Having An Affair: Words of Caution

“Where The Hell Were You?”

An alibi is the proof that you did do what you didn’t do so that others will think you didn’t do what you did.

—Evan Esar

A love affair takes up time. Sooner or later, there will come to someone an awareness that all of the hours of the day do not seem to have been accounted for. First of all, it is wise never to start the habit of accounting for all of your time. If you are known to wander in art galleries, then you wander in art galleries until you are all wandered out, however long that takes.

Second, you make a point of keeping those time commitments that you do make. Ordinarily, you might come home on a working day anytime between five and seven, which as the French know are the prime times for various kinds of assignations. However, if you say you will be home at five for some reason, then on that day (and that day only), you should be.

Third, when your alibi is in doubt, you do not offer an explanation unasked, but you do offer substantiating evidence. A woman who goes shopping comes home with things she has bought. Sometimes, they were bought three days in advance, in which case she is careful with the sales slips. A woman who has seen a movie has seen a movie, but perhaps, it was on Tuesday afternoon rather than Thursday.

 

GOLLY, HOW THE TRUTH WILL OUT

The best laid schemes o’mice and men Gang aft a-gley.

—Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”

And women too, however they were laid.

Even with exquisite care and planning, accidental revelations do happen. A husband who is away on a three-day business trip never leaves town because of a problem with the plane’s engine. A busy executive who is never home before seven comes home at three with a migraine. When you should not have been missed, you find that everyone has been frantic to reach you because your mother is ill. A water main bursts in the basement, but you don’t notice because you are not there when you ordinarily should have been, and you return to find that the entire basement is completely flooded and you have no explanation for your absence.

If you are going to have an affair, you must realize that no matter how discreet you are, it is always possible for an unforeseen circumstance to lead to an inadvertent exposure of your activities.

 

MISTAKES, MISFORTUNES, AND DEAD GIVEAWAYS

Beware the man with Lover’s eyes.
He knows your heart; he feels your cries; He seeks the guile in your disguise
Then strips your soul and sees your lies; They never close, those Lover’s eyes.

—Jadah Vaughn, “Lover’s Eyes”

With a little thought and planning, being discreet enough to deceive most of the people most of the time is not difficult. Being discreet enough to deceive a really attentive man or a lover’s incessantly suspicious wife may be almost impossible.

One consequence of being in love is a passionate interest in the other person and in all of the details about that man or woman. A man who is in love with you really looks at you, studies you, memorizes you. All of the little details about you are of consuming interest, which is all very nice but which in the end can be very difficult.

There was once a young lady who was having an affair with her boss and who, like many before her, found a long lunch hour a perfect occasion for what they called a matinee. In the same office was a smitten coworker who had amorous aspirations of his own but who had not been successful.

One day, she came back from lunch on time—cool, poised, and well- groomed—and he looked at her with a significant look and stomped out of the room in a huff. It was only much later that she uncovered how her admirer could “know” about her matinee with such certainty. This was the era before panty hose. Before lunch, a small run was to be seen in her left stocking; after lunch, the little run had mysteriously run to the right leg.

One wife who had assembled herself in haste out of a state of dishabille was chagrined to notice her husband noticing her slip—which just happened to be on inside out.

One young husband rummaged in his wife’s purse for a package of matches. He found, to his mortification, a package of condoms: Trojans, to be precise. Since he had gotten a vasectomy the previous year, he was not amused. Her attempts to explain away the evidence were rather thin.

The best protection from such incriminating mistakes is the protection of time and distance. Anyone involved in an extramarital affair is in most danger when the tryst is in too close proximity to the domestic scene. It is best to set aside or leave enough time to have a shower and change clothes before resuming the daily round.

Alas, this is a luxury which may mean that you see your lover on fewer occasions.

 

Discreet Indiscretions

Be discreet in all things, and so render it unnecessary to be mysterious about any.

—Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

If you decide to have an affair and to keep it a secret, take yourself seriously. If you want to write letters, texts or e-mails—and that is an important part of many friendships and love affairs especially when one cannot be in daily contact—then rent a mailbox or use a private e-mail address your partner can’t access.

If you want to keep letters or endearing Hallmark cards, as most people do, rent a safety deposit box. If you have a key to his apartment, put it on a separate key chain and keep it out of sight. Pretend, in other words, that you are your own detective on your own trail and try to be a difficult subject.

