I'm an Associate Editor on BuzzFeed's Pop Culture team who spends my days fangirling over all my favorite TV shows and movies.

"My overall sense of self-worth was mostly extremely low during this period of time. I thought I was worthless and didn’t deserve love or to be treated well. So I sought out experiences that kind of confirmed that to me. Experiences that made me feel used, mistreated, and just like bad.I spent like a solid month mostly sleeping with a variety of married men. Sleeping with married guys gave me the opportunity to sort of fantasize about marriage while also making it really explicit to me that I wasn’t worth being married to. I wasn’t marriage material. I guess, to some extent, it made me feel a little better. It felt kinda nice that someone’s husband still wanted and craved me. Some of them were ultimately a bit put off by my wildness and messiness. Ultimately, I started taking my meds again and got the help I needed, so I cut all of them off.I know that what I did was wrong. I feel some shame about it, obviously, because I cut them all off in the end, and I haven’t done anything like that since. I also try to have some grace for myself because I know that I was very sick, vulnerable, and unwell back then. I’m not aware of having broken up any particular marriages."

"I stayed in the relationship for another year after that and even did long distance while I was a freshman in college, and remained faithful to him the whole time. After I finally ended things, I found out he gave me an STI. When I confronted him about it, he said that I probably got it from a tanning bed. LOL. So who was the other woman here? Idk. Either way, this guy is the reason women hate men."

"Now, I’m a nice guy, and just can’t help myself when I see someone else in need. I would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t help my former best friend out. So I confronted the guy. We ended up getting in a pretty big fight. He ended up leaving her, and we had victory sex. A few days later, she was late and took a test. She was overjoyed and a little intimidated to find out that she was pregnant. Me, not so much. I was hyperventilating when she told me, and literally blew into a paper bag to calm myself. A few hours later, I had calmed down and told myself in my Accountability Mirror (Thanks, David Goggins!) that I would NOT be the dickface to leave this woman to raise our child alone. I resolved to marry her, not out of love, but out of a commitment to being a good person. I wanted our child to have a normal family and figured we would grow to love each other over time. Fast forward five years, and we are a tight-knit, happy family. We had two more kids, and I am teaching our oldest to surf, bike, ski, and be an all-around badass."

"Covid hit shortly after that, and with the lockdown, we barely left each other's side for months. Except for when she would go over and spend the night with her boyfriend. Our roommates knew, her friends knew, my friends knew… The only person that didn’t seem to know was her boyfriend. After about a year of this, she moved out and back in with her boyfriend. We continued to hook up. We saw each other almost every day because she worked around the corner from the house and would come over for lunch or after work. 

Whenever he was out of town, we were together. Or she would lie and say she was leaving town for work and come spend a few days with me instead. I even went with her on several of her actual work trips. I asked her several times over the three years of our situation if she would break up with her boyfriend and give us an official try, but she always dodged it, and I eventually stopped asking. I finally met someone else and started seeing them seriously. That was when she finally decided to break it off with her boyfriend and try to make our situation official. I shut it down. It was really hard because I had definitely fallen in love with her, but I knew if we were to be in an actual and official relationship, she would probably end up cheating on me as well. 

She moved away not long after that, and I haven’t heard from her since. I do wonder sometimes if she’s doing okay. As far as I know, the boyfriend never found out. We have mutual friends, and we would run into each other at the bars fairly often. He was always super chill. I felt (and still feel) horrible about the years of deceit he suffered, so I’ve anonymously paid his bar tab a few times when he wasn’t looking. Doesn’t make up for it, but it’s something. I don’t think I could ever tell him the truth, though. I’m now married to the love of my life, and we trust each other completely. I couldn’t ask for more."

"I realize now that I was disillusioned with marriage because of my own experience. So, I started an emotional relationship with him. He was very attentive to me and adored me. He would call me when he was on trips, constantly check in with me, buy me really thoughtful gifts, and be just really present when we were together. It was so different from being with guys my age who couldn’t hold an interesting conversation!

This went on for a few months, and one day he came back from a trip with a Tiffany & Co. bag that had a box inside. When I opened it, I found a small heart-shaped necklace. We had been hiding our feelings for one another during classes and group projects, which felt thrilling at the time. It felt really exciting to have a secret together. I honestly didn’t even think of his wife. He once told me he had a really big heart and could love many people, and that made sense to me. I didn’t want to be in something with commitment because I had already had that, and it didn’t work out well for me.

Our feelings grew, and I came to care for him, but I didn’t feel in love; I felt safe and cared for. He brought me to his house when his wife was away visiting family. He carried me into his bedroom, and then he pulled out some condoms. We ended up having sex in his bed. I got up quickly after and felt instantly terrible. All the terrible feelings I shoved down all of a sudden came up. The thrill was already muddled and felt like the guilt was creeping in. I felt him seeing me in a different light. The stakes were higher now. 

I felt sick for being so careless. After that, we didn’t speak again. I ignored his messages until I changed my number and moved away. I threw away the necklace he gave me, straight into the trash. I met my now husband about a year later, and we’ve been happily married for almost 20 years now."

Responses have been edited for length/clarity.