I Was His Mistress & My Only Regret Was Breaking His Ex-Wife's Heart

If you told me my future husband would sit beside his wife as someone introduced us - yes, I said wife, not ex-wife - I would have said you were crazy. I would never try to come between a husband and wife. My Mama raised me better than that… didn't she?

Never envisioned myself as someone's mistress or the one to break up a marriage, but there I was, all the same. A relationship with a married man ran against every moral code I believed in. Moral codes I shattered the day I met my husband.

I flirted with a married man sitting beside his wife. Then we carried on a two-year-long affair before he left her.

Two years where I avoided our mutual friends and distanced myself from people I cared about because I didn't want to reveal our secret. He and the future I sensed between us were more important to me than they were. Some accepted us when we revealed our relationship, far more turned their back on us. Turns out I made the right choice since they couldn't be happy for our happiness.

Two years where I got into bed alone, crying myself to sleep, while he headed home to someone else. Tears streaked both our cheeks when we parted each night, both our hearts breaking daily, but we recognized our future lay with one another. A future with a family and home filled with seven children, a dog, and his parents.

It began as a dalliance for him, soon morphing into the dawn of our life together. I recognized my other half in his eyes when I first saw him. Realized he was my 'person'. My ride or die. I tried to see myself with someone else, anyone else, but it was impossible. And I tried. Believe me, I tried. It was impossible.

He was in my head, my heart and my soul. The second last piece of the puzzle that was me. An integral part of myself I never realized I was looking for. Our children were the last pieces of that puzzle. As much as I should regret the affair that began our life together, I don't. I will never regret loving the amazing man who loves, cherishes and worships me. Every day. I love the life we built together almost as much as I love him.

My one regret is hurting his ex-wife.

She didn't deserve the way their marriage ended, but I doubt she realizes our actions came from a place of love. We tried to protect her as much as we could. To hurt her as little as possible.

We met by chance, an accidental meeting through mutual friends. Our affair was not our intention when we met, merely the result of our undeniable attraction to one another. Something drew us together and, as much as we tried to ignore it, we couldn't.

I remember seeing him across a crowded bar, on St. Patrick's Day of all days, and feeling like I was meeting with an old lover. Someone I'd been waiting to come back into my life. He told me later he experienced the same jolt of recognition when he saw me. We sensed we were each other's destiny. There was an instant connection between us. One that has only strengthened over the last quarter-century.

Some may say we were wrong in how we dealt with the situation. That I should have stayed away from a married man, full stop. God knows I tried to stay away from him, but there was something there. Something drawing us to each other. Neither of us could ignore it. From the first time our eyes met, it was like coming home. Our hearts, our souls, recognized their true mates in each other.

I say, 'you can't help who you fall in love with.' No matter how hard I tried to walk away. Tried to ignore the way butterflies invaded my stomach every time I thought of him, never mind what they did when I saw him, I couldn't leave him behind. It didn't matter how hard I fought my feelings for him, I fell in love with him that first night. Hard and fast.

Irreversibly, uncontrollably, and undeniably in love with him. It must have been genuine, for we've been together ever since.

I was one of the lucky ones. And I know it. Our life together may have begun as an affair, but it ended up as a lifetime of happiness. We loved each other enough to build a life together. I loved him enough to embrace our unconventional relationship, and he loved me enough to walk away from a woman he'd been with for almost half his life. A woman he'd envisioned growing old with, but not faithful to.

I went into our relationship with eyes wide open, well aware of his past infidelities.

He bruised my heart when he admitted he wasn't sure he could be faithful to me. He didn't know how to be faithful, since he'd never been faithful to his first wife. It hurt, but I loved him too much to walk away from him. As naïve as it sounds, I knew in my heart he and I were the real deal. My soul reassured me we'd each found what we were looking for. Neither of us has ever strayed from one another. Not once in almost twenty-five years.

He confided in me he'd been unfaithful in the past because he'd been searching for 'his person' and had settled in the past. Settled for a Ms. Right-Now while waiting to find his Mrs. Right. He was the part of my soul I'd been searching for, but didn't know I'd been missing. The part of my heart I needed to survive. I couldn't live without him. I was his mistress and satisfied with the stolen moments we had together.

Until I wasn't.

Did I give him an ultimatum? Yes, I did. I cried when I told him my breaking point was approaching. Fast. Our affair needed to end. One way or another.

My husband is an honourable man. I know it may not seem like it - how could he be honourable and commit adultery - but he tried to keep from hurting any of us. All of us. There was nothing to do about it. One of us was hurting every day of our affair until he figured out he could no longer live apart from me. Or me from him.

He was the one who left his wife to move in with me. It was his choice to end his marriage. His decision to follow his heart into a relationship with me. My heart was all in, I wasn't sure he was.

Turns out I was wrong. He was far more invested in us than I expected. And he left her. For me.

