I had been terribly unhappy in my marriage for a couple years.
The lack of intimacy was killing me and I feared that I would seek it elsewhere, but that wasn’t the kind of person I was. Until one day, it was.
After a booze-fuelled lunch with a friend discussing how lonely and sad my marriage was making me, I walked into a bar and saw a man across the room.
Our eyes locked, and I was just drawn to him.
Within moments Christopher* and I were chatting.
He was interesting and funny, and he made me feel like I was too. Something I had been lacking for years.
When he kissed me it is like I fell into him.
We pulled apart, stared at each other and we both just said “oh no.”
He knew I was married, we knew this was trouble.
Christopher took me home that night and it was incredible. Everything I had been lacking was right there. I felt like a woman again.
He drove me home afterwards and he held my hand the whole way in the car while I just cried. I felt terrible.
We pulled up to my apartment and there was a ‘For Rent’ sign in the yard with a smiling agent’s face plastered on it.
My lover pointed to it and said “That guy is my flatmate,” and we both silently knew that if I wanted to reach him again the phone number was in my front garden.
I had never been someone who had lots of relationships. In fact, in my 20s I barely had a second date.
When I met the man I first married, Jason*, in London I just thought this time it would be different. We dated and sex was fun, it was fairly casual but I wanted more.
One day I told him that I loved him.
“We dated and sex was fun, it was fairly casual but I wanted more.”
(Image: Getty Images)“You’re a really great girl, and you really make me laugh but I just don’t really fancy you,” he replied.
I should have had an inkling then that things wouldn’t work out, but I really wanted it to.
We stayed together but it was always an effort.
He didn’t seem interested in me sexually.
I would ask him why he never touched me, and told him I really missed intimacy, but I honestly thought that he was the best I would ever get and that this was just how things would be.
After three years together, I wanted to come back home to Australia, but he would not have gotten a visa so we married.
At that point I thought we would marry anyway so it was fast tracking the inevitable but when we came home our issues became more apparent.
He was always broke so I had been paying for everything for the entire relationship and I started to resent him.
We weren’t really husband and wife, we were barely more than friends, and being home made it more apparent. He was weighing me down.
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We started counselling to see if we could be better but we were just swimming in quicksand.
So, here I was married, sad, with a phone number on a billboard to contact someone I was really attracted to.
I called Christopher’s flatmate, and got his number. Christopher told me how guilty he felt for what we had done and that he just didn’t want to be ‘that guy’ so I deleted his number and went back to my life, but something had changed inside me.
I realised that the person I was when I was with Christopher that night was interesting and sexual and dynamic; all of the things I no longer felt with my husband.
Slowly, like a butterfly, I was morphing into something greater than I had been allowing myself to be, realising I needed and deserved more from a relationship.
I went away for a weekend with friends. I travelled a few hours away, and yet by chance I bumped into the guy that Christopher had been at the pub with the first day we met.
You can’t argue with kismet, so I got his number again and we began chatting sporadically on the phone.
“So, here I was married, sad, with a phone number on a billboard to contact someone I was really attracted to.”
(Image: Getty Images)Jason and I been going to counselling for months, and we decided he would go home to London for a couple of weeks and on his return we would decide whether we would split up or stay together.
During that time I went for dinner with Christopher and didn’t leave his side for two days.
It was so amazing to be with someone who made me feels this way and I knew that my marriage was over.
It may not have meant that Christopher and I were meant to be together but I knew that I was selling myself short by existing in this passionless, lacklustre relationship.
I picked Jason up from the airport and told him immediately that I was leaving him. I never told Jason about Christopher, he didn’t need to know.
“I never told Jason about Christopher, he didn’t need to know.”
(Image: Getty Images)I moved out of my apartment while he got himself organised. Then I moved back in when he was gone. Within three months, I was blissfully living with Christopher.
Our lives together have not always been easy. We have had miscarriages, and babies, and businesses that went bust, but meeting him in the bar that day was the best thing that could ever have happened to me. I met my soul mate.
I was not a cheater by nature, and I would never do it again. It was circumstantial.
I’ve since had opportunities even, but I am not that woman.
What I have with Christopher is so precious that I would never risk hurting him or damaging what we have.
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