The First Night of My Four Year Affair
What it’s like to pull the trigger
This story is hard for me to tell. Cheating is an immoral, inexcusable act. By no means am I proud of this affair, but I think it helps to bring this experience to light, for the benefit of anyone who might find themselves in a similar situation.
It started on a warm night at the end of May, the sort of night that just seemed to drip with possibility. But all I could feel in the moment was the heavy weight of my despair, a burden I was starting to realize was not going to go away any time soon.
A month earlier, I had been in Mexico visiting my then-fiancé, X. I had been seeing X for almost two years. A year and a half into our relationship, he had been deported by border control for having an expired visa.
During the 6 months we were apart, he dropped the ultimatum: come here, and marry me, or we need to break up.
Now, it was a fair ultimatum to make. There was no sense in continuing if we weren’t planning a future together. But in my heart, I wasn’t ready. In my heart, I knew I’d never be ready to marry him.
But I still loved him enough to go to Mexico to see if being together would help me would change my mind. This culminated in me marrying him, despite my better judgement, the day before I returned to Canada.
After my return from Mexico, things were going horribly for me. Since I had to take 6 weeks off to see X, I had been fired from my job. The only job I could find after that was a soul-crushing telemarketing job. The bills were piling up.
Worse than that was the weight of regret. As soon as I was apart from X, I knew it had been a mistake to marry him. But since I had promised to sponsor him on a spousal visa, I felt that I owed him. As twisted as this may sound in retrospect, I felt that I owed him the chance to be a Canadian citizen, as payback for marrying him in bad faith.
I felt so very trapped.
That warm May evening four weeks later, I found myself at a birthday party with my ex boyfriend, J. J didn’t know anything about X. He didn’t know anything about my relationship with X. I couldn’t bear to tell him about it. He thought I was in Mexico just to travel.
Why didn’t I tell J about X? I was just not ready to let J go. Even though J and I were, “just friends,” we still had undeniable chemistry. During that dark time in my life, my friendship with J felt like one of the few things keeping me going.
However, even though we maintained physical boundaries, the loneliness was getting more and more overwhelming. The weight of the lie was starting to get too heavy. But still I resisted the urge to get physical. I clung desperately to my integrity and was determined not to give up on my marriage.
Now, this birthday party was for J’s best friend. It was at his beautiful waterfront high-rise condo. The lights of the city sparkled around us. J’s young, professional, successful friends surrounded us. We sipped drinks on the rooftop terrace and gazed at the lights of the bustling entertainment district below us.
“So, how long have you and J been together?” asked one of the stylish, young guests.
“Oh, we’re not together,” J and I answered simultaneously.
The question rankled me. I wanted to be together with J. We should be together. It was all my damn fault we weren’t, because I was too weak and scared to end things with X, even though I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.
It was a stab right to my heart to think that any one of these polished, beautiful, accomplished young ladies might grab J up. In my heart, J had never stopped being mine.
In fact, looking around, I started to feel that all this — the beautiful condo, the stylish friends, the rooftop parties — all this was the life I truly wanted and deserved. If only I had been strong enough to break up with X, this would have been my life.
Sponsoring X’s return to Canada would mean starting from scratch again. Before he was deported, I lived with X for 6 months in a dark basement bachelor apartment with crumbling walls and a squealing air conditioning unit. Neither of us could afford anything better. Every day was filled with anxiety, as we awaited the results of the hearing regarding his legal status in Canada. He worked his ass off doing 18 hour shifts, coming home too exhausted to eat.
The thing is, it’s not that I was unwilling to live that lifestyle. I was not afraid to be poor and build a life from the ground up, but time had made me realize that I didn’t love X enough to make all those sacrifices again.
My memories of that time living with X contrasted starkly with this beautiful, easy rooftop life with J by my side. This is where I belonged, where I should have been all along, instead of fighting so hard for a life I didn’t truly believe in.
Up on that rooftop, looking out at the bustling city in the soft summer twilight, something snapped inside me. It was the last piece of me trying to stay faithful to my sham of a marriage.
I had a couple drinks, then approached the same woman who had asked if J and I were together. I whispered conspiratorially that it wasn’t strictly true that J and I were just friends, and that it was my goal to take him home that night. She smiled knowingly. It felt so good to claim him.
I can’t remember quite how things went down. We kissed in the car. He was shaking. I wanted him so badly it hurt. In spite of all that, the sex was not great. But, when I woke up next to him, for the first time in months, I felt at peace.
When I got back in my car to head back home to my parents’ place, the anxiety returned. What the hell was I going to do now?
I felt more trapped than ever, and now I had the guilt of infidelity on top of the despair and self loathing of agreeing to a marriage I didn’t want.
This was the first of many such sporadic encounters that would go on for almost four years. Whenever I grew too lonely and bored, I would see J. I tried to push the thought of X’s feelings out of my mind, telling myself he would never find out, anyways. Subconsciously, I’m sure I just wanted a way out of this marriage and the love I couldn’t completely reciprocate from X.
From time to time, J and I would agree to just be friends, but it never lasted for long. Sometimes J would ask me if I wanted to be in a real relationship, but I couldn’t bring myself to fully commit to J, because that would mean breaking up with X.
During that four years, I could never bring myself to tell J the truth about X. I assumed that if he knew the truth about my ill-fated marriage to X, he would reject me forever. In spite of my ongoing infidelity and lies, I truly believe that honesty is the most important foundation of a relationship. Therefore, in my mind, J and I could never have a real relationship since there had already been too many lies.
Twisted, I know. I said at the beginning of this story that this was a stupid, illogical and painful tale.
Truly, all these mental gymnastics were just a cover for what I knew to be true: That I was weak, and selfish, and afraid.
Looking back at that time, I wish I had known what I do now about mental health and what causes cheating in a relationship.
After the first time I cheated, I felt like I deserved nothing but loneliness and pain. I was a bad person, a cheater. Now, I know now that infidelity sometimes happens during long distance relationships. Infidelity is a symptom of greater issues in a relationship. It’s horrible and immoral and traumatizing, but far more common than we may care to admit.
If I had taken the energy away from punishing myself and put it towards facing my issues and becoming stronger, then maybe things would have turned out differently. I could have found the strength to break up with X right away instead of making him wait for me in Mexico for four years, alone.
This is why I think we need to change the conversation about cheating. I’m not trying to trivialize the trauma of being cheated on, but we do need to take a position of harm reduction. My deep, deep shame kept me from fixing the problem head on. Because I was so ashamed, I hid the truth about the affair from my friends and the result was that they couldn’t support me when I needed it most.
I lead both of these innocent men on. J kept pushing for a more committed relationship, and I told him no, because I still held out hope that I could convince myself to commit to X once and for all and sponsor him like I promised.
After four long, painful, confusing years, I finally broke up with both of them.
X and I don’t talk, but I can see from Facebook that he has found someone else and has a beautiful new daughter, just like he always wanted.
What’s more, the most surprising part is that two years after it was all over, I was finally able to be completely honest with J about the whole thing.
J told me that during that period, he had suspected something was off, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. I told him about my ill fated marriage, why I did it, and how much it hurt to hide all that from him. It was so amazing and cathartic to share the whole truth with him. Finally he could see who I really was. If I had told past me what the future would hold, I would have come clean much sooner.
During my four year affair, I was filled with anxiety when I thought of the future. I felt completely paralyzed. My life today is not perfect, but now I am ready to start from the ground up, and it feels good.
