He Cheated With Me On His Wedding Night
So you really can’t always blame the other woman, IMO.
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I was my best friend’s Maid of Honor, I stood next to her when she got married on a rainy June afternoon, watched them both take vows — vows that’d she’d already broken weeks before — vows that he would break within hours.
Marie had cheated on Nathan about a month before their wedding, and he found out about it.
It’s a small city, a big group of friends, and rumors swirled about her until they reached Nathan, and when he confronted her she told the truth.
She’d cheated on him, repeatedly and with different men, during their engagement.
Later, Nathan would tell me that the only reason he went through with the marriage was because he was too embarrassed to cancel his wedding four weeks prior.
Not that that excuses what we did together.
I’d known Nathan for years, he was my best friend’s boyfriend, after all.
He was always around me, though we’d never spent alone time together.
Until one night Marie suggested we SHOULD spend alone time together.
“You’re the two most important people in my life, you should get to know each other better.”
Nathan dropped Marie off at a bar downtown and came over to my apartment one night a few weeks before their wedding to chill.
I thought it was a bit strange, and awkward at first, being alone with him on purpose, like it was a mission or something, but we had a few beers and settled into an easy banter and found that we had a lot in common, and we shared a lot of laughs.
The next weekend, I went to New York City with Nathan and our friend Brian, just the three of us, and at one point when Brian was in the bathroom and Nathan and I were alone, he looked me in the eye and asked me, honestly:
“Do you think I should marry Marie?”
I was put on the spot, having to choose sides, and I couldn’t.
“Well, she did cheat on you, are you okay with her probably doing that again? Cause she probably will.”
And he sighed and looked down and took a drink, and the conversation was over before it began.
“No, don’t marry her,” I should have said. “It’ll never work, it’ll never last.”
But I didn’t.
Instead, I stood with her while she took her vows.
I followed them back to the hotel for the afterparty after the reception, and somehow ended up being the last one there.
Marie was passed out on the bed in her white dress, snoring away, and I needed to get a cab home at two in the morning.
“I’ll drive you,” Nathan offered, and it was stupid for me to let him do that, because he was totally drunk, but thankfully I only lived a few minutes away.
Parked in my driveway, we started talking, and somehow got on the subject of how sad it was that he wasn’t going to consummate his marriage on his wedding night because Marie had passed out, and what a bad sign that was.
Then I remember him saying:
“Ever since that night I came to your apartment I’ve wanted to kiss you.”
And:
“So do it,” I said.
Then we were making out in the car in my driveway with my roommate (and another of Marie’s bridesmaids) sleeping inside the house.
Then my hand was in his pants and his were sliding up my dress, then he was on top of me in the front seat, pants down, ripping off my panties, kissing me, then slamming inside me, hard and fast and desperate until he came.
That was nine years ago now, and I’m trying desperately to remember all the thoughts and emotions that were swirling through my head while he fucked me, but I can’t.
All I can remember is the heart pounding excitement of it.
The “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening,” aspect of it.
But certainly, not wanting to stop it.
And we didn’t stop it.
He texted me the next day, all while Marie drove to their honeymoon destination, and we never stopped texting.
And we never stopped having sex.
Our affair lasted almost two years —two months longer, actually, than his marriage lasted — and we probably had sex at least 3–5 times a week during that time.
We were shameless. We were insatiable.
We were not thinking at all about the consequences of our actions, and we weren’t feeling any guilt — we weren’t feeling much of anything, really, except the physical pleasure.
And that’s the only thing that made me feel guilty.
That I didn’t feel any guilt for sleeping constantly with my best friend’s husband.
That I justified it somehow, in many ways.
In the fact that he started it, and he kept it going.
In that fact that she’d cheated before their marriage, and I knew for a fact she’d cheated on him again during it as well — because she told me.
In the fact that I (and a whole lot of onlookers) knew their marriage was a sham that would never last…
I just told myself that what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and that I was never the reason their marriage sucked and eventually ended.
I told myself that none of this was on me.
It seems to me that, based on personal experience, the other woman gets most of the flak in an affair.
I understand why.
Because at any time the other woman has the option of walking away and ending things.
Not that the person who is actually cheating can’t do the same, they can, but people don’t seem to demonize them as much for not making that choice for some reason.
Like we other women are evil wenches who stick our claws into unsuspecting, unavailable men and want to blow up their lives on purpose, for sex.
No, it’s not always like that.
Sometimes the other woman is the unsuspecting, surprised participant in the affair.
I was a willing participant, but I didn’t instigate that relationship, I didn’t seek it out, plot, or desire it.
But I didn’t want to get out of it either, and that’s where other people’s judgement comes in, almost always from women in relationships, obviously.
Because you think it’s easier for us to leave and end it?
Or is it because you don’t expect your men have the strength to do the same thing?
You demonize us because you want to be able to forgive them, perhaps?
Or because you can’t forgive yourself for “letting” your partner stray?
All I’m getting at here, what it all comes down to in the end, is that it takes two to tango.
Two people choose to start and carry on with an affair.
One may be more of the instigator, but both are equal in the blame.
And that’s not even counting the underlying reasons that affairs really happen in the first place, for which both parties can be blamed, or one, or even, in some cases, neither.
I’m not saying I shouldn’t feel guilt for having an affair with my best friend’s husband — I should.
I’m just saying I shouldn’t be the only one blamed for not ending it.
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