I had an affair. Those are not words I ever imagined I would say out loud. When I married my husband, we were so in love. I remember thinking “we will be the couple that lasts forever. We will always be in love like this and will make it through anything”. I fully believed that. We had our issues like anyone else, but I was so sure that us loving each other would be enough to get us through life. And it was, until it wasn’t.
My husband has a video game addiction. When we first started dating, he hid it well from me. I never really noticed how much time he spent doing it until we moved in together. After that point, things started to go downhill.
What started out as a seemingly benign hobby soon revealed itself to be a full blown addiction. It was the only thing we ever fought about. Everything else was great between us. We would joke about how easy our relationship was. But every 3–6 months like clockwork, I would realize how lonely I was. I would tell my husband and ask him to please spend a little more time with me. He would agree and say “Yes, of course I will.” Then for a little while, he would make the changes and put in more effort to spend extra time with me. But always around that 3 week mark, he’d go right back to the way it was before and my loneliness would slowly build back up again until the next fight. This lasted for 6 years.
I tried everything I could think of each time. My love language is quality time. I didn’t need ALL of his time. I never asked him to stop gaming. All I asked for was 1 hour a day. When I got home, I wanted him to spend 1 hour with me to talk, connect, chat about our days, make dinner and eat together. To feel important and prioritized in his life. And sometimes he would, but then it would revert back.
After 3 years, my efforts waned. I did still try. We did still have the same fight. But I was losing steam. By year 5, my heart was no longer in it. I stopped begging him to spend time with me. I stopped planning trips for us. I stopped researching conversation topics since he said it was too difficult for him to try to just talk to me on his own. He wanted to DO things together.
It was also around the year 5 mark that I started to HATE when he touched me.
His love language was physical touch, which meant the only time he would come hang out with me was when he wanted to have sex. Afterward, he would go back to his computer and I’d be alone. Sometimes he’d stay with me if he was tired, but he’d fall asleep.
Looking back now I see where everything started to fall apart. Where my thoughts started to wander a bit.
When I had only been married about 7 months, I met my affair partner for the first time. My office worked with his office and part of my job was maintaining that relationship. We had to talk on the phone almost daily to keep track of what all was going on. I really enjoyed working with him. He was extremely professional, excellent at his job and so friendly.
I was instantly somewhat smitten with him. I enjoyed talking on the phone with him. His voice was so soothing. There was never any personal talk in the beginning, never anything remotely inappropriate. I just found myself looking forward to talking to him. I knew he was older than me just from his voice, but never thought much of it. Eventually I found out that age difference was 16 years.
About 3 months after we started working together, I had to take some papers to his office in person. It’s still to this day one of the clearest memories I have, when he walked out of his office and down the hall toward me. I think my heart may have skipped a beat, but I know for sure my mouth fell open and the first thing I thought was “that is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.” The voice definitely matched the face.
I knew this was an immediate red flag, especially being so newly married. For the next few years, I avoided seeing him in person if at all possible. We still had to talk on the phone almost daily, that was unavoidable. But I knew I had to keep my distance and maintain the professional side. I had no desire for it to progress, and I ignored the enjoyment of talking to him as much as I could.
Over time we both learned little things about each other. I found out he was also married and had two daughters. He learned about my husband and dogs. That was about the extent of how we kept things for many years, just work level friends. He had no idea I had a ridiculous crush on him that I could never even admit to myself, let alone anyone else.
Occasionally I would have dirty dreams about him that felt like they came out of absolutely nowhere. which always threw me off when I talked to him the next day. Again, I ignored it. Eventually, I left that job, and we didn’t talk much at all after that. We kept in touch now and then since we’re in the same industry and sometimes needed to talk for one reason or another, but it was very few and far between.
As my marriage fell apart, I started dreaming about him more often. I wasn’t sure why, as I hardly ever thought about him since I didn’t work with him daily anymore. But the dreams were very realistic and were not the kind I was used to having about anyone.
The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was in August of 2022 when I had the spiciest dream I’ve ever had. I orgasmed so hard in my sleep that it woke me up. It was so intense and I was so surprised and disoriented when I woke up, I tried to sit straight up but was wrapped oddly in the blanket, so I actually ended up falling out of the bed. It was like something out of a movie. This had happened before, but NEVER like that.
After that night, I couldn’t get him out of my head. I had been toying with the idea of leaving my husband at this point for many months. I was pretty sure that was what I was going to do, but it felt very scary and I was trying to figure out logistically how it would work.
About a month later, I decided I needed to see Mr. AP in person again. It had been years, and I told myself there is absolutely no way he is as beautiful as I remembered. I must have built it up in my head. And he was so much older than me, get a grip. So when I knew I would be near his office one day, I called him in the morning to ask if I could stop by. He said of course, so I did later that afternoon. I sat in his office catching up for about 2 hours without even meaning to. But as soon as I saw him, I just remember thinking “Fuck.” Because yes, he really was that beautiful, and no, I hadn’t imagined it. I remembered him shockingly well for only having seen him a handful of times.
When I left that day, I decided I would write him a letter. I would tell him how I felt. How I admired him, how gorgeous he was, how amazing he was at his job. But I would do it anonymously, and I would just get it off my chest so I could stop thinking about it. If nothing else, he was so incredibly humble, I had a feeling no one had ever told him these things before and I wanted him to know someone thought them about him, even if he never knew who it was.
Have you ever heard the phrase “acknowledge how you feel and release its hold over you”? That was what I was going for, and exactly what I told him. I wrote the letter and dropped it off the next day.
The panic I felt dropping it off should have been an indicator for what I had just started, but I was so naive. I thought this beautiful, perfect man would never even THINK about stepping out on his wife, so this will just flatter him. And I had no intention of cheating on my husband, I just needed to get over this crush. Looking back now, I should have had a better idea of what that would do. Or at least seen it as a possibility. It just seemed so unrealistic I didn’t consider it at all. At the time, I had no way to know I had actually just opened up Pandora’s box and this was the start of what became the greatest love of my life.
