I CHEATED WITH MY WORK WIFE

LIFESTYLE

We’re All Just Animals

By Jesse Larkins · August 7, 2026 · 8 min read

I check to see the coast is clear before pulling my workwife behind an industrial fridge and kissing her. This is our routine. Sneaking behind corners and groping on the cusp of being caught. Our manager, a croning hag shaped like a buoy, waddles past without seeing us. Work wife fixes her clothes and we shuffle out. The manager sees us leaving the kitchen and scratches her head.

This affair didn’t last long. It came to an explosive end when my girlfriend (at the time) began pounding on my window while my work wife and I were naked in bed. Both of them yelling “what the fuck is she doing here?”

I let things go too far. I was young and naive. But the truth is that the modern workplace is an unavoidable petri dish of infidelity. Men and women, forced into proximity, given the perfect excuse to run right up to the line, and eventually cross it. In fact, the line is there to be crossed. The work wife is not something sought or obtained, but rather something that naturally occurs unless you consciously fend it off.

After the affair blew up, work became interminable. I couldn’t avoid my ex-work wife following me from room to room. There was no sneaking around corners; it was all out in the open. “We’re at work right now,” I tried to reason with her. “You’re going to need to stop this. We can talk about this later.”

“At least I don’t owe any alimony” I would think to myself. Then I got fired. I vowed that at my next job I would establish better boundaries with my coworkers. I’d avoid work wives entirely.

Now I work at a dog kennel: constant barking, picking up shit, and bitches marking their territory all day—two-legged and four-legged. As the only male in an all female work space, despite my resolution, the key factor in my survival has been my development of a work harem: a collection of work wives that view me as wholesome Nice Guy™. Frying pan to oven.

The camaraderie that arises from enduring 40+ hours a week together dissolves the illusion of boundaries between men and women. Harmless banter, inside jokes, shared vulnerabilities; all take on a sinister flirtatious underpinning as they evolve into personal confessions and late-night texts.

Much like a real relationship, having a work wife means keeping her happy. Tending to her needs and lending an ear. Giving complimentary courtesy chuckles at bad jokes, actively engaging with her gossip, and developing a shorthand through shared glances. Just the sort of attentive tenderness that maintains real relationships.

One of the biggest complaints from my harem was that other girls, also in my harem, weren’t following basic instructions. “I swear I keep telling this bitch you have to do the bath the night before early morning pickup, but she won’t listen!” I met these mundane tirades with compassion, strategically mitigating their intrasexual competition.

The more this went along, the more I found myself unable to withstand even the most cursory female storytime from my new girlfriend, who I now lived with, because I had exhausted whatever I was capable of at work. She hated hearing about my female coworkers even though she trusted me not to do anything improper.

She tried to tell me about her day but none of the information was sticking. I found myself nodding absentmindedly, retaining nothing, wishing she would just stop talking. “Are you even listening to me?”

At the same time, temptations remained everpresent. Working at a dog kennel means constant physical proximity. When guarding fences to not let dogs loose; it’s not uncommon to find your face practically inhaling the ass cheeks of your female coworker. Someone who you would otherwise not consider sexually viable starts to take on attractive qualities.

Most of the guys don’t last at my work because they either give the girls the ick or they fuck a work wife and it erupts in unconscionable drama. One guy named Victor lasted three months before it was revealed he had been nailing one work wife in the washroom while fingering another in reception. It came to a head in the break room. All three quit that day.

Learning intimate details like who’s fucking, who’s barren, or who’s trying to get pregnant before it’s too late creates a sexually charged undercurrent that influences conversations and weighs down every word with tension. It’s hard not to imagine your coworker in compromised positions when she tells you about all the dudes she’s fucked recently and that she likes to eat ass. When they do this, it feels like a shit test; they go into such deep, raunchy detail as if to say “What? Am I not supposed to talk like this? What’re you going to do about it?” And there is of course nothing you can do about it. The lower the status of the job, the less of a filter they have.

Work spouses naturally stir up the jealousy in your partner; and not in the hot way. For instance in early July, a married man won a luxury YSL makeup gift basket in a raffle at a work event. Instead of bringing it home to his wife he gave it to his work wife. This of course infuriated his actual wife who then took to social media to record herself crying and post about her feelings of being “erased” and “undervalued” as the breadwinner.

At home, my girlfriend continued to feel underprioritized. I became adept at refuting daily victim-complex comments like, “oh yeah so you can go fuck your work sluts?” after getting called in to euthanize a pitbull.

Even relaxing, watching TV at home, I was plagued with the low bass hum anxiety of not wanting my phone to light up with a work text. The inherent competitive jealousy of another girl texting me would spring out of my girlfriend. She would emotionally spiral into a very loud form of silent treatment. I turned off notifications.

An all-American chad with golden retriever energy named Liam started at the kennel. He developed a strong “friendship” with one of the managers. She fell in love with him despite being in a committed relationship. She would say, “Jesse, that man is the love of my life.”

The comparisons naturally arose. She’d talk about how Liam was so much less judgemental. Such a better listener. So much less “toxic” than her fiance.

It wasn’t long before worlds collided and jealousy set in. At a house warming BBQ for this manager, her fiancé immediately clocked the awkward temperature between them.

He questioned her and she flat out denied it. He didn’t believe her so he snooped through her phone and discovered their texts. Mostly platonic but the occasional flirty “checking in seeing how you’re doing” text.

He told her, “you’re never allowed to text him again.”

She said, “I have to, I'm his boss.”

They broke up. Not long after the manager came home to the overwhelming smell of gas. She quickly retrieved the animals from the house and called the fire department. They came in to discover a hissing leak from behind her dryer and all the carbon monoxide (CO) detectors turned off. She asked the Fire Chief if her cat could have done it. He said only something with opposable thumbs could turn that valve. He had tried to kill her and her pets. The engagement ring was sitting on the counter.

“I’m his boss” is the key here. When the sexes were placed into the modern workplace together an entire generation of women (and men) were given carte blanche to commit soft adultery with impunity, and not only encouraged but effectively forced into an environment where hard adultery is inevitable.

Crossing the line is treated like it occurs in a vacuum; that society bears no responsibility whatsoever to mitigate female temptation. A private world away from the home full of suitors they must get close to in order to “do their jobs.” Business trips. Tipsy happy-hours. Why are you so mad Jeff drove me home? Don’t you support my career? And yes, men have the same temptations, but society does in fact mitigate their desire, quite heavily. Unlike their male counterparts, women have no fear of getting MeTooed.

So I maintain my harem, but I keep them on a leash. No texting after hours. No groping by the kennels. I pretend to actively listen while they shit talk their boyfriends and husbands, and in return they don’t actively sabotage my relationship or my income. In that way it’s a lot like marriage. In sickness and in health, till HR tribunal do we part.