Re-posted

Affair, funny word.  It means in today's parlance, cheating, but it is just a harmless dalliance between two people.  Everyone should have an affair.  NSA.    The truth is that they happen more often than people think and for different reasons.  They can occur between two unattached people, but for e most part one or more of the people has a commitment.  There is a difference between affairs and love affairs.  Love does not have to be attached to sex, but when it does, becomes at once better and worse.  Better because the parties feel the full range of feelings and have better sex because of it and worse because the NSA develops strings, ropes really, and when it ends it pulls down both people and the people they care about.

I have had a love affair.  The damage has not finished ricochetting through the halls of justice.  If a love affair happens though it is because the is something missing in one or both people's lives. 

Love affairs do not always mean sex, but they have the same effects as if they have had sex.  

It is funny, when someone finds out about an affair, who should not have found out about the affair, it is usually the end of the affair and a long period of distrust ensues and in many cases the end of the old relationship.  With a love affair, it often gets treated in the same manner, but it should not.  There are a few results. No mutual love affair, the lover continues to peruse the relationship and cause further trouble and if it is mutual love the old relationship is broken, what was there cannot be mended easily and will often fail catastrophically; indeed trying to mend the old relationship will often leave the person alone, after they try to keep the old and sacrifice the new.

Many people give up on the old and continue with the new since the old one is damaged and the new one is practically unblemished.  Still, there are problems, everyone involved knows you had an affair and one affair probably means more affairs.  Of course you might get lucky, your new partner might recognize that you are prone to affairs and might be more understanding.

So I have been involved in a love affair.  I am not sure how this one is going to pan out.  For me my feelings were true and my intent was up front.  And I know why it happened and I do not see any changes in the other person beyond superficialness.  I wish that it was only an affair.  I feel hurt, but I am still friends with her.  He will never understand; he will never forgive her.  She will continue to have affairs, because nothing has changed.  She will get mad at me for saying so, but she knows it is true.