It all started with a text I received while waiting in an airport lounge, ever-so-slightly hungover. 'Hope you had a wonderful time,' it said with a smile emoji. Innocent enough... but already it felt transgressive.
I was on my way back from a girls-only holiday in Majorca, celebrating a friend's 50th. The trip had been wonderful. Full of sangria, silly fun, and then - right at the end - an hour or two of flirtation with, well, I only knew his first name, but the man who was now texting me.
I was married, worked full time and had two teenage sons.
On the one hand, this meant I very rarely had the kind of time to myself that allowed me to flirt. And on the other, it meant I really shouldn't be flirting at all.
I hesitated before replying, and then quickly typed back: 'The trip was amazing. Just what I needed.' I paused again, unsure if I was really going to write what I wanted to write. Then I did. 'Keep in touch.'
What emoji to use? A heart? Too much. A thumbs up? Too functional. I opted for the smiley face he'd used.
And so began my 'emotional affair'.
If I'm honest I was in the perfect space for it. My husband and I, married for more than 25 years - a ludicrously long time, it felt - had fallen into a rut for at least the past year, if not much longer. We loved each other, but it felt like a familial love rather than a romantic one. Passion had died a long time ago.
When you think of affairs you think of illicit meetings in hotel rooms. Buying lingerie. Trying to cover your tracks. I am speaking as if I know about these things, but I don't. I've never had an affair. (I've watched friends have them and then pitched in to help pick up the pieces when inevitably it got messy.)
My marriage wasn't brilliant, but it wasn't hideous. I wasn't looking for another man.
And yet here he was, Mr Majorca, whom I'd met on the last but one night of our jaunt. My friends and I were in a restaurant, finishing dinner, laughing like drains as we had from the moment we landed.
Suddenly the waiter was by my side, brandishing a bottle of champagne. ‘The gentlemen over there has bought you this,’ he said, pointing to a handsome man, about my age (or maybe slightly younger?) sitting across the room. He looked a little bit like an old ex-boyfriend.
Didn't these things only happen in films starring Anne Hathaway? Without thinking about it, (I'd had a few drinks) I raised a glass and smiled back at him.
Perhaps an hour later, he came over just as we were about to leave, ‘You ladies still having fun?’ he said. We all giggled like teenagers. He had an Irish accent. Where was the harm? A bit of flirting! Why not?
‘Could I get your number?’ he asked. This was the moment I should have pushed back and said, thanks, but I’m actually married and have two kids at home.
But that’s not what I did. What I did was type my number into his phone, leaning towards him so our heads almost touched.
My friends were shocked. ‘I’ll obviously never hear from him again,’ I protested in the cab on the way back to the hotel.
Was I trying to prove I was still attractive? I was 51 - if I’m honest I wasn’t at all sure that I was still attractive. Quite the reverse. But inside, I was cross at my friends’ squeamishness. We’d all talked candidly about our marriage woes. We all felt like we were yearning for something, but couldn’t put our finger on what.
After the airport text, I didn’t hear anything from Mr Majorca for a week. Normal, hectic-but-dull life resumed.
But then came a short message - ‘How’s life back home?’ I was in the office, sweating from a heavy commute. I work for a charity as a marketing director and had a day ahead of me full of officialdom and responsibility. It was ridiculous to start texting this person.
Didn't my marriage - my life - function well enough, even if it was overly-cosy and at the same time overly-busy? Dan and I didn't argue. We didn't talk much, no, but we certainly didn't exchange cross words.
If it felt as though he was slowing down, always horizontal on the sofa, scrolling on his iPad, well, that happened to men in midlife, didn't it?
The fact that I had no idea what he was reading or watching - had no real curiosity about his interests any more - was, again, just one of those things after 25 years.
I picked up the phone during my lunch break, and sent MM a reply. ‘I’m finding it hard to get back into real life,’ I typed, and then added a thumbs up emoji.
That felt right. We were a man and a woman texting one another. It was just like a work email really.
But of course it wasn't and over the next four weeks, we exchanged more texts, more frequently.
Once or twice we even talked about sex, but in a jokey way.
He mentioned that he had zero sex drive (which seemed slightly odd to be honest but I welcomed his honest and direct approach) and I said I was the same, which was kind of true.
But it was the emotional conversations that felt more intense. Mr Majorca was at a crossroads in his life. He was 50 and had split with his girlfriend. He lived in Ireland and wanted a career change.
He had run a restaurant in Majorca and had worked in the restaurant trade all his life but was tiring of the stress and unpredictable schedules. What should he do? He sent me copies of his CV so I could read them and give him tips.
It's quite possible I was ploughing all my feelings into my texts with MM and had nothing left over for my husband
I enjoyed offering advice. It didn't feel romantic because we often talked about his love life and how he was struggling to find meaning in it all.
He once told me he never dated women his own age, which felt like a clear indication that he wasn't interested in me - and like a punch in the stomach, if I'm honest.
