It was just supposed to be diversion, an affair. Not all hearts are built that way.
—
There’s plenty of talk and advice for the marriage with the husband and father who cheats with another woman. The talk becomes hushed and even muted when certain dynamics of the scenario are altered, however, namely when the married man is bi-curious or a closeted bisexual and who committed himself to a traditional marriage that, as far as his wife knows, is neither open nor polyamorous.
“Is he gay, bisexual? Who would’ve guessed?” – some of the predictable first reactions when the cheater is caught or exposed. The questions, beyond the expected, get more complex and their answers less open-ended. Does the cheating man have a moral responsibility to his wife and child? More argumentative, does the man with whom the husband cheats take on the dilemma of keeping the secret of the married man’s extra-marital sexual preference and protecting him from discovery by the wife and child?
More argumentative, does a man’s extra-marital affair with another man reinforce the stigma and prejudice against the bisexual man (and woman) even within the LGBT community? And, in the broader scheme, does a married man having an affair – straight and otherwise – speak to the ethical and moral ideal of being a man?
Ron is a real man. In the early hours of a crisp October morning, Ron had a specific purpose in mind for driving to a city park that was notorious for its gay cruising. He would remember later that he waited in the vacant park half an hour before another man showed up and parked some half dozen spaces from Ron’s pick-up. The man, whom Ron pegged as gay, got out of his vehicle and proceeded into a heavily wooded area of the park where gay sex was known to take place behind the shield of heavy brush and foliage.
Ron followed the man into the woods. After the man he followed stopped and sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, Ron struck up a conversation – surface stuff such as how both were doing and how quiet and scenic the fall morning was. “So, what brings ya’ here so early?” the man asked Ron. “How about a blow job?” Ron answered nervously. Ron left the park that morning with what he came for, satisfied and grateful to the man who serviced him. Both men parted with the unspoken assumption that they had had nothing more than anonymous sex with a stranger and that neither would encounter each other again.
But the two men did encounter each other again at a chance meeting at a service station just a month later. Ron, that time likely emboldened by his earlier experience, wasn’t nervous when he asked the man for a second favor. The man agreed but explained to Ron undercover police would likely be staking out the park at that hour of the day. Ron readily agreed to follow the man to his apartment. There Ron again received the satisfaction of sexual relief and, knowing now where the other man lived, asked if he could drop by again. It was the start of a sexual relationship that would last 12 years.
Two years into the relationship, which had progressed from oral sex and mutual masturbation to intercourse, Ron told his partner he had never been with another man sexually until that morning two years earlier. But another disclosure, a confession that throttled the other man: Ron had gotten married the very afternoon of the day the two men first met. But for years before his marriage, Ron said he had been curious about gay sex and, in the privacy of his home as a single man, had watched gay porn regularly. Understandable, the man remembered thinking to himself: porn is impersonal, “safe” from the dangers of actively soliciting sex, safe from being caught by a spouse.
But the man also remembered a feeling of being lied to, deceived, of being made the unwitting “other man” in Ron’s marriage. But the man, perhaps to his discredit, agreed to keep seeing – and satisfying – Ron and swore not to contact him or do anything that might tip off his wife.
The man got a second surprise another two years later when Ron called him and invited him to his house, the first time the two would meet in the new house Ron and his wife had built. His wife was out of town for the weekend, Ron said, and there was no chance of the two men being caught together. But before entering his house, Ron confessed a second secret: he had a 2-year-old daughter asleep upstairs, that they needed to be “quiet.” Again feeling he had been made the “other man” in what now was a wider deception involving a child, the man nonetheless consented to continuing the affair and agreed to extra safeguards that would shield Ron’s wife and daughter.
Ron’s extra-marital affair with the other man lasted another four years – and ended when Ron entrapped himself. The other man learned years later that Ron, drunk one night, unwittingly dialed his wife’s cell phone thinking he was calling his sex partner and left a voice message inviting the man to the house for a night of “s**king and f**king.”
There would never again be any communication between the two men after that night – no phone calls, emails or letters of explanation. Ron simply fell off the face of the earth, ceased to exist. His partner was left for years with the shame and fear that he had played a very real role in the possible destruction of a marriage and family, that a woman and child had become the collateral victims of his sexual lust for their husband and dad. For him, the shame was worsened by the pain of losing a man with whom, somewhere along the line, he had fallen in love.
