Infidelity As Revenge

Getting Back to our theme for the moment on the extracurricular activities of our partners, I have recently been asked whether or not I myself have ever cheated on a partner. The answer to that, I am a little ashamed to admit, is yes. Whatever the reasons anyone else has used for their betrayals, mine were mostly, firstly, in a search to feel desired, and then later (although perhaps subconsciously) in an effort to exact revenge on a partner that I felt had left me emotionally abandoned.

How did it begin? I suppose the internet was my first step into betrayal. After my love life with by 'husband' has started to wain a few years after being together, I began to feel a little less than desirable. He stopped being affectionate, loving. he stopped wanting me sexually. It started with chat rooms like yahoo and the like. I would talk to people, get to know them. They would ask me to meet them, talk dirty to me, arouse my sense of self worth and desirability. I remember marveling at the fact the such a large number of the men on there had partners, talked about waining sex lives, were blatantly and openly going for something 'extra.' For a long time, that's all it was for me, though, talk. I never them or talked to them more than once or twice. I just needed that sense of being wanted. I needed to feel desired.

As things progressed, however, my relationship was not improving and I began to need more physical contact that I was getting. When my partner was out of town or gone for the evening at work, I began to venture out to meet some of these internet people. Not often, mind you, but perhaps once every couple of months or so my flesh would burn with a desire that could not be quenched on my own despite my best efforts. I just had to have some kind of physical contact and my partner was not providing it.

He even accused my once. He had accidentally pulled up a conversation I had had on an IM service and questioned my lengthy and mysterious hours spent staring at the screen not allowing him to see what I was doing. I denied it at the time, eventually admitting only that it was just talk (which it mostly was), tried to explain that it was about feeling desired and needing someone to want me. But he didn't understand, or else didn't want to. Eventually I even tried to bring up the idea of having an open relationship. At that point I was willing to try anything. he was not to keen on the idea. We sort of discussed it, but apparently not well enough, for when I decided to test this arrangement by bringing someone home with me and into the spare bedroom, the response was not exactly one of acceptance.

Everything sort of deteriorated from that point on. The open relationship idea was a complete bust as it seemed only to pull us further apart. It was like trying to put a small band aid on a broken arm and hoping it would heal. Suddenly there were new and more exciting lovers to experience, and the tired old 'you and me' became less and less desirable to both of us.

As sick as it sounds, it became almost a competition between us to see who could lure more people in, who could command a greater prowess, who was more desired. He brought home a young man once from the local college with whom he proceeded to very loudly make scream with pleasure in the next room while I tried to sleep. Instead of leaving or calling a truce, my revenge was to bring one home on my own and to do it right back to him. It was a dark day in my history, and one that I am not proud of. I was spiraling down into a devious and dark world that I didn't belong in.

Eventually it got so bad that I had little choice but to remove myself from the situation. If I hadn't, who knows how far I would have let it go, and the only direction it was going was right down the toilet. Of course, I ended up walking into an even worse situation, but that's a story for another day.

So, in the end, whether it was just a symptom of the many things wrong with our partnership or the beginning of many other problems, my infidelity began the demise of my longest relationship so far. I don't want to say I regret doing it, although I am ashamed that I was capable of it. It was a necessary learning process in my evolution. I would like to think that I am a better person that to use such an act to hurt my partner, but I guess we never really know what we are capable of until we're faced with it head on.