Speaker 1: I didn't want it to feel like a date, but
Speaker 1: it was a date. A married woman on a date.
Speaker 1: It didn't feel good at all, but it felt good
Speaker 1: at you know, it's at the same time. If you
Speaker 1: understand what I'm trying to say, that voice you just
Speaker 1: heard was Sabrina. Sabrina's in her fifties, she doesn't have children,
Speaker 1: and she's been married for twenty years. Unlike our last guest,
Speaker 1: Sabrina didn't initiate her affair because she wasn't feeling fulfilled sexually.
Speaker 1: She wasn't really feeling much of anything except loneliness. Her
Speaker 1: affair just sort of happened, and when it did, she
Speaker 1: found it filled a different need for her. It fulfilled
Speaker 1: something that she'd been missing with her husband for a
Speaker 1: pretty long time. I don't know if I was looking
Speaker 1: for another relationship. I think I just was looking for
Speaker 1: someone to talk to. My husband's always at work. You know,
Speaker 1: we have no children, so I think I was just
Speaker 1: really looking for a good friend. But it just happened
Speaker 1: to turn into something more than friends. The man Sabrina
Speaker 1: started cheating on her husband with made her feel good again,
Speaker 1: like she had a real companion, one who was actually
Speaker 1: invested in her. He tells me that I'm his best friend,
Speaker 1: and that just melts my heart. You know, not just
Speaker 1: oh you're my lover, You're just someone that I'm sleeping with.
Speaker 1: He tells me, I'm glad that I've met you. That
Speaker 1: must feel really nice to be seen like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like he's my best friend as well.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Piazza and you're listening to She Wants More,
Speaker 1: the podcast where real women talk openly and honestly about
Speaker 1: the extra marital affairs that have completely changed their lives. Sabrina.
Speaker 1: That's not her real name, by the way. We changed
Speaker 1: it to protect her identity. Sabrina hasn't always been lonely
Speaker 1: in her marriage. When Sabrina and her husband first got together,
Speaker 1: he was obsessed with her. My husband even has a
Speaker 1: tattoo with my name on it, which he did on
Speaker 1: my birthday, I believe, when I was turning thirty five.
Speaker 1: He surprised me. He came home one day with the
Speaker 1: tattoo on his neck. Did you like the tattoo? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. I love it. That
Speaker 1: is love. Yes, I've never met anyone like him before,
Speaker 1: you know, And she was pretty obsessed with him too.
Speaker 1: How'd your husband proposed? I'm just actually I proposed to him.
Speaker 1: I asked him to marry me. Okay, I think you
Speaker 1: were at his parents' house, I believe, or his sister's house. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I asked him to marry me. So in the
Speaker 1: beginning you were quite smitten. You said I want you.
Speaker 1: I choose you. Yes, yes, And we were together ten years.
Speaker 1: You know, we were married, so I said it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's time to get married. But that was more than
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. And after two decades with one person,
Speaker 1: things change. People change. I've been happy up until I
Speaker 1: would say, maybe fifteen years into the marriage. You know,
Speaker 1: I love my husband, but you know, it's just that
Speaker 1: we are not very compatible anymore. He's much older than me.
Speaker 1: He's ten years older than me. Okay, so make a
Speaker 1: big difference. Yes, So he's not as active as I am.
Speaker 1: He likes to just you know, stay home and you know,
Speaker 1: do the boring stuff, the boring stuff. So he's not
Speaker 1: very active anymore like he used to be. He's not old,
Speaker 1: but you know, he just doesn't enjoy certain things anymore.
