What I learned from my affair.

May 7, 2026

I have regrets. I deeply regret having an affair.

I was listening to a podcaster the other day, and she said people should have regrets, because regrets — remorse — is what changes behavior. So, I’ve been reframing my thinking around regrets.

I think regret fuels self-condemnation, and unless you do something constructive with that, you fall into a shame cycle that keeps you in despair. Shame paralyzes you; it keeps you from moving forward. It prevents you from taking the needed action, making the needed changes, to return to an existence that is rewarding and fulfilling. I know. I was stuck in shame for a very very long time. I nearly died of shame.

So, I think regrets are helpful if you know how to process and move beyond them. If you can turn regret into repentance and forward momentum, into a conscious effort to make more ethical and moral choices, you can overcome the self-shaming that comes with regret.

There’s a huge component of self-forgiveness in there, and I’ve found that the only way to get to that place is to persevere. It takes time. The tools are therapy therapy therapy, adopting healthy practices, taking your meds if your life depends on taking your meds (as mine does), and plain old determination and perseverance.

Self-forgiveness is not linear. I make progress then some weird thing happens, like someone will sound like him, or look like him, and I’m right back there, re-experiencing all the pain of the affair — and the regret. But those episodes pass more quickly now. They take me by surprise, because I get complacent in believing the affair is so far in my past, eight years past, it doesn’t bear on my present any longer. Not true. That woman who I was, that woman who was capable of doing that depraved thing I did, she still lives inside of me. To be complacent, to assume I have transformed to a place in my life where I will always make the good and moral choice, that’s foolishness. I must always be on the lookout for my darker self. I must consistently and persistently work to see her and direct her against actions that are harmful to me or harmful to others. It’s hard. I forget. But I aspire to remain always vigilant.

Here are six things I learned from my affair that I do not regret having learned.

I’m done with emotionally unavailable men.

This one is tough. From decades in therapy, I’ve come to understand I have anxious avoidant attachment. This is rooted in the inconsistencies in how I was treated in my family of origin. My father was abusive. My mother, although she was aware, chose to overlook all of it. I loved my mother deeply; we were very close. Her betrayal was profound and obvious, but I didn’t see it then. I didn’t have the capacity to wrap my mind around the truth of what had happened to me until I was well into adulthood. It wasn’t until I was middle-aged that I began to understand all of the dynamics that went into my formation and that fueled my lifelong struggle with bipolar depression. As a child lacking understanding and any capacity to process what was happening, I was always anxious and unsettled. The abuse began when I was seven. That is when I fell into the Dark. I was depressed and in profound emotional pain.

As a young adult, and again, well into middle-age, I continued to choose men who were remote and unpredictable, just as my father had been. I repeatedly elevated men in authority positions, put them on pedestals when few deserved it, and worked very hard to gain their recognition and approval. I did this with male therapists, professors, managers, anyone I perceived as being in positions of authority over me. I became infatuated with these men. And, sometimes, I’d date one of these assholes. Never my therapists or professors, nothing like that. But I’d pick men who I perceived as being better than me who fed my intense need for intermittent rewards. Such men would shower me with admiration and affection, then be absent for days. Even if those men were physically present, they’d be checked out, not truly engaged in the moment — not invested. Not all of them, and the way their lack of respect manifested was different in each of them. But, by and large, I dated assholes. I fell hard for them, overlooked every red flag I was able to overlook, and invested physically, emotionally, financially, and every other which way in them, when they simply weren’t worthy of my time and effort.

Inevitably, those relationships ended. I usually ended them, because I’m dumb but I’m not stupid. I mean, after a while, I end up paying attention to my gut, and all the things I learned in therapy break through, and I finally get that I’m not in a healthy situation. I might stay a while longer, when I was younger, years longer. But, in the end, I walk.

That pattern repeated throughout my adult life. I brought all of that ugly baggage into the affair, and Jeff did not disappoint! He strung me along for weeks and months, over a year. I knew it was dangerous and unhealthy, that it was contributing to a tsunami of circumstances that were threatening my very ability to continue on in the world. I tried to break it off time and again. But he knew all the right things to say exactly at the right time, and I stayed and stayed. Until I couldn’t stay any longer.

Since Jeff, I am much quicker to see the red flags and react appropriately. I may not choose perfectly, but the men I’ve dated since the affair have been good men. It’s just that, for one reason or another, things just haven’t worked out. I remain friends with those men. They are good men and I’ve no reason not to remain friends with them.

I am capable of depraved acts.

This one was tough. I have disappointed myself by my own choices upon occasion, but the affair was an aberration. If it had been brief and purely physical, I’d have been over it long before now. But it was intense, at least for me it was intense, I thought I was passionately in love with the man. Oh my word. Coco. You dumbass! But it doesn’t do any good to do that, to go there. Not helpful. I’ve suffered enough at the hands of my own unforgiveness — of me.

The affair ended disastrously, as most affairs do. I knew it going in, that it was a Faustian bargain that would cost me far more than any benefit I received. And it did. I full well knew better. But I did it anyway.

And then, when I was at my wit’s end and couldn’t figure out how to make it stop, how to end it, I told his wife. That’s a horrible thing I did. As bad as the affair itself. But it was all wrapped up into one ugly ugly ugly package.

Now, when I’m tempted to think I’ll never make that choice again, or when I’m tempted to somehow imagine I’m better than other people and the decisions they make, I remind myself —

NOPE.

Girl, you are capable of depraved acts!

And so, I extend grace, as best I am able, to people — especially women — who are struggling with making moral decisions. I advise them to not go there, but I don’t judge. And I make sure they know I don’t judge. Because I’ve been there, and I’ve judged myself so harshly, and it’s been completely unhelpful. I won’t do that to anyone else. And I try not to do it to myself. But. I struggle.

When I make a choice, there is always context.

I remember when I was young, my aunt said something to me that I have pondered on all my life. She said, “We all make the best decisions we can at any given moment with the information we have in that moment.”

When I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed, and that went on for months and months, I recognized I was doing the best I could in those moments, it’s just that my best wasn’t very good.

I chose the affair out of desperation. I was grasping at anything I thought might keep me from dying, from ending my own life. I knew going in that it would not help to get involved with Jeff, but I did it anyway, because in that moment, it made me feel better. A fleeting and temporary reprieve, after which I fell further into the dark. I knew that. I knew that. I knew that! But I did it anyway. The context was, that in that moment, I was desperate. And so, I chose poorly in an attempt to simply put off plotting to die. It was that bad. It was that ugly.

I must must must forgive myself for making that choice in that moment. Because there was just SO MUCH CONTEXT. And I do forgive myself, for the most part, most of the time. But not when I write about it like this. Then it all comes back, how horrible I was, how horrible he was, how horrible the affair was.

Oh my God — don’t do it! Do not make the same mistake I did.

But if you do, know that I recognize there is always context. A complicated web of circumstances that put you in a place where you think the choice right in front of you is the best choice, even if that choice is a married man. It’s not. And you full well know it’s not. But if you do make that choice, just know I understand. And I don’t judge you. I can’t judge you. I get it. I really get it. Because I know what it feels like to believe that man, that man right in front of you, blocking out the sun, is your best and only choice.

I have options. I have agency.

For much of my life, when I was faced with a tough decision, it would seem like I only had one choice or that I had no choice at all. That is never true. I always had options and I always had agency. Always.

Choices are usually not binary, either. It takes wisdom gained from experience to recognize that fact, but eventually, I figured it out. One day, I started to see things differently, the world opened up, my capacity to recognize my array of choices expanded, and I gained much needed clarity. I’m sorry it took me so long, but hey, it takes as long as it takes.

I also understand now that it’s important I not make a decision before I’m ready to make a decision. That doesn’t mean I put it off indefinitely, but it does mean I now take the time I need to gather information, think it through, and get advice from trusted friends before I commit myself to a particular course.

So that’s kind of a general thing I learned from the affair that doesn’t actually only pertain to matters of the heart (sexual attraction). It’s a life hack, generally speaking.

I have the capacity to change the course of my life in every moment.

Just because I did something today doesn’t mean I have to do it tomorrow. There is truth to the saying “past is prologue”. But what is even truer is that change is constant and inevitable. You cannot help but move through life and learn all kinds of things, about yourself, about relationships, and about people, that cause you to make better and wiser choices. If you’re at all introspective, and particularly if you’re committed to therapy, you become a better person as time goes by. And you become a better person incrementally, over time, as you are faced with the tough decisions that inevitably and routinely present.

I have become the woman that I always hoped to become. I’m not perfect at this life of mine, I still make bad decisions, wrong decisions, harmful decisions, knee jerk decisions, and stupid decisions! But less and less often. I make choices that are contrary to my own best self-interest less frequently now. I am transformed. I am a new creation.

It doesn’t happen for everyone like that. I mean, we have some notable exceptions to this notion that we progressively improve as human beings over time on ugly display in our political administration. Some people get sucked into the vortex of depravity and never get out. Some people decide they never want out. They live there. They like it. They’re comfortable there. It’s easier.

But, by and large, people become better people as they age. Because you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror in the morning and not hate yourself. You get tired of living with the cognitive dissonance inherent in living a life that is not in line with your values. That poor Pam Bondi. I do so pity her. I mean. Truly. She must be in absolute torment. Oh my gosh, and Rubio!

I digress.

Self-Forgiveness is a process.

I get so angry with myself for continuing to fall into self-shaming over the affair, and a handful of other really really stupid choices I’ve made over the course of my life. But, it is not helpful and it is not loving for me to stay in that place of guilt and shame.

Alas.

Therapy therapy therapy.

I Persevere. And life goes on.

“Humility is a necessary aspect of character, and a key aspect of humility is to not think too highly of your own integrity and capacity to resist temptation. The humble person doesn’t look at his fallen or flawed friends and neighbors and say, ‘That could never be me.’

Instead, the truly humble person says, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”

-David French