The Mistress

The year that I lived in Tacoma was a season when I seldom thought about God. Even worse than my indifference to God was the obsession I had with my own needs. I had no idea why it was so, but during this season, my life was dominated by a need for sexual fulfillment. When it came to sex, I was like a man dying of thirst. I think I know what David may have felt like when he went after Bathsheba and had her husband murdered.I would later learn from the book His Needs – Her Needs by Willard Harley that most men have a strong emotional need for sex throughout their life. It’s just something we’re born with. Unfortunately, we can’t turn this need off or wish it away. Men become aware of this need early in life, but usually, their wives dismiss it as their husbands just being ‘horny’. The danger of dismissing this emotional need is that men will find a way to have it met – one way or another. If their sexual needs are not fulfilled in their marriage, men will often seek fulfillment outside of marriage. That’s how strong its pull on us can be. Women – please hear me on this point. If you want to affair-proof your marriage, take your husband’s need for sex just as seriously as any need you have. Keep him happy, and he’ll keep you happy.

The bitter irony of my decision to move in with my new girlfriend would taunt me almost immediately. My wife made a call to my manager and told him about our affair. I was called into his office, and we had a very uncomfortable chat. My girlfriend and I were put on opposite shifts. We would have only one out of three days off together. She was placed on a unit that got brutalized for 24 hours, running non-stop calls in the sleaziest part of town. When she came home, on our one day off together, she usually slept the whole day. The time I expected to spend with her seemed like a mirage that disappeared the nearer I came to it.

She lured me into her life with good looks and charm, but after we moved in, I began to see the real person she was more clearly. She and her teenage daughter fought constantly. It was like living in a house with two teenagers who were at each other’s throats constantly. She was also a compulsive liar, and that created a lot of mistrust.

She allowed me to keep track of our finances and pay the bills. We pooled our paychecks, and things went pretty well for a while, until the day she decided to keep part of her paycheck for some personal things that she wanted to buy. It was the beginning of the end, financially, as she began withholding part of each paycheck. A few months later, we were behind on the bills with no way to catch up. As bad as my marriage had been, this wasn’t any better. I was now the live-in babysitter for a deceptive, short-tempered, and financially irresponsible woman.

It’s amazing the level of stupidity a man will lower himself to when following his desires. The enemy will promise you everything you want, but he never delivers on his promises. What you get is nothing like what you envision at the start. The emptiness of it all will shock you.

I always knew that a woman who cheated with you will eventually cheat on you. I knew it in my head, but the one time I really needed that wisdom, it wasn’t anywhere to be found. Well, it was around, but I wasn’t using it. Knowledge and wisdom aren’t the same thing. Wisdom is knowledge applied. I had the knowledge about women who cheat, but I chose not to apply it in this situation. Many times, we suffer not because we lack knowledge, but because we fail to apply the knowledge we have.

My girlfriend soon found a firefighter who was better suited to give her the things she wanted. It wasn’t hard to see what was going on. She began receiving text messages that I wasn’t allowed to see. She withdrew emotionally and started meeting him on the nights I was working. Around this time, my twins suggested I move out of Tacoma so they could come back to Washington to live with me. It took me about three seconds to start working on a plan.

I gave my landlord notice that I was moving out and began looking for an apartment. I found one next door to the High School my kids wanted to attend. After a year of living with the pigs, the prodigal was ready to come home.