A while back, we wrote about "former side chicks" who shared the painfully petty, heartbreaking, and jaw-on-the-floor shocking reasons for getting with married people. Then, some readers even shared their own W I L D stories with us too. Here are the best ones:
1. "We were both married at the beginning of our relationship. At the time, I was ending my relationship with my then-husband. I wanted to have my little adventure with this handsome guy. It was the best situationship since we were both living in a small town. He wanted to keep his image, and I did too. I was falling for him, but I couldn't be the side chick for long. I thought he felt the same way I did, so I straight-up asked him if he felt the same and if he wanted to start something with me. He said, 'Yes, I feel something for you,' but he was not going to get divorced...that hurt me deeply, but I put a stop to it. I haven't been with another man since. Relationships are complicated. I have peace in my head/heart now."
—Anonymous, female, 42
2. "A married cop at my job gave me the usual story. He was only with her for the kids. He was TALL, handsome, and very charming. I went with it. I always knew it was for a good time, not a long time. He claimed to be in love with me, but to me, that meant that if I needed him, he would show up for me no matter what. It took one time when he didn't show up for my lady bits to dry up and end things."
—Anonymous, 36, female
3. "A couple of years ago, my ex-husband ended things with me over a variety of things, but mostly because I have bipolar disorder and my manic episodes really bothered him. He hated how delusional, unreliable, and hypersexual I became. I broke his trust on numerous occasions, and it all just kind of added up."
"My overall sense of self-worth was mostly extremely low during this period of time. I thought I was worthless and didn’t deserve love or to be treated well. So I sought out experiences that kind of confirmed that to me. Experiences that made me feel used, mistreated, and just like bad.
I spent like a solid month mostly sleeping with a variety of married men. Sleeping with married guys gave me the opportunity to sort of fantasize about marriage while also making it really explicit to me that I wasn’t worth being married to. I wasn’t marriage material. I guess, to some extent, it made me feel a little better. It felt kinda nice that someone’s husband still wanted and craved me. Some of them were ultimately a bit put off by my wildness and messiness. Ultimately, I started taking my meds again and got the help I needed, so I cut all of them off.
I know that what I did was wrong. I feel some shame about it, obviously, because I cut them all off in the end, and I haven’t done anything like that since. I also try to have some grace for myself because I know that I was very sick, vulnerable, and unwell back then. I’m not aware of having broken up any particular marriages."
—Anonymous, 35, female, Washington DC
4. "I started dating a 36-year-old man when I was 18 years old, the summer after high school. I lost my virginity to him. He was a photographer and had a 10-year-old child from his first marriage that I knew about. I should have realized what a red flag that was that I was half his age and only eight years older than his CHILD, but I had such intense daddy issues that it felt normal to me at the time. We started an intense romance. My family even accepted him. He met my parents and even came to Thanksgiving at our house. Halfway into our two-year RELATIONSHIP, my 12-year-old sister found out via Instagram stalking that he had a second child I didn’t know about in another state, and a baby mama that definitely thought they were in a long-distance relationship. Throughout our relationship, he would take mysterious trips to another state 'for work,' and I later found out they were to see her and his 8-month-old baby. I was so dumb."
"I stayed in the relationship for another year after that and even did long distance while I was a freshman in college, and remained faithful to him the whole time. After I finally ended things, I found out he gave me an STI. When I confronted him about it, he said that I probably got it from a tanning bed. LOL. So who was the other woman here? Idk. Either way, this guy is the reason women hate men."
—Anonymous, 30, female, Atlanta
5. "I was best friends with this girl from ages 5-15, until we moved away. I kept in touch for a year, but we lived so far away, I just kinda felt like it was a waste of time. Fast forward four years, and she contacted me completely out of the blue. We got to catching up, and it turned out she was even more of a bombshell than I remembered. I think she was having similar thoughts about me because I had been hitting the gym. It turned out she was in LA visiting extended family and came to see me. The sex was literally mind-blowing. Afterward, she guiltily confided in me that she was dating someone. At first, I was pissed, but then she said he’d been abusive and had the bruises to prove it. After that, I chilled out and realized that the correct moral decision just got a hell of a lot more complicated."
"Now, I’m a nice guy, and just can’t help myself when I see someone else in need. I would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t help my former best friend out. So I confronted the guy. We ended up getting in a pretty big fight. He ended up leaving her, and we had victory sex. A few days later, she was late and took a test. She was overjoyed and a little intimidated to find out that she was pregnant. Me, not so much. I was hyperventilating when she told me, and literally blew into a paper bag to calm myself. A few hours later, I had calmed down and told myself in my Accountability Mirror (Thanks, David Goggins!) that I would NOT be the dickface to leave this woman to raise our child alone. I resolved to marry her, not out of love, but out of a commitment to being a good person. I wanted our child to have a normal family and figured we would grow to love each other over time. Fast forward five years, and we are a tight-knit, happy family. We had two more kids, and I am teaching our oldest to surf, bike, ski, and be an all-around badass."
