Love: In love with the girlfriend's husband
"Now sleep finally", mumbles Christian, as I sweat bathed look to the alarm clock. Already five. Drowned, he puts his arm over me. I listen to his breath and feel a painful tenderness. Could I ever live without him? No! Why then this nightmare that does not want to end during the day? Why do I risk our love?
The evening before, we were invited to dinner with Ariane and Vincent. Our neighbors and friends. My lover and his wife. "You were so quiet," Christian said afterwards. Does he really not notice what's going on? It breaks my heart to betray him, to betray Ariane. I have not been able to look them in the eyes for a long time. "I do not want that, all those stealth, those lies," I said to Vincent.
I know, it's not right, what happens. And Vincent knows that too. Everything about this love is wrong. For a person you get, you will lose many.
This love is not good for me
"We can not see each other anymore." Sometimes it says one, sometimes the other. For two, three endless days we hold it out. Then one of us picks up the phone. "How are you?" And again everything starts from the beginning. The feelings of happiness, also the despair about the own failure. "Just enjoy it as long as you're feeling well," a friend told me. But that love is not good for me.
We met Ariane and Vincent two years ago when Christian had to move to another city. We became neighbors, living in the same street. It was Ariane that made settling in easy.
What was especially nice: Our men also understood each other. "Vincent is a nice guy," Christian said when we met four for the first time. Yes, he was. Not a very attractive man, but one with quiet humor and great sensitivity. And he enthusiastically talked about his travels, which he did every two years without his family. "I need that every now and then, this peace, this loneliness," he had said. Ariane accepts that. She never wanted to accompany him.
"Such a trekking tour, far away from civilization, I would also like to do that once," I said to Christian, who just laughed. "Ten days in freezing temperatures in the tent, to shortness of breath and headache? No, thank you, without me."
And suddenly it was there, that gnawing feeling, with all luck and love to miss something. To miss something in life. I felt a touch of soulmate between me and Vincent. A vague feeling only, which became stronger with each encounter. How dangerous that could be, but I did not suspect? until the day in March when we invited them to brunch, "Come, I'll show you my new iMac, a great device," said Vincent. As if by magic, a photo of me appeared on the screen. "Hey, where did you get that from?" I wondered. He grinned, opened a blank page and tapped with two fingers: "I think a lot of you!"
Secret meeting
The next day the phone rang. "I would like to see you," he said. "I do not think that would be wise," I said, feeling my heart pounding. Three days later we met. At the zoo. "We meet as friends, but no one can have anything against that ..." You look for arguments until you believe them yourself, downplayed, which is not harmless? and finally finds himself smooching in the dark corridors of a deep-sea aquarium and does not recognize himself anymore. That's not me, the woman who cheats on her husband and her friend. I can not be that. There were so many moments when I could have pulled the emergency brake and put an end to it. But I did not do it. And I probably will not do it today or tomorrow. I hate myself for that. With every day, with every embrace, my self-esteem fades. But I can not help it. And Vincent is the same. "I wish we had never met," he said recently. "Then I would not know what I miss."
Escape from the nightmare
Two weeks ago he booked another trip. Himalayas this time. In October he wants to fly to Nepal. Where everybody wants to go right now. And I like it too. "Come on," he said, but it was just a bitter joke. He knows that it is not possible. And he does not want to have me with him. He flees into the distance to gain distance. He hopes to be able to think clearly in nature and in the thin air, to find his way back to himself and back to his family.
And me? I will try not to think about him for three weeks. I want to focus on what's important in my life: my husband, my job. And I sincerely hope that we both manage to let each other go. So that nightmare comes to an end before it's too late.
