Why Hooking Up With Girls Who Have Boyfriends Never Pays Off

Sep. 7, 2011
. Scott is a 24-year-old writer and journalist who lives in Ocean City, Maryland. You can get in touch with him ...

There have been many instances where a man has had some sort of sexual encounter with a spoken-for woman that resulted in the woman breaking off her relationship to go on and live happily ever after with “the other guy.” I’m sure it will continue to happen again and again until the world ends next year, and that kids will be born who will never have any idea that their Daddy, using his cock, snagged his wife from an unassuming dude who had no idea it was happening.

Of course this happens, but it has never been my experience. I really don’t want it to be. I’m (probably) never going to make a homewrecking attempt again.

I didn’t write those prior sentences because I want you to think I’m a good person who is against homewrecking in any moral sense, because I’m not. The way I see it is like this: If I don’t know you, and your perfectly adequate (at least physically) girlfriend is willing to engage in a pleasurable physical experience with me, then I’m not going to defer just because she has a boyfriend. Unless you’re much larger than me and I think you’re going to find out, the mere fact that you’re her significant other isn’t enough for me to miss an opportunity to put my tongue in an attractive female’s mouth. I’ve found that most guys will do, and have done, the same thing to me. Everyone wants to be wanted, and being wanted by someone who previously wanted another person is the narcissistic icing on the cake. Just because there’s a goalie in the net doesn’t mean you can’t score, right?

My reasoning for no longer homewrecking is two-fold — three-fold if you take into consideration that I no longer have any game. Statistically speaking, I am really inept at homewrecking. I’ve seen success only with my most recent attempt, but the rest have all been misses, meaning the girl did not break up with the guy because of me. One of the girls is still with her boyfriend years later, and he hasn’t got any idea she was ever unfaithful. I would bet my pog collection — including slammers — that he never will. (After I wrote that sentence, I thought, “Oh well. Ignorance is bliss,” which is a really scary thought because now I’m wondering how many times I’ve been dicked over that I don’t even know about.)

The outcome of homewrecking is negative whether it’s successful or unsuccessful. In either scenario, you’re dealing with a cheating woman. That’s always going to be somewhat dicey.

There are few things in life that feel shittier than coming to the realization that — for whatever reason — you are not good enough. This is how you’re probably going to feel after a failed attempted at a homewreck if you become emotionally invested. It’s like if you play for a basketball team and you’re sitting on the bench, just fucking around and seeing which of your fellow bench buddies can drink the most water before halftime when your coach summons you.

“Scott,” he says. “I know Bill has been playing every single minute for us for the past year-and-a-half, since right after that fall formal, you know, when he came up to me at the punch bowl and started rubbing my back and said, ‘Why don’t you give me a shot at the title, coach?’ But you know what? You’re going in there the second half. Thing is, though, you can’t tell Bill. I’m going to make some sort of excuse so he thinks there isn’t going to be a second half, and he goes home or goes to see the 68th installment of the Final Destination franchise. You can’t ever tell him that we played the second half of that game, though, okay?”

“Well, that’s not fair to Bill, but like I give a fuck. I have one thing on my mind now, and that’s getting in the game, coach,” is what you say, even though in the back of your mind you know coach is a trollop.

Then, halfway through the third quarter (when all you’ve gotten in is some lousy foreplay, not even a proper chance to prove yourself), he decides that even though Bill’s not that great at basketball and he’s always getting called for five-second violations (premature ejaculation), he’s going to go running back to him. Because he has something you don’t. He wants to get him back in the game before any more damage is done.

So that’s what it’s like when you give it a shot and it doesn’t work. You go home with nothing except, at best, a few orgasms you could’ve drummed up yourself if things got dire. This is precisely what you had before, except now you know somebody tried you out and you weren’t good enough. You had your shot, and you were inadequate.

When you succeed, however, it can be even worse.