It felt like I knew everything about MM and nothing at all about him. We talked about being middle aged. Our relationships with our parents. Growing up. Break-ups. And yet I'd met him in person once.
Why was I doing this?
The answer, I now think, is because I was falling into a fantasy.
Over these weeks, I was beginning to construct a romanticised, story-book version of MM in my head. This version of him was kind and funny and sexy and clever. In the gym, I listened to old Radiohead songs from my twenties and imagined - really intensely imagined - meeting him in real life again.
I followed him on Instagram and started scrolling through his photos. One evening, after a G&T, I messaged: ‘I think I’m getting a bit obsessed with texting you.’
I was standing in the kitchen and my son was playing Playstation in the front room.
‘Let’s talk then,’ he messaged back. I couldn’t clearly remember what his voice sounded like. It was a scary, thrilling, breath-taking idea.
But was it safer to keep him inside my head than cross this boundary? Safer for my marriage and for my fantasy? My son screamed into his headset. I texted back that I couldn’t talk.
Meanwhile, Dan and I were becoming even more distant. Or that's what it felt like - it's quite possible I was ploughing all my feelings into my texts with MM and had nothing left over for my husband.
Not that Dan liked sharing his feelings - he and MM were polar opposites in that respect.
And still the exact nature of my 'relationship' with MM felt nebulous and blurry. Was I an agony aunt to him? I used hearts in every text now, but it felt so desperately needy.
Every morning the first thing I did was check my phone to see if he’d texted. If I messaged late at night he’d send me a sleepy emoji and nothing else, and then I’d worry that, again, I was being too much. Clingy, annoying.
Bizarrely, I started to get served a lot of content on social media about ‘how to get a man to text you’ or ‘how to make a man obsessed’. Those kinds of videos where a usually young woman gives you tips and ‘Rules’ about playing it cool and not putting him off. It felt weird, like my phone could read my mind (it was probably just reading my texts).
About three months into my exchanges with MM, I was openly texting him while watching my son play football on a Saturday afternoon. I’d text in the supermarket with my husband - this actually added to the thrill of it, I’m ashamed to say. The weird thing is I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty at the time.
Partly because that part of my marriage, the intimate part, the one where we talked about our feelings... was gone. As had the sex, largely. I’m not proud to admit I’ve also texted MM when my husband is asleep next to me - snoring away. This makes me feel incredibly guilty, but because the relationship is purely on text, I justify it by saying that it’s not a ‘proper affair.’
In fact I even mentioned one evening that I’d made a friend in Majorca but my husband wasn’t even curious to find out who this person was (or to ask if they were male or female).
I justified it by saying it was innocent - we weren’t talking about my marriage; we weren’t talking about having an affair - but it wasn’t innocent
‘I feel like I’m lonely,’ I texted MM one afternoon.
‘I feel like that too all the time,’ he replied. He sent me a photo of the table where he was sitting working, ‘I just have work and nothing else,’ he said. Then a heart emoji.
It was exactly what I wanted, but also not what I wanted. What I wanted was the version of MM I'd created in my head.
I tried to stop texting after that, leaving it for up to four days at a time. But it felt like I was shrinking, like I was deliberately shutting down the light at the end of the tunnel.
It's a truism, but being a mum and juggling work was hard and boring. MM made me feel like there was still some adventure on the horizon.
I justified it by saying it was innocent - we weren't talking about my marriage; we weren't talking about having an affair - but it wasn't innocent.
It was now autumn and I know I was grumpy around my family. The problem was nobody seemed to notice anyway.
'Hey how's it going?' A text from MM popped up. He sent a funny video of a guy waving and falling over. 'I've been busy but how are you?' I felt my stomach turn over. My energy lift.
I felt like I was 'catching feelings' (this was a phrase my son used to describe falling in love), but with a man on a phone.
In the end, I confided in a close friend, laughing sheepishly at how daft I was being, but at the same time making it plain that my feelings were serious.
'What do you think he wants from me?' I asked her.
'Well, why don't you ask him?' she said. 'Stop messing about. You're two grown ups. Just ask him what this thing is.'
She was right to be so blunt and exasperated, but the thought scared me.
MM and I had become friends but we also gave each other something we both needed - drama, fantasy, an outlet for all of these middle-aged feelings of emptiness and hope and desire.
I began to wake up from my trance. I realised with a jolt that I wanted to have a proper, meaningful sex life again (and if it wasn't with MM then it needed to be with my husband - and if that didn't work then we needed to split because I wasn't prepared to wave goodbye to that part of my life forever).
And I did what my friend said I should. I messaged MM: 'What is this?' He replied immediately. 'It's whatever you want it to be!' he replied and sent me an avatar of a man doing the heart shape with his hands. I smiled at it - and then deleted it.
I haven't stopped talking to MM by text yet, but I'm slowly evicting him from the space he once occupied in my head. I'm trying not to think about him as much; it's hard but I know I have to. I want to make things work with my husband if I possibly can.