Insomnia has never been convenient. At 2:13 AM in a Las Vegas hotel, it became unexpectedly enlightening.
Pacing the carpeted corridor of the 23rd floor, I crossed paths with my colleague Sarah exiting our boss David’s room. She wore yesterday’s conference attire, hair disheveled, heels in hand.
Our eyes met briefly before she hurried toward the elevator, the scent of hotel shampoo and whiskey trailing behind her.
I stood motionless, hand against the textured wallpaper, stomach twisting. We’d all attended the same leadership conference — Sarah in marketing, David leading our team, me delivering a presentation on tech initiatives.
Hours earlier, the three of us had shared dinner, discussing quarterly goals while David’s wife texted him about their children’s swimming lessons. His wedding ring had clinked against his wine glass as he gestured enthusiastically about next year’s projections.
I came to the conference expecting to refine my leadership skills. Instead, I found myself standing in a hotel hallway at two in the morning, getting an unplanned crash course in workplace affairs.
Well, that was uncomfortable
For days after that encounter, I tried to shove it out of my mind. Maybe I’d misinterpreted what I saw. Maybe Sarah just needed help fixing a stuck zipper. Maybe David’s hotel room had the only working Wi-Fi.
I wasn’t naive. I knew conference hookups happened. I just thought they happened in different industries, or at least with different people — strangers at the hotel bar, not the boss who ran our all-hands meetings and forwarded Ted Talks to the team.
My marriage to Greg had always been built on transparency and fidelity. We’d weathered difficult moments but never questioned our commitment.
Watching colleagues casually disregard similar promises left me confused, and weirdly defensive of my own relationship. Was I being self-righteous? Were conference vows different from real-world vows? Who made these rules?
As I packed my suitcase that final morning in Las Vegas, I felt changed. The conference had expanded my professional knowledge, but it had also forced me to acknowledge a side of work culture I hadn’t wanted to see.
I called Greg from the airport, suddenly needing to hear his voice.
“Everything okay?” he asked, sensing something in my tone.
“Yeah,” I said. “Just… missing you.”
Which wasn’t untrue. But it also wasn’t everything.
The extracurriculars reveal themselves
My insomnia continued to prompt late-night wanderings at subsequent conferences. And once I knew what to look for, I saw it everywhere.
The signs were subtle. Executives from partner companies slipping out of rooms that weren’t theirs. Married attendees entering elevators with colleagues. Hushed conversations in stairwells between people who barely acknowledged each other during daylight sessions.
I started thinking of it as the extracurriculars — an entire underground layer of professional conferences that operated in the spaces between keynotes and networking events.
And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it.
The conflict isolated me. Talking to colleagues about it would sound judgmental. Explaining it to Greg would mean unraveling an entire world that had never seemed this morally ambiguous before.
So, I carried the knowledge alone, drifting further from the happy-hour bonding that had once felt necessary for career growth.
Suddenly, I’m suspicious of my own husband
I adjusted. Skipped the late-night networking events. Booked morning flights when I could. Kept my head down, did my presentations, and left before the extracurriculars kicked in.
But the effects spilled into my personal life in ways I hadn’t expected.
Greg started traveling for work too, and suddenly, innocent details — late client dinners, colleagues’ inside jokes — set off quiet alarms in my head. Had my observations planted seeds of doubt that would never have existed otherwise? I hated it.
I hated that I was questioning someone who had never given me a reason to. I hated that I felt like I’d lost something — not in my marriage, but in my ability to trust the concept of marriage at all.
One night, after a particularly pointed line of questioning about Greg’s dinner plans, I stopped mid-sentence, horrified at the person I was becoming.
“What’s really going on?” Greg asked, his patience wearing thin.
I told him.
How what I’d seen at conferences had shifted my perception of professional spaces. How it had crept into my brain in ways I hadn’t expected. How I didn’t want to be suspicious of him, but suddenly understood how easy it was for people to lead double lives.
We talked for hours. Uncomfortable but necessary. And by the end of it, we’d reaffirmed what we already knew. Our marriage wasn’t built on cultural norms or the absence of opportunity — it was built on a choice.
“Not everyone makes the same choices,” Greg said. “What you’re seeing isn’t inevitable. It’s just what some people do.”
Drawing my own line
Greg’s perspective helped me recalibrate. I couldn’t control how others operated, but I could define my own boundaries.
Morning meetings over late-night cocktails. Professional relationships built in daylight, not in dimly lit hotel bars. Transparent conversations with Greg about my schedule, not out of guilt, but because I knew now how easy it was for people to blur lines when no one was looking.
During a leadership summit in Las Vegas, I declined a dinner invitation from a group that included several people I’d previously observed participating in the hidden extracurriculars.
“Early presentation tomorrow,” I said, which was true. But just as true: I had no interest in pretending I didn’t know what I knew.
Business travel creates the perfect conditions for boundary erosion. Distance from home, reduced accountability, alcohol, shared interests, the excitement of a new environment. It’s a psychological loophole — one that allows people to feel disconnected from their normal identity and responsibilities.
I could understand it without justifying it. And I could stay professional without becoming cynical.
The doors still open
The extracurriculars are real. It will continue. But so will my career.
Professional conferences remain fixtures in my life — spaces of both opportunity and contradiction. I still deliver presentations, still build connections, still walk hotel corridors at odd hours when my legs won’t let me sleep.
The difference is, I no longer feel like I’m witnessing something I don’t understand.
Greg and I now have explicit conversations before either of us travels — not from suspicion, but from a shared commitment to transparency. These discussions, once uncomfortable, have become affirmations of our relationship and the values we prioritize.
The doors still open. The elevators still hum with quiet negotiations. Some people will always step inside. Others will walk away.
I know where I stand. And I won’t be signing up for the extracurriculars.
