Why do you sleep with married men then blame them for cheating?

 

The Question: A few years ago I got out of a terrible relationship (he cheated, was abusive, alcoholic) and at the time I moved into a house with a good friend. In the house lived 4 guys and we all became very close. One man in particular I became very close with. Within 2 months of me living there we hooked up but nothing serious. He is 9 years older than me and I just wasn’t in a place to get involved. As time went on we became even closer. We talked on the phone on our way to work; we would email all day long and then talk on the way home from work. Once I was back to my place, I would go up to his place and we would cook dinner together and hangout and talk all night long.

After a few months the attraction between was got the best of me and we hooked up again. When I said I was ready to sleep with him, he wouldn’t sleep with me because he knew we didn’t want the same things (he wanted to be together and I just wasn’t ready). After that we stay very close and continued “playing house” (cooking every night, going away together, spending our weekends together) without any physical relationship. I also dated other people as did he, but I assumed we would eventually be together or just be very good friends.

The next year I had 2 new roommates move in, both female, and I told them right off the bat that he was off limits. That we had something and that I really cared about him. One of the new girls and I did not get along right off the bat, and it turns out that she started seeing him but never told me. I was furious. Not because they were hooking up, but because I felt betrayed and embarrassed.

Fast forward 2 years. I have sense moved out of that place, but remained very close with the guys who live there. The old roommate and the one guy are still together. When he and I see each other we still flirt like crazy and just genuinely care about each other. I have assumed they will get married and closed that chapter in my life. However, I went over there last week to visit and things got a bit out of control. A bunch of us were hanging out and the old roommate/girlfriend was not there. We were drinking and having a great time.

I noticed that the guy was being overly affectionate (playing with my hair, hugging me, always getting me a drink ect.), but thought nothing of it. At one point he even walked over to me and kissed me on the mouth. As the night went on people slowly began to go to bed. I asked this friend if I could just crash on his couch and he said no problem (I have done this a million times; I used to always do it when I lived there as he had air-conditioning in the summer and I didn’t). The second everyone was gone he came over to me and I thought he wanted to dance. Instead he pushed me onto his bed and started kissing me.

At first I kissed back, but then realized what I was doing and stopped. He made a comment like “This is our last chance”. We then talked about it for a while and he told me this is something we should have done 3 years ago. I agreed with him, but I also said “aren’t you practically married?” (On a side note, at 35 he will be moving in with her in 1 month and this is the first girl he has ever lived with. She is 25). He said he was practically married but that he needed to know that he wasn’t missing out on me. I agreed with him, I also needed to know that I hadn’t made a huge mistake years ago. Kissing led to much more but we stopped. I decided I needed to leave and as I was leaving things got super heated and we ended up sleeping together.

The sex wasn’t bad, but I didn’t feel fireworks. Afterwards we just laid there together. I asked him what he would do when I left in the morning, because she would still be there. He answered saying that we were friends who did what was natural to us and had it not been that night it would have happened another night. That we would always share this and when we’re in a room together and we make eye contact we’ll never forget it.

Here’s the thing, I don’t feel bad about sleeping with him. I agree this is something I needed to know. I don’t feel guilty, or like “the other woman” and I certainly don’t want to date him. My question is, why do guys cheat. In this situation he has had a girlfriend for 2 years, he is moving in with her and says he is practically married to her. So why, on this particular night did he decide he would chat on her. It actually makes me angry that he did. Granted I contributed to this fact, but he initiated it. So why do guys do this when they have a good thing?

The question is, why did this guy cheat? Having been cheated on myself, I think some guys do it bc they are freaking out in their current situations. This guy is 35 and is moving in with a girl for the first time??? This girl was someone he cared about an obviously had wanted a relationship with. Maybe he did this so he could move forward with his current relationship and not ever wonder about “what could have been”…maybe the OP felt the same way.

|Age: 27

Ahhhhhh…..now I get it.

I’ll preface my response with a story.

I played softball years ago with a group of people. One woman on the team and I became friends. She, like me, was the youngest of 5 girls and from Boston. She also lost her father when she was very young. Red Flag #1.

So one night she goes away on business with a co-worker she had been crushing on. A married co-worker. She comes back and she tells me that she had slept with him. She then told me that she went to his office that morning to say Hi, but what she really wanted was to get a look of any pictures he may have had in his office of his wife.  Red Flag #2.

Then, a few weeks later, she and I were out for drinks. Some guy approached me and started talking to me. He walked away for a minute, and she mentioned that she thought he was cute. I really couldn’t care either way about him.  But I didn’t tell her that because I was still feeling him out. He came back with a beer for me, we chatted a bit, I wasn’t all that interested but, again, I didn’t tell her that. I asked her to watch my purse as I went upstairs to speak to another friend. I came back down 15 minutes later and she’s gone. My purse was sitting in the middle of the floor. Red Flag #3.

She proceeded to call me daily at work and at home. I didn’t answer. I knew why she was calling, and I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. When I finally did answer a few days later, she was all “Oh my God…are you, like, mad at me?” I asked her why she’d ask that. Which is what you should do when you know someone feels guilty for something. She said she thought I was mad about her taking that guy home. She fucked him, she said. No, I said. I didn’t even know you left with him.

I was just pissed you left my purse on the floor. Her flat response spoke volumes. “Oh” she said. That’s when I realized that she wanted me to be angry. But I wasn’t, since I didn’t want the guy in the first place.But she wanted the satisfaction of feeling as though I was hurt that that guy chose her over me. That’s why she did it. That’s why she wanted to see pictures of the married co-worker’s wife. She wanted to see if she was prettier than her so she could think he would eventually choose her over the wife.

Another night she and I went to a Corporate Challenge, which was a marathon type event held every month for professionals in Manhattan. We walked in to the bar and looked for seats. As we walked towards the end of the bar she said to me, without even turning her head my way, “Do you ever notice how many guys look at you when you walk in to a bar?”

Right then, I ended the friendship in my mind. Her needs were too great. Her issues were obvious to everyone but her and she was never going to change.

The woman who submitted this letter to me was basically trying to get me or anyone else to soothe her ego after the guy didn’t immediately break up with his girlfriend. She needs to believe that she so haunted this guy that he needed to clear her out of his system before he could ever love anyone else fully and completely. She expected him to be torn or conflicted. When he wasn’t, she was hurt. She wanted to hear he was having second thoughts, that things weren’t working with his girlfriend, etc.

But the thing to remember about women like this is that this isn’t simply about competition. No, this isn’t merely a case of one woman wanting to “beat” another. The woman who wrote this letter, and women like her, are not actually competing with other women. They are competing with their own self-esteem and sense of self-worth. The only person they are trying to prove something to is themselves. They need to believe that they are so special/important/interesting/worthwhile because there’s this little voice in the back of their head that tells them every day that they aren’t. That voice is who women like this are competing against.

They need to believe that they somehow defeated that voice in their head. Only that voice is never silenced, and this behavior continues. Every time they are not “chosen” they become more determined. Which means their behavior and the routes they take to be the victor become more severe and more desperate.

They will not stop until they become The Chosen One.  Whether it’s breaking up a marriage, destroying another woman’s relationship or fighting for attention with a man’s young daughter.

They will not accept second place.