Cheater’s High

Colleen and I have been talking on the phone during this period of quarantine. We’ve even had a couple of virtual coffee dates. Nothing remotely suggestive has occurred, of course.

I’ve also just started a cyber affair with a wife from New Zealand. She’s sexually frustrated and desires an erotic outlet. She was intrigued about my background in ministry. The prospect of engaging in virtual infidelity excited me. Our online interactions have been almost entirely explicitly sexual in nature.

I remember the first time I cheated on my girlfriend. She had to fly out of town to visit her ailing mother, and I drove her to the airport. Physically separated from her, my lust flared up. I rented a hotel room and called an escort service. Soon my head was firmly planted between the large breasts of a curvy young blonde. After my sexual escapade, I was stricken with guilt over betraying my chaste and absent girlfriend. We broke up just a few weeks later.

Sex had been sundered from romance. Guilt invariably ensued after subsequent furtive encounters. My insoluble dilemma, as I’ve commented on before, of wanting to date “good girls” while enjoying the carnal knowledge of “bad girls” has resulted in schizophrenic behaviors with women. Rationalizations abound. “My intense sexual needs have to be satisfied in some fashion.” “By acting out in other ways, I’m preserving Colleen’s purity.” And, of course, “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

I met “Rose” on eharmony. She was a music director at a Catholic parish. During one of our early online interactions, she made her beliefs clear: “God intends sexual intercourse to be between a husband and a wife.” We ended up (chastely) dating for a few months. She was smart and spunky, and I admired her commitment to her faith.

Yet I couldn’t resist another type of woman on her knees.

While driving back after one daylong date with Rose (she lived in another city), I got the itch for another form of female companionship. Again, another hotel room. Another escort. What Rose wouldn’t provide I obtained from this lady of the night. By this time guilt comingled with a certain dark pleasure — what some psychologists have termed the “cheater’s high.” As sweet, innocent Rose preserved her purity, I indulged in impurity without her knowledge. The thrill of getting away with it was undeniable.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez distinguished between a public life, a private life, and a secret life. The allure of a secret life, I believe, partly comes from its brazen assertion of autonomy. Certain strictures, such as cultural and religious expectations of monogamy, can be flouted without having to incur social opprobrium. It comes at a cost to one’s integrity, of course. Hence the guilt. The attendant pleasure makes the guilt bearable, though.

Adulterous Eyes

They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin (2 Peter 2:14).

This week I’m overseeing Vacation Bible Study at our parish. It mostly consists of fetching materials for the kids.

Speaking of fetching….

My eyes can’t help but notice a few of the comely MILFs accompanying their kids. Mrs. Hansen, prim and proper as always, yet with a shapely behind. Mrs. Paisley, who with her long brown hair and black frame glasses resembles Tina Fey. Then there was Sasha, the yoga instructor who dropped off her kid on her way to teach her class. She came dressed for work — her skintight yoga pants left little to the imagination. (I couldn’t help but notice a few months ago when her chest expanded, obviously due to breast augmentation.) Her wedding ring only seemed to intensify her erotic appeal.

This year we’ve combined our VBS with another local Lutheran parish, which is pastored by “Rev. Lara.” She’s young, having received her first call just a few years ago. Wisps of brown hair frame her pretty face. She’s married with two small children.

I can’t take my adulterous eyes off of her, either.

“Women lust and women cheat.” So writes Wednesday Martin in Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. Her most significant discovery is that women are no more “naturally monogamous” than men. Women, it turns out, are not evolutionarily programmed to be less sexually adventurous. The fairer sex is just as capable of “passionate, voluptuous pleasures and sometimes of tremendous risk-taking in the pursuit of sexual satisfaction.” Martin reports that more than one woman she interviewed told her, “I have a really strong libido. I don’t think I’m cut out for monogamy.” Martin relates her own struggles with monogamy. “Cheating was a lot of work, with a lot of stigma. But when we thought about or experienced the passion and excitement of being with someone new, or considered trying something we’d never tried before, it felt worth the risks. In fact, it felt urgently necessary sometimes.” Society applies a double standard to a woman who is open about her own sexual desires, despite increasing evidence that women are prioritizing sexual autonomy. One poll showed that the number of women admitting to extramarital activity has increased by 40% since 1990. In The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife, Alicia M. Walker interviewed dozens of married women (including regular churchgoers) who found partners on Ashley Madison. She discovered that most of them weren’t searching for love or intimacy. They were sexually dissatisfied with their spouses and sought sexual satisfaction elsewhere. (Perhaps this sheds light on the quality of sex in the matrimonial state. One survey reported that more than half of women had their “best sex ever” with someone other than their husbands.) Our sexual script that assigns a less active libido to women is being rewritten.

