I grew up in a family that confused honesty with truth. While we were honest about our feelings and desires, we were fundamentally untruthful. We engaged in self-deception and lied to others in pursuit of comfort and to protect our privileged worldview.
This difference is why, as Dr. Jeremy Sherman writes, “One can be completely honest and totally untruthful.” Honesty focuses on intent; truth focuses on fact.
The foundation was laid early. The family mythology states my parents began dating while my father was still involved with someone else. To continue the new relationship, my mother demanded my father recover his class ring from the other woman as proof the original relationship was over.
Instead, my father merely traded the class ring for his class pin. He presented the ring to my mother as “evidence,” turning her into an unknowing affair partner.
I often reflect on the “honest” lies he must have told—variations of infidelity’s common mantra: “I didn’t want to hurt you,” or “I never wanted to upset you.” These statements may have been honest expressions of his intentions, but they concealed the truth of his actions.
Though unprovable, I believe infidelity—or the appearance of it—was a recurring event in my family of origin, marked by crying, drinking, and arguing over my father’s business trips.
The initial lack of truthfulness planted a deep, enduring seed. Our family consistently preferred pretending normal over confronting the truth. Whether through gaslighting or blame-shifting, the goal was always the same: choosing honest comfort over the humility truth demands. Honesty is an emotional snuggle; truth is a sharp needle that insists on reality.
I carried that pointed legacy into my own adult life.
Some of the people I encountered were equally unskillful. Most were just people, like me, trying to find a connection that felt safe—or passed as love. In truth, I was not safe, and frankly, most of them weren’t either. We date at a sexual level and build relationships at our emotional level.
I burned through endless energy trying to prove my worth, obsessing over what they thought of me because I couldn’t bear what I thought of myself. Fear truly is the mind killer—and the relationship killer. It taught me to conceal: hide the flaws, pretend normal, and minimize the cost of looking away.
In the end, I abandoned my own life and identity for the comfort of others. In my marriage, for example, there was simply no room for me to be me. Instead, I grew spines and embraced the four horsemen of betrayal: lies, evasions, omissions, and shame—shades of dishonesty and secret-keeping needling intimacy to death.
With Painter, we were each other’s affair partners. Sometimes I knew there was someone else in the picture; sometimes I was blind to it. Often I choose the convenient lie.
Of course, not everyone was married. Sometimes we were just fucking around. Other times it was purely emotionally fucking around. Too often we were carrying intimacy entirely off the books.
Regardless of the how and when, and despite the black-and-white adultery narratives that monetize victimhood, infidelity can often be a catalyst for real change. Whatever survives the fire is often of great value, should we decide to embrace the fire and not become the fire.
This inventory resists chronology. It is not linear, and it didn’t all begin or end with physical affairs. Some didn’t involve sex at all, just embarrassed regret, bitter remorse, or a quiet moment I failed to seize out of laziness, shame, or fear. Every name marks a collision between two people grasping for an oasis, and the wreckage left when I chose comfort over truth:
Amelia W.
Amy
Amy
Angel (Affair Partner)
Beatrice (Ended in an affair)
Cindee Lee
Covington, KY
Dawn L.
Deb B. (Affair Partner)
Janet M. (Affair Partner)
Jill F.
Jolene
Katie
Kellie R.
Kelly S. (Affair Partner)
Kim D.
Kim K. (She had an affair)
Leslie
Lisa
LoraLee
Mary Grace (Multiple affairs)
Michelle D. (Ended in an affair)
Painter (Affair Partner)
Pam C.
Sharon C.
Sherri S.
Singer at the Radisson (Affair Partner)
Tonya B. (Affair Partner)
Winona W. (Ended in an affair)
* There are others; this is not an exhaustive list. Names have faded over time, leaving behind only remorse and the ghosts of stories that hang about my conscience like the albatross around the neck of the cursed.
