With the summer a short wait away, and spring fever still coursing through our veins, marriage and/or sex is on everyone’s minds. Whatever your feelings about holy matrimony (I don’t like to think of myself as single; that implies that I’m incapable of finding a mate. (I prefer to refer to myself as “romantically challenged.”) One ugly (and sometimes deadly) result of this combination of wedding bells and raging hormones is the lucrative dead-end known as “sex with the married.”

Oh, okay. It’s not really like you’re boffing someone who’s cheating on their spouse. No, I’m sure that in your case, your sex partner is “in the middle of a divorce.” WAKE THE HELL UP! “Almost divorced” rates right up there with “half-pregnant” and “open-minded fundamentalist” on the Oxymoron Top Five. Not that it will do any good, but let’s go through the regular “reality slap” on the question of sex with someone else’s spouse.

MYTH: They plan on leaving their wife/husband.
FACT: If you have a pair of shoes that don’t fit and are causing you pain, do you shop for some that do fit, then walk out of the store saying, “One day, I’ll end this agony and buy something good for my feet?” If it’s not healthy at home, they leave or they stay. If their current mate is such a dickhead, what does that say about their decision-making capabilities and/or taste, and the fact that they picked you? A woman locked in a relationship with an abusive man may want to get her rocks off in your bed, but until she gets help (or you become even better at dope-slapping than hubby), you’re nothing but a rest stop on her Highway To Hell.

MYTH: The divorce is almost final.
FACT: The divorce is final when the lawyers have been paid and one partner is left a bloodless, lifeless hulk; not one fucking moment before. Bad Signs: They still share the same home; she/he calls spouse from your house and asks you to leave the room; you get asked to babysit.

MYTH: They’ve “never done anything like this before.”
FACT: In the sense that they’ve never led you around by the gonads, yes, they in fact haven’t. And even if they haven’t cheated with anyone but you; how long do you suppose this undying passion is going to last once Mr./Ms. Fidelity finds out how much fun it is manipulating people for sex? Do you suppose Ted Bundy’s first victim spent her last moments thinking, “Thank goodness I’m dying at the hands of someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience at this sort of thing”?

Maybe you don’t need to worry after all. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll send $100 to anyone who can prove me wrong. The Easter Bunny gave me the money. No, really–the check is in the mail.