My husband and I were stuck in parent mode – so I started a quasi-affair

“Micro cheating” is a bit slippery to define. In my parents’ day, in the 1980s, I imagine it would be removing your wedding ring when you attended a drinks party. Or failing to mention that you have a husband when someone offers to buy you a baby-cham at the bar. Nowadays there are many ways to micro-cheat with WhatsApp and social media, making it easier than ever. A term popularised by the dating coach Melanie Schilling in 2017, micro cheating isn’t a one size fits all. What does and doesn’t count feels individual and varies between couples (is liking someone else’ s Instagram photos micro cheating?) I’d personally define it as the things you do or say which you know would upset your partner if they knew. A survey found 40 per cent of Brits believe that “developing any romantic feelings [even] without acting on them” is cheating. So perhaps calling it “micro” is just an attempt to make it sound less terrible than it really is. The problem is: I think if most married couples were honest, they’d admit that they’ve thought that way about other people, and fantasised about sleeping with them. I’m not proud of it but I have been micro-cheating on my husband for 18 months. Shorts I’m 48 and have been married to Simon* for 22 years. We have two teenage boys. Simon is wedded to his work and we get on well, but I feel like we’re ships in the night. We spend too long on our laptops. We talk about how we need to prioritise one another but we’re too busy. We have stressful jobs, and at the end of the day, we tend to stare at our phones. Perimenopause hasn’t helped much either. I don’t fancy Simon and feel angry a lot. A year and a half ago, I met Dean at a health and wellness conference in Corfu. I work in corporate hospitality and we were staying at a beautiful luxury hotel. Each day we’d attend talks about the ‘future of hospitality’, which was boring, but at 5pm everyone would meet for drinks. On the second night of the conference, Dean and I ended up sitting together at the local taverna. He was Irish, in his late 40s, recently divorced and worked in PR. He lived in Bali, not the UK. I remember noticing him right away; he was good-looking, but I also dismissed him as annoying. He kept name-dropping famous people that he’d worked with. Then after a while, perhaps influenced by three glasses of wine, we got chatting. We had a lot in common. We loved 90s dance music. We’d gone clubbing to the same places in our youth. We loved the same films – any Steve Martin comedy. I realised that talking about this stuff was something I missed. Simon and I were in functional parent mode; we talked about what to eat for tea and whether the boys were going to fail their exams. Dean and I got drunk and we swapped numbers. I felt 18, like I was in this fantasy where I was desirable again. To be honest, I didn’t think I fancied people anymore until I met Dean. When I woke up the following day, I felt guilty. Why had I found it so easy to give Dean my number? I told myself he would be a “useful work contact”, and vowed to give him a wide berth. On the second night, however, when I was sitting at the bar, quite drunk yet again (I was letting my hair down; I might even have been smoking too…), I got a text from Dean. “I was hoping we could meet up. Fancy coming to my room for a nightcap?” To be honest, I was stunned. I’d not seen him all day and thought he’d been flirting with me the night before because a lot of people in our industry can be super friendly. I told him that I’d give it a miss. Then he sent another text saying he was disappointed – “I thought we had chemistry,” he said. At that point I should have fully shut it down but instead I typed: “I really like you. I would love to come to your room but I can’t do it as I know what will happen. I’m sorry.” The reality was that because I was away on my own, in a different country, I felt like I should have a holiday fling! I fell asleep and the next day got a text from Dean saying that he was leaving early as he had to go home for a work meeting. I felt flat, like I’d missed an opportunity. If I’d slept with Dean, then probably the whole thing would have finished right there. But instead, that’s when we started messaging one another in earnest. We used Instagram messenger, not WhatsApp – where I text most people. I’ve never actually texted a man who wasn’t Simon, not romantically at least and to begin with I was disoriented. Sometimes Dean would text about work-related things. So he’d be sharing a client and then he would be telling me that he was feeling sad because he’d injured his knee. He would send me selfies and