DUH! I THINK SHE HAPPENED TO IT

IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Fell in Love with a Much Younger Man While I Was Still Married

And now he lives with my husband, my children, and me.

To say that I didn't mean for this to happen doesn't begin to express the disappointment I felt in myself when it did. I had been married (technically, I still am, because divorce is expensive and living separately is unthinkably so) for 11 years, with two school-age children together and one I brought from a previous relationship.

I realize how cavalier I must sound. I'm 46. I shouldn't be behaving like this, right? I'm a mother. My pleasures, if they're not able to be harmlessly integrated into family life, should be set aside. What matters most (and here's the thing: I know this) is my children's happiness, safety, and security.

To make it worse, I met him at hip café — the only one of its kind in our town, and a gathering place for the small population of would-be beatniks and cheerful outsiders in an otherwise unremarkable suburb. He's 21 years my junior. And he had a manbun.

He started the conversation with me — at least that's what I think, and I'm going to roll with that, because although my motivations were far from ulterior, I need to know I wasn't trawling for a boy-toy, even subconsciously. I'm a flirt, but not the kind who makes others uncomfortable; just the type inclined to compliment friends on a particularly flattering outfit with a wink and a sly smile. I don't unpack that right away, though. The most I could say about this first brush against the man who I now consider to be a great love of my life is that our interaction involved a pleasingly mutual charisma and the excitement of shared ideas.

My husband and I had been negotiating some murky waters. We hadn't been getting along for years. Our sex life had become perfunctory and joyless, an obligatory flail at intimacy once or twice a month at best. There was so much conflict and resentment between us that it didn't even feel good to touch each other. He claimed, when I pressed him for a greater mutual effort at sexual connection, to have little to no sex drive — until I found out he was masturbating several times a day. NOT. GOOD.

OH PLEASE! READ IT HERE!