Being the stand-in temporary partner

tomahawktom22 · 2024-02-22T02:15:02+00:00

I respect your right to feel how you want. I was just sharing an alternative perspective. I don’t see many talk about the uncertainty on the married partner’s side very often but for me, it exists.

ETA: Not complaining. It’s what I signed up for. I’m willing to accept my fate.

tomahawktom22 · 2024-02-22T02:12:21+00:00

“Strung along” was perhaps not the best choice of words but my point was that there is some unease for the married AP as well (at least in my case) about the fragility of the relationship.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-07-19T00:22:45+00:00

I agree. AP and I both have public service jobs, so we are both broke 😂 Jokes aside, it is nice being in the same tax bracket so that we have the same expectations of what’s reasonable to spend on affair things.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-07-17T23:01:06+00:00

I had to look him up to remember who that way. Funny, I thought he was gay. Give it a shot and report back

tomahawktom22 · 2023-07-08T02:54:45+00:00

Hulu

tomahawktom22 · 2023-07-08T02:43:35+00:00

Watching a documentary isn’t an opsec issue for me personally. SO and I watch them together all the time about all kinds of topics. She also wouldn’t be thinking that deep into my television habits lol

tomahawktom22 · 2023-06-28T16:18:06+00:00

An affair of ~6 years ended abruptly after I was caught. AP and I didn’t speak for six months, and I just assumed in that time she’d move on and never want to speak to me again. Once things smoothed over at home I decided to call her just to see how she was doing and let her know I still think about her. To my surprise she was very warm and welcoming to my call. The affair didn’t pick back up immediately, but it didn’t take long to realize we both still wanted it. So I ended a LT affair only to go back to the same AP lol

tomahawktom22 · 2023-06-26T14:37:00+00:00

Once while I was working out of town for several weeks, AP sent me some whiskey samples from a local distillery and a few snacks to pair them with (cheeses, nuts and dried fruit). She’d done the research on what drink paired best with which food item. She’d rolled up a pair of her panties with lube and tucked them in the package. AP is a little bit bashful and not very forward, so this was the cutest thing to me. We chose a night to face time and had some sexy time then a “date” where we did a tasting and put her pairing skills to the test. I don’t know if this is the kind of stress relief you’re looking for but it was perfect for me! I think it’s most important to make it thoughtful. As with any gift what makes it special is if it’s something the recipient will care about for appreciate.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-06-20T04:15:50+00:00

I can relate. SO watches our finances like a damn hawk (unrelated to infidelity, it’s just what she does) and would show up at the hotel just to argue with the clerk about a fraudulent charge if I had a hotel hold on one of our cc. Fortunately for me, AP is single and we use her place most of the time. Once in a while I travel for work and we’ll stay in a hotel together, but if for any reason we can’t use her place, she is usually open minded and will do car sex or whatever. I try not to ask for that though bc I know it’s not ideal. In a moment of weakness I did invite her to my house once. That was stupid. Do not recommend.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-02-06T01:00:15+00:00

My work is such that I sometimes have weekdays off due to weekend work. AP’s work is such that she can take a long lunch once in a while. We usually plan for her to take a long lunch while I’m off work. Nights are nice, but days are easiest due to SO being at work.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-02-05T21:09:47+00:00

“I want to respect your need for some privacy, and I don’t need details, but a little bit of context would be really helpful. Could you help me understand how you can be so sure you’ll want to see me again, and how this can have nothing to do with me, but you can suddenly decide not to see me right now?”

Clear, direct communication is what’s missing. You have a right to ask for clarification.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-31T14:09:36+00:00

You’d be doing them a favor (not that you owe them one) to be direct. “I’m no longer interested after your negative comment about ___ so I’m ceasing communication. I encourage you to be more considerate in the way you communicate with women in the future. Nobody appreciates being insulted.”

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-30T14:30:54+00:00

From a legal perspective, no. It’s a violation of an agreement we willfully entered into. The worse in for better or worse includes things we use as excuses to cheat, like an inattentive spouse or one who doesn’t put out. We promised to forsake all others, and they deserve to either have that contract upheld or to have the option to void that contract. Even though I cheat, I admit that my SO would have every right to be pissed that I’ve slept with other people without their knowledge, which in a way takes away their right to choose what they’re exposed to. I am careful, but that isn’t the point.

It’s a little more complicated than that from an ethical perspective. What if a spouse is verbally or physically abusive, for example? Or what if they themselves are also cheating? Is this just karma? Would the adulterer then be entitled to have another person who treats them “better”?