Your worst problem in managing an affair is the disruption of your known habits. If you always shop for groceries on Wednesday, then not getting groceries on a Wednesday is a cause for comment. The more you establish yourself as an erratic person with an erratic routine, the more freedom you have. This will mean, of course, that even when you do not have a lover, or when he is not available, your non-predictable patterns must still prevail.

When we are concerned about protecting the chastity of young girls, one of the first measures taken is to impose a curfew. Young ladies in good schools must be home at ten o’clock on weeknights or at midnight on weekends. We assume that there is safety in numbers so that as long as one is out in a group, in the daytime, all is well. Such structuring only shows the lack of imagination of the chaperones and means that, a generation ago, college girls missed a lot of afternoon classes, which they had to make up some other time. After their “matinees,” they went back to their carefully supervised official residence and were snug in their own beds, alone, by “lights-out.”

 

Husbands and wives think much the same way. The only really serious problems of accountability occur when you have two married people, who are not married to each other, alone together, and when they are alone at a time so far into the night that there is nothing for them to be officially doing. How late is “late” depends on where you live. In many small towns, everything is closed up by 10:30 p.m.; in New York, there would still be many activities happening at 2:30 a.m. Wherever you are, four o’clock in the A of the M is too late.

The first prudent rule, therefore, is to concentrate your activity in the daylight hours. A second protective strategy is to surround yourself with other people. In Hollywood, the coming and goings of the stars are conspicuous and of considerable interest to the public. It is difficult for anyone who is even a minor celebrity to remain incognito for long. So to cope with this problem, there has evolved a custom of going out in the evening in the company of a “beard.” In this context, a beard is a friend who accompanies an illicit couple out in public, thereby creating a group instead of a dyad. A beard can be a man or woman but is usually a man. If a woman is out with two men, or with three, then officially, she is not really out with any of them. She is just “out with the boys.” The beard who comes along to offer his or her protection understands his or her role as third wheel but is willing to enjoy the couple’s company as a favor.

It is a nice bonus that, traditionally, the beard never pays for any of the dinners or drinks and is not expected to return this hospitality. You don’t have to be a movie star to find this strategy a useful distraction.

Post-Racial Society: Really?

Do you really think we are living in the ‘Post Racial Society’, as the many conservative talk show hosts and pundits would have us believe – and unabashedly spew forth each and every day? Well I don’t; but you have to give them credit for trying. It would be interesting, albeit disturbing, to open up their minds to see if they actually believe it themselves.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, and initial weeks of the Trump presidency, we’ve been treated to some real cretins who lack any social graces or guile and repeatedly spew vile bigotry into our homes through the airwaves. Since Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20^th, reports of hate-fueled taunts and threats have surged. Swastikas and graffiti declaring “Sieg Heil 2016” were reportedly spray-painted in South Philadelphia. “Trump!” was scrawled on the door to a prayer room used by Muslim students at New York University. A gay pride flag was burned in Rochester, New York. And the apparent effigy of a black man was hanged above the entrance to a coffee shop in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, dangling from the end of a rope. Trump’s election has also emboldened Republican lawmakers to let loose with inflammatory racist comments. Rep. Steve King drew national attention when he tweeted “somebody else’s babies” can’t save Western civilization, which many interpreted as an endorsement of white nationalism. In January, Rep Mo Brooks said a “war on whites” was responsible for criticisms of then Sen. Jeff Sessions ahead of his confirmation vote for attorney general. In early February, Sen. Ted Cruz called Democrats the “party of the Ku Klux Klan” while defending a rebuke of Sen. Elizabeth Warren for criticizing Sessions; and Rick Santorum accused Obama of not commenting on “black-on-white” crime while he was president.

Back in May 2016, then presidential candidate Trump implied that Gonzalo Curiel, an American citizen born in Indiana and the federal judge presiding over a class action suit against the for-profit Trump University, could not fairly hear the case against him because of his Mexican heritage. “He’s a Mexican,” Trump told CNN. “We’re building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is, he is giving us very unfair rulings — rulings that people can’t even believe.” In his first week in office, President Trump’s hastily drafted and prematurely implemented an executive order banning refugees and immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which led to the promulgation of a bevy of half-truths and outright lies.

Granted, Trump’s remark about Curiel and his executive order may arguably have nothing to do with the disturbing acts reported above – and their outcomes may not be comparable – but when taken collectively with many other such documented examples of tone-deaf racial comments – they prove beyond a doubt that we do not live in a Post Racial Society when it comes to Power, Politics and Legislation.

