It’s amazing what technology can do these days. Check out the email that I received on Wednesday, just before preparing to leave for Thanksgiving:

Hello, Erin.

You don’t know me but I am going to do for you what I wish someone would have done for me a year and a half ago. K** H***** was a delivery man for RTI when I met him about 15 years ago. He delivered packages to the school where I was a preschool director. He had tried to talk to me then but I was happily married and paid no attention.

Over the years my marriage became stale, my husband worked a lot of hours, we had some financial problems, I was feeling neglected and taken for granted. In July of 2006, I ran into K** H***** again. I had two children by then aged 8 and 15.

We started talking and he obviously sensed my vulnerabilty and took advantage of it. He began to do and be all of the things that I was missing at home. He took such an interest in my life and my job. He wanted to know everything that happened in my life. He became my best friend and confident. We began an affair. I am not proud of this, I was raised in a religious home, attended a parochial school, but it happened. I told him over and over that we needed to slow down; that I was falling in love with him. He said “good”, because he felt the same way. He became jealous of my husband, telling me not to sleep with him, etc. I told my husband that I had to take an additional class for my job and spent every tues and thurs evening at K**’s house in addition to any other time during the week or weekend that I could get away. Finally after 6 months, my husband caught me heading to Oxford when I was supposed to be going to school. I admitted that I had been having an affair and was in love. He moved out of the house in February.

As soon as I was free to talk to K** anytime I wanted and to see him all the time, I realized that there were several periods of time that I could not find him. I would call late at night or early in the morning and he wouldn’t answer any of his phones. We began to fight a lot. I found out that he could be truly mean and insensitive. We fought so bad that we broke up several times. During one of those times he actually sent me a picture of some other woman in her bra and panties posing in his bathtub to hurt me and make me jealous. When we would make up he would always tell me that the other women were just “friends” and that he wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, but I’m not crazy and didn’t believe him. One night I held a meeting at my school and he didn’t believe that’s where I was. He called me on my cell and accused me of seeing someone else. I drove all the way out to his house to show him the receipt from the pizza that we had served at the meeting to prove where I was and there was a strange car in his driveway and he wouldn’t answer the door.

I didn’t talk to him for a couple months after that. Then in the beginning of October he started calling and coming around again. I had tried to forget him and started to see someone else, but I was still in love with him and he knew it. I found the birthday card that you gave him in his truck so I knew that he was seeing someone but he said you were just another “friend”. He made the mistake a couple of weeks ago of sending me an email that he had also forwarded to you so I got your email address.

I know that you are at least one of the people that he is currently seeing because I was in his bed Sunday morning when you called around 9:15 a.m. I didn’t come to his father’s funeral because I am white and didn’t want to answer a whole lot of questions about who I was and how I knew him. I have been with him at least once a week for the past 6 weeks again.

I think that he is lying to both of us and probably several others. I don’t think that he has the capacity to be faithful to anyone. I am going to try to stop seeing him and forget him. I know that the only way I can do that is to get him to leave me alone. This will probably make him mad enough to finally stop calling me. I hope that it’s not too late for you to get out. Even if you decide not to, at least you know the truth. He can never be honest or true to anyone. I also don’t think that he can ever love anyone else because he is too in love with himself. Even though he says it, I don’t think that he really knows what it means.

He has ruined my life, I hope he doesn’t do the same to you. We always blame the other women when it is really these men that play with our emotions that we should punish. If you want to know anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. I truly wish someone would have sent me this email before I got so involved with him. They would have saved myself and my family so much pain and heartache.

Good luck
M

While this entire email situation is sad; the worst part is that she divulged this information to a TOTAL STRANGER. I replied and let her know that I was sorry for her situation, but that I didn’t know the person that she was speaking of. After exchanging emails for a while, she realized that I was telling the truth, and that there might just be someone else out there named Erin Davis who was involved with this man.

After receiving this, I talked with a couple of people that I know about the prevalence of extramarital affairs- and I was overwhelmingly surprised at what they told me. Apparently, people frequently engage in extramarital affairs- it’s a common occurrence of some sorts. Definitely not news that you want to hear. Your thoughts?