photos of everything in his life. Not naked ones, but just a diary showing what he was doing. We messaged a lot. It was a running conversation that we picked up as soon as we were both online. I started putting kisses at the end of each message. I also confided in him about feeling lonely. It felt like cheating because I don’t usually put kisses at the end of messages. Also, I was finding that Dean was cropping up more often in my mind, and I’d wonder what he was up to. But he was also so far away that it felt safe. We didn’t have to take anything further, and Simon didn’t have to find out. At other times I convinced myself it wasn’t cheating as Dean would share information about a woman he was seeing. Weirdly, I felt hurt but knew I couldn’t – I’m married! The life that Dean was living seemed idyllic and a long way away from me putting washing in the machine and avoiding Simon, who was often in a permanent sulk. I should have felt guiltier, but as the weeks passed, I justified it because I was feeling low. Our marriage had deteriorated. I was comparing Simon to Dean and Dean was just a fantasy. But it felt strangely intimate too. He’d share songs that we both loved. I found myself getting obsessive. I knew it was ridiculous. Months passed and each morning I’d wait for a message, feeling disappointed if there was nothing there. Simon was now working every hour of the day; I mean, I assumed he was. I would regularly delete the chats with Dean but Simon has never been one to check my phone. One time my son Aidan picked it up and I hadn’t deleted the conversation. He said: “Who is this dude?” I blushed. “He’s just a work friend. We message about work stuff,” I’d said. Luckily, he didn’t mention it again. When I spoke to female friends, they were aghast. Why was I bothering to text this guy who lived so far away? What was his agenda? Money? Did he have any intention of meeting up with me? What was I getting out of the whole thing? It was hard to explain. I was getting friendship, and a bit of flirtation thrown in for good measure. With micro-cheating, you get “micro-doses” of guilt. I justified it because I was bored. Because Simon and I didn’t have sex. Because I felt old and like time was running out. The truth was that I felt closer to Dean than to Simon after 12 months of texting. We knew each other really well. He would often say things like “if we’d met back in the 90s, we would have been an item.” But he never made plans to come to the UK, even though I knew that he could. There were times when I tried to push things, suggesting that perhaps I should come to Bali. I increasingly felt like my feelings were much stronger than his. Then one morning a couple of months ago, when I was getting ready to drive to the garden centre, I checked my phone and Dean had sent me a photo of his penis! I felt like perhaps he’d sent it by mistake. Luckily, it disappeared as Instagram has a one-view feature. “I’m sorry,” Dean texted later. I felt so mixed about it. I did fancy him. I sometimes thought about what it would be like. I dreamt about it, in fact. The photo did feel like a line had been crossed. I also felt like he was maybe playing me; if I didn’t message for a few days, he’d double down and send me a long voice note. I’d hear his voice, immediately felt closer and more obsessive again. But the photo made me decide to go cold turkey. I blocked him – of course there was no resolution because we didn’t have a relationship in the first place but I felt like I was going mad. Then, after two weeks, I unblocked him and messaged. “I can’t stop thinking about you. How’s work?” I knew it was stupid. That was last month. I know I have to put energy into my marriage but I feel so over it. The energy I get from Dean makes me feel alive. Today I am still “micro cheating”. Except it doesn’t feel quite so micro anymore. It feels like a massive lie because it’s been going on so long. I keep telling myself it’s pointless. That I am betraying Simon. That I owe it to my sons to give it up and make more of an effort at home. There are days when I feel Dean and I will meet up in real life and others when I think he’s stringing a whole host of women along. He’s an enigma in many ways. The opposite of the man I’ve shared a bed with for so many years. I know that I’m wasting time. But I’m also totally addicted. I sometimes daydream a scenario where we meet. I also know that if we did meet, there’d be too much pressure on the whole thing, as my expectations of him are way too high. I have sort of made him into an ideal partner, filled in the blanks and ensured he has all the things I look for. He’d never be able to live up to that high standard anyway.