OK, I said we kissed on the first date but I also was there for three hours and it was mind-blowing, you can guess what happened. As we lay after, something I can’t describe was the feeling of Wow. It was like “something incredibly special has just happened” and the reciprocated glances and smiles meant she felt that too. (Hindsight clearly tells me now it was just an act though). For the purposes of the story lets just call the first date Day 1.
I left T’s house and instantly felt butterflies. I didn’t give a single thought to my wife and family because already, this really felt like the thing that I’d yearned for. We messaged long into the night professing just how mind blowing it had been. We also spoke on the phone that night and amongst other things was the first mention I had of her ex. He had dumped her 6 weeks previously after an 18 month relationship that had her walk out of her own 22 year marriage. Let’s call him C.
The back story to the break up of T’s marriage was that she had a husband who always revelled in her successful career. She earned in the top 5% of salaries (as I do so this wasn’t my attraction to T at all) and with every new job brought new spending opportunities for her husband. T said that she had been prone to affairs and one night stands throughout her marriage and that she had came close to leaving a number of times but didn’t go through with it. When C came onto the scene, he was high profile and in the public eye in an arena that interested her. In fact, she stated a number of times she herself wanted to pursue a career in this line. When he first left the family home, she moved in with C for a number of weeks before getting her own place. This clearly brought tension with her friends and family; particularly her children. T stated that she got off on C’s intellect and it was fine for a time, they bought a house together after a year but that only lasted six months.
She said that C had difficulty in accepting her kids and he was a person that was better off living on his own. In the six to eight weeks that she had been single, she said that they had remained friends and that she had offered him a friend with benefits type scenario but she didn’t say if he took that up or not. She did say that he would come round and they would watch TV and cuddle.
On day two, more messaging and phone calls, she was everything that I wanted in a person, smart, incredibly sultry and oozed sex appeal. She didn’t really get my humour and saw me as quite serious, something that none of my friends would say. This wasn’t a problem though as things grew.
On day three, I visited her house and on the pretence of being away on business to my wife, I stayed over. We basically went to bed and made love time and time again. When we weren’t making love we were entwined in embrace and chatting. We quite literally got no sleep and as the sun came up we were still making love, cuddling and chatting. I cannot begin to describe the inner peace of a woman that was so into me and me her. It was quite literally my happy place. As she was off work at the time recovering from surgery, I spent time on the morning of day three with her before heading to the office. I had missed a meeting and calls were unanswered. I didn’t care.
More messaging that day uncovered more mutual interest, it just seemed to be whatever I was into, she was. She would say things like “I can’t believe you like dance music, its my favourite”. Once again in hindsight, I saw little evidence in the mutual interest as time went on but at the time I was convinced. We literally were sharing 1000 messages a day by that point and as you can imagine I became more disengaged and distant at home. Our next meeting was on day five and we went for dinner followed by a bottle of wine and then bed. More love making, entwinement and pillow talk. We managed a couple of hours sleep that night but again in the morning, I spent more time there and missed more work.
Day six was a biggy. It was a Saturday night I will never forget and basically this is what happened.
I told T I had my kids which was partially true but mostly it was because during the week I could excuse absence in the house with work but not at the weekend. We messaged during the day as usual, she was out for lunch with friends and I received pictures of her and the friends she had told me about. It was good to hear that she was introducing me into conversation (maybe wasn’t of course) and that I was starting to become part of her story.
The problem on that Saturday came at night. I wasn’t aware she was meeting a friend for dinner that evening although it wasn’t a problem. Im a trusting person and it;s important to me that I don’t feel that Im stifling someone, they’re free to meet who they want when they want. Inwardly I felt a little uneasy though and in one of my messages, I purposefully made a reference to hoping she had a good time with “her”. Almost in an instant a message came back. “Her? You sure she’s a she honey?” This stopped me in my tracks.
I became quite crest fallen that T had in my eyes, purposely created doubt in my mind. My texts back became quite short and I wished her a good night. An hour or so later she messaged back sensing something was up with me and she took great pleasure in my mind to explain that the person she was out for dinner with was C, her ex. She also revealed he came back to hers for coffee because he had 10 minutes to kill before going to pick up his son at 9.30 pm. Later when I looked back the texts the times didn’t add up and my stomach felt like it was lined in lead. Significantly, (for a reason I will go into in a later post) she wanted to talk and was able to message so was quite clearly alone. I reflected on the turn of events and became incredibly guilty that I had let someone who was quite clearly either a master manipulator or had a very different perception to me of what we had (I was later to learn it was both) make me act in the way I had. My wife was enormously loyal and a great mother who had never created doubt in my mind like that in 20 years let alone a week. I decided I had had enough and said to T that I was not going to be put in a position like that and we were over, I felt something of a relief that I had managed to get away without exposing my wife or kids to the hurt. I’d had my head turned and I only had my own guilt to deal with. I would redouble my effort at home and make my marriage work.
T had different ideas. She absolutely refused to let me go saying that she didn’t see she had done anything wrong but she said we had something she’d never experienced. She’d found her soul mate and it wasn’t to be discarded. She accused me of leading her up the garden path with my affection, flowers, chocolates etc when I didn’t mean the things I said. The conversation ended with me in my eyes reluctantly agreeing to see how it went but the alarms were ringing. All on day 6! It was interesting though that I emerged from the exchange thinking that I had been the unreasonable one.
A few more shared nights and some acts that stood out. At the time, I had a blocked tear duct and my eye was swollen. When I saw here she told me she had been to the pharmacy and sought advice for my eye. There was no ointment but I had to regularly massage the lower lid. Something she would do for me regularly with great care and tenderness. My wife would never in a million years do that and it was again something that stopped me in my tracks.
On day 11 there was flowers from C which he had dropped off on his way past her house. It was a slight annoyance but they were played off as something that was wishing her well in her recovery. When I left T that day though, all of this was building up and Id made up my mind that despite the wonderful nature of the last week and a half there was a nagging doubt about her willingness to be so close to a man that was a “pig” to one of her children and a real mysoginist. T had previously mentioned that in her mid-forties she still wanted more children and I didn’t. An example there were compatibility cracks appearing and none more so than I had a wife and children at home who were being betrayed by my cheating and selfishness. Despite the feeling of closeness and comfort with T, I was hating myself for not being true to those who really depended on me. What ensued that day was another conversation where I tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from the situation.
In the next couple of days the love-bombing that followed had me bring my world down.