Lies people tell themselves so they don't feel so bad

Two nights ago I was idly watching tv, trying to figure out whether to watch a program or put in a movie when I saw a short part of some law show where a girl was accused of murdering her married, older lover. On a side note, until my husband’s affair, I never noticed the prevalence of adultery in the media. We can hardly see a movie or show that doesn’t make some reference to someone cheating.

Back to my story. I only saw a couple minutes, but the girl made a comment that really stood out to me: “I told myself it wasn’t an affair because we were friends so I wouldn’t feel like such a slut.”

It made me think of my husband’s lover. She always played off the sex and said it wasn’t a big deal, and talked a lot about how she didn’t want to lose his friendship and hoped they would always be friends. Maybe that was her way of validating what they did too, by saying they had a close friendship.

My husband has said many times that in retrospect, they never had much of a friendship because everything they shared was superficial, and their friendship was built on lies and selfishness. Looking back he has talked about many ways that she did not act like a friend, and he didn’t either, but I would bet that his lover will never admit that, because it would mean that she was partially responsible for what happened too.

Anyway, the point of all of this is, I wonder if she tried to hang onto the friendship so much and denied that the sex was anything important so she, too, wouldn’t feel like such a slut…….

I guess I’ll never know.