Yes! You are.
According to the volume 17 in Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom, one Buddhist Bible, there are
metaphors of desire like
color, sound, smell, taste, and touch which people keep pursuing without hesitance.
However, people are ignorant of what the
great torments or harm might occur caused by endless desires. It is said that
the desires do not bring a fruitful result but a delusion. It ends suddenly and
goes nowhere like in a dream in which what happens is not real and disappears
right after one wakes up. The quest of desires should be stopped and then
sorrows or regrets will be gone but peace remains only.
Rarely are “extramarital affairs” apparently entered into without
conflict or even distress (Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Psychology Today, September 18, 2012). There is not yet a road map
for how to have successful open relationships, and a majority of married people
remain sexually monogamous during their marriages.
Feeling
more liberated and exciting rather than guilty and stressful
I
wasn’t fatalistic but believed I could enjoy the fruit of endless efforts on my
hard work. I was also confident of that my self-image as a good husband and
father was important to me.
I
was immune from infidelity, which was not a foreign
topic to me or others. I was one of the followers who deeply believe in the
practicality and benefits of monogamy. I gave that hearty laughs when some of
my friends said, “Don’t be so sure that you won’t be tempted by an affair because
you have a good marriage and good husband’s quality.”
I wondered why people were willingly to take such risks -- to have
extramarital affairs. How could one indulge in this ridiculous and awkward
circumstance?
Then I understood it is because they believe they are worth the
risk because I’ve going through this.
She intrigued me right away at first sight and we just
hit it off. I did not know why this happened to me. How could it be possible that
I was into someone that much swiftly? I started dating her without regret at
what I was doing but longing for. I was aware this was not
a regular occurrence.
I
was not one going after beauty or youth. I did notice the plumpness of youth
was long gone in her cheeks. How could a woman grow more beautiful with age
when the wrinkles on the forehead and around the eyes, and the subtle lines around
her mouth? She wasn’t trendy but I could tell she had her own sense of style
indeed.
I like
the way she feels free to sit cross-legged on the sofa when she is sitting next
to me and laughs the easy laughs at what the lousy jokes I make up or sharing raw
secrets with me. Besides, her humor is captivating, which I adore very much.
In
the beginning, I wondered if it was only a short affair like what people talked
about. I promised her I won’t let whatever occurred put her off finding a
once-in-a-lifetime kind of love or if she decides to go. However, she seemed to give me her love without holding anything
back. I knew there was a mystery and intimate connection of sex or emotional intimacy between her and me.
We do not live together but I stay with her for two days when I am
on business trips every other week in her city. She has no living
family besides me, and always looks forward to my visits. Whenever I meet her, I definitely feel my spirits lift and
it seems to me that time stands still on the right moment. It is not what
people say is instant happiness or physical desires in such a
relationship between both of us.
Once
I felt desperate to hear her voice and called her during my sleepless small
hours, I heard her voice clogged with tears – apparently revealing sadness. I
asked her why she was crying and she pushed my question aside and answered my
question with a question – if I was okay. Have I been creating a mirage of hope
to stay with her, which makes her stick to the actually hopeless relationship?
Avoidance
never was one of my defenses against the trouble, but I chose it then.
I convince myself that the fewer reminders of what is forbidden, the better.
Matter-of-factly, both of us know thoroughly but keep it in the back of the
mind that it is a dead-end relationship.
Lacking
for an opportunity for regaining a well relationship after going through an
infidelity
I
present myself on the outside as I always do when I am falling apart on the
inside. I’ve felt split in two, beyond doubt. I am
surprised to learn how good I am at bounceback between the double lives I am
leading. I know I put myself over the limit across the invisible line
existing in a committed marriage.
There is no denying that hurting my wife or my children is the last
thing in the world I intend to do. When she complains about my absence of
family events, I convince her that the opportunity working in
different cities gives me more flexibility, more perks, and higher income.
Besides, I get special dispensation from work if needed. She seems to accept
it.
I
pay as much my attention to my wife as I used to. And, there haven’t been
issues which leave me or my wife dissatisfied before or after the affair, which
eventually I was tempted into.
Sometimes,
I feel I’ve been guided by feeling rather than thoughts and what I have tried
to push away rises in my mind when I am at home. I never disable the text
notice on the cell phone. I should. But, I welcome a text alert my cell phone
trills with because I know it must be from her. I am not one feeling texting
awkward and slow anymore. Giving me more time, I become kind of proficient in scrolling
through the message box.
I
keep my cell phone in my pocket most of time and that allows me immediately to
retrieve it from the pocket if she texts me. While reading the messages, I feel
my heart racing with thrill and anxiety, the heightened emotions apparently I feel
but I pretend normal in front of my wife.
I’m
living a life that is so much more complicated than the one I used to expect
myself to lead, which I’d mulled over the plans in advance. How could what happened to me have changed eternally the way I used to feel about everything
in such a short time?
Will
my obsessive desire to be with her be gone for good like the intimate relationship
between my wife and me?
Will
she leave me for good since she’s been offered a chance at freedom to pick up a
right guy to accompany her all the time not like me sporadically only?
Those
thoughts are clogging my brain and I can hear her whispers in my head. Work’s
become an outlet for me and I work with every attempt at the point of
exhaustion.
Being
impossible to repair the damage of infidelity done
My
current situation does make me feel like living fully just thinking the happy moments
with her. It makes my old days stand out as ordinary and bit of boring in
comparison. But somehow there is something else. It seems very wrong at the
heart of me, which I am feeling jittery. It comes a growing terror that my
children surely judge for what I’ve done, who are always first in my heart. The
weight of that feeling becomes heavier for me to carry on every day of my life.
On
the one hand I don’t know how to get over the guilty of betrayal, and on the
other hand there is not a sign of lingering remorse in my heart about the affair.
Anxiety wells up more often, intense and overwhelming and I can’t shake off the
haunting memories of her but think about her nonstop. That keeps me awake. Since
I was born a poor sleeper, all these make the insomnia and anxiety my
companions. But, I hide those well not been noticed by my wife.
I
behave as a good husband and do what my wife asks me to do. Besides, I have an
eagerness to please her. Hopefully, that lessens the weight on my shoulders of
having an affair with another woman. I know the morality
between my wife and me is all a façade, but my wife
just doesn’t get the picture yet.
Am
I ready for a new phase in my life? My inability to act out a new life or turn
back into my former life, which completely changed forever and no longer exists,
is obvious.
What
if my wife finds out? It is true that the chances of my affair will be exposed
somehow unless I am able to end it before it is too late. I do realize it is the
correctness of this decision. I’ve also had lots of practice of scenarios about
it and imagine whatever domino effect this will cause.
Feeling
full momentarily and remaining eternally
It
was ironic he did not ask her name but called her “kid” like her grandma did,
who was his neighbor. He comforted her while she was crying and missing her
parents, offering her a ride on the way to his college. He gave her cheek a
quick peck whenever he picked up or dropped her with a big smile for the whole
semester until she moved back to live with her parents in the south. She was 15
and he was 21. He just doesn’t remember it, but this has stayed with her for such a
long time. When the day comes, she assures herself that her farewell will be light
and airy since she has all her memories of him. It is the best to put their
mind at rest.
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