Speaker 1: Sabrina was lonely. Her husband worked all the time. They
Speaker 1: had no kids, and she was home all day because
Speaker 1: of an injury that forced her to take a leave
Speaker 1: from more And it was ultimately that loneliness, not a
Speaker 1: desire for sex or passion, that let her to have
Speaker 1: an affair in the first place. Loneliness is currently a
Speaker 1: public health epidemic. That's psychiatrist doctor Gail Salts. We heard
Speaker 1: from her in the last episode. I called Gail because
Speaker 1: I want to know a little bit more about how
Speaker 1: debilitating loneliness can truly be and what that loneliness can
Speaker 1: lead you to do. It is a huge cause of depression,
Speaker 1: anxiety disorders, health, physical health issues, and it is growing,
Speaker 1: and not in the elderly population where you think it
Speaker 1: would be growing, but all manner of ages. And it
Speaker 1: is a horrendous and desperate feeling, and so it will
Speaker 1: drive people to do all kinds of things to feel
Speaker 1: less lonely. I asked Gail if she'd seen people turn
Speaker 1: to extra marital affairs to stave off their loneliness, even
Speaker 1: when they're married and they think they shouldn't be lonely
Speaker 1: because they've got their person already. Sometimes it's worth being
Speaker 1: with somebody that you feel alone with than being alone.
Speaker 1: Just because you're legally married to someone doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you feel intimately connected to them and you can really
Speaker 1: talk about your emotional state. And so one could definitely
Speaker 1: feel very lonely in a marriage and be wishing for
Speaker 1: and therefore actually making them vulnerable to who might come
Speaker 1: along that does listen to them and does make them
Speaker 1: feel heard and understood and empathized with and therefore really
Speaker 1: connected to. That definitely would easily be the beginning of
Speaker 1: at least an emotional affair and then possibly evolve into
Speaker 1: a physical affair. Sabrina never imagined being a cheater throughout
Speaker 1: my years my relationships. You know, I never cheated. I
Speaker 1: was always just me and that person in the relationship.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't see any to cheat, right, If
Speaker 1: you have to cheat, then you know you should just
Speaker 1: not be any relationship. That's how I felt back then.
Speaker 1: But now as I'm getting older, it just changed. My
Speaker 1: feelings just changed. As you get older, you need, you know,
Speaker 1: any more compassion in your life. So I didn't particularly
Speaker 1: want something different, but I did want the attention. He
Speaker 1: wasn't giving me any attention, and the affair, it it
Speaker 1: just sort of happened. Nothing that I was set out
Speaker 1: to do, plan to do, it just sort of happened.
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, I get it. I understand why
Speaker 1: this situation was so appealing to Sabrina. Before this, she
Speaker 1: felt invisible when she first met her husband. He was
Speaker 1: the I who was obsessed with her, the guy who
Speaker 1: tattooed her name on his neck. And then suddenly he
Speaker 1: was coming home from being at work all day and
Speaker 1: she felt like he didn't even see her. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear more of Sabrina's story, starting with how she
Speaker 1: met the man who'd changed her life and everything that happened. Next,
Speaker 1: we're back with she once more. So Sabrina is out
Speaker 1: at this club for her friend's birthday and a guy
Speaker 1: comes along. He's handsome, and he's paying a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to her. He's younger than her husband, younger even
Speaker 1: than her. He started talking and you just connected. He
Speaker 1: gave me his number. But the thing is he is
Speaker 1: also mad. Should we give him a name or should
Speaker 1: we call him Randy? Randy? Okay? When you and Randy first,
Speaker 1: was there a spark? Were you flirting? He was flirting?
Speaker 1: He was very good at flirting. We just had good
Speaker 1: conversation and you talk for hours, and you know, I've
Speaker 1: had a lot of things in common. It felt kind
Speaker 1: of strange, knowing I'm married talking with another man, flirting
Speaker 1: with another man. So it was kind of strange but fun,
Speaker 1: I would say. And so he gave you his number, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to give him my number, you know, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so the ball was in your court. Yeah, basically. Yes,
Speaker 1: Actually I waited two weeks before I called him. You know,
Speaker 1: I had to sit and think what am I doing?
Speaker 1: So yeah, I waited, waited two weeks before I called him.
