Amerika

But in my generation going Dutch in a restaurant is one of the most noticeable achievements of the women’s movement – and when we stayed in I seemed always to be the one buying wine and nibbles. In other words – women still get treated like dirt, only now we have to pay for it.

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As my guilt began to rise about what I was doing to this woman and her marriage, I tried to remind myself that without infidelity, literature and opera would be dull and dreary. There would have been no siege of Troy for Homer to chronicle in the Iliad. No Anna Karenina. No Emma Bovary.

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About six months after I left my first MMM, I saw him on the street with his wife. She didn’t resemble a harridan at all. She looked fragile and gentle and seemed so eager to please him.

A shuddering swoop of anguish made my knees give way. Shame welled up in my chest at what I had done.

Even all these years later when I think of her, remorse as heavy as a winter coat presses down on me.

And when I think of him, something cracks open in me and fury wells up out of the dark hidden places in my heart. That’s when I regret having been a mistress most of all.

The Daily Mail

Modern life is about making the external fill the internal void. So convenience becomes prized over accuracy, until you’re able to loosen the bonds the external has on you, and ask yourself how you want to be defined.

And in this case, you see how you leave a trail of heartbreak in the name of “liberation,” and still have to pay for dinner.