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Infidelity versus integrity and integrity wins!
By P.D. Reader
Last updated on Sep 16, 2023
When my four-month emotional affair with a married man ended, I wish I could tell you I went triumphantly on, met the love of my life, got happily married now, and life morphed into something wonderful.
No, that did not happen.
Instead, here I am, observing the onrush of old age with apprehension. Alone.
Here's why I passed up the opportunity to restart an emotional affair.
1. The six years after the affair ended were brutal.
It took me 5 years to finally understood he was never coming back, despite the fact he reported that marriage counseling had been a bust three years ago and had tried to see me platonically at that time. "Platonically," I know how long that would have lasted!
The truth was, I didn’t trust myself after four years. I knew he was unhappy, and he could have been happier with me, and I could have been happier with him. How much happier, though. That’s a very debatable question.
How long before I would have started working on him? Oh, come on. You know you aren’t happy with your wife. Oh, that would have been a disaster.
The reason I know this is I had a passing interest in astrology for quite some time. When I started speaking to my affair partner again, I started looking up our charts. What I saw was so accurate I began an intense study of astrology.
What it showed me was an entire string of transits told the story of a very destructive affair that would end up wrecking the lives of all three people. All because I felt entitled to force another person into the healing he should choose be doing.
2. I was trying to raise my self-esteem by “saving” someone else.
Sometimes the healing of another person is like a flower opening. If we force it, we destroy the flower.
Therefore, if we want to see the flower blossom into beauty, we have to leave the flower alone and let it bloom in its own time.
Even if we won’t be there to see it, and the flower ends up blooming for someone else.
I tried to hang around and wait for him to bloom. After all, I wasn’t idle. I had a ton of my own inner child work to do, and it took me six years to do it.
And you know, six years is a long time to wait for a flower to bloom.
He might have been like the kurinji plant, which takes twelve years to bloom. Would this guy even remember me in twelve years? Probably not.
In the meantime, I saw cheaters spill intimate details of their encounters and fantasies. Maybe these episodes are ways of getting back at a spouse they believe has failed them. Maybe they are ways of feeling free. Maybe they aren't.
3. Would I want to do this to someone I care about?
When I finally decided to tell him how I felt, I did so for two reasons.
First, he was obsessed with his wife and watched her every little twitch, I figured nothing I said would disturb that dynamic. I’d probably be told I was inappropriate and get frozen out. That didn’t happen.
Second, he had such low self-worth. He knew I’d had a good marriage before my ex passed away, so if I said he was desirable and lovable, he’d probably believe I was telling the truth.
If I wanted the guy to feel better about himself, well … how much better would he have felt about himself after a furtive coupling in a car someplace? Hiding our dishonesty from other people?
We might miss each other forever, or we might not, but at least we’re two people who didn’t push each other to damage ourselves emotionally. If we can’t have love, at least we’ve still got our pride.
When you break up an illicit relationship, you can savor your integrity.
I may have denied us a chance at a relationship, but I think preserving his marriage and my integrity was a far more loving thing to do.
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P.D. Reader is a level one student in the NCGR School of Astrology, but her work focuses on spirituality, lifestyle, and relationship topics. She runs Unfaithful: Perspectives on the Third-Party Relationship Medium.
This article was originally published at Medium.com. Reprinted with permission from the author.