And let’s not forget Cliven Bundy, the cattle rancher from Bunkerville, Nevada that Fox, et. al. tried hard to turn into a folk hero in 2014, until he suggested that the ‘Negro’ was better off in slavery. Shock and awe – his words sent all his hero worshippers scurrying for cover. He said what they thought – well, damn it, why’d he have to go and do that? The truth is, all those folks in Congress and the talking heads on Fox didn’t simply latch onto good ole’ Cliven because he made “good sense” espousing the theory of Eminent Domain and that the Federal Government really didn’t exist. There was another reason, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Also, lets not forget the wonder of the 1%. Yes, I am talking about, Donald Sterling. He had his dirty laundry aired and it didn’t go over too well! Players took to Tweeter, along with many others who had something to say about his low and ugly comments regarding his ‘ownership’ of those that he contracted with to play ball for him. Of course, some came to his defense with cries of, ‘he was set up!’ and, ‘he shouldn’t be penalized for what was a private conversation!’ Power is a funny thing though; ultimately, money talks and he didn’t have enough to override the entire NBA and public opinion.

So you may ask, what do these two loud and proud members of the old school and their pronouncements have in common with President Trump and his merry band of cabinet appointees, or with what many think but don’t say aloud where others can hear?

• Wealth (Obscene to somewhat obscene)
• Age (Old)
• Ignorance (Absolute)
• Race (Caucasian)

Yes, they are all Rich, Old, Ignorant, White Men.

It is as simple as that. In my personal opinion, if we are going to achieve a ‘Post Racial’ society, it is up to those of us who enjoy the privilege of walking down streets, through stores and through life without worry for our lives or our freedom to undo Racism. The simple truth is only White people can teach the next generation about racism, bigotry and prejudice; thus only White people can undo social and institutional racism.

The victims of social and institutional racism can teach us about the harm it does; but they cannot undo the harm, as they are not in our homes teaching our children from an early age. Legislative remedies can go only so far in correcting institutional harm, what we see across our nation is proof of this truth. President Trump and supporters, Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling are examples of bad behaviors that lead to racist outcomes.

Another example is the reaction to our first Black President in the White House.

Asses have been up on shoulders ever since Obama won his first term as President. As much as there are those who say it is not about the half of Barack Obama that is Black, the simple truth is what other reason could it possibly be? This nation saw this man as a Black man, with a Black wife and Black children, move into the House that slaves built and, frankly, lost its collective mind. In an attempt to delegitimize Obama’s presidency, Trump led a nonstop birther movement with a vengeance, and only ended the charge recently with great reluctance and feeble acknowledgement that President Obama was born in the US. Never in the history of this nation has any President battled Congress for even the smallest of small steps toward compromise. Never in the history of this nation has any President faced a Congress that would rather see the nation fail than have a President succeed. Not Race? Please give us credit for not being complete idiots.

Now, back to old Cliven and Donald. What has happened to them?

Donald got some comeuppance. His money wasn’t enough in the face of what would be lost by the league if players wouldn’t play and sponsors wouldn’t pay. Banned for life from games and a paltry (in the face of the size of his bank account) fine. Other owners forced him to sell his team, and succeeded.

As for good ole’ boy Cliven, well all his friends at Fox and in Congress, they deserted him like rats from a sinking ship and were quick to let all know that they disagreed with his ‘Negro’ comments. Who didn’t disagree? Well let’s see, how about all those great patriots with their guns? You know, the ‘Militia’, the ones who drew down on government officials trying to do their jobs, who put women out in front as targets. Yeah those ones. They camped out on the side of the roads, fighting each other and terrorizing the locals with their roadblocks until they finally disbanded. Good old Cliven, he still owes the Government $1M plus still stands in front of the American Flag (of the government he doesn’t believe in) and fails miserably to understand what he did was so wrong.

Cliven lost his sponsors, Fox News, Donald Trump and his supporters. Cliven should have gone to jail, along with his little buddies the militia. Donald didn’t do anything illegal (this time), simply chose to act immorally and unethically.

An interesting read I borrowed from Frank of A Frank Angle fame, shows perhaps why some are so terribly fearful of their place in this ever changing world, http://www.pewresearch.org/next-america/#The-New-Us

The moral? Yes, there is a moral. We do not live in a post-racial society, not by a very long shot. We are getting there albeit slowly. The next generation, for the most part, are beginning to say, “no more”. Society is changing; our outlooks and views are changing. The younger generations are beginning to question the ignorance and intolerance of those who came before them. Is it fast enough to undo the harm that is being done today?