—Anonymous, 25, male, San Diego
6. "I’m the side piece to a wealthy married man. His wife also has a side piece. I went into this relationship knowing that both were dating and wasn’t sure if it was the right fit for me. He courted me for six months because I wanted to make sure no one would be intentionally hurt, especially me, in this scenario. I can’t say it hasn’t been really tough at times, but we are a year in and both working towards this lasting long term. I can say it works because they live in more than one state, and there’s a lot of moving around. It sometimes doesn’t work, not because of jealousy, but because of a lack of, or poor, communication among all parties. It's definitely a learning curve."
—Anonymous, 54, female, New York
7. "He was my horny neighbor whose girlfriend was away at college. It was more about getting my 'cougar patch' than anything else. For context, he was 25, and I was 52. The sex was meh at best, but his wanting to hook up with me did wonders for my ego!"
—Anonymous, 64, female, California
8. "I was in a 35-year marriage that was on the verge of divorce due to his alcoholism. He was someone I had met online. We started chatting, and the conversation became more intense and personal. He was in a rebound second marriage and was essentially a 'trophy husband' and unhappy. I had started a job that took me on the road for long periods, and eventually, we met in person. He was everything I wanted and more. Eventually, I got divorced. It took a little longer, but his wife left him, and he divorced her. We’ve been together for 18 years, married for 10."
—Anonymous, 70, female, Tennessee
9. "She was my roommate for a year and a half before it started. She had had this boyfriend for many years, and they had lived with each other at one point, but then moved into separate places because she had cheated on him. They worked through it with a counselor and wanted to stay together, but their counselor suggested separate living spaces for a healthy balance or whatever. So, that’s how she ended up as one of my four roommates. I had been dating someone for several years when she moved in, and we lightly flirted sometimes, but never crossed the line. We were good friends. That was until my girlfriend and I broke up. And then it happened almost immediately. Real hot and real heavy."
"Covid hit shortly after that, and with the lockdown, we barely left each other's side for months. Except for when she would go over and spend the night with her boyfriend. Our roommates knew, her friends knew, my friends knew… The only person that didn’t seem to know was her boyfriend. After about a year of this, she moved out and back in with her boyfriend. We continued to hook up. We saw each other almost every day because she worked around the corner from the house and would come over for lunch or after work.
Whenever he was out of town, we were together. Or she would lie and say she was leaving town for work and come spend a few days with me instead. I even went with her on several of her actual work trips. I asked her several times over the three years of our situation if she would break up with her boyfriend and give us an official try, but she always dodged it, and I eventually stopped asking. I finally met someone else and started seeing them seriously. That was when she finally decided to break it off with her boyfriend and try to make our situation official. I shut it down. It was really hard because I had definitely fallen in love with her, but I knew if we were to be in an actual and official relationship, she would probably end up cheating on me as well.
She moved away not long after that, and I haven’t heard from her since. I do wonder sometimes if she’s doing okay. As far as I know, the boyfriend never found out. We have mutual friends, and we would run into each other at the bars fairly often. He was always super chill. I felt (and still feel) horrible about the years of deceit he suffered, so I’ve anonymously paid his bar tab a few times when he wasn’t looking. Doesn’t make up for it, but it’s something. I don’t think I could ever tell him the truth, though. I’m now married to the love of my life, and we trust each other completely. I couldn’t ask for more."
—Anonymous, 37, male, Arizona
10. "We are both there for each other when we need. We've been friends since college. I know his wife, and I knew he needed a break because I don't treat him like his wife treats him. When we have a girls' night out, I'm always listening to her terrible behaviors, all while her husband finds comfort in me. The conversation is always about her and how wonderful her life is. Gloating about her 'wonderful life.'"
—Anonymous
11. "I moved somewhere new and took myself to the local dive. I ended up hooking up with a plumber, and we had chemistry out the whazoo. But out of nowhere, he stopped showing up at the bar and ghosted me via phone. We ended up hooking up after he had a girlfriend. She saw me talk to him and then tried to choke-slam me against the wall. And you bet your ass I slept with him that night."
—Anonymous, 35, female, San Francisco
12. "I was just bored, not gonna lie."