Speaker 1: Sabrina was pretty nervous when she first called, and she
Speaker 1: didn't really think that anything was gonna come with us.
Speaker 1: She thought it might just be a dinner, a chance
Speaker 1: to hang out with someone new, and that is it.
Speaker 1: I didn't want it to feel like a date, but
Speaker 1: it was actually a date, you know, so a married
Speaker 1: woman on a date. It didn't feel good at all,
Speaker 1: but it felt good, you know. It's at the same time,
Speaker 1: if you understand what I'm what I'm trying to say, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It was weird. It was weird,
Speaker 1: definitely weird. Did he think it was weird. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. No, No, he's a man, you know,
Speaker 1: man they are Yeah, they they don't care, no care.
Speaker 1: And when you went on the date, what did you
Speaker 1: think would happen? Did you think, all right, this will
Speaker 1: just be dinner. Um, yeah, I thought it would just
Speaker 1: be dinner. Maybe I wouldn't see him for a while,
Speaker 1: you know, we would be friends. That's what I thought
Speaker 1: at first. Did you really think that? Yes? But even
Speaker 1: though Sabrina didn't intend to see Randy again, the attention
Speaker 1: that he gave her was so nice and put a
Speaker 1: little spring in her stuff, and it gave her something
Speaker 1: to look forward to. It was very exciting. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it felt like something new and fresh. I just felt free.
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain. And there was a thrill in
Speaker 1: the affair too, in the secrecy of it. Sabrina got
Speaker 1: a burner phone to arrange her meetings, and she started
Speaker 1: taking better care of her appearance, of herself and anticipation
Speaker 1: of seeing Randy again. We have se phones, you know,
Speaker 1: I have more than one cell phone. Then my husband
Speaker 1: doesn't know about so we text on those. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that part of it must be kind of exciting too, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very exciting. Yes, how is the sex different? It
Speaker 1: was different because he was Italian, that that was different,
Speaker 1: but just you know the fact that he was not
Speaker 1: African American me. So he was my first Italian man
Speaker 1: I've ever been with, you know, sexually, first, my god,
Speaker 1: first first man I cheated with first, first, everything first.
Speaker 1: For her, unlike for some of our other guests, the
Speaker 1: affair really seemed to be more about the attention and
Speaker 1: the friendship with Randy and how our time with him
Speaker 1: made her feel better about herself and less lonely. Didn't
Speaker 1: feel like someone was seeing you in a new way too,
Speaker 1: because I feel like when yeah, yes, someone for such
Speaker 1: a long time, it's like you see me, it's the
Speaker 1: same way every day. Yes, definitely to have someone notice me.
Speaker 1: You know, my husband notices me, but like I said,
Speaker 1: things sometimes they get old. We don't really have anything
Speaker 1: really keeping us together, right, you know, it just felt
Speaker 1: good to have someone noticed me and send to my needs,
Speaker 1: listen to me. I just felt like it's something that
Speaker 1: I needed, something I deserved. So I said, you know,
Speaker 1: why not? Why not? I just said, let me take
Speaker 1: care of me. There's something really powerful in that position
Speaker 1: and saying I'm going to do this one thing just
Speaker 1: for myself. Yeah, so I can be happy. I want
Speaker 1: to be happy. Did you feel like you've been taking
Speaker 1: care of just your husband for a long time? Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: very much so, and so to take care of yourself
Speaker 1: must have felt really different. Yeah, definitely. It's not that
Speaker 1: people say, oh, yeah, that was a great thing to do,
Speaker 1: was to have an affair. It's more that when people
Speaker 1: are not talking about what they need to talk about,
Speaker 1: it comes out in their behaviors. That's doctor Laura Gottlieb.
