occupy movement. It’s a valuable skill set honed through years of executive management and co-parenting; so I feel pretty good saying if I pass judgment on someone or something I’ve looked at all the angles.

So I’ve put this whole dating-a-married-man nonsense through the stress test and it just doesn’t add up. Here’s where I get confused. How does the mistress sell herself on the fact that he’s with her one night and with his wife the next? What does she think to herself as he’s in the other room saying goodnight to his wife and kids? What thoughts go through her mind when she’s reminded how her  life is stuck in neutral waiting for him to tie up loose ends with that other thing? How does she get used to the fact that she’s hurting people she doesn’t even know? And if she’s completely self-centered with the blackest of souls and it’s all about her how does she get by knowing he’s cheating on her, with his wife?

We’ve all heard the stories of executives; celebrities or lawmakers who kept a mistress for years, sometimes decades as he went about living two separate lives. These women can’t make the argument they didn’t know about the marriage, which by the way is quickly becoming a worn-out lame excuse. If a woman has been seeing a man for more than a month she’s not going to convince me she didn’t know he’s married, or at the least something is seriously up. And let’s say the whole thing started out as a ‘mutual agreement’ like a giant really screwed up barter arrangement. He gets laid, she gets free rent.  First, that’s makes her a prostitute but second, I’m not persuaded it doesn’t eventually become something more and feelings start getting in the way, especially for her vecause douchebags are especially adept at compartmentalizing.

And here’s my last point in all of this. Which happens to be the main head scratcher I have with affairs in general. Let’s just say that he does cut bait and gets divorced and now wants to be with the mistress legitimately. How can she not worry every single day of her life that he won’t turn right around and do the very same thing to her? Does she think she’s that special?

Obviously this is a pretty big issue, Google ‘mistress’ and see what you get. In fact it seems so prevalent that single women who date married men now have a nickname – Masochist Mistress.

Frankly, the name is fitting.

Side note – I want to thank Dinkutopia for the title inspiration.