Not in my opinion. From my perspective, there are still too few of us who feel the way I do to make a profound difference. What can you do? Speak out! Be part of the growing resistance and start teaching your children what is right, stop ignorance now.

Collusion: The Blind Eye

I pray that I may not be married
But if I am to be married
that I may not be cuckold
but that if I am to be a cuckold
that I may not know it
but if I know it
that I may not care.
—Anonymous Bachelor’s Prayer, circa 1650

In a number of cases, the practice to deceive a husband about an ongoing or prospective affair is simplified by his implicit, and sometimes explicit, agreement not to notice anything. The wife and her husband enter into what amounts to collusion, thereby saving face on both sides. If he doesn’t ask, she doesn’t have to lie; if he doesn’t know of an affair, then he doesn’t have to do anything about it.

Such an arrangement may often occur in a marriage of convenience where there’s little pretense of affection between the husband and wife. They simply agree to lead separate lives and come together only when the business of the marriage, in the form of children or property or social functions, demands it.

A parallel arrangement may also exist for couples who are quite fond of each other but have made a realistic assessment of the importance of their sexual bond. In fiction, the well-known story of Lady Chatterley and her lover involves the explicit permission of her husband to take a lover, and indeed to have a child by him, since the husband was crippled and paralyzed and could not provide an heir for himself. Righteous indignation eventually came, not because she had an affair but because she selected a gamekeeper who was too déclassé to be considered an equal.

History provides some real-life examples of husband-wife collusion. When Lord Horatio Nelson began his infamous affair with Lady Emma Hamilton, they were both living in the same house as her husband Sir William Hamilton, her senior by thirty years. Husband and lover were friends, although there is little doubt that Sir William knew the real parentage of “his” daughter, especially when Lady Emma named her Horatia. He simply announced his quiet determination that the peace of his household would not be disturbed, and apparently it was not.

Emma, Lady Hamilton, by George Romney (died 1802). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Similar situations occur in the contemporary world. There is a vivacious, sensuous wife, a mother of two that I know, who habitually goes out to play bridge or to see a movie or something equally innocuous and returns home at two or

three in the morning and explains that she and the girls “just got to talking and forgot the time.” She has been married for nearly twenty years and has been playing bridge far into the night for at least eighteen of them. She has learned a lot more than Goren and the Blackwood convention.

Her suburban husband watches the eleven o’clock news and then goes to bed and goes to sleep. Sometimes if he wakes up at four and she’s still not back, he worries. She could have had a car accident or be in some kind of trouble. He’s reassured when she comes home all right and goes back to sleep. Sometimes, since he is awake anyway, they make love first.

Eighteen years. He does not ask how the bridge game went. Various men show up at various times to take her to lunch. After lunch, they tend to stay for dinner at the house. The husband is gracious enough, plays the good host, and then retires to his study and his books.

Peering through the window into the mystery of other people’s marriages, one must conclude that the husband does know what’s going on but chooses not to recognize it. This is what is meant by “the blind eye.”

Unless a man has decided that he wants to divorce his wife, presenting a blind eye to her affairs or to the possibility of her affairs is an excellent and wise strategy. If he officially knows, then he’s required to act, and none of the available options for action is very appealing. Oliver Goldsmith considered all of this and concluded that, in the Western world, not seeing may well be the best answer. In The Citizen of the World, he writes, “If I were an English husband, I would take care not to be jealous, nor busily pry into the secrets my wife was pleased to keep from me . . . Whenever I went out, I’d tell my wife where I was going, lest I should unexpectedly meet her abroad in the company of some dear deceiver. Whenever I returned, I would use a particular rap at the door, and give four loud ‘hems’ as I walked deliberately up the staircase. I would never inquisitively peep under her bed, nor look behind the curtains. And even though I knew the Captain was there, I would calmly take a dish of my wife’s cool tea and talk of the army with reverence.”

There are two players in such a charade: one who deceives and one who agrees to be deceived. Vicki Baum puts the same message somewhat differently in And Life Goes On when she observes, “Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of insincerity possible between two human beings.”

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Really, Post Racial

QBG_Tilted Tiara

We are living in a ‘Post Racial Society’, isn’t that what those in the know want us to believe? Do you believe we are living in the fantasyland the pundits gleefully spew forth? Yeah, well neither do I but you have to give them credit for trying. It would be interesting, if a bit filthy, to open up their minds and see if they actually believe it themselves.