Speaker 1: She's a psychotherapist, an author, and a podcast host. She
Speaker 1: wrote a best selling book that I Love, Love Love
Speaker 1: called Maybe You Should to Someone. And So, if somebody
Speaker 1: is using an affair to say I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to take care of myself, I felt uncared for in
Speaker 1: my relationship and I didn't know any other way to
Speaker 1: take care of my needs, and then it gets the
Speaker 1: couple talking about the things that they needed to talk
Speaker 1: about long before that affair happened. It can have a
Speaker 1: really positive effect on the couple going forward if both
Speaker 1: people are invested in having those conversations and repairing the
Speaker 1: marriage or the relationship. And then also creating something new
Speaker 1: that wasn't there before. But affairs are incredibly painful. There's
Speaker 1: just no way around that. I don't think that anybody
Speaker 1: goes around recommending that somebody have an affair. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll hear more of Sabrina's story, including if she ever
Speaker 1: thinks she'll leave her husband. We're back with she wants more.
Speaker 1: I asked Sabrina what it was exactly about Randy that
Speaker 1: made her feel so good, so much more alive. He's
Speaker 1: very touchy, feeling, but very attentive, you know as well,
Speaker 1: very attentive. He's just a good man. It's a good man,
Speaker 1: good person. For the two of them, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: about sex. It was also about companionship and connection, and
Speaker 1: both of them knew that they wanted to keep seeing
Speaker 1: one another, but they had to figure out how that
Speaker 1: was going to work. Randy was married too, but unlike Sabrina,
Speaker 1: he had kids. The good thing was that Randy worked nights,
Speaker 1: which left his days mostly free, and that's when Sabrina
Speaker 1: happened to be available. But from the very start they
Speaker 1: knew they had to be careful. We don't meet on weekends,
Speaker 1: you know, my husban minutes at home on the weekends.
Speaker 1: We schedule certain days, certain times every week just to
Speaker 1: be safe because he has children, so his schedule is
Speaker 1: kind of more booked than mind. So we don't have
Speaker 1: much time to spend together. That's like maybe an hour
Speaker 1: if that. Oh wow, so it's fast. It's fast when
Speaker 1: you guys meet. Where do you guys meet? Sometime we go,
Speaker 1: you have something to eat sometime, the hotel, you know,
Speaker 1: walk in the park, you know, something like that. If
Speaker 1: you weren't having the affair, how do you think you'd
Speaker 1: be spending your time? What would you be doing? The
Speaker 1: fellows hours, not doing much. I don't have many friends.
Speaker 1: I don't go out much until I met him. You know,
Speaker 1: I have something to do now to appropy my time.
Speaker 1: What kind of boundaries did you guys set early on?
Speaker 1: You know, don't get involved in my marriage. I won't
Speaker 1: get involved in yours. You no phone calls my husband,
Speaker 1: no poem you know what I'm saying. If we have
Speaker 1: an argument or something like that, you're not going to
Speaker 1: do that. But a good thing about it is we're
Speaker 1: not jealous. You know, I'm not jealous of his relationship,
Speaker 1: is not jealous of minds because it's something that was
Speaker 1: there before me. You know, he was married to a
Speaker 1: way before me. So right, that's something I have no
Speaker 1: control over. Basically, Sabrina told me that her affair with
Speaker 1: Randy has been going on for eight years now. Eight years.
