My wife is the kind of woman who will have random men walking down the street propose to her — I was with her twice over the years when it happened.
She has known my same circle of friends for decades, all of them, at one point or another, hit on her. Some tried really hard.
For years, she had zero problem pushing away inappropriate attention.
Then, she had her boss hitting on her. She switched jobs to avoid that situation.
Two big changes then — motherhood and job struggles. Her working mother thing was costly, she felt like she went from perfection to failure for the first time ever.
At that point, a postpartum depressed young mother became comparatively vulnerable.
This is when our neighbor, co-worker, 7-years older family friend (we did BBQ’s, kids hung out as they got older, etc.) decided to be her shoulder to cry on.
I don’t know that it could have been anyone.
Richer, more handsome dudes had all been turned away during less vulnerable times.
Suddenly, the attention was what she wanted and she jumped in with both feet. No half measures. No looking back.
I’m not big on the ‘perfect storm’ theory, as there is no excuse to choose to cheat. The facts are, she was at a low point and she decided to go even lower, rather than face reality.
When the A ended, and she felt far worse than before the A.
For her, the path forward was to build from within, to understand she didn’t need anyone to validate her. It took some time, and even though the A was kept a secret for way too long, watching her evolution to being a stronger person was fascinating to witness. We still had tremendous work to due on dday — she just had a head start on her own healing, and that did help our rebuild.