Hi Anita,

I’m really grateful you took the time to read what I wrote and respond.  And there are truths on what you say, some of them harsh but understandable based on what I’ve written.  I need to face up to some of them.

I agree I wasn’t over my ex.  I don’t know that I’ve even truly reached a place of acceptance yet but the pain isn’t nearly what it was.  We actually see each other frequently now. I am friends with her new boyfriend (not the man she was seeing – another old school friend).  She talks to me a bit about the original man but I try to change the subject if I can.  My ex has been very supportive during recent weeks but there’s an unspoken friction between us.  She is nothing like the person I settled down with now and we aren’t the friends that we were.  It’s my fault as much as hers. I still harbour a lot of bitterness.  But  we’ve always tried to get on for the sake of the kids and because we both avoid conflict, rightly or wrongly.

I admit, I leant on M.  I thought I was in a good place when I met her but I was still in the anger phase of my break up, I think, and she supported me.  She took away the pain.  It’s true. I know I became emotionally dependent on her.  She also talked a great deal about her ex husband who upset her frequently.  We vented our frustrations.  It was a two way thing.  But looking back I know it wasn’t healthy.  But it built up trust between us and gave us some common ground.

I didn’t know what I wanted with M.  I liked her but was reluctant to get into anything too quickly.  I wasn’t looking for a relationship, it’s true. But people told me not to overthink things.  Just enjoy one another, and we did.  It was reckless in retrospect.  We should’ve talked properly early on.  I had dated someone a few months earlier but ended it after a few dates because I knew it was too soon.

You’re right that the sex was a massive part of it, for both of us.  It’s how it started – we were both very attracted to each other.  I’m sorry now to have put such an emphasis on it above because it wasn’t only that.  I’ve never had a particularly high sex drive or anything.  I never went out looking for sex and in fact have only had sex within relationships.  I’ve never cheated.  I say a dream come true because towards the end of my relationship with my ex, I was so unhappy about how I felt about sex and I thought about how sex was in my first serious relationship. I wanted that again.  But I never wanted to leave my life or break up my family.

But I didn’t only see it as sex.  Our children met many times. We camped and did days out.  She met many of my friends.  I met most of her family. I had plans to take her kids out in London after the pandemic. We spoke about dozens of things we were going to do together.   Gradually I had started to think more long-term and I told her, but I didn’t know how we could live together.  But over the past 2-3 months, it had seemed like an affair – just meeting for one night at a time.

It was exciting and fun and in huge contrast to what the previous 13 years had been like.  It’s true.  And it’s true that the way I feel now is probably disproportionate to how serious the relationship really was.