To protect the Innocent.

This is going to be hard to write about without creating clues as to true identities. I guess I'll have to talk in the most general terms.

A friend of mine--who I'll refer to as "it" because it may be male or female--recently discovered its spouse was carrying on an online affair with an old flame. A hot and heavy Internet affair. And when it confronted its spouse about this, its spouse went to visit the old flame on the West Coast. (The spouse had a business trip there anyway, but left six days early and flew directly to the old flame's city.)

It used to feel they had a decent, rock-solid marriage; and it's willing to chalk it all up to mid-life crisis... if the spouse and the flame don't sleep together. But the spouse, when asked to promise that no sex would happen, couldn't do so.

So, there's a picture of a fine marriage disintegrating, out of nowhere. My friend is despondent. Who wouldn't be? It isn't every day that your marriage becomes a bad Ann Landers column.

I tried to assure my friend that it was probably just an infatuation, that the spouse and the flame were in love with their memories, not with each other, and that's probably true. But I'm not sure their relationship can survive such a huge breach of trust.

I don't know if mine could. I don't think there's any danger of anything like this happening to either K or me. It's not to say I never get caught in the "what might have been" kind of games or even the "boy, I'd like to get to know her better" kind of games, and for all I know, K may too. But this little incident has made me realize that if I ever were to go chasing after a fantasy in a photo, it wouldn't just be my choice to make--it wouldn't just affect me. It would hurt K, too, and that's why I feel extramarital affairs are the most selfish act anyone can take. It's different, I suppose, if the love is entirely gone, but I can't live without K and she can't live without me.

I hope it's a road we never have to take.

Besides, no one would ever want to have an affair with me, anyway. (Oh, come on, you knew I couldn't leave that unsaid, didn't you?)