Speaker 1: That's longer than my marriage, and it's a long time
Speaker 1: to see one another multiple times a week. I had
Speaker 1: to ask her one thing. I had to ask if,
Speaker 1: after all of that time together, all of these years together,
Speaker 1: if she's fallen in love with him. I would say yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Do you still love your husband? Oh? Yes, I love
Speaker 1: my I will always love my husband always. How do
Speaker 1: you reconcile that in your head? That's a good question,
Speaker 1: That's a good question. That's something I will have to
Speaker 1: think about. Do you think your marriage is better now
Speaker 1: that you've given yourself this one thing? I will say
Speaker 1: yes because I'm able to tolerate my husband not paying
Speaker 1: me any attention, you know, because if he doesn't, the
Speaker 1: other man will. So I'm like balanced, right. But recently,
Speaker 1: the guilt that Sabrina has felt juggling two different men
Speaker 1: has made her feel nervous, and she's been thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about the consequences of her affair and what would
Speaker 1: happen if her husband ever found out. It's a tricky,
Speaker 1: tricky situation because if my husband found out that I
Speaker 1: was having an affair, and say, like he left me,
Speaker 1: I feel like I would probably be out by myself,
Speaker 1: you know, I would be alone because I don't feel
Speaker 1: that my lover would leave his wife. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and vice versa. If his wife found
Speaker 1: out that he was having an affair, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I would leave my husband for him, right. So
Speaker 1: it's tricky, scary and tricky at the same time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and that I think about that situation a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's gotten to the point where I'm feeling like, now
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I should end this, you know,
Speaker 1: because of that situation, because I don't think I would
Speaker 1: leave if his wife left him, he would want to
Speaker 1: be with me, but I don't know if i'd be
Speaker 1: able to leave my husband to be with him, right
Speaker 1: and vice versa. You guys also don't know if you
Speaker 1: would be compatible in the real world. In the real world, Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because now it's basically just having fun or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it. But yeah, I think about that
Speaker 1: situation a lot. Do you feel guilty, Yeah, I feel guilty.
Speaker 1: I feel guilty, and sometimes I feel like I might
Speaker 1: wind up being alone, you know, do all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, you know, like they say karma, right,
Speaker 1: So I might wind up being alone in the whole situation,
Speaker 1: without my husband, without my lover, you know, without So
Speaker 1: it's just scary and that could be that seems like
Speaker 1: it could be terrifying. Yeah, and that could potentially happen
Speaker 1: if your husband did find out about the affair. Are
Speaker 1: you worried that you would be alone? But then also,
Speaker 1: you know, financially unstable or just unstable generally, Yes, I
Speaker 1: think about that all the time. Yeah, I probably would
Speaker 1: be financially unstable, but I will be able to make
Speaker 1: it too. Yes. Do you ever think about are there
Speaker 1: any things that you'd dream that you could do with Randy? Like,
Speaker 1: do you ever think I'd love to go on vacation
Speaker 1: with Randy. I'd love to be able to do this
Speaker 1: thing that we can't do that's impossible for us to do.
Speaker 1: I would love to do that, but I know it's impossible,
Speaker 1: So I don't even think about it because right now
Speaker 1: it's not possible. We both know that it's not possible.
Speaker 1: We just have what we have and that's just have
Speaker 1: to be enough for now until we decide if you
Speaker 1: want to be together and leave our spouses. But we
Speaker 1: haven't gotten there yet, so we just in the in
Speaker 1: the moment, in a moment, as I would say, there's
Speaker 1: something kind of beautiful about being in the moment, Yes,
Speaker 1: in a moment. Next up, we'll be talking to a
Speaker 1: woman who doesn't just see her affair as a step
Speaker 1: in prioritizing her own emotional well being after having a child.
Speaker 1: It also became something so much more. It actually became
Speaker 1: an important part of her self care. So can an
Speaker 1: affair be a form of self care? That is all
Speaker 1: on next week's episode, This is She Wants More. I'm
Speaker 1: your host Joe Piazza. She Wants More was inspired by
Speaker 1: the book A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish.
Speaker 1: It was adapted for audio by executive producers Merrill Poster,
Speaker 1: Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan Shapiro Parish. She Wants More is
Speaker 1: hosted and reported by me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is
Speaker 1: our lead producer and story editor. Our sound design is
Speaker 1: by Jessica crencich Our theme was composed by Anna Stumpf
Speaker 1: and Hamilton Lighthouser. Our executive producers for iHeart are Ally
Speaker 1: Perry and Nikki Etour. She Wants More as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeart Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.