Want A Strong Marriage? Avoid These 6 Easy Mistakes That Preceded My Affair

Affairs are rarely spontaneous.

They are a slow series of little choices. Unresolved conflicts led to turning away from my spouse, and toward another. Making negative comparisons of my spouse to my affair partner.

The first secrets are small until they aren’t.

Turning away from your partner is the biggest mistake you can make in a relationship.

We make bids for connection all the time to the people around us. Over years of marriage, I turned away from my husband more and more often.

Some of these were unintentional, where I just missed the bid. But the ones that were most devastating was when I rejected his bids for connection. Too busy playing games, scrolling my phone, and not in the mood for TV, sexual intimacy, or conversation. Out-of-town work, and the anxiety of the pandemic further created a divide between us. Instead of relying on each other, I pushed further away.

When my spouse asked for intimate photos, I refused to send any. When he asked to talk on the phone, I was busy playing games or on social media. I blamed him for my loneliness being home with our kids, and for the stress of the pandemic.

The stress was only temporary, but the turning away lead me further down the path away from my husband.

Rejection breeds resentment which leads to unresolved conflicts.

My husband and I were excellent at avoiding conflict. It made us seem as if we had a perfect relationship because there was no fighting.

No conflict, actually means you hold those minor annoyances and frustrations instead. We both perceived rejection by each other. When we held these small displeasures, they festered. Eventually they turned into resentments that we held onto dearly, which caused me to further push away. He was a jerk, I told myself, always angry and didn’t want to be around me.

I met someone during this time, my future affair partner. When we first met, he was just this fun, exciting guy who wanted to play games with me. And someone who would listen to me while I expressed my upset with my husband and distracted me from the anxiety of the pandemic.

This man made me feel good, when everything in my life felt bad, which led me further away from my husband and our good marriage.

My new friend was exciting, fun, and desirable.

Everything my husband was not. He wanted to spend time with ME, when my husband was busy with work or napping.

We bonded over gaming and flirting over text and chat via the gaming network. The flirting especially was exciting for me, as I felt like a boring, unsexy stay-at-home parent. I made (unfair) comparisons of my husband to this other man. My husband wanted to nap, but this man wanted my time and attention. My husband was mean, and this man was funny and sweet.

I started thinking about my affair partner more often and my husband less. When I thought of my affair partner, he was perfect. With my husband, I only saw his negatives.

Comparison isn’t the thief of joy, it’s the thief of happiness between spouses, and the next step down the path of infidelity.

This is really when the affair began, when I became emotionally attached to another man.

We had so much more in common and he was so much more exciting than my spouse. We had way more in common with playing games, which my husband never wanted to do.

And since my husband was away, my affair partner was the perfect person to confide in about the struggles of parenting during the pandemic. To which he kindly praised me, telling me I was an excellent mother. I would also tell him all the awful things my husband did. My affair partner would tell me that relationships rarely recovered from such awful circumstances. Setting the stage for me to detach from my husband and attach to someone I had never even seen in a photograph.

Confiding my affair partner wasn’t the first betrayal of my spouse. The first was rejecting him, but confiding in my affair partner was where the affair began. I stopped investing in my marriage and turned that energy toward the other man.

Becoming the confident of a hurting person gives the perfect opportunity to someone to become your perfect partner.

When you know a person’s frustrations and joys, you can cater to their needs.

I had a lot of complaints about my husband. Smoking, porn, working too much, watching too much television, napping every day, and not helping me around the house.

My affair partner carefully noted all of them. When I expressed my frustration, he sympathized. And during our chats, he would tell me he would never do what my husband did. My affair partner did his own laundry, cleaned the kitchen after cooking, and once we were together, he’d never watch porn or TV. We’d have a perfect life together.

Giving him all my annoyances, opened the door for him to be perfect. Affairs are total fantasy life where you don’t have to live in real life. Of course, I could pretend everything was amazing with another man, because I never had to face his dirty underwear or dishes.

I was in love, which meant I couldn’t share anything about life with my spouse anymore.

Everything about my life was now a secret.

Who I was talking with while I gamed. Who I was texting with at night when I put our youngest to bed.

I couldn’t confide in my husband. Although if I had at any point during this cascade, I would have saved us a ton of hurt. I was far too excited and in love, obsessed with my affair partner to even think about my husband any longer. I would no longer allow my husband the opportunity to be present for me in our relationship.

Secrets, even small ones, were a tiny bomb in my relationship. If I could have been vulnerable with my spouse, I wouldn’t have justified my emotional attachment to another man. Secrets start out small, but even small ones cause ruin.

When you keep a small secret, eventually you will keep big ones.

Often during our marriage, I’d fantasize about being happier with someone else.

I always thought I’d never act on it. A lot of life circumstances left me vulnerable to allowing myself to choose someone else. Affairs aren’t spontaneous, they are a slow series of choices of turning away and hiding from your spouse.

Being vulnerable and seeing the moments of connection have been a blessing in my life now.