—Anonymous, 34, female, Orlando
13. "I was in a year-long affair with my married coworker. He was a subcontractor at my job. I was in charge of assigning him work and making his schedule, so we spent a lot of time talking. Friendly banter led to harmless flirting, then intentional flirting, and eventually to physical intimacy. He mentioned he was having issues in his marriage, and I was single and didn’t want anything serious at the time, so we pretty much agreed to have fun together. But over time, we started falling for each other, and things between us got complicated. We were getting very reckless and risky, and he had children he was worried about if we got caught. We mutually agreed to end things and have caught up once since that year, but I reached out twice and never heard back from him after that."
—Anonymous, 30, female, Texas
14. "I got married when I was 19 to a man 14 years older than me, and by 23, I was divorced. It was difficult to be so young, but I felt like I had been through a lot. So, I met a guy while I was trying to finish my degree who was in the same online program as me. We were in the same cohort and met in person for classes. He was 28 and very successful. He was focused and smart, but also had a really sweet disposition. He was a little shorter than me, so I thought I wasn’t interested in him, plus he was married, so at the time I felt like I could flirt with him and that it was 'safe' because he seemed to be happily married."
"I realize now that I was disillusioned with marriage because of my own experience. So, I started an emotional relationship with him. He was very attentive to me and adored me. He would call me when he was on trips, constantly check in with me, buy me really thoughtful gifts, and be just really present when we were together. It was so different from being with guys my age who couldn’t hold an interesting conversation!
This went on for a few months, and one day he came back from a trip with a Tiffany & Co. bag that had a box inside. When I opened it, I found a small heart-shaped necklace. We had been hiding our feelings for one another during classes and group projects, which felt thrilling at the time. It felt really exciting to have a secret together. I honestly didn’t even think of his wife. He once told me he had a really big heart and could love many people, and that made sense to me. I didn’t want to be in something with commitment because I had already had that, and it didn’t work out well for me.
Our feelings grew, and I came to care for him, but I didn’t feel in love; I felt safe and cared for. He brought me to his house when his wife was away visiting family. He carried me into his bedroom, and then he pulled out some condoms. We ended up having sex in his bed. I got up quickly after and felt instantly terrible. All the terrible feelings I shoved down all of a sudden came up. The thrill was already muddled and felt like the guilt was creeping in. I felt him seeing me in a different light. The stakes were higher now.
I felt sick for being so careless. After that, we didn’t speak again. I ignored his messages until I changed my number and moved away. I threw away the necklace he gave me, straight into the trash. I met my now husband about a year later, and we’ve been happily married for almost 20 years now."
—Anonymous, 45, female, Washington
15. "I was the side chick to a guy I dated in high school. I had no clue, and here is why: when we met originally, both me and another friend liked him. When he started showing interest in me, my friend got pissed and kept trying to take him away from me. He dismissed every single one of her advances to the point where other friends were telling me how respectful he was being to her, but also because he clearly liked me. We hooked up a few times. Then one night, I ran into him and a group of his friends at a local festival. He ignored me and seemed annoyed. Well, it's because his long-time girlfriend was there as well. I found out that night he had been dating another girl for almost two years."
—Anonymous, 43, female, Michigan
16. "I once had an affair with a friend who helped me get out of my abusive relationship. His wife was bi and, at the time, had left him to live with her girlfriend. I moved into their house, had lots of sex with him, and hoped his wife would decide to leave him permanently for her girlfriend. That didn't happen. Instead, his wife wanted to come back and share me with her husband. He liked the idea. I left the state and moved out. Last time I checked, they were celebrating their 20th anniversary."
—Anonymous, 64, female, Arizona
17. "His wife has lupus. She is his third wife, but they are not legally married. With her disease, she is often sick, and he takes care of her, cooking, cleaning, and doing home maintenance. He also pays her bills. Because I fulfill his sex drive, so he doesn’t go looking for other women."
—Anonymous, 55, female
18. "My husband was the side guy when I was married to someone else. My ex was a narcissistic jerk who eventually abandoned his 6-month-old child. Meanwhile, my husband adopted my son when my son was 3, and we’ve been in love for 16 years. It was a case of bad timing — meeting him when I was already engaged."
—Anonymous, 43, female, Georgia
19. Lastly, "My ex (the possible love of my life) and I broke up three years ago. He very quickly made a new girlfriend but kept coming back to me every few months. In my head, we were more real. We got together about 10 times in three years. I was insanely in love with him and probably still am, but he’s blocked now since he booty-called a month before getting engaged to his girlfriend. Good riddance."
—Anonymous, 27, female, India
Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
Comments