Days of My Life

My Latest Theory on Male Infidelity

I got it! By George, I’ve got it! I’ve finally figured out why I fascinate some married men. I’m the girl they looked over but now wish they had. If only I were being arrogant… Think of Musiq’s The Girl Next Door–that’s me all day long.

This is my theory. Some married men stray to satisfy their sexual fantasies. We typically assume that is why most men cheat, other than the reason of “because they can.” I submit to you that there may be another reason as well. Consider this: some men cheat because they married the fantasy chick and now wish they had married a wife, or at least the girl next door.

Think about it. The girl next door is your girl, your homie, your ace, you know, you can just be yourself and chill. Think Xscape’s “Just Kick It.” Most men, for reasons I do not understand, feel at ease around me as they get to know me. They usually have a combination of intrigue and curiosity going on trying to “figure” me out. I’m laid back. I’m a Southerner. I’m easy like Sunday morning and cool as a cucumber, which by the way, really are cool. (Did I mention I’m a corn ball?) The girl next door is the one you kick it with while never really thinking of her as a girl. She’s always, you know, just the girl next door. Until you see her years later, all grown up, and she’s suddenly so much more. The girl next grows up to be a beautiful woman and sometimes a wife.

My ex’s stepdad called it just right. I was in high school and he told his son: Boy, you’d better hold on to her because in a couple years she’s gone be fiiiiiiiiinnee!! I blushed back then, absolutely clueless as to what he really meant. I was still developing, but since I was still oblivious to male attention, I maintained a great deal of humility, naivete, and just innocent sweetness that stuck for a long time. I was the girl next door. So, it’s not so strange that a guy who gets a little frustrated in his marriage will let his mind drift to the last time he was really comfortable with a member of the opposite sex, and for some men that will be when they were just kicking it with the girl next door who is now so much more. They want a girl who is cool, confident, beautiful, handling her own, and is also a wife. That wife part is the key because this is the guy who when he was younger wasn’t as concerned about having a wife as he was a sex partner and/or tropy. But things change. If he’d known better, he would’ve found out that part of being a wife is being a willing participant in that undefiled marriage bed of anything goes, but he didn’t choose a wife–he just chose a partner.

When the kids are unkempt but the spouse’s nails and hair are done, the husband wishes he’d married a wife who is also a mother. (All women aren’t maternal.) When the spouse refuses to have children, the man wishes he’s married a wife who’s also a mother again. When the dishes are piled high and the spouse is still ready to hit the club, the man wishes he’d married a wife. When the trophy is breaking his bank and has no concern for the household expenses, the man wishes he’d married a wife. When the woman who shares his bed makes him feel like she’s doing him a favor by being there, he wishes he’d married a wife. Dude is feenin’ for the girl next door and can only think, she would never do this to me.

Let me digress a bit. My single male cousin was discussing me with his married friend who did not know that I was listening to the whole conversation. I knew the first time dude met me he was fascinated. He’s a business associate of my mom’s. He was a bit too generous with his compliments and stayed longer than he should have trying to extend the conversation, and the fact that he was married was a bigger turn-off than the fact that he still wouldn’t be my type even if he weren’t. See, that’s the thing. Guys always tend to assume they could actually pull the woman about whom they fantasize if they weren’t married. They cannot. Just stop already.

I may come across as kind, considerate, compassionate, and yaddah yaddah yaddah yah, but if someone left his wife and I (in a moment of gross stupidity) married him, I wouldn’t still be those things because compromising my standards would make me into someone else, someone God never intended for me to be.

Anyway, dude concluded that my cousin didn’t have to try to save me for him because I was clearly uninterested. You think?!! Dude’s rationale is that he’s preparing to divorce his wife, but if he knew what I knew, he would keep her. From what I know, he actually lucked up and married a wife instead of a good time girl. He’s just being extra.

Me? I like to have a good time, but I’m definitely a wife. The married guys I meet are drawn to the wife-like qualities that I have. I’m a wife. That’s just what I am except I have no husband. The fantasy is beauty, brains, and wife all in one neat little package. I fit that bill. I am the girl that men who married young would overlook because the requisites then (20s) were beauty, maybe brains, and good time girl. I’ve never fit that bill. I neither flaunt nor hide any of my better qualities, but I’m all too aware that I have them.

I’m an extension of an unfulfilled fantasy: I wish I’d married the nice girl. Coupled with the wrong person, there is very little that is sweet, beautiful, or alluring about me. That is what the married guy fails to get. You wouldn’t complete me; you’d create an ugly me because we are no better than the people with whom we connect ourselves.

When men tell me, your husband will be one lucky man, I know he will because he will be my husband and I will be his wife. Shoot, I’m already his wife; I’m just holding it down until he finds me. God says he finds, but you know what? I choose. That is why I’m still single; I haven’t chosen any of the men who have found me. I plan to choose wisely, so I am single by choice and not by force.

For all those men who wish they hadn’t overlooked the girl next door way back when, just wish… I bet you can turn a garden tool into a housewife and make an ordinary woman become a wife. But why don’t you work on what’s at home and see how that goes.

To be fair, this works both ways. Women also cheat because they wish they’d married a husband instead of what they have at home.