I adhere to a religious tradition that extols the sanctity of marriage. One of its ten commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” (Esther Perel notes, “It is the only sin that gets two commandments in the Bible, one for doing it and one just for thinking about it.”) And yet, despite being single, I find the taboo thrill of “cheating” highly arousing. Sex with the Deaconess was intensified by the engagement ring she always wore during our coupling. Some of the pleasure surely came from simply getting away with it. Neither staff nor parishioners nor her betrayed fiancee across the Atlantic knew about our extracurricular activities. Nor should the frisson of transgression be discounted. “Being bad is a pleasure,” says Perel.

In her book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, Perel writes:

Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so too has the taboo against it. It has been legislated, debated, politicized, and demonized throughout history. Yet despite its widespread denunciation, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy….In every society, on every continent, and in every era, regardless of the penalties and the deterrents, men and women have slipped the confines of matrimony. Almost everywhere people marry, monogamy is the official norm and infidelity the clandestine one. So what are we to make of this time-honored taboo—universally forbidden yet universally practiced?

I’ve written earlier about my own experience of defiling the marriage bed. Breaking the Sixth Commandment (according to Lutheran numbering) brought immense guilt. And immense pleasure. “Monogamy may not be a part of human nature but transgression surely is,” Perel says. “Whether we like it or not, philandering is here to stay.”

Defiling the Marriage Bed

The English word “adultery” comes from the Latin adulterare, “to corrupt,” meaning, “debauch; debase.” That which is pure is made impure.

I had defiled her marriage bed.

My only regret is a lack of regret.

She had proved herself an adulteress. She had promised to remain faithful, to honor her sacred vow. But forbidden fruit is delectable.

“Contrary to all public verdicts on adultery, the lack of any wish whatsoever to stray is irrational and against nature, a heedless disregard for the fleshly reality of our bodies, a denial of the power wielded over our more rational selves by such erotic triggers as high-heeled shoes.”
Alain de Botton, How to Think More about Sex

I was on Ashley Madison before it was hacked. I didn’t have much luck on it. It turns out most married women want to cheat with married men, as did the single women on the site.

I did meet “Suzie” online (Her nom de sex was “Suzie Sux_a_Lot.”) She was an elementary school nurse just shy of 40, overweight with an unremarkable face. Her husband was a pilot who was frequently away. When she contacted me, she assumed I was married and asked, “Have you strayed?” She grew up in the church but no longer considered herself religious. She confessed to fooling around with the dads of her daughter’s sports teammates. “Mostly titjobs and blowjobs,” she said. A friend helped facilitate her transgressions. She suggested possible signs of flirtation from a married woman at church. Then we got together.

One time I pulled up to the back of her school in the early winter twilight. She was waiting in her SUV. When she saw me, she got out and opened the back of her truck. Then she shimmied out of her slacks. I felt a chill as I hurriedly unzipped and pulled down my pants. We crawled into the back of her SUV. She had spread a blanket down over the seats folded flat. She shut the door, lay down. and spread her legs. I got on top of her. Soon the truck began to rock.

We hooked up a several more times at her friend’s house. (I regret we didn’t have sex in her own bed.) She revealed to me that she had been promiscuous since she was a teenager. She said she used sex as a way to receive validation from men. Her neediness turned me off, and I quickly cut off our “affair.”

The guilt of transgression is smothered by the thrill of the naughtiness of it all. One wife said of her first act of unfaithfulness, “It felt surreal, so wrong, evil and infinitely arousing.” The arousal negates any concern over who gets hurt. The risk intensifies the experience. The thrill of adultery overwhelms any moral objections.

