For whatever reason, I have always been the girl that guys talk to. Like really talk to. I think it’s because I don’t have this princess complex lots of girls have, I don’t make them put on airs about who they are and what they want in my presence just because I have a vagina. The result of this is that I’m privy to the details of my friends and coworkers and acquaintances’ marriages that women as a whole are really unfamiliar with, and I have two things to say about that: way more men cheat than I ever imagined, and I can’t really blame them.
It seems to me that there is a huge disparity between what women want and what makes them happy and what men want and what makes them happy. Women want the title and the image: a fancy wedding, a big house. Men want the physical stuff, however shallow it seems: sex and someone who makes them feel desired.
After knowing such a high percentage of men who were habitually cheating on their wives, and not really feeling like the were doing anything wrong (the wife has what’s important to her, the husband has what’s important to him) it’s no surprise I ended up in the other woman role myself.
I met Pete when we were at a popular vacation spot a few hours from the metropolitan area where we both live. He was there with a group of his hot-dad friends and I was there for a girls weekend with a large group of my own friends. It was a once a year bender for him, and a regular Saturday night for me. But that’s probably why he was so bold.
We met at the bar and he invited me back to his hotel room so we could all get high and continue drinking after the bar closed. His wife hated when he smoked, he told me. It was “a relief” to be away.
When we talked, he got so excited, like he hadn’t had any brain stimulation in months. He couldn’t stop complimenting me, how I liked to have fun, how I wasn’t uptight, how I was dressed up for the occasion. The reality of all of this made me really hate his wife.
As his friends began to pass out, we went for a walk by the water. We sat by the waves and had this moment of intense connection that can only end in a deep kiss. Of all the guys I’ve ever hooked up with, this was the most fun of them all. He was hungry to not be dead inside, the way you are when you’re a certain kind of middle-aged married man. I am the kind of extrovert that can’t help but put her foot in her mouth regularly, but at the price of bleeding the kind of exuberance these men crave.
When he was inside me, he burst out laughing, he was so happy. He was a kid in a candy store and his obvious happiness and the 10+ years of sexual experience he had on me made the night insanely good. We ditched our friends and had crazy sex all weekend alternating between weed and scotch. We kept in touch when we went home and he comes over about once a week to hook up while we’re on our lunch breaks. It’s the best relationship: all fun, no drama.
It’s pretty laughable when I hear women talk about how evil “homewreckers” are. It’s not just Pete, it’s not even just his whole group of married friends that I’ve become close with, it’s the collective feeling of every guy I know that their wives bait and switched them. Like, they just don’t care about their husbands. I don’t get it. Who would choose to get caught up in the stress of life and kids and home life when you could just as easily choose to still be fun and zesty?
Honestly, why wouldn’t you cheat on someone who became stale and monotonous and was constantly trying to turn you into the same? Women want to live this suburban Leave It To Beaver life, when no one in their right mind would be interested in that. Affairs are the consequences of your actions if you leave everything to be desired. It’s not shocking or evil, it’s a symptom of a disease you yourself are a part of creating. 
