Cheating With My Work Husband

I never took myself for a cheater. We never really do think of ourselves as people who do awful things, until we somehow wind up in the middle of doing them. It’s difficult to grasp the spectrum of deceit and betrayal of your own actions until you’ve distanced yourself from them. It’s now been a few months for me…

I met him (we shall refer to as Boyfriend) when I was 19. He was 27. We were old family friends and had known of each other for years. Something familiar drew us to each other and we enjoyed over five years travelling and living together all over the world. The age difference never really got in the way and with our relationship being primarily in my early twenties, I wasn’t on the wavelength of thinking of mutual prospects for the future. I didn’t take into consideration all of the things I didn’t appreciate in the relationship until I was shown what I actually wanted by someone else. This all changed in May last year.

I had begun a new job in the early months of 2019. This was my first form of permanent long-term employment. I had previously been working as a temporary cover for various companies across London in between studies and travels. Never anywhere long enough to make a friend or learn the code to get into the building off by heart. I grew to simply adore the atmosphere of being at a job long enough to have inside jokes with the friendly faces around me and we all instantly became a small family. It was a startup and the majority of us were young adults as well as coincidentally from Australiasia. I began spending all of my free time after work with colleagues.

22% of married couples in the U.S. first met at work.

This was a stark contrast to how I usually acted at a job. Previously, rushing back to West London at the strike of 5:30pm to attend my evening boxing classes and hastily return into the arms of my beloved. This drastic change of course didn’t go unnoticed. Nonetheless, work became a safe haven and my colleagues became my closest friends. This culture was growing more intense over the summer of 2019, right when said Work Husband arrived in town as part of the influx of new additions to our little startup.

Fresh faced, tanned and bearded, he appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The heavens dropped this perfect 25 year old specimen right into my lap on a sunny Tuesday morning in May. I was asked to show the handsome devil the ropes in my field which meant that I had the pleasure of being locked in a room with him for eight hours. It was hard not to ogle but he made intentions clear from the beginning. He was a man of high morals and wouldn’t touch a taken lady with a rod. I however, felt my own morals dropping. Funny thing a work place. Somewhere we spend most of our waking life, providing us with a random selection of humans to invest time in where we wouldn’t otherwise. Boyfriend didn’t stand a chance.

The connection grew stronger with everyday and work became an opportunity to dress up and flirt. A definite distraction from efficiency at my job but something exciting to look forward to each day. A work husband. A common term labelling a harmless ‘flirtationship’ between two colleagues. A bond to get you through the working day. Harmless at first but proving not over time. I recognize that my circumstance wasn’t unique and this is a common occurrence at work places worldwide. In fact, according to The Business News Daily, 22% of married couples in the U.S. first met at work.

Boyfriend sat there enjoying authentic Vietnamese delicacies, blissfully unaware of the future hopes and dreams crumbling before him.

The more inside jokes, collective group experiences and alone time, the more unavoidable the situation became. A beautiful package of a cheeky friend at work who happened to tick all of my boxes. I became quite the little predator. The more distance I kept from Boyfriend awaiting my return back home, the more it seemed to justify my new feelings. I didn’t feel an immediate need to deal with it. The passion was so strong that whatever was in the background became irrelevant and undeserving of my attention.

I did try to suppress it. I have evidence in the form of setting him up on a date with a good friend, who in my opinion was the closest projection of me you could get. I tried not to be selfish. I thought that perhaps I could live vicariously through their relationship and all I needed from Work Husband was a bit of harmless banter during the working day. It would then really become forbidden. An added reason to keep me straying from loyalty. Something to hopefully and finally knock some sense into me.

Long story short, the date didn’t go well and neither of the parties were interested in a second. I was told that my dear friend was in actuality nothing like me and the two of us offered the complete opposite to each other as potential wives. I breathed the deepest sigh of relief that morning, of course wrapped in a facade of indifference. Hiding the flashback of tears shed in the shower that previous night in fear of the date going well. My mind went as far as imagining a life between them. One where I would forever envy the idyllic partner I wilfully gave away. Every time I would show up at their child’s birthday party bearing gifts from their darling godmother, each kiss on the cheek upon entrance would be filled with regret.