I once engaged in an online sex chat with a married woman. (“OMG you’re a pastor?” I explained to her that I was a lay minister. I don’t think it mattered to her.) She confessed to frequent extramarital encounters and was forthright about her motives: “Cheating is fun.” The prohibition against adultery gives it its allure. Personal experience has taught me that religiosity is no impediment for a woman who seeks to stray. I’ve heard several rumors of infidelity among pastors’ wives.

Why would a woman like Lindy — a pastor, a prominent figure in her church, a mother of two small children — risk it all for a furtive encounter in her office? Were her “harmless fling” to be discovered, it could jeopardize her ministry and tear her family apart.

Sometimes women are just bored in their marriages. Emotionally disconnected from their spouses, they feel unappreciated and lonely. They seek attention, being objects of desire. They seek intimacy. They’re sexually dissatisfied. Their husbands’ sexual performance leaves much to be desired. Sex in an affair can feel “dirty,” making it exciting, wild and liberating. They experience a longing for passion and new opportunities. In marriage, according to Zygmunt Bauman in Liquid Love:

There is always a suspicion … that one is living a lie or a mistake; that something crucially important has been overlooked, missed, neglected, left untried, and unexplored; and a vital obligation to one’s own authentic self has not been met or that some chances of unknown happiness completely different from any happiness experienced before have not been taken up in time and are bound to be lost forever…

Adultery is a form of theft. One enjoys the possession of another. “Stolen water is sweet; and bread eaten in secret is pleasant” (Proverbs 9:17). There is a certain pleasure that comes from the knowledge that I’m screwing another man’s wife.

And it’s really hot when she wears her wedding ring while she fucks you.

“Cheating is fun.”

New Year’s Eve

I knew Rev. “Lindy” from our mutual involvement in an ecumenical social ministry. She’s the youth pastor of a local Congregational church. She’s very cute–tall, with long dark brown hair she usually wore in a bun or ponytail. Occasionally she wears glasses. She is about my age but looks younger. She’s married with two young children. I admired her for her intelligence, good humor and compassion. We knew each other for several months, but our encounters were brief.

We found ourselves together on New Year’s Eve. Her church’s young adult group was having a party in the church’s Fellowship Hall, and she had invited me. A lot of alcohol was being consumed (I don’t drink much). Rev. Lindy was there by herself; her husband and kids were at her mother-in-law’s. It became apparent that she had too much to drink–she was quite tipsy. I was sitting on a couch along the wall when Lindy sat down right next to me, her leg pressed up against mine. As we talked, I could smell alcohol on her breath. She soon put her hand on my thigh and moved in even closer to me. I started to get aroused. She undid her ponytail and leaned in to kiss me, then whispered, “You’re cute.” Another kiss followed. “I’m up for hooking up tonight.” She suggested we go to her office. We then got up and excused ourselves from the party.

We headed for her office. I couldn’t resist temptation. My hands briefly shook as I contemplated what I was about to do. When we got to there, we immediately started making out. The alcohol on her breath was almost overwhelming, but we continued to French kiss. I hurriedly removed her sweater, unbuttoned her blouse, and unclasped her bra; I rubbed her breasts and felt how hard her nipples were. She undid her long skirt and let it drop to the floor. Then she pulled down her panties. (She didn’t remove her wedding ring.) I guided her to the couch. Soon I was on top of her, penetrating her in her deepest places. I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought. But it felt too good to stop. I surrendered to the moment, and pleasure washed away any tinge of guilt. I was fucking a woman of the cloth, and I loved it. I was defiling her marriage bed, and it was delicious. Then….

Jouissance

I emptied myself inside her.

Afterwards, we cuddled on the couch a while. I started to feel somewhat depressed. “I have to get home,” she said softly. She was in no condition to get behind the wheel, so I drove her home. We didn’t talk during the drive, only a perfunctory “Happy New Year” when I dropped her off at her house.

The next couple times we met, our interactions were extremely awkward. If word about our encounter got out, we would both be liable to discipline by our churches. We didn’t talk about our hookup, but I could tell she felt ashamed over what she did–she blushed during one of our halting conversations. I decided to resign from the social ministry to spare us any further embarrassment.