I always assumed I’d never be capable of cheating with another woman’s man. After all, I’d never cheated before. I just wasn’t that kind of person, I told myself. Until I was.
We met, fittingly, in a bar. I was bartending at the time, and he was chugging beers faster than I could pour them. At first, I thought he was why because he didn’t speak, just mumbled one-word responses.
Then, one night, he sat down with his buddy, whom I saw nudge him and say in a low voice, “Come on. Don’t be shy. Talk to her.”
I’d felt touched. How cute and sensitive, I thought, before deciding to ignore him. A few nights later, after closing up the bar, a group of employees and regulars congregated around a bonfire on his property. He sat next to me. We sat silently, and I felt a profound peace radiate from him into me.
When he dropped me off at my home, he didn’t say a word, just put my hand in his and looked at me while I looked back. The next week, he showed up at the bar again. As he paid me for his beers, I asked him if he was in a relationship.
“Not technically,” he responded after a guilty pause.
I knew what he meant when he said he wasn’t technically in a relationship, but I chose to play dumb.
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I would soon learn that he wasn’t shy at all, at least not when drinking. He was a man’s man, a ladies’ man, and the life of the party. He wasn’t dumb either; he was uncannily street-smart, imaginative, and an Encyclopedia of interesting anecdotes.
Then, of course, was the simple fact that the physical chemistry felt electrifying. I’d never experienced anything like that before, or since. Somehow, it became easy for me to justify satiating my lust with him.
I reasoned with myself that I didn’t need to feel so much guilt because I was single. I wasn’t the one choosing to cheat. As far as he was concerned, his situation was unique. His long-term live-in girlfriend, with whom he shared a house and beer business, had moved three hours away for a lucrative job. As a result, he felt abandoned.
I rationalized possibly hurting her by convincing myself that she had most likely moved as a way to escape the relationship. (Admittedly, this thought scared me a little.)
Either way, at the very least she must have expected him to cheat given the circumstances, right?
What’s more, as I told a friend who voiced her objection to our dalliance, he wasn’t married, just in a domestic partnership.
“No vows were said before God in their relationship,” I said, much to her dismay. I made sure to add that his kids — two beautiful teenage girls — were the product of his first marriage, not his current lady. My rationales, however, couldn’t sustain our doomed relationship.
Our intense but short-lived initial fling fell apart as quickly as it began, but it never totally ended.
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It would’ve if I hadn’t ‘checked in’ from time to time. That’s on me. ‘Rational me’ knew he was bad for me, but ‘emotional me’ couldn’t bear to go too long without assuring myself he was real. ‘Rational me’ saw him as not the type of man I would let raise my daughter due to his uncontrollable drinking and anger issues. ‘Emotional me’ refused to let go of him completely.
I’d ended our dalliance years before we were caught together. I was drunk and completely alone — my daughter with her grandparents — the night before Thanksgiving. He called asking to come over. Normally, I would’ve ignored him, but that night, loosened up by red wine and rattled by a string of recent traumas, I welcomed him.
He charged in, seeming manic and very drunk. I endured quick and uninspired intimacy, and afterward, he wrapped his body around me, clutching my head to his chest as if he were terrified of something that I couldn’t see.
I was so unsettled that I couldn’t sleep. I eventually wriggled out of his desperate grip but could only sleep in spurts, awakening with anxiety and a mind buzzing with questions.
Where was his girlfriend? Wouldn’t she wonder where he was? Didn’t he need to wake up and go home? A few minutes after dawn, she showed up.
We tried to date to save face.
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She promptly kicked him out, taking their home, his truck, and their dogs. He was sleeping on the couches of friends, homeless. Truth is, he had no one to blame but himself, having cheated on her with a string of different women throughout the years.
Still, I was plagued with guilt for the part I knew I played in their breakup. I felt partially responsible, even though I knew I was just another pawn in his games with her, and in his desperate quest to forget how much he hated himself for being a drunk, a cheater, a deadbeat.
I knew he was drinking like a fish and blowing all his money. His darkness scared me. I wanted to make it better somehow. Late at night when I’d rather be asleep, I lay on the phone with him, desperately trying to make him laugh so that he wouldn’t be so sad.
“You think I don’t know I’m broken?” He cackled at me one time. “I know I’m broken!” Still, he tried desperately tried to make me his girlfriend. He didn’t want to be alone.
Sometimes, the way he looked at me made me think that maybe he did love me.
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Usually, however, I felt used, like I was meant to play a part so that he could feel better about himself. I didn’t feel wooed. I felt like a babysitter. Multiple times a week, he would call me screaming that his car had been stolen or towed. In reality, he was so too drunk and disoriented to see straight.
Each time, I would calmly explain that he just needed to eat and sober up and then try again. Each time, he would erupt in fury with me. What’s more, this type of behavior happened sometimes multiple times a week. I became increasingly overwhelmed.
“I can’t be your mother,” I told him more than once.
Still, I made time for him when I could, especially after he learned that one of his best buddies was most likely dying of HIV. His friend had been one of his anchors after the fallout of the breakup. He plunged right back into deep mourning — he had encouraged his friend to lead an unhealthy, partying lifestyle with him in the months leading up to his sudden health issues.
“You didn’t know he had HIV,” I reminded him, hoping to assuage his guilt.
During those few weeks when we feared his friend would die, he would come to my place and sleep all day in bed next to me while I typed away at my remote job. Curled up and trembling, his pain was palpable.
“I need help! I can’t do this alone!” He finally admitted.
But by May, over six months after the traumatic breakup, he was still non-functioning. He was unemployed, having neglected to seek new work after his construction project ended. Instead, he was drinking incessantly at the bar with the money in his pension account.
He told me once as I complained about his behavior, “I know I’m a burden to you. I feel it.”
When he asked to borrow money from me while he waited on his wire transfer, I lost it. It was the final straw. He knew very well that I was broke, unemployed, and a single mom. (Yes, I lived at home with my upper-middle-class parents, but that seemed beside the point.)
Something ruptured inside me. “Eff off,” I texted him before blocking his number.
