This week on Slog, we’re revisiting some of the most popular Savage Love letters of all time. We’re organizing them in our new Best Savage Love Letters of the Day section, which will continue growing with more all-star letters throughout the week. —Eds. Note
At a recent large work conference, I met a hot, interesting, married guy, who lives in another country. We hooked up twice at the event—once drunk, once sober. The sex was great, and afterwards, I asked him how often he had cheated on his wife. He said three or four times before me.
A week later, he adds me on LinkedIn (seriously). We started chatting, progressed onto WhatsApp and arranged to meet for a weekend in another city two months later. During the two months, we spoke nearly daily, ranging from flirty sexts to serious conversations. I was clear that to me we were planning a NSA hookup, not a romantic affair, and gave him multiple opportunities to cancel or to say he’d prefer to meet platonically. He insisted he wanted to meet, and to fuck. The first night, we meet, fuck, and all is good. The second night, during dinner, he says he he “doesn’t want anything physical” that evening, because although he wanted to hook up again, it “just feels wrong.” Never mind that apparently it hadn’t felt wrong when he was tying me up and fucking me 16 hours earlier. I said that was fine, we enjoyed dinner and then went our separate ways.
He hit on me at the conference, he added me, he instigated our text conversations, he planned the weekend away, and he had cheated on his wife before me. I gave him multiple chances to back out of our weekend plans. By being the one who ended things, in his head he gets to be the “good guy,” leaving me the “temptress.” The trouble is, I don’t feel bad about what I’ve done. Should I feel worse for sleeping with a married guy? Am I missing some kind of moral compass everyone else is adhering to?
Harmless Affair & Resulting Lack Of Terrible Shame