5 Things You Need To Know Before Getting Caught Up In An Extramarital Affair

So, you are thinking about having an affair. You didn't go looking to become a cheating husband or wife, but you met a certain someone who rocks your world.

The feelings you have for this other person are like none you've ever had before, so it would be wrong to deny those feelings ... right?

To the uninitiated, having an affair is all about having sex. And, for the most part, affairs ARE about sex. Wonderful, illicit, and mind-blowing sex.

But they are also about so much more.

Listen up before you take the plunge into infidelity, because what you are about to read might surprise you.

Here are 5 things you probably don't know — and need to be aware of — before you become a cheating husband or wife.

1. It will wake you up in a big way.

Affairs don’t happen in a void. People who have an affair are often stuck in long-term, unhappy relationships. Sex is non-existent, communication has broken down, and love is dead.

Then, out of nowhere, someone new appears and changes everything.

For example, one woman I know thought her life was fine. She wasn't happy, but she didn't feel like the absence of love and sex in her marriage was important to her. She had her kids, her friends, and her work and, really, what else could a 40-year-old want?

Until she met him ... and he totally got her!

They could spend hours talking about everything and understood each other perfectly. He thought she was beautiful and told her so in every text he sent her. Just thinking about him got her body tingling. And when they ultimately had sex ... Boom!

She had been sleepwalking through her days for years, felt herself getting older every moment she spent just being fine. Now every single part of her was wide awake.

2. You will have the best sex of your life.

Affair sex is the type of sex that you've never had before in your life. It's better than anything you could ever imagine.

Affair sex can be a like drug for some people — a highly addictive, legal, potentially lethal drug. And once you have a hit, there is no going back.

Emotional connection marks the beginning of affairs, ones that can be months or years in the making. And that kind of extended emotional foreplay can only lead to intense sexual connection. It's certainly more intense than anything you have had recently or ever.

The sex is illicit. No matter how old you are, doing things that you aren't supposed to do is fun. Someone I know has perfected the art of having sex in the pantry. No sheets needed to be changed and there were a lot of fun walls and doors to be put to full use. The experimentation was the best part.

And then there are the orgasms. Our lives are dull, routine, chaotic, and jam-packed, but the dopamine high from an orgasm can last far past the bedroom. Imagine how much better grocery shopping or conference calls are when you are experiencing an orgasm high as well.

Once you have had affair sex, it’s virtually impossible to stop. And this is why people can’t walk away from it and risk everything to have it. Everything.

3. You will break into a million tiny pieces.

In the beginning, affairs are more exciting than anything you could ever have imagined. And then, not so much.

Another woman had an affair with a stay-at-home dad. They had known each other for years and one day when she needed him, he was there for her — and everything changed.

The new electricity between them was addictive. Try as they might to not let it get physical, it did. Over and over and over again.

It was so much better than married people sex and neither one of them could get enough of it.

Soon, their affair started disrupting their lives. They would show up late to school functions because they had been squeezing in a quickie. Or they would manufacture late-night runs to the grocery store to spend time together.

Their relationships with their friends, their work, their children and, of course, their spouses suffered.

They tried to break it off. They knew the destruction it was causing. But, they just couldn't let go of the way that they felt when they were together.

She hated herself. The tug of war between the emotional, sexual woman who she was in the throes of the affair and the person she was as a wife and a mother was killing her. She lost 20 pounds, stopped sleeping, cut off her friends, and ultimately had a nervous breakdown.

The thing that started off so magically almost killed her.

4. It will feel almost impossible to walk away.

Many people enter into affairs thinking that it will be a brief thing. "We will just have sex once and that will be it" is often the thought process.

Unfortunately, once you've started an affair, it's almost impossible to walk away from it. Once you've crossed that threshold and have sex with another man, there will be no turning back.

The person you've become during the affair, the one who is loved and loving, who is having great sex, who is appreciated and taken care of, and the one who feels alive for the first time in years, will do anything to not have to go back to being the person they were before.

As a result, affairs often last until someone is caught because breaking away is virtually impossible. You might succeed for a few weeks or months but staying away is very hard. But, not many people succeed, unless they are caught.

5. It will change your life in a big way and in more ways than one.

When someone finally starts noticing who they are in the world, they start recognizing not only the need for a big change.

Yet another woman had been miserable in her marriage for a long time. She told me about the first time someone told her to leave her husband as they were driving their sons home from preschool. Their sons are now sophomores in college.

Then she fell madly in love and lust with a man she worked with. She went through the incredible highs, sure she had found the love of her life, and then, ultimately, she crashed and burned because that great love turned out to be just another man. Before she knew it, she had lost a year of her life and of her children’s lives. She was wrecked.

She did see, at the end of that year, having lived through the joys and the pain of love, lust, and deep emotion, that she had to leave her husband. The words that wouldn't come out of her mouth for 20 years came out readily and with conviction.

She knew that she would die — literally and figuratively — if she didn't get rid of the toxic men in her life and start building a life that would feed her soul. Her affair and its after-effects gave her the power to do that.

If you are considering having an affair, think carefully before you do.

While affairs seem like they are all about sex, they are so much more. They will build you up and then tear you down in a way you could never have imagined.

You will become addicted to and obsessed with your affair in a way you have never been obsessed before.

Your affair will, in more ways than one, change your life forever.

So, tread lightly, my friend, and be careful. He might seem like your soulmate, but really, he is just another man. Do you want to risk your life for him?

Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate whose writing has been published in The Huffington Post, Prevention Magazine, and The Good Men Project, among others, and who works exclusively with women to help them to be all they want to be in this crazy world in which we live. Let her help you life the life of your dreams by contacting her now via email to get started!