We're used to hearing mistresses talk about how frustrated and guilt-ridden they feel. But here a MAN reveals his side of the story
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The wedding finger is now the first part of a woman’s body I look at. For nine years I was madly in love with a married woman.
And for a very long time she was in love with me.
We met at a party in West London in 2004. Lauren was tall (5 ft 9 in) with shoulder-length blonde hair.
She was wearing a crisp white cotton blouse, black boots and a long charcoal skirt.
I found her instantly enchanting. She really made me laugh and I liked the hint of mischief in her hazel eyes.
She worked in television and, at 40, was two years older than me. We exchanged business cards.
When I noticed her wedding ring I thought what a shame only one of us was single. Maybe things could have been different in another life?
It was Lauren who contacted me first. I was surprised but thrilled when I saw her name flash onto my screen. In a subsequent flirty email she boldly suggested that I cook her a meal at my Wimbledon flat some time. My heart missed a beat. Did she really mean what I thought she meant?
When we met for a drink, we seemed to have so much in common: a love of puns, Scrabble and Waitrose chilli sardines.
I loved the way she carried herself. She was stylish but confident enough to be self-deprecating.
‘I like candlelit restaurants. They make me look younger,’ she joked early on.
But I was reluctant to get involved. She was married and people could get hurt — not least her eight-year-old son, Jake. By the third time we met, however, I simply found her too alluring to resist. From our first kiss we were a couple.
It became physical very quickly. We made each other feel special, and it was as though I’d been waiting for someone like her all my life. What I found irresistible was the way she came across as prim and proper, but also delightfully naughty at the same time.
I loved the shy, almost disbelieving smile when I paid her compliments. Had no one told her how attractive she was before? I adored how she smelled and the look she had when her seriousness descended into playfulness
In cafes, she always spooned the froth off the top of my cappuccinos. I would pretend to be annoyed, but secretly loved it.
At night, I cherished it when she fell asleep with her head on my chest, and the way she laughed gently in her sleep.
We began to meet once a week whenever she was in London. She worked from home, researching for TV producers, and we met when her meetings finished in town.
Her family home was in rural Hertfordshire, but she kept a flat in North London, which her parents had bought for her before she was married.
She stayed in the flat when she was working late in London or on days out during the school holidays with her son. She and her husband never stayed there at the same time.
‘I can barely stand to be in the same room as him,’ she told me. It made me feel special. Guilty.
There were times, looking at her in the evening with a wine glass in her hand, or in the morning, waking up together, when I felt like the luckiest man alive.
During the snatched moments we spent together, life just felt so right. So right that I sometimes forgot she was married.
But her wedding ring troubled me. It was all I could feel when we held hands and a constant reminder that she went home to another man.
I finally came clean: ‘It’s your wedding ring, sweetie.’
‘What about it?’
‘It’s all I can feel sometimes. Would you mind taking it off when I see you?’
‘Of course,’ she laughed.
Her ring came off surprisingly easily. If only leaving her husband could be as simple.
It was almost as if she wanted to be found outÂ
After a few months, Lauren started to send me the sweetest cards and letters. Each card became the bookmark for the novel I was reading. Over those nine years she must have posted me several hundred.
Even now, I am sometimes brought up short when I discover one in an old book. My cards to her were delivered in person. They remained in her London flat, secreted away in a bundle in a bedside drawer.
I consoled myself that at least she hadn’t thrown them away. But I soon found I couldn’t just call or email her when I wanted to. For fear of being found out, she signed off her emails with the instructions ‘No reply’ or ‘You may respond’. It sounds imperious. In retrospect, it was.
Spontaneity is the first casualty of infidelity. On sunny days, I couldn’t ring out of the blue and suggest a picnic. Our dates were planned weeks in advance.
On the mornings we woke up together, Lauren always phoned her son to wish him a good day at school. She asked me to switch off my own phone in case it rang when she was talking to him.
Early on, I asked her if she still slept with her husband Greg.
‘Are you kidding?’ she replied. ‘I’m a married woman. Married people don’t sleep together.’
Music to my ears. I didn’t want to share Lauren, even with her husband of 12 years. But I did want to go public, meet her parents, her friends, her son. Instead I was propelled into a world of secrecy.
I became a scribble in her Mulberry diary. She would write down my initials on the evenings we were due to meet.
By Max Wooldridge
 The Daily Mail