This girl and I used to mess around at my friends’ apartment on nights when I would visit them in my old college town. She had a boyfriend. I didn’t and still don’t know him. It was fun. At the end of the sessions though, I wasn’t allowed to sleep with her. She was afraid somebody would come waltzing out of one of the bedrooms and see that she was spending her Friday night hooking up with some dude who hours before was belting out every lyric from Toto’s “Africa” with a bunch of dudes on a dance floor at a sketchy bar. I’d be clandestine about that shit, too. And she was really very good at keeping it a secret, seeing as her best friend in the world didn’t even know about it until months later when I accidentally dropped the dime.

This was fine with me, though. Getting to mess around with someone on a weekly basis and end up sleeping by yourself instead of with another person on a tiny couch? Sign me up, I thought at the time.

But then she and her beau broke up, things escalated a little bit and I developed feelings for her. Ones I hadn’t had in a while. We began spending more time together, but I began distancing myself, and here is why: Once somebody cheats on their significant other, you can never trust that they won’t do it again. For me, that information is unforgettable. As far as love crimes go, cheating is pretty high up there, right? And as far as real crimes go, murder is pretty high up there, isn’t it? Tell me: Are you going to sleep in bed with O.J. Simpson every single night for the rest of your life and never, ever have it in the back of your head that he might fucking kill you? And that guy wasn’t even convicted!

We had a conversation, and she assured me she wasn’t looking for anything serious.

“I really want to be single for a while,” she’d said.

Fast forward to a few months later, and she tells me she is spoken for again. Natch, this conversation took place through text messages, even though she used to be all about Skyping and talking on the phone. Better I find out that way than in a video chat, because she would’ve seen me starting to manufacture the voodoo doll and have some inkling where all those pricking pains have been coming from.

“That ‘I want to be single’ thing really lasted long, huh?” I sent.

She told me if she is honest with herself, she is a “relationship person who fears commitment.” In other news: Michael Vick is a dog lover and God decided to brew an earthquake near D.C. specifically so all those politicians will decide to get their heads out of their asses (because God is from Amurica, and don’t you fuckin’ forget it).

She may never cheat again. I hope she doesn’t. I agree that people change, but how is there any way to ever really know she’s not going to do the same thing to you she did to her last boyfriend? Some of you may be all about giving people second chances in regard to this. That’s where all those stories about Daddy using his wrecking balls to steal Mom come from. Just make sure you bring your A-game, Dad, because nobody is going to want to hear you whining if someday you discover you’re no longer good enough. TC mark

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image – Paulina Clemente

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  • http://www.wilfordlauren.tumblr.com Lauren Wilford

    “There are few things in life that feel shittier than coming to the realization that — for whatever reason — you are not good enough.”

    You know the sting of inadequacy. So don’t participate in a moral system that perpetuates that cruelty, whether for you or for someone else. You talk about being the other man as if it’s morally neutral, but then opine about the women you’ve cheated with being rendered tainted and untrustworthy. You were complicit in that– hell, you DID that to them. Your ethics are incredibly tangled. Yeah, it doesn’t pay off for you. But to use people for your own pleasure and then discard THEM as morally untrustworthy– that creates a despicable cycle.

    “Now I’m wondering how many times I’ve been dicked over that I don’t even know about.”

    Exactly. Why would you want to give any other human this feeling? It’s like you spend the essay trying to deny your humanity to be provocative and countercultural, but it can’t help but bite you in the ass.

    • Guest

      The cheater is entirely to blame and to think otherwise is foolish. The only mistake this guy made was to, at one point, become attached to the cheater. The murderer analogy was a bit much, but I would argue a murderer and a cheater have at least the same probably of repeating their ‘crimes’. Shit, OJ may have stolen his own memorabilia and gone to jail for it, but he didn’t kill any other white women.

  • coffeeandinternets

    Can we not with the murdering analogy?

    As a girl who has slipped up with regard to ‘love crimes’ — and is currently trying to rehabilitate — I’d like to think I have more of a chance of success in overcoming personal demons than, say, a person who kills other people.

    Let me live my dreams.

  • coffeeandinternets

    Can we not with the murdering analogy?

    As a girl who has slipped up with regard to ‘love crimes’ — and is currently trying to rehabilitate — I’d like to think I have more of a chance of success in overcoming personal demons than, say, a person who kills other people.

    Let me live my dreams.

