My initial story for The Drive Home series detailed the first time I had an affair while married to my ex-husband. Although I haven’t researched the proper term, having an “affair” seems like an ongoing event—something long term. Simply cheating on your partner can be either an affair or one-nighter. It’s all infidelity, I know; but shouldn’t there be a term just for stepping out on your marital vows when it’s just a one time event? We’ll just call it being unfaithful.
Unfaithful (adj.) - engaging in sexual relations with a person other than one’s regular partner in violation of a promise or understanding.
When you’re unfaithful, it may be emotional, physical, or both. With the chef, it was a physical affair with no heartfelt emotions attached. One might conclude that emotion was involved in the excitement of sexual tension, but it wasn’t romantic by any means. It was merely the draw of being desired that resulted in sex. And I’m okay with that. As we previous discussed, sex can be strictly physical, with no emotional attachments; and that’s what it was. Understand, I do not condone unfaithfulness; but we’ve all done things for our own reasons. That’s what we call life.
The next person on the infidelity list was also solely physical and absolutely did not involve any amorous emotions. The story is shorter, but the implication of a marital violation is still immense. “So why did you continue to cheat on your husband?” The short answer is: I don’t know. I can’t go back and ask that girl why she even got married in the first place—let alone ask why she stepped out sexually on her relationship so many times thereafter.
All I can do is write about it for you… which brings me to Cary. We will use the name Cary because it can be either masculine or feminine—which his actual name was. I had no sexual attraction for Cary, who worked in the Food & Beverage division at the hotel where I worked. Yes, this was during the time I had an affair with Finn, the hotel chef. This was a one time event and I desperately tried to purge it from my memory—but, here we are writing about it.
Let’s start from the beginning…