Was I happy? Yes. It was the happiest day of my life when we moved in together and began our lives as a couple.

It was also bittersweet and sad.

Last thing I wanted was to bring heartbreak to his ex-wife. To anyone, really. But I did. My husband and I both did. The act of us falling in love resulted in the end of his marriage to give us our life together.

Our meeting and subsequent relationship was destined.

It was foretold. We've been together almost twice as long as he and his first wife were together, courtship and marriage included. None of his previous relationships lasted as long as ours has, and we now have seven children together. We have discussed the way we felt that spark when we met. The instalove, to quote a romance genre. We've never wavered in our dedication and commitment to each other. 'When you find your missing piece, you just know.' And we did.

Would I have preferred to meet him when we were both single? Absolutely.

It was not meant to be, however. While reminiscing, we discovered several opportunities to meet one another occurred in the three or four years prior to us meeting in that Irish pub. It never happened. Not until that fateful St. Patrick's Day in 1996. If that's not fate, nothing is.

Any earlier and he wouldn't have been ready.

Any later and I may not have given him more than a smile.

As devastating as an affair is on a relationship, everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it's the catalyst necessary to help a couple find who they are meant to live out their lives with, even if that is with someone different from their spouse. Individuals need to be true to themselves and their own happiness. They need to recognize who their soul calls to and whether they are settling for someone who doesn't make their heart soar and soul sing.

Storms that broke other marriages strengthened ours.

My mother's death and renovating a home showed us adversity strengthened our union.

Unemployment. Pregnancies, miscarriages and raising seven children illustrated how loss brought us together.

Narcissistic and dysfunctional relations with both his parents and my father, and the eventual estrangement from my father proved manipulation gave us determination to work things through.

We came through it all. Stronger. United. More in love than ever. The open, honest communication at the heart of our marriage is what relationship counsellors everywhere preach to their clients.

Do I regret the pain and heartache his first wife experienced?

Of course I do. I'm not a heartless monster, no matter what her opinion of me might be. I never wanted to cause her pain. Her tears were my tears. I cried often in the first few years we were together. I recognized how much she was hurting. And I hated hurting her, but a life without him in it seemed unbearable. My husband and I put our happiness ahead of hers, and that wasn't a terrible choice. Hell, it wasn't even a selfish choice. It was the choice we needed to make in order to find a contented path forward. It just wasn't the one she wanted us to make.

Should I have walked away? Never even started the affair?

Maybe I should have. The force drawing us together was too strong. From the beginning, our relationship has been the envy of our friends. They tell us how good we are as a couple. That the Fates smiled on us the day we found one another. It distressed us both to break someone's heart to find our happy ending.

The exception, not the rule.

It thrills us she found her own happy ending. She lives in a home she loves, in a neighbourhood dear to her, raising a beautiful daughter with her loving husband. She found happiness with someone unexpected and different from the first man she married. The three of us found our happy ending. All was right in our little worlds.

I realize we were, and are, part of the lucky few who engage in infidelity and find their happily ever after. Infidelity happens all the time, to people in all walks of life and different types of relationships.

Not very many affairs end the way mine and my husband's did, in a happy, healthy, and long-term relationship. Too many end up in broken marriages, with three people brokenhearted and, all too often, alone.

I don't advocate going out of your way to pursue a married partner. There is nothing heroic or admirable about breaking up a marriage. I'm not proud of being my husband's mistress, nor am I ashamed of it. It is what it is.

Our relationship began under less-than-ideal circumstances, but there is something to be said for finding your 'person'. And, in my husband, that is just what I did, even after fighting my attraction and desire for him like it was my job.

Is it love or hot, dirty lust?

No matter who you fall in love with, but especially when it's someone in a relationship, you need to ask yourself if what you feel is love or hot, dirty lust.

One could take you into the relationship of your lifetime, the other down the road to heartache. If you're honest with yourself, and trust your instinct, you may find that the passing fancy goes in one ear and out the other. Easy to ignore and easier to talk yourself out of. Or you may find that hot, dirty lust is what you want.

I asked myself that question for a long time, even after our affair began. A married man would never have been on my radar before I met my husband. I couldn't have wiped him from my mind afterwards. And, all these years later, neither of us could imagine our lives without the other. We were lucky, it was both love and hot, dirty lust.

If I hadn't listened to my instinct, I would have lost the love of my life. You know yourself and what you want and need in your life better than anyone else. Your instinct will never lead you astray, so long as you ask the right questions, listen to it and trust in it.

So, should you ever find yourself in a position where you are contemplating a relationship based on infidelity, you need to ask yourself if it is love or hot, dirty lust. Listen to the answer and base your actions upon it.

It's not just your life that is affected or your heart that risks being broken. Your actions can affect the rest of someone's life, yours and theirs.