    • http://www.wilfordlauren.tumblr.com Lauren Wilford

      Nope. You, as “the cheating woman,” are now and forever “dicey.” 

      Infidelity is just like murder in that it is a crime with a culprit and a victim.

      Duh. 

      • coffeeandinternets

        Infidelity does not, however, entail the knowing superiority of being able to deem a human life as less than and thus capable of being extinguished — trampled upon, sure, but only metaphorically. You can’t slip up and murder someone.

        I mean it’s manslaughter at best.

      • http://www.wilfordlauren.tumblr.com Lauren Wilford

        I’m on your side, girl. My comment was slathered in irony. 

      • coffeeandinternets

        Very subtle.  Hard to detect.  Never saw it coming.

        OJ would be jealous of your skill, my friend.

      • http://www.wilfordlauren.tumblr.com Lauren Wilford

        lawl.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=9383035 Scott Muska

        Ok, you’re right. That was an extreme/hyperbolic analogy. I didn’t mean to imply I was putting you in the same category as O.J.

  • Diana

    you come off as kind of a dick here, just saying.

    • http://www.nosexcity.com NoSexCity

      Might be the point, but I’m unsure.

  • Anonymous

    Whatever, they’re giving you a hard time. Sex happens, attachment happens (especially when you’re not supposed to) and falling for someone who you know is a cheater (based on the fact you committed the sin with them) is an awful, impossible feeling. I KNOW they’re impossible to be in a relationship with, but you still….

  • http://twitter.com/mung_beans 371747

    “a man has had some sort of sexual encounter with a spoken-for woman … and that kids will be born who will never have any idea that their Daddy, using his cock, snagged his wife from an unassuming dude who had no idea it was happening.”

    And the transfer of ownership is complete.

  • http://www.nosexcity.com NoSexCity

    Interesting how up in arms all these ladies are… I know I think the same thing about any guy willing to cheat on his main lady. Though I definitely have more than a few scruples with ignoring that kind of knowledge just for a roll in the hay.

  • kat

    Just because of this article, I kind of hope you get cheated on. (Jerk)

  • Catt

    I always wondered why guys still hit on the taken ladies, and now it makes sense… because they just don’t give a shit!

    That being said, I do agree that the fault lies with the cheater, regardless of gender.

  • AA

    this just happened to me. always told myself i wouldn’t mess with a girl like that then it happened. lot of fun while it lasts, then the inevitable moment of truth hits you. i didn’t really feel like i had the right to tell her she gotta lose the dude even though that’s what the corny ass movie script says is supposed to happen. maybe if i had pressed the issue but what would i have then? like, shit if you had been single when i met you we both know it would have went somewhere. but given the circumstances if this did go somewhere i know i would never trust you 100%. at least this way i know you’re liable to do something like that.

    while catching feelings probably self destructive, i don’t think i’m really in the wrong here otherwise. she made a conscious choice to start messing around with me (and it’s not like i even went after her it was pretty much her move) and i didn’t know the guy. if the girl is with a friend of yours or someone who trusts you, then by all means yeah that’s fucked up. and it takes a level of audacity that i’ve never understood to hit on a girl right in front of her boyfriend but that happens too. 

    i’m sure it’s the fact that she’s cheating that makes it enticing or exciting or whatever..so it ends up being a pretty intense thing, and that makes it easy to look at it as something it’s not and should never be

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=599425988 Veronica Carr

    What’s the big deal about cheating? It’s not murder. It’s not hard for me to see that ONE person might not satisfy ALL your desires and needs even if you like them a lot or love them.

    • E.M.

      I believe that most people take umbrage at the dishonesty of it . If one is upfront about one’s desire to fuck more than one person at a time, then one’s partners can make informed decisions as to whether or not they want to share. If one is duplicitous and secretive, however, then emotional hurt can ensue.

  • Vectorpete

       It’s because no one really knows what’s going to happen in the future OR knows all too well what HAS happened in the past.  So you hedge with other potential possibilities.  And also you can control current involvements with potential others depending on the insecurities of the participants. I was clueless about all this for a long time until my gf would repeatedly flip out at another woman even looking at me as proofl of me wanting leave her.  It sickened me to suddenly realize how insecure she felt. 

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