This Week's Dance With Infidelity

Just in case you thought I had everything figured out...

Let’s just say I relate to Vincent and Mia’s flirtation and sexual tension.

Hey,

This week, your friend and Earth School classmate, Atoosa, has toured both sides of infidelity. I was cheated on. And I, too, dipped my toe (okay, my tongue) in the wrong pond. As I tell my children, two wrongs don’t make a right…but they don’t listen…and I guess neither does their mother.

I’ve had many run ins with infidelity in my life. You’ve heard ad nauseum about all my own past adulterous shenanigans, so I won’t bore you with that now. But, oooof, do you remember the first time you were cheated on? For me, it was my college boyfriend, “J.” One night, I was at his apartment and used his phone bill as scrap paper to jot something down on (this is before we all had smartphones to take notes..imagine that!). And then I happened to notice that there were a bunch of calls to some number super late at night. Like 230 in the morning. Hmmmm. Being the nosy bitch that I am, I didn’t say anything to “J” but I wrote the number down and called when I got home. I got a machine. “Hi…It’s Tracy…” Blah, blah, blah. It was some girl. I. Was. Furious. But what made absolutely no sense at all was that I was mad at this girl Tracy! (I won’t lie, her voice sounded like someone I could hate anyway…just sayin’.) I’m horrified to say, I actually eventually spoke to her and had a whole stay-away-from-my-boyfriend conversation with her. I mean…I know…I’m fucking mortified. I just swallowed a little vomit thinking about it. That was not my best look. 🙈

And yes, my husband cheated on me, too…But I’m saving that story for my book. 💁🏻‍♀️

This week, I want to talk about someone I made out with. Someone I shouldn’t have made out with. Someone I really enjoyed making out with. Someone who is in a monogamous relationship. And yes, I knew. But honestly? I kind of didn’t care. And yes, I know what that makes me. It makes me honest. (At least in this community, it makes it honest because we don’t judge – we get curious. Right???????).

So please come get curious with me. We can process this in real time.

So the kiss was just the kiss. It was amazing. It was intense. But it was what he said after the kiss that we need to break down. “You groomed me!” he said with a smirk. He was being funny. But it was funny, not funny if you know what I mean. I groomed him. I groomed him. I groomed him. I FUCKING GROOMED HIM. He was right. I’d been grooming him for two years.

I don’t need to tell you why this is so big and profound, right? Think about when we usually hear that phrase. Childhood sexual abuse. The perpetrator grooms the victim. And look at us here. The victim (me) becomes the perpetrator. I groomed him. I fucking groomed him.

I realize I didn’t sexually abuse him. I realize he is a man both bigger and older than me. But yet, I knew what I wanted and I played the super slow game to get it. He had never before cheated on his partner. And many people would argue that since it was just a kiss he still didn’t. But this unpacking is kinda less about him and kinda more about the other thing. How inside me exists both the victim and the perpetrator. I groomed him, my sister. I groomed him.

You might be wondering what that grooming process looked like. Among other things, it includes sharing details about my sex life over the past two years. The less satisfying experiences that perhaps had him thinking how much better he is in bed. The incredible experiences that made him fantasize what it would be like to have that kind of sex again. I shared my fears, my insecurities. Intimacy. Intimacy is how I did it. I didn’t do it on purpose. No scratch that. I mean…of course I did it on purpose. I enjoyed and valued our closeness and fed it consistently. But I didn’t do it consciously. I didn’t think, “Oh, let me share this stuff with him so he can imagine us having sex.” That’s not how it was. It’s just that I’ve always kind of loved him. He’s been in my life for a long time. Long before he met his partner. What I’ve always wanted from him was intimacy. He’s a tough nut to crack that way. So that’s what I was going for. That’s what my oversharing was about. I wanted to feel intimacy with this reserved, non-intimate guy. I wanted to create a small cozy place to talk. And we did, we did.

And we also kissed.

So yet again, I sit with the boundarylessness of my childhood. That competitive need to get physical and emotional intimacy from my friend is rooted in a childhood of competing to get my mother’s love at all costs. When I’m unconcious (and I was this week for reasons relating to my own relationship), I’m seeking that intimate bond I was deprived of as a young person. It’s the same bond that my perpetrator was deprived of from his mother…that he tried to replicate with me. I still remember my perpetrator’s boundaryless kisses: Jamming his angry tongue down my throat, seeking to finally get that intimacy that was deprived him. Angry. Angry. So angry. My own seeking is not angry. It’s just competitive. Competing for my mother’s distracted attention. So a man who shies away from intimacy (unavailable for one reason or another) is cat nip for the unconcious cat and mouse game with my mother. This ancestral wounding of a long line of unavailable mothers that resulted in the incest I survived. This boundarylessness put my friend in an uncomfortable position. Even though he liked kissing me, I’m sure he would have preferred not to kiss me. He would have preferred we kept a platonic relationship, albeit one he can reflect upon however he likes in his own private fantasies.

A few weeks ago, I had a really interesting conversation with the first man I ever had an affair with… on film. It was the first time we really unpacked our affair. I thought it might be interesting content for you. And it was….but then he changed his mind about releasing it. He just felt too shitty because what came out was that he really didn’t give a shit about my husband at the time. In retrospect, he felt like it was bad karma to put it out there. And trust me, I know what he means. I didn’t care about my friend’s partner either. I’m not saying it’s okay to do whatever we want without thinking about the ramifications on people’s lives and feelings. I’m just saying it’s complicated. Survivors of childhood trauma have complex and old reasons for our hunger. This hunger that’s sometimes so intense that we don’t realize we’re biting someone’s hand in the process of feeding.

So today, I sit with grief for crossing my friend’s boundary. Not because he expressed anger or disappointment in me. But because he didn’t. 💔 I am reevaluating every relationship I’ve ever had through this lens. How much manipulation was going on? I sit simultaneously with shame and compassion. I sit with my hunger. The hunger I still have for my unavailable mother that translates to unavailable men. Today, on Halloween, I will feed it sugar. But tomorrow, I will follow my own advice and feed it what it really needs: Some good self-love. I have no answers, only questions.

This really isn’t about infidelity at all, is it? It is about boundaries. One thing I’ve been unconsciously seeking, I didn’t realize until just this moment is boundarylessness in my partners. And yet, my last partner was super boundaried with me. I kept chipping and chipping at his boundaries…almost mocking them. Until…he cheated on me. What an ironic line in the sand. And one I truly understand. Maybe Karma IS a bitch after all? The only thing I know for sure is, it’s complicated. We were each victim and perpetrator in that relationship, too…I’m just not ready to unpack it yet. 😕

I’m trying not to blame myself this step back in my commitment to consciousness. Work in progress, work in progress. 💃🏻

I’ll be working on this emotional Rubik’s Cube if you want to grab yours, 24/7, as always at atoosa@atoosa.com.

xo, atoosa

The soundtrack of my 🤍🖤❤: