The Guilty Pleasure.

This blog post is quite controversial, and is probably going to leave you (especially if you don’t know me) thinking I’m a slut, bitch or whore. For those who do know me, you should know that I am none of the above, and if you know me well enough, will know the full ins and outs of the below stories, which proves that I am not as bad of a person as this blog post is going to insinuate. 

Quite often in my life, I have been the bit on the side, the mistress, the guilty pleasure. Sometimes it’s happened by accident, and others on purpose. I have been in situations where I’ve been seeing people – mostly guys – who have wanted to keep our relationship ‘quiet’, only for me to later discover the reason being that they already had a girlfriend or even wife, and I was just their ‘bit on the side’.

Other times, I have chosen that path. It was never done on purpose, but if I really like someone, I have a tendency to forget that they have a partner when I’m with them. It’s not something I’m proud of, but when I’m with someone who I have feelings for, all I concentrate on in that moment is the two of us – nothing and nobody else – which causes me to forget that they have other commitments, which aren’t to me.

It sounds awful, I know, but it was even the situation that I lost my virginity in. I knew he had a girlfriend, but he managed to convince me that I was special. I was led to believe (and was, in fact, naive enough to believe it) that it was me he really wanted, and that he was unhappy with his girlfriend. I convinced myself that I must be special for him to want me, and that by sleeping with me, he was proving that. I never thought of it from an outside perspective – that he was just having his cake and eating it, so to speak, sleeping with two women. 

Even after losing my virginity in that awkward situation, it was a path that I continued living. I was young, stupid and naive enough to believe that being their ‘bit on the side’ meant I was special. I couldn’t see that if these people really did like me for who I was, they would be with me and not in fact with someone else. I was always the guilty pleasure and I never saw it as a bad thing, because I was wanted.

It wasn’t until it happened to me that I saw how damaging it was. Even though I knew these men had girlfriends, I didn’t think I was personally doing anything wrong. After all, I wasn’t the one who was being unfaithful to a partner. I was care free, single and loving life. I never thought about how it would feel to be the other girl – the one who was being cheated on.

I had been cheated on before, but I had always seen it coming. The people I was with had become distant and were acting suspicious. It was never a surprise to me when I discovered or they confessed that they had been cheating on me. It wasn’t until someone I trusted completely confessed that he had been sleeping with someone behind my back that I realised how it felt to be the other girl – broken.

I’d like to tell you that my bad behaviour stopped there but it didn’t. With low self esteem and a broken heart, these dirty little affairs were the one thing that made me feel okay about myself. It sounds stupid to say that now, as in the long run, it had a very damaging affect on my self esteem, but at the time, it made me feel good about myself. I figured it was better to be wanted for just sex, to be the guilty pleasure, than to not be anything to them at all. I couldn’t see that I was just being used and abused.

Even recently, a similar thing has happened. My self respect has risen, so I had not let this person use me for sex, but I’d fallen hard and been convinced that he was going to be mine ‘soon’. After months of being told ‘soon’, I realised what was happening. I was the guilty pleasure again, the bit on the side, even if I wasn’t providing sex. If this person really wanted to be with me, why were they messing around? They would be leaving their partner for me if that was really what they wanted. That’s when I realised how low being the guilty pleasure can make you feel. I began to hate myself even more than I had before and my self esteem dropped even lower. When we were alone, just the two of us, I felt like the most beautiful girl in the world who was wanted and loved, but in public, I felt like a peasant on the street who people stared and spat at. If this person had really liked me and really wanted me, I wouldn’t have to be the guilty pleasure. I would have been their one and only, and rather than being ashamed of me, they would have wanted to shout from the roof tops about how they felt.

I put my foot down. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s taken over three years of playing this ‘guilty pleasure’ card on and off for me to realise that it’s not the life I want. It’s damaging to both myself and the other person involved – the one who is being cheated on. It’s also giving the middle person (the one with two people on the go) a bigger ego by thinking they’re God’s gift to the world and that people are dropping at their feet to be with them. They’re never going to learn their lesson if you allow them to have their cake and eat it.

One day, I will find someone who loves me for exactly who I am, and is proud to be with me. Until that day, I am giving up on love and relationships. I don’t want to be with someone who is half hearted about us or who wants me as their dirty little secret. I am worth so much more than that.

Clare
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xxx