All my life, I’ve had six serious relationships. By serious, I mean relationships that lasted more than a year and involved men who proposed a relationship to me and I accepted. Out of these six men, only my first boyfriend was single when we started dating. The other five were either married or already in relationships. I knew they were committed to other women and still agreed to date them.

The sixth man, the one I’m currently dating, is also married. I met him at his wedding, we became friends, and here we are now. We have been dating for almost as long as he has been married. To be honest with you, I don’t like talking to men whose main attraction is simply that they are single.

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I’m not waiting for someone to tell me there’s something wrong with me. I already know there’s something wrong with me. That is the reason I’m sharing this story.

My first boyfriend was single. We were both young and trying to see whether love would work for us. There were problems we couldn’t manage. Even when I wasn’t cheating, he accused me of cheating because men would stop me and have conversations with me, sometimes even when I was with him. Eventually, he ghosted me.

The second man who came into my life was married. He didn’t remove his ring or try to hide who he was. He approached me and said he wanted us to be friends, and eventually, we started dating. He came to me when he wanted to have fun and called when he wanted to talk about silly things.

There was something exciting about knowing that someone chose you even though they already had someone else. In your head, you don’t feel like their second choice. You convince yourself that you’re the person they would have chosen if they hadn’t made the mistake of choosing the person they were already with.

My friends and I argued about this. They said a married man could only use you and would never take you seriously. I told them no one spends money on something they don’t take seriously. Some of these men even spent more on me than they spent on their wives. In my mind, I was giving them the chance to experience what they could have had if they hadn’t married their wives. I saw myself as the person they used to correct their mistakes.

My friends called me deluded, but to me, being delusional makes life fun sometimes.

When that second man was eventually caught and left me, something changed in the kind of men I entertained. From that point on, I only entertained men who were already committed to other women, either through marriage or relationships. That was how the rest of my serious relationships happened.

One of those men was Charles.

On my twenty-eighth birthday, my mom told me I was getting older and it was about time I brought a man home. She wouldn’t stop bothering me about men and marriage, so I decided to bring someone home to meet her.

I took Charles home. Charles was married, but he removed his ring so we could lie to my mom that we were dating. My mom received him very well and kept singing his praises. I don’t know what impressed her, whether it was the car he arrived in or the fact that he was handsome.

She said, “God wants you to stay in this home and be more blessed. Kindly treat my daughter right, and you will find favour with God.”

Charles kept saying amen to my mom’s blessings, knowing very well that he was married.

And that’s another side of dating married men. You know they won’t marry you, and somehow, that feels comforting. When they eventually leave, you understand why they left. Dating a single man you hope will marry you is an extreme sport. Your heart becomes invested in something you don’t know will ever work.

They leave, and your heart breaks. You tell yourself you had everything they wanted, yet they still left. You blame yourself for not being careful. You insult yourself for not seeing the red flags.

Married men come with their red flags already hanging over their heads. They are visible and easy to recognise. You know what you are getting into, so in my mind, there is less wasted emotion and less wasted hope.

After Charles and the other relationships I had with committed men came the man I’m currently dating. He is the sixth man I’ve had a serious relationship with, and he is married too.

He treats me like I’m the best thing that has ever happened to him. We’ve dated for two years. I attended his wedding with my friend. My friend is very close to his wife and still doesn’t know that I’m dating her friend’s husband.

At the wedding, I had no intention of dating him, but when we shook hands and he asked for my number when no one was watching, I knew something inappropriate was about to begin. His marriage was only three weeks old when he proposed to me.

He belongs to someone else. I know one day he may leave and never come back, but he treats me well. He is emotionally available to me. I only have to call him, and he’s there. I only have to cough, and he says, “Here, take this to help with your cough.”

I became pregnant for him even before his wife had a chance to get pregnant. The decision about the pregnancy was simple for both of us. We knew we couldn’t keep it, so we didn’t.

Today, he tells me that if he had known it would take this long for his wife to have a child, we should have kept ours. They still don’t have a child, but ours would have been a few months short of a year old by now.

I know something is wrong with me. I know I’m making excuses to justify being wayward. I’m over thirty and still don’t have a man I can call my own. The strange thing is that I don’t even want one. Single men don’t excite me.

A man tells me he’s single, and the first thought that comes into my head is, “You’re single because no one wants you. And you want me to take what no one wants?”

Is There A Man Out There Who Doesn’t Cheat?

You could have all the money in the world, be extremely handsome, or even own some of the most lucrative businesses in the country. If you’re single, you don’t excite me.

I know this sounds like madness, but the question I keep asking myself is why it feels so normal to me. That is the part that makes me think something is wrong with me and that I need help.

What do people like me do to be cured of a disease they actually enjoy having?

—Berverly 

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