Happy People Don’t Cheat

Happy people don’t cheat

We sat nestled into the worn cushions of her outdoor couch, two women softened by time, sipping wine under the quiet majesty of mulberry trees. Her backyard had always felt like a secret—lush, green, and completely unexpected in the heart of the Las Vegas desert. She had spent years crafting that space. The plants, the blooms, the perfectly weathered wood—all of it bore the mark of her care. And that night, I felt honored to sit in it with her, just the two of us.

It had been a long time since we had shared the space without the hum of a dozen other voices. Usually, her house buzzed with the energy of her social orbit—kids, friends, helpers, tennis partners, wine drinkers, dreamers, mothers. But tonight was ours.

We talked the way women talk when they trust each other. Easy. Elastic. Jumping from light to heavy, from funny to vulnerable. Children. Husbands. Her tennis. My jewelry business. And, of course, the new man I’d met just a few days after joining Match.com. I told her about him—his energy, his kindness, how I felt strangely alive again, like I’d stepped back into a piece of myself I hadn’t realized I’d left behind.

She smiled and listened with a graciousness that had always been her gift. But beneath her smiles, I saw it again—that low, familiar ache she carried like a second heartbeat.

Her marriage had long been more shadow than light. From the outside, she had everything: beauty, wealth, four healthy children, a husband who played the part, and a home that looked like something from a magazine. But inside—inside was a different matter entirely. I had seen her cry too many times not to know.

It was the kind of sadness that doesn’t scream. It hums. It lives in quiet corners and late-night thoughts. A longing not just for love, but for aliveness—for the feeling of being chosen again, seen again, touched again.

She used to say she couldn’t leave, that the life they had built together was too big to dismantle. But what she really meant was that she couldn’t imagine starting over. The idea of beginning again—at this age, after all this time—felt more terrifying than loneliness.

And me? I was used to starting over. Boyfriends came and went like seasons. I wasn’t immune to heartbreak, but boredom was more my poison. Still, that night, I was genuinely happy. I think she saw that, and it struck something in her.

Before we left, she hugged me and whispered, “You look so happy. I’m so happy for you.” I believed her. And yet…

A few days later, she came to my open house—graceful as always, radiant, social, effortlessly generous. She bought pieces for herself and urged others to do the same. I was grateful. She was the kind of woman who lifted others. Always had been.

That night, after the event, my new boyfriend looked troubled. “Your friends are… different,” he said.

I laughed. “Of course they are. They’re like me.”

But then he told me something that shifted the night: one of them had kissed his neck.

I stopped laughing.

I already had a hunch. I’d seen her—this friend—floating around him like a bee to nectar, too close, too light with her touches. And when he confirmed it was her, the moment clicked into place like a missing puzzle piece.

It wasn’t that she wanted him.

She wanted what I felt when I was with him.

She wanted what I radiated that night on her patio—ease, intimacy, the glow that comes from being wanted.

And in that moment, I thought:

Happy people don’t cheat.

Happy people don’t chase what belongs to someone else.

Happy people don’t need to borrow your light.

I wasn’t angry. I was heartbroken for her.

Not because of what she did, but because of what she had forgotten.

She had forgotten that happiness doesn’t live in someone else’s arms. It lives in us—in the way we see the world, the way we honor ourselves, the way we sit with the discomfort of longing without grabbing for whatever’s closest.

She had forgotten that what she envied wasn’t a man—it was a moment. A mood. A reflection of something inside me that had finally come to the surface.

She wanted that feeling. Who wouldn’t?

But feelings are fireflies. Beautiful. Brief. And never meant to be caught and caged.

I remember what she forgot.

That night under the mulberry trees, my happiness came not just from him, but from the alchemy of the evening: the trust, the honesty, the wine, the warmth. It came from years of heartbreak that had carved out space for something new. It came from me.

She mistook the glow for the source.

We all do sometimes.

But I know the truth:

Joy borrowed from others will never feel like joy we find within.

And that’s the lesson.

Not about betrayal.

But about forgetting.

And remembering.

That happy people don’t cheat—not because they’re better—

but because they know the feeling they’re chasing can’t be stolen.

With love,

Gulten Dye