The Things You Don’t Think About When You Think About Having An Affair

• Your waistline, because you end up eating some meals twice, like dinners, because both of them will want to eat dinner with you, and you will run out of reasons why you can’t.
• Where to put your wedding ring, because the number of times you forget to take off your wedding ring will be directly proportional to how long you’ve been married, so you should have a place (I used the ashtray in my car, but you should use the spot that works best for you).
• How difficult remembering two lives is, because remembering two lives is difficult (notice I said two lives, and not two lies, because …)
• The weight of the lying, because the lies add up, and you end up not wanting to lie, because one of the people — your spouse or the person with whom you’re having the affair — begins to matter more, and to this person you want to be honest, but you have already lied, making coming clean and being honest difficult, if not impossible.
• A lack of sleep, because trying to lead a full life with one person is hard enough, let alone adding a second person, because the only way to make two lives work is to somehow make more of the 24 hours we get in a day, which means you sleep less than you should.
• Anger and frustration (see lack of sleep).
• Wishing you could take back the lie, and maybe even the affair, but not knowing how to take back the lie, and maybe even the affair.
• Where to keep any pictures you take of the person with whom you’re having the affair, especially if you share a computer, and a photo library, with the person to whom you’re married.
• What to do with the gifts, if any, given to you by the person to whom you’re having the affair. (I passed some off as things I bought, and others off as things I won, and still others off as things I bought for the person to whom I was — and to whom I still am — married).
• How not talking about this person to your friends makes you feel, which leads directly into
• How not introducing this person to your friends makes this person feel, because you can only say so many times that your friends aren’t available before the person with whom you’re having an affair starts to wonder if you’re embarrassed or ashamed (clearly, this only matters with people by whom you’re neither embarrassed nor ashamed).
• Forgetting, for a while, maybe for always, that the person with whom you’re having an affair may not be OK learning that he or she is the person with whom you’re having an affair.
• Explaining why you can’t stay the night, or why you can’t stay more often than you can, because the person with whom you’re having an affair will probably want you to stay the night, and the person to whom you are married will wonder where you are on the nights you are not at home.
• The aftermath, when one or both of the people with whom you’ve been enjoying a relationship, no longer want to talk to you, or, in some cases, know you.
• The cost, since relationships are expensive, and two relationships are doubly expensive.
• The guilt, if you’re prone to guilt, or the not-guilt, if you’re not prone to guilt. Not sure which is worse: the guilt, if you’re prone to guilt, or the not-guilt, if you’re not prone to guilt.

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