Adultery, Betrayal, and How I Rationalized My Way Out Of Things

By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com 
www.sensuoussadie.com 

Back in my vanilla days, I got hit on now and then by married men. No one actually said “my wife doesn’t understand me,” but the sentiment was there. I ran into Mark my first summer in Vermont while getting my motorcycle tuned up after a long winter’s rest. Mark was big and muscled with grease under his fingernails, one of those rough and tough guys. He made a special visit out to my place to bring me a motorcycle part, and we ended up smooching in the grass, still damp from an afternoon rain. His roughened fingers raked my back, making me squeal even as he pulled up my bra and cradled my breasts. Did I know he was married? Yes I did. Did I have an excuse? No I did not. I was hot and he was hot and that was all we needed. He never called me again, which was a good thing. I was pretty darn close to sleeping with a married man, maybe the closest I’ve ever been.

My next brush with adultery happened when my friend Morelli fell in love with me. Of course, he was married to a shrew; no man trying to seduce you is ever married to an angel. We met in the downtown Burlington cemetery to consider our options. I liked him plenty, oh yes, because of his powerful body and his tender mind. There is a special attraction to someone being in love with you, no risk, no worries about rejection. But this time the specter of his wife was clearly in my line of sight. It was a close call, but I managed to leave, having given up just a few soulful kisses. I never heard from Morelli again, even after their divorce. His passion must have been more about escapism than it was about me.

A few years later my buddy Shawn, a Submissive with a taste for exhibitionism, asked me to watch him masturbate. Hmm, I thought, as long as I don’t touch him, then he’s not cheating on his wife and so neither am I. Shawn had a toned body, lithe and tanned, one which slipped into quite a few of my nighttime fantasies. So I watched as he stood on the back porch in the June sunshine where he might just be seen. No… I didn’t touch him. I didn’t feel so bad about this one, but then I didn’t feel really good either. I couldn’t help but wonder where that line was, and if I had crossed it.

It wasn’t long after when I met friend Ken, a cross-dressing Submissive. He convinced me with soft and pleading words that I was the only person who he felt safe enough to come out to. He convinced me that this wasn’t cheating because his wife didn’t “do” BDSM and so therefore he had no choice but to get it elsewhere. I hadn’t had a Submissive all to myself before, and I admit it stroked my ego to have someone choose me as his first. I gave in, engaging in one dinner with a flirtation chaser, one introductory scene with minimal skin contact, and one real scene where he freaked out and left five minutes after I told him to strip. No apology no explanation, so I thought I’d done some terrible thing. In any case, I rationalized that since we had barely touched, this really wasn’t cheating. I wasn’t actually party to adultery. I wasn’t guilty of hurting some woman out there whom I never met. I wasn’t responsible. Now I know it wasn’t that I committed some horrific Dominant faux pas, but rather that the universe didn’t want me messing with a married man.

This was the last time I ever considered a relationship with someone who was cheating on his partner (as opposed to a consensual open relationship). It’s harder in the BDSM community to hold this line because so many married people need to express their orientation, but will not or cannot tell their partners. I don’t have any answers for them, only my own choices to do or not to do. Being “party” to adultery is the same as adultery. You don’t get dispensation from being one degree away.

I formally apologize to the four women I have disrespected through my selfish acts. I don’t know your names, but I hope you will accept my apology, anyway.

The reality is that adultery is the same whether it is vanilla or D/s. The crux of the thing is not whether or not specific acts came into play, but the fact of our intimacy and the betrayal it caused. That’s the sin. Those men betrayed the affection and trust of their wives, and I helped. For what it’s worth, I won’t do it again. The most important thing I own is my integrity, and that, at least, is intact from here on in.

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Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene (http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html). She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn , Vermont 's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications