Anatomy of an Affair

I like this...

Very well done.

Excellent

That's what happens when you cheat on your loving husband and family.
YOU LOSE

cunt

4587 Stars

Wow

How true

Excellent.

When they say that an affair strengthened the marriage, you know it won't take much to have another one.

Brilliant piece of writing. Thank you cpete.

It left as many questions as answers - that's what a short should do. 5*

NO MATTER THE CRIME

when its time to pay the piper-----the coin of the realm is expensive. TK U MLJ LV NV

The best is yet to come!

You have to write the sequel to this story. The selfish woman finds herself living alone in an apartment on the cheap side of town. She finds her kids disobedient and openly angry with her all the time. There is no money, because the divorce has eaten it all up. The kids father is wounded and in pain. The kids futures have dimmed. The statistics about children of divorce and their hard futures is the new reality. Her married friends are distancing themselves from her. Their husbands do not want her influencing their wives. She finds herself relegated to the social world of misfits and sluts. The only men that are interested in a middle aged cheater are the ones that are too cheap to pay for a whore. Her husband gets all the sympathy and her former friends set him up with a pretty, younger woman who recently divorced her husband for cheating. She is alone, unloved, disliked, with her memories of her crummy stupid affair. The same cowardice that got her into her affair is all that keeps her form killing herself. As time goes on, her contact with her husband regarding the children has improved. Since his new marriage, he no longer openly hates her. He is doing everything he can to be nice to her and to heal their relationship for the benefit of the children. This only makes her love him more. This is the only warmth in her cold blue life. She learns to live with that and focuses her being around the love she feels for her children and her ex husband. She finally learned what love is. (this is drawn from a couple of marriages I have seen disintegrate - they were very similar and sad)

now that's a story

You have a great talent...short but packed with emotion....carry on

Very good

Interesting approach. Thanks.

Great story!

I don't think anyone has ever broken down an affair like that from a women's perspective before, very interesting! You can feel the emotional roller coaster she is riding!

Thought this was incomplete

I gave this a *****, even though it is incomplete. You should do two more chapters. One of his diary over the same period of the cheating. And one of the aftermath when he gets raped by the courts and his children are given to his cheating slut ex-wife. Just to inject some real life experience into this story.

ditto

I like the idea of doing the husband side of being clueless and then either seeing little signs or just a friend mentioning something he saw. I certainly enjoyed reading this tale you wrote and the labor you put into doing it. Nicely done, well written and thought out. Thank you for sharing.

Original

This was unique, and it contained some key insights into the world of someone doing something as unethical as conducting an affair. I'm not sure the divorce needed to be there, as this was more of a character study than a short story. But, of course, if you hadn't explicitly stated that consequences were levied, a number of people on this site would have missed the value of the passage entire.

Great

It is obviously a flash story and not designed to cover everything. Perfect. 5

A Questionable Balance ?

First i want to say this CSI slant is a novel one and Cpete is to be commended for stepping out of his comfort zone. He has established a niche of hard working " 'family uber alles' male narrators who are initially devastated by their mates straying. The good guy swiftly rebounds by concocting an artful, usually hilarious payback and upgrades as well cc life partner.

In this story, the lost time, expense, maddening logistics and gnawings of conscience are superbly depicted as well as the fading novelty of taboo trysts. Rock solid read, no doubt ! Upon reflection, I thought that to take this story to the next level there needed to be more fluctuations in the journal. This was set in too minor a key.

Cheaters are addicted to the rollercoaster of gamesmanship. Ideally this narrator would also have had periods of feelings of nigh-omnipotence. There's an element of 'I'm too smart to be caught by my drab, dull hubby' that would have painted a fuller portrait of the female cheater.

They often think they're all that plus a bag of a chip & therefore deserving to take a sabbatical from sworn vows. This story was mired mostly in the key of fear and remorse. I hope this criticism is seen as constructive. All authors who do their best are to be commended to be stepping into the arena and the Loving Wives demographic is the most perilous of all.

Cpete doesn't flinch from submitting his stories for judgement. I always find a multiple number of points that provoke thoughts that startle myself as his hard work baits them to the surface. I'm glad to join the vast majority of fellow commentator, that are very glad indeed for his contributions.

another whore divorced

they should just enjoy being whores once they cheat that is all they are. If i married a cheater and found out in past relationship she did it i would divorce her.

never be with a cheater they are nothing but trash

Originality gets it five stars.

And I thought it was well handled as a flash story. It would have been a mistake to add in all the boring bits of an otherwise normal life - this was, quite rightly, like watching the 'edited highlights' of something. Very good indeed.

good description

this sounds like what happens too often to women that have been married for a while and get complacent in their lives and just want a little excitement and it many times ruins their marriage completely and finally as judge bean would have judged.

this is one of the best stories here

it was very very original, and was worth the 5 everyone has given it.

Good read

Thanks for sharing. The changeup in normal cheating wives format is refreshing.

more questions than answers

Normally I love this authors' work but this one I think is pretty close to being a dud if not outright disaster. Yes I will give him points for originality.... But there are so many unanswered questions... that the very short entries actually end up causing more confusion and uncertainty towards the end of the story.

In an odd way... this story is somewhat similar to the highly overrated and poorly thought out story HOUSE OF CARDS by OHIO. In that story the wife claim to have always put her husband #1 in her life even though she was having an 8 month RELATIONSHIP. . And of course becuase the author was bent on reconciliation all cost the author ensured that the husband never come to the obvious conclusion that an 8 momth long affair is is PROOF that his wife was NOT #1 .

In THIS story.... this was NOT an affair. It was a long term relationship... that last for 7-8 months.

By week 16 the wife says God I hate my new world.
By week 17 the stress is clearly getting to her and she's having breakdowns in the shower
By week 19... she cant sleep.
By week 21 she cannot stand the sight of her Lover.

Yet the affair continues up until week 28. That is another 12 weeks or 3 more months during which the wife is increasingly disheartened and disgusted by her lover during which she was having second and third thoughts. Yet she never stopped.

Nice way of entertaining us

It is nice to see that the wife gets to the same point in the affair as she was in the marriage. Extremely well done and perceptive. Thanks!

There are several pathetic people in this story

The most pathetic far and away is the self centered slut who was a wife in name only.
When she discovered there was problem in her marriage what effort did she put into resolving, what passion did she show. What she did was in a very selfish way she started flirting at work all the while knowing she was entering forbidden territory.
She is shown to be a lousy lover to her husband, and eventually a lousry lover to her new fucktoy, when is it going get into her thick skull that the problem might just be hers and really hers alone. The author had a good idea for the format of his story but where it fell apart was the really weak self absorbed characters.

FYI...it's much the same from the male's perspective. Very well done!

FYI...it's much the same from the male's perspective. Very well done!

Realistic and sensible

Liked the story because it made sense and was real.

It was good, but being one sided made it difficult to enjoy! Also you should've taken it further in the process. Stopping where you did seemed odd to me!

More answers than questions.

The story was so good because it opened up so many lines to read between. In those huge gaps we were able to supply our own logic. Really good short story. No real need for more - but another side of the story in the same style would be interesting, no doubt about it. Thanks for writing 5*

GOOD!THE cheatinf whore got what she deserved, amd hopefully she got AIDS from her bastard boyfriend and dies alones, in pain,a nd misersble

authentic!

This has obviously been written from experience. Sadly I had an affair a few years back. It too lasted about 6 months and never became public. I now see my wife as Mrs perfect, I could not see this before the affair. In my opinion most affairs are born from the chase, we all love the fresh exitement of the chase. This is a good story and hopefuly (I know it won't) will disuade others from venturing down this blind alley!!

Well written

The emotions ring true,how cheating turns from a thrill to a burden and how it.damages the cheater and their life.The twist at the end,that when she has broken it off and is back in love with her husband,he has found out and leaves points out another truth,that a terminated affair is still a threat..did the ex lover tell him?Did someone see them?Had husband found an old.email...it points out that if you decide to make your.marriage work again you have to come clean,it is the only way to reconcile,and while it can ruin the marriage,it also means it is out in the open and not there as a landmine waiting to go off....by the end I felt sad for her bc she realized what she had done,she isn't a slut that way,and wants to do right but she nevet does...we can hypothesize that hubby knew and wanted her to come clean,but when she didn't he felt she couldn't be trusted.

The end did not disappoint, where there were consequences and husband was not
as dense as thought, or she as clever as she thought. ...I liked it.

Harry - it took so long because -

in the story (and this is a story. Very well crafted even though, cpete you played a old trick in leaving me wanting more).

So long to get out of the clay she stepped in Harry because:

she is being threatened by the lover, who is so in love with her ( I bet she's hot as hell) that he's willing to blow out the twenty-seven stone missus and eight fat kids for endless knocking of this submissive (not necessarily true)...but quickly subjugated, according to her diary..

Geddit? And she's so freaked by the fat evil fucker's threats as described in this great short, though she hasn't (we're reading between the lines, see, Harry?) described the lover, but we gain a great insight into the character of the husband...