In the last few weeks, we were treated to some real cretins, lacking in any form of social grace or guile they have spewed the vile bigotry into our homes through the airwaves. Granted, at least one of them didn’t intend his remarks to reach our ears, they did though and we hung on every disastrous word. Interestingly, these two cases have nothing in common and their outcomes cannot be compared, except for one very specific point; they prove beyond a doubt…

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First Caveat: Facing the Risk of Exposure

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
—Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories

In relating to a paramour, the first thing a wife must decide is just how secret her affair has to be. To decide this usually means deciding whether or not she wants to maintain the viability of her marriage and, if so, for how long. If a couple who embarks upon an illicit affair takes seriously the need to remain undetected, both participants can usually avoid exposure and embarrassment. Most of the time, they get away with it, and no one is the wiser. Most of the time.

A word of warning. A serious word. If someone, a husband or a lover, decides that he does want to know what you do, where you go, and when and with whom, then he can find out. A skilled detective can know more about you in a few weeks than you care to know about yourself. A bugged telephone is not entirely a far-fetched idea if total surveillance is what someone has in mind. Such techniques are expensive, but even those of modest means may decide that the price is worth it if the stakes are high. Few husbands are this unscrupulous or this paranoid, but if there’s enough at stake, it’s always possible for such drastic measures to be taken.

When a married woman has an affair, she must also remember that there are more people potentially involved in the question of secrecy than herself and her husband. She may also be subject to scrutiny by her lover’s wife, or girlfriend, who resents her poaching on what she considers “her” territory.  Your lover’s wife may need to be able to prove his adultery to establish her own alimony payments, and you end up being an unwilling co-respondent in a divorce action. His girlfriend may be simply curious to know what is going on. And if he’s in a position of power and authority, he is always vulnerable to the blackmail of opponents who will resort to whatever techniques they think will work. Mr. Sterling are you paying attention?

Adultery (Photo credit: tugwilson)

Jealousy can be a desperate thing leading to desperate measures. Adultery may also involve serious practical issues: who gets a divorce, contested or otherwise; who gets custody of the children; who does or does not pay alimony.
It is unlikely that anyone will be interested enough in your affairs to go to such drastic lengths to discover and document them, but it is possible, and that possibility is something to assess and to keep in mind.

An outraged husband I know, determined to avoid alimony and to keep custody of his children, led his wife to believe that he would be out of town overnight. He anticipated that she would take advantage of his absence, as she had on other occasions, to entertain her lover in their master bedroom. He quietly let himself into the house and, using equipment he had set up the previous day, secretly taped her activities, using her own video recorder. She was so appalled at the video tape he subsequently produced that she meekly signed over everything to him and retreated to a commune in New Mexico to think things out.

Schoolchildren often advise each other, “Be good. If you can’t be good, be careful.” Out of the mouths of babes can come some sound advice. Be careful.

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Ribald Wit: The Humors of Adultery

“Come, come,” said Tom’s father, “at your time of life,
There’s no longer excuse for thus playing the rake.
It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife.”
“Why, so it is, Father—whose wife shall I take?”
—Thomas Moore, “A Joke Versified”

Thomas Moore wrote these ironic lines at the beginning of the nineteenth century. They illustrate a paradoxical aspect of our views of adultery. On the one hand, it is supposedly a very serious affair, a major sin, and a cause for outrage and retribution. On the other hand, it’s incorporated into the jokes and wisecracks of everyday life in such a way as to suggest that it’s not really all that serious.

Rodney Dangerfield’s comedy album No Respect. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People laugh at the prospect of adultery in ways they do not (yet) laugh about things they regard as more beyond the pale, such as child abuse or incest. “Do you suppose,” the comedian wonders, “if infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?” “A man can sleep around, no questions asked,” quips Joan Rivers, “but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes, she’s a tramp!” Marty, a comic, reports a conversation with his friend Art. “Your wife is gorgeous! Tell me, is she faithful?” asks Marty. “My wife is too good to be true,” replies Art. And Rodney Dangerfield jokes, “I have good-looking kids. Thank God, my wife cheats on me.”

The ubiquity of humor about adultery suggests that it is quite a commonplace occurrence, in actual fact as well as in fantasy. It implies an ambivalence about it which softens the sense of prohibition.

