Dear Secret Blogger,
Yesterday I read your post and I have to say, I was impressed with your bravery. Not many people would stick their neck on the line and say that they think sleeping with another woman’s husband is a good thing, something we should be thanking you for.
I will be honest with you, I did take to twitter to voice my opinions on this piece. I had to put it out there that I felt this post was not a positive one, and not one I expected to see promoted to a readership of parents, especially ones who may currently be dealing with infidelity and its after effects.
I was told by the @tots100 twitter person that they were not promoting your lifestyle choices, but supporting the fairness of free speech.
So in order for me to express my ideas (and one that you may not agree with), I would like to tell you a little story.
A good few years ago there was a young girl called Kate*. She lived in a very loving home with her Mum, Dad and two younger brothers. She rode horses each weekend and, even though we teased her about it, she still like to take 3 Carebears to bed with her each evening.
Since the age of 6, her family would go to their summer home in Cornwall for three weeks during the school holidays. Her and her brothers would spend every waking hour hanging off their fathers every word. He was their hero. He taught them how to crab, how to bodyboard, how to build fires on the beach. I was always so jealous of those holidays.
He was a hard-working man, but always made it home for two family dinners week. Sundays were filled with a family walk and a huge roast dinner. Kate’s mum’s cooking always bought people together. As she put the food on the table Kate’s dad would open the wine, always pouring his wife a glass first and saying she deserved it for how well she looked after him.
Just after Kate started senior school things changed. Her father was home less and less for family dinners. Sundays were not the same, her dad always seamed to be preoccupied. Their family walks were often canceled due to her father having to ‘pop out’.
She noticed her Mum looked tired too, and she was sure that sometimes she could hear her crying in the bathroom when she was in bed.
Then one, nondescript, Thursday afternoon Kate came home from school to be told by her mother that her dad would no longer be living in their house. That he was moving into a hotel. That life as they knew it was over.
Her mother, unable to hide her emotions anymore, broke down in Kate’s arms. She had no one other to turn to than her 13 year old daughter. She poured her heart out, telling Kate how her dad had been having dinner with a lady from his office on the nights he said he was working late. He had been having an affair. On the times he said he was working away he was really in a hotel with her. That he had told his wife he loved her more as a friend these days than a wife.
Now, secret blogger, I don’t know if you can remember being 13, but its a horrible age. You don’t know where you fit in the world at the best of times, but throw a marriage break down and your mother falling apart into the mix and it really can mess with your head.
The Care-bears when straight in the bin, they were a present from her loving father after all. A man she now felt she didn’t know. Her hero who was now a villain.
Kate’s teenage years went by in a blur of weekend visits to her dad’s, now in a lovely apartment but a broken man living with the shame and guilt of what he had done, and mopping up the tears of her mother who now, unable to trust anyone, was a lonely and bitter lady lacking the drive to be a positive role model for her children.
In her adult years Kate’s bed hopping made her realised she had issues with men, and she knew she had to ask her Dad the question that had been burning away in her head for so long.
Why?
Why did you hurt my mum? Why did you ruin my childhood? Why did you let me down?
There were tears, confessions and once again an overwhelming about of guilt. Her father told her that he was bored in his marriage. That things had become stale and repetitive. That he found a lady in his office that he clicked with and got caught up in the moment. He said he wished she had rejected him, or a least not pursed him. That he was weak and took what he saw as the easy option. A way to have the best of both worlds. He said he never wanted his wife to find out, that he had never planned to leave. He just wanted to put some spice back in his life.
But he did get caught, and he had no choice but to leave, and the ‘other woman’ didn’t want anything serious, so she walked away too.
He lost everything, and she moved on to her next married man.
Now, I’m not judging your life choices. I know many people who have, in one way or another, got involved with married men. It happens.
What I take offense to is your brazen attitude that we should be thankful for this. We should see your infidelity as a public service.
If my husband felt trapped/bored/dissatisfied our marriage I feel he is two options. Talk to me about it or leave and make a new life of his own. There is no option 3. There is no ‘stay with me for the nice home, children and cooked meals and find some other woman to get your kicks from’.
You say you have children. How would feel, if when they grow up, someone cheats on your daughter or you lose access to your grandchildren as your son has an affair and divorces his wife?
I admire how you make your life work to suit your needs, that you have the balls to go out there and think ‘bollocks to the haters’.
What I don’t admire however is how, in order to do that, you have to risk the happiness of adults and children you have never met, people who have never done anything wrong towards you, and how you feel this is something that we, as the married female population, should be thanking you for.
I hope all works out for you and life makes you happy. I just hope it’s not my husband you are sleeping with.
An Essex Wife
*Kate’s name has been changed to protect my friends identity, as I am aware some people who know me in ‘real life’ do read my blog.