A decent hard working guy. Who may or may not have been neglective of his spousal duties. (Back between the lines Harry. I hope you're following). When he (the fat evil lover with perhaps a hint of savage passion that has obviously enthralled sweetie (thanks LDS), cannot bear his loss and so he tells hubbio that he's tupped the slut countlesss times. Soft cunt. Now we can really feed our imaginations. How does the good (but possibly negligible) husband react to this snide betrayal.Come with me Harry, my old hobo,

deep between .....

Deep between the lines we discover he's left. She loses. In the writing we know he (bastard evil low class betraying lover) was an illicit refuge. She quickly soured of. She found herself trapped with. She began to regret it. She started to fear him. She thought of the consequences...She thought maybe, somehow, she'd got away with it!

And then, in a brutal finale, she was properly fucked. Class. Can I give it another five?

To those of us that make it to midnight, I salute you. Once again - great story - couldn't have honed it much sharper.

cpete

It' a "4" but can be a "5" if you finish the story and tell us what happened to her after he left the note ... hopefully she suffered terribly!!!!! I hate cheating whore wives!!!

Thanks

She wants to know how and why?

She really never knew herself very well. She is an emotionally immature selfish person. It is that simple. She would sacrifice everything for an ego boost. That's beyond stupid, it is delusional. Unfortunately, it is also very common when it comes to human beings.

Well written

Short and to the point. Some might have wanted some of the husband's words at the end, maybe in the form of a letter repeated in her thoughts, but then this story was really all about her thoughts and emotions. I remember the thing we used to say as kids "Cheaters never prosper." Thanks for a good one.

Not a pre-license requirement

This is a diary which should be required reading for those (Hubbies and Sweeties) passing their third anniversary, to be repeated every third anniversary. Hubby needs to realize that his Sweetie just MIGHT start thinking this way unless he stays on his game!

A little attribution is in order

Sorry to do this but this was adapted from a web article: ://www.ivillage.com/having-affair-advice-cheating-a nd-marriage/6-b-477934
Anyway, it was a good adaptation but it would be great if you took it a little further and continued with the husband's viewpoint. How he noticed the changes, how his suspicions were aroused, etc..

Definitely Plagiarism

This story is almost verbatim the article shown below. What bullshit.

Credit where Credit is due.

This story was based on a series of articles from the above posted web site-however LIT does not allow listing or pointing to other web sites in the submitted story body or other credits. Thus the above posted site was "modified" for posting on LW into a story form.

Don't know about the plagerism bullshit...

... but you could surely redeem yourself to the haters with a follow up chapter from the husband's point of view. Sort of fill in the gaps, so to speak. Worth a try, don't you think.

WTF- complete plagiarism - word to word !

The author has lifted this word to word from an article that was linked to in a previous comment.

i tried to see the story but the site told me it was not there. attribution might have been a good idea.

It's a ... dramatization

It's a derived work, certainly. Nonetheless, thank you cpete for bringing it to us.

Perhaps we can appreciate it as commentary on the frequent retasking of common plots?

A sad state of affairs

How sad things turned out for a woman that was feeling her life was coming to an end and wanted some excitement in it.

She made a lot of mistakes and spent many weeks worrying herself into a nervous and an emotional wreck, only to have the reality of her misguided feelings cause her more grief.

Not only is she ruined, but her husband is probably a mental case from having the woman he loved be deceitful and lie to him for over half a year.

A sad state of affairs.

Thanks for the read...

I liked it.

I enjoyed the read. I would like hubbys view point. Maybe she was boring in bed and it was pretty clear that she was not focused on hubby or the kids much for weeks on end. Selfish woman

Keep em coming!

Your pen has been quite active the past weeks. That's a good thing btw

LOUSY

Keep trying. this has to be the worse piece of crap ever written,and I'm a mom who has had a few affairs.

Joan @ The Jersey Shore

copycat?

If you check SOL where the story was originally posted you can see attributes given to the original site and article. LIT does not allow such allowances such as pointing to another web site.
cpete

sorry cpete but you did not have to link to it - only say it was an adaptation from an idea from and list the site - you did not need to link to it. if you had no one would give you shit about this, but you didn't. it is not the idea it is the fact that it is almost word for word, that is the problem. you added in the dates and stuff but you screwed the pooch with this one. still i liked it and they way you did it. sorry that a good story gets bad marks for a mistake but they take away Phd's from people who do the same thing. you are a good writer, take this as a message not to adopt language wholesale and not say you did it. and i looked again and i dont see where you posted your attribution in the story, which is where it should be.

There was a space in the "a nd" - Here is the link

://www.ivillage.com/having-affair-advice-cheating-a nd-marriage/6-b-477934