I read that most affairs are about validation and ego. that most affairs would not happen if we were all secure little entities, capable of finding validation through other means, perhaps healthier means, and when I say healthier I say this only because when I speak of affairs here, I am speaking not of those who are single and out having multiple relationships as single people do and have a right to, but to those who are married and have made vows, depending on religion and custom, to perhaps forsake all others as they say, to put all the eggs here, to promise yourself to one man, one woman and to really mean it. to say “until death do us part” and know that when you walk down that aisle, when you say the words I will or I do, that this is the last person you will ever bed down with. It’s a scary business to some, but to others, it comes naturally. There are no questions asked, it is a simple equation. I forsake all others not because I believe monogamy is perhaps natural or not, depending on species, though maybe it is, but because I know that I have had enough experience to know that what I have found with you (whomever that may be, dear reader) and that I do not a. wish to hurt you, b. wish to jeopardize this good thing, and c. perhaps cheapen myself and wake up one day wondering who the hell I am and why did I sell out so cheap.
I speak and write from experience, and I speak now from what I have read and researched for years in an effort to understand why it is that people have affairs. There are many types of affairs, as we well know. There is the much debated “cyber affair” that some people believe does not qualify, since no actual physical contact is made and it’s all words over a phone or DSL line, so it doesn’t count. There’s the one-night stand, which we will hear “meant nothing”, which is likely true for the person who did the doing and certainly not true for the spouse on the receiving or discovering end of the one-night stand because I can pretty much guarantee you that to that person, it will mean everything. There is the several months long fling, the long-term, many years affair, there is the emotional affair which is never physically consummated yet is so emotionally intense that the bond with the so-called lover and the emotional relationship not only drains the marriage, but is betrayal of the highest order because intimacy is shared with someone other than to whom is was promised.
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