Following a massive security fuckup early in my cheating life, I started researching my book, How to Cheat: Field Notes from an Adulteress.
I had no idea what I was doing other than knowing my goal was to have sex. Having sex is easy for a woman, so it wasn’t just sex, but the right type of sex with the right person. Even though I was desperate and had gone nine years without sex, I knew, as all women do, having sex with the first person I saw would be a mistake.
I like to spin this tale to say I did my research first, then had an affair, but the reality is I got on Ashley Madison, met my now long-term affair partner, started having sexy times, and then began figuring out how best to have an affair.
The third anniversary of our first sex date is this September 13th.
We’d begun chatting on September 3rd and moved off Ashley Madison to email not long after. And that’s when I breached my security.
I’d sent my first email to my lover from an email account in my name.
He was surprised. I was surprised. That’s not how things are done in cheaterland. Knowing my name meant he could have owned me. He could have blackmailed me, extorted money, demanded sex, or destroyed my life. You see, I had a throwaway email account, but the morning I emailed him I was not only excited but half-asleep.
That’s when I knew I needed to sort my shit out.
I’ve worked in government for a long time and in many roles and at one point I took a slight career detour to work as a security program officer. Less exciting than it sounds, I was responsible for conducting on-site physical security assessments, make asset protection plans, writing threat-risk assessments, and teaching personal security awareness measures to government employees going overseas on business.
This last one included basic stuff. Companies and foreign governments target government workers for corporate espionage purposes. The cloak and dagger stuff is over, and now they want access to data, contract details, statements of work, and technology. Our people need the elementary skills to spot and avoid trouble. We taught pickpocket awareness — they lost wallets. We taught them how to protect documents — they lost them. We taught them to avoid public transportation — they were hurt in bus accidents. We taught them to vary their routes daily to avoid patterns — they were rouged up on street corners because they took the same route every day.
My favourite was explaining to fat, balding, middle-aged bureaucrats that the sexy young woman chatting them up in Beijing/Havana/Moscow/Lima…hotel bars weren’t doing it because they liked fat, balding, middle-aged men. Of course, they’d all laughed and agreed they’d spot that one a mile away, but a surprising number didn’t when the time came. Why didn’t they? Honey pot traps work.
I’ve long since returned to my HR roots, but I never forgot what I learned doing security work. So I figured there was nothing more to learn, but I’d committed the cardinal sin of security — complacency.
Complacency kills.
As soon as you start thinking you know it all, it’s time to wake up. I was so confident I wouldn’t screw up, I screwed up one of my first contacts. I was mortified and deeply concerned by my lapse.
So that September 2018, morning I got up, dusted myself off, and started researching cheating because I wasn’t going to let that happen again.
And that’s when my book, How to Cheat: Field Notes from an Adulteress, got its start.
Check it out here, and learn the security tips you’ll need to keep your secret affair secret —
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