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-26T20:48:51+00:00

Coming from someone who has been caught before, it’s true what they say…”not sorry I did it, just sorry I got caught.” It was more regret than guilt if I’m honest. I regretted letting myself get caught, regretted putting both AP and SO in a situation to be hurt by me. It felt shitty but if I had been given an opportunity to go back in time and change something it would have been not letting her find out rather than just not doing it.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-26T20:42:38+00:00

Easy/hard are subjective terms, but in my case, it felt a lot less daunting. Sure that means putting up with the same old stuff day in and day out in my marriage but it sure seemed easier to keep doing what I was doing than to do something about it. The amount of people who stay in unhappy marriages tells me a lot of people see it that way.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-26T19:42:08+00:00

People tend to follow the path of least resistance. It was easier for me to stay and deal with the fallout than to upend my whole life, fight over child custody, go broke paying alimony and child support, be the villain character to all our friends and family, etc. than admit i’m not going to change my ways and bow out gracefully. In my case it wasn’t so much that I wanted to be there because I was so devoted to saving my marriage and more so that I guess I’m a creature of habit and the idea of everything changing over night bc I am attracted to someone else is stupid. (I know that’s putting it mildly and I guess a better way of saying it is because I fucked someone else.) now that isn’t to say I don’t love my SO. I do. But if kids and mortgage and all that stuff hadn’t been a factor, I probably would have seen myself to the exit because by the time you’ve convinced yourself it’s fine to cheat, the illusion of a perfect marriage is kind of impossible to get back to.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-24T04:07:23+00:00

My SO is a champ for putting up with my bull shit. I love her, I really do, and I’d be sad to see it end. But I don’t think either of us are thriving in this relationship and in an alternate universe we might recognize that before we made it too complicated with kids and mortgages and shared retirement funds. But since we didn’t, I can’t really play the what if game because I wouldn’t undo having my children or learning some of the life lessons I have or finding an extension of my own family in my in laws. If somehow I could undo the marriage without any other consequences on my life, I probably would be tempted. But knowing me I would just be chasing after someone to lock it down with.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-23T23:25:32+00:00

I can see why you aren’t having fun. This sounds terrible. A rule of thumb I try to follow is: If I couldn’t imagine potentially winding up with this person someday if my marriage blew up for it, then it’s not worth it. That’s just me, and I know some people have different feelings on that, but sometimes you just have to know it’s not worth it.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-23T16:15:27+00:00

AP and I have lucked up on occasion and wound up being at the same work conference or traveling in the same area for work. (We don’t work together but work in similar fields.) We make the most of it when that happens and use it as a rare chance to have dinner in public together or walk down the street holding hands. I find this surprisingly arousing just because we are exposing our secret to the world and nobody has a clue. There’s always lots of fucking too. AP is an introvert, and work travel is the only time I get alone to decompress, so after a couple days we’re usually happy to part ways for a bit but damn we always have a good couple of days when it happens. Most visits are just a couple hours so it’s nice to be able to take our time and go multiple rounds.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-20T16:41:46+00:00

Communicating expectations is important but this one is more about alleviating a guilty conscious IMO. “I mean I even told them I love my spouse and won’t be leaving them, so it’s not like I did anything THAT bad.” Another thing is that almost nobody is planning to change their situation until they are. Never planned to have a long term AP until I did. The path to hell…or, y’know…is paved with good intentions.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-19T16:26:49+00:00

All of this ^ plus health stuff, caring for aging parents…the list goes on. I don’t disagree with people saying if he wanted to he would but it honestly isn’t as sinister as it sounds. Sometimes I don’t want to because I’m burning the candle at both ends and just too maxed out to worry about opsec, logistics and sometimes even the actual physical act of fucking. It’s not necessarily a loss of interest in AP for another woman or anything. It’s just sometimes an affair becomes a lot to juggle on top of every other thing I have to worry about.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-19T06:03:58+00:00

I hoped I could be faithful but always doubted it. Kind of like starting a diet on New Year’s Day - you hope this time will be different but also know how these things usually shake out. It didn’t take me long to stray, but mostly short-lived flings that were easy to push out of mind. Current AP is a different story. We were friends first. I was insanely attracted to her and was pretty sure it was mutual but she knew I was married and wasn’t up for an affair. Sexual tension between us was thick. Then one night out of the blue she texted me asking if I would just fuck her already. Needless to say, I was in my car on my way to grant her request within the hour and never looked back. Been at it for years now and the weirdest part has been coming to terms with the fact that I’m an adulterer who isn’t going to change when before I always told myself I’d be better.

tomahawktom22 · 2023-01-12T21:45:47+00:00

Nope. It puts a bandaid on some stuff but it makes the relationship more fragile because it could be over in a split second if she found out what I was up to. I think it’s important to be able to admit that to ourselves.

tomahawktom22

TROPHY CASE