I had an affair that was all hearts and roses. Until it wasn't. Then it was all heartbreak at the end. But when it was good, holy fuck, it was on of the best things ever! Naturally, I've been trying to recapture that ever since. Punctuated by fits of Fuck it, I'm done. this all hurts too much!

You have to have incredibly thick skin to put yourself out there over and over again. You have to be made of something else to put your marriage at risk like that.

I have definitely put my guard up, and have definitely been hurt a lot of times. The more time that passes since my epic love affair, the more I realize I won't love like that ever again. Or be loved like that.

Anytime I start to lower my guard for someone new, they prove to me why I shouldn't. So I keep my guard up, I stay jaded.

Nowadays, in my post-affair life, when I do very rarely manage to start feeling like a person has potential, they don't feel that way about me. And when they are feeling that way about me, I'm not feeling it for them.

Someone recently commented on here that we only get that one unicorn affair partner, and once we have them, they ruin us for all others. I want to believe that's not true. But I think, actually, it is.

So tell me, adulterers, have any of you had HUGE, mutual affair love (it wasn't just one-sided, you and your AP both felt it for awhile but then it had to end) and lived to love again? Or is it all just one and done, so that even if you have other affairs, they all pale in comparison?