Are Affairs Really About Sex? What I Learned as the Other Woman
Everyone has a theory about why people cheat, and almost all of them start and end with sex. He wasn't getting enough at home. She wanted something new. Keep your partner satisfied and they'll never stray. It's clean, it's simple, and it lets everyone feel safe.
It's also mostly wrong.
I spent years as the other woman, so I've heard every version of the "it was just about sex" theory. This week I sat down with Dr. Marie Murphy, a non-judgmental infidelity coach, and we took the whole thing apart.
Why Men Pull Away After Getting Close (What I Learned in Three Weeks)
Three weeks. That's how long I saw a guy in Scottsdale before I left for Greece, and for three weeks he did everything right. He asked me out after every date. He let me be pursued. His texts weren't "morning, sexy" nonsense, they were plans, because we actually saw each other. His actions backed up his words. Then one morning they stopped, and I got a front-row seat to a question a lot of women in their 40s are asking: why do men pull away after getting close?
Waiting to Be Chosen: What I Learned From Five Years as the Other Woman
Being chosen is something we all want. Not just in relationships. We want to be chosen by friends, by family, in our careers, in every room we walk into. And when we're not, we sit there and pick ourselves apart. What could I have done differently? What was it about me that wasn't good enough? It's a brutal little loop, and almost everyone runs it at some point.
But there's a version of wanting to be chosen that's sharper than the rest, and that's the one that lives inside an affair.
Why I Stopped Taking Dating Advice From My Friends
I'm writing this from Greece. Chapter three of The Summer of George, and I picked the dating diary back up right where I left it: seeing someone for about three weeks, and somewhere in those three weeks, the feelings I swore I wasn't looking for showed up anyway.
Which is funny, because when I started dating again I genuinely didn't think I'd meet anyone I actually liked. I figured it would be about going on dates and meeting people and filling my time. Not this. So now I'm 7,000 miles from home, feelings involved, and I've had a lot of slow Greek mornings to think about what I've actually learned about dating in my 40s.
Can You Sue Your Husband's Mistress? What a Divorce Lawyer Told Me
I had a divorce lawyer on the show this week, and about ten minutes in she told me something I didn't know was legal anywhere in this country. In North Carolina, a wife can sue her husband's mistress. Not the husband. The other woman. There's an entire civil action built for it, and Nicole Sodoma, who's practiced family law for 25 years, walked me through exactly how it works.
I'll get to the lawsuit, because it's wild. But the conversation that stayed with me afterward wasn't about suing anyone. It was about why marriages actually fall apart, and how rarely the affair is the real answer.
I Swore I'd Never Do It Again. Then I Got Back on the Apps.
If you go back far enough in my old episodes, you'll hear me swear off dating apps completely. I hated them. I said I'd never do them again, probably more than once, and I fully meant it.
Then in June, I got back on one. And this whole summer happened because of it.
Did He Try to Get Me Back? What Happened When I Left a Married Man
The question I keep getting: did he ever try to get me back?
It shows up in my DMs more than almost anything else. Did he ever try to come back? Did he ever try to change your mind? Did he fight for you?
The answer is no. He didn't.
Dating Again After a Long Time: What It Actually Brings Up
I hadn't dated in a while. Not because I was hiding from it, I just hadn't. And when I got back out there, I found out fast that dating again does something no amount of alone time can do: it holds up a mirror and shows you exactly what you still need to work on.
Why People Get Into Affairs (And What's Actually Missing)
Nobody wakes up wanting to be in an affair. I believe that. I believe most of us are good at our core and that, given the choice, we don't want to hurt the people in our lives. And an affair is a very high risk of doing exactly that. So if almost nobody actually wants to be there, why do so many people find themselves in one anyway?
My answer is that something is lacking within. Not just in the marriage. In the person.
Getting Ghosted After Making Plans: A Real Week Back on the Apps
He made the plans. Not me. He called me, asked me out, picked the day and the time himself. And then he went silent for four days and flaked the afternoon of the date with a text I still haven't heard back from.
Welcome to being back on the apps.
This is week nine of The Summer of George, and I'm out here dating again in a way I haven't in a while. Some of it is fun. Some of it is baffling. And this week gave me a little of both, so let me walk you through it.