It does not matter whether or not you happen to find jokes about cuckolds and horns funny. What is significant is that adultery is often seen as being, literally, a joking matter.

 

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Rule Nine: Beware the Monster That Is Habit

The less of routine, the more of life.
—A. B. Alcott

In a love affair, or in any relationship which is valued intrinsically, one needs continually to guard against that monster that devours everything, the monster of habit.

A blonde and glamorous and much married movie star was once asked   why she had divorced her latest husband. Waving a bejeweled and lacquered hand, she exclaimed, “But, darling, he made love to me on Wednesdays.” “And what is wrong with Wednesdays?” inquired the reporter. “Nothing is wrong with Wednesdays,” she exclaimed. “But, darling, he made love to me only on Wednesdays and always on Wednesdays. It was all just too predictable.”

When life’s great moments become just too predictable, they cease to be great moments. When people have to face great adversity, from physical handicaps to prison camps, they console themselves with the cliché that you can get used to anything.

Alas, you can also get used to anything that is good. If every night you have caviar, lobster, and champagne, eventually you groan, “Oh god, caviar again!” The jet-setters have learned, if nothing else, that contrast is everything. That cold of the ski slopes is crisper if you are still tanned from lying on a beach, the luxury of a grand hotel is grander if you have just returned from safari, and wallowing in a hot Jacuzzi is more relaxing if you have just survived ten days of testing your limits with Outward Bound.

The joy of a love affair is often that it’s something different from your ordinary life. The death of a love affair often begins when the difference becomes a routine part of one’s daily life.

The most exciting kind of lover is one who is aware of the somnolent effects of routines. Whether he has this sensitivity or not, you should yourself make sure that the habituation effects in an affair are minimized. Make it a
point to vary the experience, not just in terms of how you make love but also with regard to what you eat, what you talk about, where you go, whom you see, and where and when you see each other.

Someone once observed that young people love to take a vacation because it is a break in the routine, and old people hate to take a vacation for the same reason. In a love affair, try to maintain the youthful attitude and punctuate your routine as often as you can.

So why become a mistress?

Mistress Musing

Last blog I gave you a very quick overview of what happened to my marriage and why I’m now a mistress. Let me explain further.

I didn’t set out to do this on purpose.  Far from it!  I have seen quite a few of my friend’s marriage’s break up because of affairs and being the woman, usually sided with the “wronged wife”  –  really angry at the husband who I thought, could think of nothing of but his dick.

But when things strating going wrong for me and my marriage, my perspective changed.   

I try not to judge people, I try very hard to be open minded and relaxed about a lot of things so my subsequent actions following my husband’s confession as to being gay and preferring men, came as a great surprise to me.  I never thought I was capable of liaising with a male prostitute, let alone begin an…

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Rule Four: Pick the Right Man for the Right Reasons

It is more important to be aware of the ground of your own behavior than to understand the motives of another.
—Dag Hammarskjöld

When you approach a new love affair, stop for a long moment to think carefully about what you’re doing. Examine your own motives. Interview yourself the way you imagine a psychiatrist or a reporter might. Ask yourself: Why do I want to have an affair? Why now, this month, rather than last month or next month? Why this particular man?

affairs of the heart (Photo credit: derpunk)

These kinds of questions never have just one answer. Our motives for acting as we do are always complex and are often interrelated. It’s important, nevertheless, to at least try to puzzle them out. Are you trying to avoid something you don’t like in your life? Are you seeking an affair as a means of running away? Are you simply drawn to an appealing prospect? Would a love affair offer some comfort and consolation when other things have gone wrong? Would it fill an empty place left by a vanished man—or child or job or parent?

If the Freudian psychoanalysts are correct, the motives we think we have for how we act may be superficial and trivial, and the important motives in our lives may be subterranean forces of which we’re unaware. The link from motive to action is an endless puzzle. Nevertheless, it’s important to try and understand the motives a potential lover may have for seeking you out and the motives you may have for being drawn to him or for rejecting him.

Sometimes, an otherwise promising love affair becomes a long shot because either one or the other of you is approaching it for the wrong reasons.

Will discuss some of the wrong reasons for having an affair in upcoming posts.

Related articles

• Safe Conduct: Guidelines for an Affair of the Heart (pickingalover.wordpress.com)
• Ever-changing Outlook (letitgoandletitbe.wordpress.com)
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• “I had four affairs. It was all about the sex.” (sacratomatovillepost.com)