Years later, long after Ron ceased to be, his ex-partner set out to try find out where Ron wound up, hopefully with his wife and now-teenage daughter. The man hoped for closure, reconciliation – whatever – or maybe he was just curious. Through Internet searches of public records, it was found that Ron’s marriage apparently survived what surely must have been a significant crisis and threat to his marriage and family. According to the cyber trail – verified and confirmed by multiple other records – Ron, his wife and their daughter moved out of state five years ago. The man found Ron’s current address and thought briefly about writing him a letter, but quickly dispensed of the temptation.
Through the years, the man thought about Ron but, gradually, more strongly about his wife and daughter and with a fervent hope from blind faith that they emerged scathed but whole from Ron’s extra-marital gay affair. He also thought about the ethical and moral dimensions of men having affairs, straight or same-sex, and who in the end is responsible to the cheated spouse and children.
Ron was certainly complicit in a web of deception that ensnared his wife, daughter and his gay lover. He did not disclose his impending marriage the morning he hooked up with the other man for the first time and, indeed, withheld his marital status for two years into their relationship. Nor did Ron disclose to his lover that he had a child until two years after her birth.
Clearly the other man was duped into the role as the “other” in an extra-marital affair – at least initially. He did, however, continue his sexual affair for at least four years after learning of both Ron’s marriage and child. To that end, he failed in his moral and ethical responsibility to respecting Ron’s marriage and to perpetuating the fraud on Ron’s wife and daughter.
For the man, self-absolution is all too easy – and unsatisfactory – by invoking “justifications” and rationalizations: Ron would not have sought sexual companionship if his marriage had been intact; he would have found it anyway with someone; it was Ron who made the decision to cheat on his wife and risking losing her and his daughter. Maybe so. Nonetheless, in the end, both Ron and his ex-lover were complicit in conscious deception that impacted the integrity of a marriage, made collateral victims of a wife and child and besmirched the ideal of what a man is supposed to be – and not.
Guilt, of course, is a gnawing presence for the man. But he is left with the consolation that his complicity and selfishness did not destroy another woman, her marriage, her child – maybe her life. And the man has regret that he failed in fulfilling his role as a man of responsibility, accountability, morales, ethics and respecting the feelings and needs of the other person.
To husbands who are cheating or contemplating it, to their lovers and potential lovers: caution is valor. More times than not, there will be consequences, even hurt, as the married spouse and as the third person in an extra-marital affair. The benefits of cheating best be weighed against the costs. Or, at risk of invoking a chauvinistic warning, the cheating man and his partner need to think with their head and not with what’s beneath the waist.
As for Ron’s ex-partner, he has not had a relationship since – both because he doesn’t want one but mainly because he does not want to risk once again being the third partner in a marriage. For him, the benefits of his 12-year sexual affair with Ron weren’t worth the cost.
For, of all involved in the situation, it was he who paid the most.
Photo: Flickr/:mrMark:
I know this feeling.
