"I had a real bad breakup with my girlfriend at the time and was heartbroken. I had the genius idea of making sure I was never hurt that bad again, and proceeded to keep people at arm's length."

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

—Anonymous, 67, female, San Francisco Bay Area

"I rationalized it, of course, thinking that if it wasn’t me, they’d just cheat with someone else. It occasionally got messy when feelings came into play. Don’t ever be foolish enough to think you can maintain such an arrangement for a prolonged period without someone catching feelings — that’s not reasonable! Anyway, that whole period lasted a good four years or so, and I got tired of keeping any kind of real connection at bay. Eventually, I wised up and was lucky enough to find someone who didn’t hold that kind of past behavior against me. "

"The second actually initiated with me — completely out of the blue — when her boyfriend LEFT HER DORM TO PICK UP A PIZZA DELIVERY. She grabbed me and made out with me passionately before he came back. A week or so later, she jumped my bones during a study session (again, completely out of the blue) and we had some of the most intense sex of my life up to that point. We hooked up a few more times after that.

In both cases, I ended up getting my heart broken. Neither was looking to dump their current beaus for me. I was just a release for them. It messed me up for a long time, but I can now look back at those experiences with some fondness, as they were fun and exciting in the moment."

"Just a few weeks before graduation, I got a message from a friend of a friend asking me if I was seeing this guy, and I replied back honestly that, yes, I was seeing him, and I had fallen in love with him. The friend of a friend shared that she had also been seeing him for months longer than me, and that she was also in love with him. 

The hurt that I felt was indescribable and I immediately confronted him, he didn't deny anything but he convinced me that he cared more for me than he did for her and I stupidly went back to him. No one will be shocked to learn that the friend of a friend messaged me nonstop about their escapades for a couple of weeks after that first confrontation. Every time she would message me, I would blow up at him, and he would convince me to stay. Right before graduation, the friend of a friend messaged me one last time to tell me all about her night with him, and that's when I officially decided I was done.

That same night, while I was lying in bed crying about that stupid boy, I got a message from my best friend wanting to set me up with someone, and that someone has been my husband for the last ten years."

"We continued like that for months, exchanging nudes and dirty messages until he moved out and they filed for divorce, and she was asking me when we could finally meet up with each other since we lived thousands of miles apart. We made a plan for her to come see me, but just a couple of days before she was to come down, I got cold feet and told her that I actually had a lot going on and that she should cancel her trip. She was upset, but she understood, and we still kept exchanging pictures and messages.

A few short months later, the tone of her messages started to change; she grew colder and distant, and eventually she stopped responding to my messages altogether. I noticed on her socials that she was posting pictures with her ex-husband. I confronted her, and she admitted that they were getting back together, his affair had ended, and they were going to work on it for the kids. I still tried to keep in contact with her, but she kept ignoring my messages. I eventually gave up, until a few years later, when a buddy and I were looking at stories on Snapchat, and her picture came up. We both messaged her. She left him on read but immediately responded to my message. 

We spent the next few days catching up, her and her ex husband were doing well but I missed her, in my mind she was the one that got away so I decided to pursue her and eventually she caved. We started exchanging nudes and dirty messages again, she said she felt like we were teenagers again, and I was trying to convince her to move in with me. I didn't want to lose her again, but she was scared to jeopardize her life that she had just worked so hard to get back on track. Eventually I wore her down but I unknowingly wore myself down too, once she finally agreed to move, I didn't want her to anymore. I figured if it would be this hard to convince her to be with me, everything else with her would be 10X harder, plus, I didn't really want to be a stepparent to her kids anyway. I ended up ghosting her the same way she originally ghosted me. Eventually, she gave up trying to get a hold of me, and she blocked me everywhere. I haven't seen or heard from her since."

"A year after we broke up, he called me complaining that she wasn't financially responsible and wasn't able to run a house as well as me. He asked me to move to Florida with him. I laughed at him and said he should have thought about that before telling me I was the other woman."

"We tried not to do anything, but after a year of tension, we finally ended up hooking up. I knew he was married, and I knew it was wrong. I never met the wife, but I thought she must be a much better person than I was. My colleagues had met her, and I knew she was beautiful, fit, and seemed really kind. I was at such a low point in my life that I would take the scraps just to be with him. It was a tumultuous relationship, and I tried to end it many times, but because we literally worked together in a tiny office and I still had intense feelings for him, it would start back up. I tried dating other people to take my mind off things, but I couldn’t because I was so in love with him. I felt trapped and would frequently cry in the office bathroom, knowing I needed to get out somehow.

I ended up breaking it off with him, resigning and taking a $70k pay cut just to get myself out of the situation ASAP. Then COVID hit, and the new company scaled back its operations. Because I was a new employee, I was laid off. I then spent the next year in a super deep depression, but eventually managed to get myself out of it.

So, I honestly didn’t set out to have a relationship with a married man; I just kind of fell into it over time and made a series of poor decisions. The wife ended up finding out after I had already resigned, and I know she is the main victim here, and I feel terrible that I hurt someone innocent.

I have since landed back on my feet, gotten a new job, lost all the weight I gained, and am feeling far more confident in myself. Obviously, I stay far away from married men, and if the situation had happened now, rather than at such a low point in my life, I would like to think I would make better decisions."

Responses have been edited for length/clarity.