Paris was a trip that sealed the deal for me. A mutual colleague of ours from the French office, invited us to stay with him in Paris for the weekend. Myself, Work Husband and one other friend were on the next Eurostar train through the Channel Tunnel that Friday evening. This was an escape for the two of us which for me especially, felt bound by no lies. This was of course some kind of strange delusion but I took the false sense of relief and ran with it. I didn’t have to report back specific times or locations of my whereabouts. The freedom of being in a different city meant that all I had to say was ‘Paris, a ‘bunch’ of friends and an (unintentional) three-day weekend in Paris’. (We ended up missing our Eurostar home on the Monday morning. We each received a disciplinary meeting for the unprofessionalism of leaving our office without three of its finest employees with no notice — but that’s another story).

Was I really that good at splitting myself down the middle and keeping one side a secret?

It was a weekend of Parisian romance. Holding hands under the Eiffel Tower, red wine…the cliché got me good. It was an escape from hiding and showed me all that I could have and needed to do when we got back to London. Boyfriend hadn’t suspected a thing which was both shocking and guilt inducing. The trust that had been broken was stronger than I’d thought. There was however, one more curve ball left before our scandalous affair could be turned into a love story. One to reminisce about around the campfire with our grandchildren. There was a month long expedition booked through Southeast Asia within weeks…with Boyfriend.

Paris was September. Asia was October. This was to be torture for both myself and Work Husband. How do you allow the person you love to spend a month making memories with someone who they used to love? Especially when in the honeymoon phase of a blossoming romance. The risk and fear of feelings reoccurring were understandable on Work Husbands part. What is even more comical and ironic was that Work Husband helped me organize the itinerary for this trip back in the first few weeks of our friendship. Life really has its perverted ways.

I was clear that my focus was to be on enjoying the exploration and adventure of a new continent and that was that. It was a chance to get away from the smoggy city of London and use the time to say goodbye to a past life. A twisted way to do so considering my so-called past was right next to me the entire time. Boyfriend sat there enjoying authentic Vietnamese delicacies, blissfully unaware of the future hopes and dreams crumbling before him. Meanwhile, all that I could ponder on, was the dreamy emerald waters of Ha Long Bay and how the warm sun reminded me of the prospect of my new love. Morbid, I know.

The beginning of the trip started with Boyfriends phone getting stolen by a motorbike taxi driver in the bustling Ho Chi Minh City. This is a very common petty crime occurring daily to hundreds of unexpecting, selfie-taking tourists. So there I was, sharing a phone with him for the remaining 3 weeks of our trip. You couldn’t make this up. The sneaking around got worse. The messages came at an even greater risk. Boyfriend who was a photographer, wanting to fly his drone, needed my phone frequently to do so. Often going out with it for hours at a time. Desperate times called for desperate measures. I was forced to speak to Work Husband via our work chat Slack, which Boyfriend had no clue how to operate.

My intentions were far from being mischievous and conniving but it’s who I had to become in order to hide the secrets. At times, the stress of balancing this double life made me wish that I’d blow my cover. That during one of the interrogations that took place every other night, I’d slip up or Boyfriend would notice the sweat accumulating on my upper lip. But it never happened. Was I really that good at splitting myself down the middle and keeping one side a secret? The crashing down of my disguise was a worthy trade-off for the back pain of carrying the weighty burden of trepidation ending.

It had been five years with Boyfriend. It had become stale. More of a friendship than anything else. I was holding onto something that was no longer alive. I didn’t notice. I needed someone else to see it and that doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person. It happens. It happens to people who then make it happen to other people. I didn’t go out of my way to do something bad but it unfortunately was the route I ended up taking to a much happier life.

Some may think an affair is more immoral than a random night of lustful cheating, I’d disagree. There was a reason for the manic and distrust, one that can never be justified as morally right. One I couldn’t explain until after it had already occurred and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. I learned not to hold onto things just because I was scared to lose them. I never would have presumed that in such a situation I’d be such a coward. Unable to do what needed to be done until it became so obvious that it was already done. I can only imagine the pain that I induced by imagining Work Husband who is now Boyfriend doing the same to me. Not pleasant. Soul-crushing. Heartbreaking.

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Previously published on medium

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