I have been with a cheating spouse before and trust me I know how it feels, those suspicions are not mere paranoia. If you suspect that he is cheating, he definitely is..I hired a PI who helped me install monitoring bugs on his phone that diverted all his messages( facebook, whatsapp, text messages, and even phone calls) to my phone;(COMPUTERSPYEXPERTS at GMAIL dot COM ) is the man for the job with a very high level of professionalism and highly reliable. I really enjoyed working with him and the few friends I told have been nothing but thankful to me… Read more »
I’am entrapped in this situation, we just hooked up few days ago in a drunk impulse (he started, for my surprise) and I serviced the guy in his house, with his family (wife and kid) sleeping inside while we stayed on the back porch. I’m friends with both, and instantly felt guilty, terribly guilty and paranoid that someone heard us (the sex itself only lasted minutes) and the fear and horror of being caught, having the same friends and living in a small town would bring – the sum of all fears. My guilt is killing me, but for some… Read more »
It was a quite sad story, maybe when Ron´s ex lover figured out he was being “the other man”, he was already in love, so he preferred that situation, and being with the man he loved, even if it was in those conditions
Thanks, Erin! My intended point is that a married person who cheats AND the person with whom he cheats, opposite- or same-sex, are complicit in a deception of the spouse being cheated and, especially if the affair is uncovered, how the cheating spouse and the person with whom he cheats reconcile themselves to the predictable hurt and possible long-term damage to the family. I WILL take exception to ONE comment made by another person here: if the cheated spouse leaves and the family is broken, it is NOT because SHE broke it – it is because of the deception of… Read more »
Christoffer Somehow I think my reaction a wife would be double hurt. Because if you are married to a gay or bi sexual man and he never share and tell you about it ,that can be a very unpleasant experiment . You are married to a person that hides important parts of himself. In my country we have a beloved singer songwriter now dead. He lived with his wife and children. He died as an old man, Long after his death ,a biography was punished about him told that he was gay. ( or maybe bi ). The family ,… Read more »
David – If it’s ‘essentially’ masturbation, why wouldn’t you simply just masturbate? What would be the point in looking for another human being if it’s basically the same thing as masturbating? Logically, if someone is looking for another person to engage in sexual acts with vs just masturbation, obviously they are getting something else from the encounter that masturbation will not give them. Further, by engaging in sex with another person, without your other partner knowing, that is infact cheating. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or woman sleeping with the opposite gender or the same one. Sex… Read more »
It is essentially masturbation but it is not. There is another person but you do not have an emotional attachment there is a difference. Women do not understand because they are so ruled by emotions that they cannot understand sexual contact without emotion. Justification and blame thing is a matter of opinion. We obviously disagree. The truth is that there is no way to know years down the road what you are getting into when you make the decision to get into a lifelong monogamous relationship, which is why I choose not to have them. Sure there are options. The… Read more »
David Can women also do the same and define it as not cheating ? I try to imagine my husband face if air had set with an other woman for year after year but tell him ” this is not cheating , but only sex”. Hilarious :)). And one more thing. Yes, women are also able to have sex without any emotional attachment. Just visit intentional conferences and keep your eyes and ears open. It happens all the time David. But at least most women are not delusional but honest enough to themselves to admit this is cheating, if they… Read more »
David – There is no where in the definition of cheating that says that it’s not cheating when you have no emotional attachment. So no, lack of an emotional attachment does not magically make it not cheating. If you are purposely going behind your partner’s back, if they are not on the same page with you about what your doing, that’s called “cheating”. Your emotional investment in the other person actually has nothing to do with it. Secondly, men are *just* as emotional as women are. Women are not ‘ruled’ by their emotions anymore then men are. This website is… Read more »
Thank you for reading and commenting, David. You have many good and valid points, of course, and they’re not interpreted to be a “justification or rationalization.” While my piece certainly isn’t intended to demean anyone who seeks sex, companionship and anything else outside marriage, I hope MY experience conveys caution if secrecy and discretion are needed to prevent the spouse being cheated from finding out – and, maybe as important, maybe it’s a good idea NOT to develop an emotional – that is, fall in love – with the married man we’re having an affair with. Again, David, sincerely –… Read more »
It is not a big deal because it is simply not cheating for a straight married man to use a sub man for sex. There is no relationship. Essentially it is the same thing as masturbation. There simply is no such thing as a moral or ethical responsibility in these encounters I don’t care if people agree with me. That simply is the way it is and the way it will continue to be. No amount of hand-wringing will change something what has happened forever. The best thing to do is ignore it and move on. This is not a… Read more »
David
If this was the case then why keep it a secret ?
Why hide and lie about the happenings ?
I am so conflicted about how David can claim it is not cheating. If my husband vowed to be with only me and then chooses to be with any other person, male or female, then it is indeed cheating. You claim that the wife is not doing her part to fulfill the husbands needs…but that might not be possible. I offer to have sex twice a week, and even peg my husband as he has requested…and explore different sexual experiences…and that is not enough…then clearly I CANNOT give him what he needs. It is not without attempt or effort. Sometimes… Read more »
Absolute crap. My husband went out of his way to seek out a man for a sexual experience which i could not have given him, due to having a vagina and not a penis. What am i expected to do ? Have surgery so that he can experience pleasuring a penis and then stay that way if he enjoys it? no. It’s cheating. Plane and simple. Regardless of the gender that has had the relations with the married partner. The only difference is that when it becomes a position of a man cheating with another man it makes the woman… Read more »