I was my husband’s other woman — but he’d never cheat on me

‘Jealousy and suspicion have never played a part in our married life.’ (Picture: Getty/Myles Goode)

Welcome to How I Do It, the series in which we give you a seven-day sneak peek into the sex life of a stranger.

This week we hear from Karina*, a 50-year-old writer in London. Karina’s marriage started in a rather unconventional way: she cheated on her partner with her now-husband, who was also in a relationship at the time.

‘Our affair was back in 2005,’ Karina says. ‘We met in Chicago. I was living in the city, and Dean* was visiting, playing gigs as a musician. He was 39 at the time, and we hit it off, despite him being in a relationship for several years.

‘We spent every night of that week together, and I didn’t feel as guilty as I should have if I’m honest.’

After Dean left Chicago, the pair didn’t see each other for two years — but when Dean broke up with his partner, he reached out.

‘He wanted a chance to reconnect but I was resistant. I didn’t trust the feelings I’d had a couple of years ago,’ she adds.

Finally, in 2018 they reconnected on social media and made the decision date each other.

We’ve now been together for seven years, and we got married in 2023,’ Karina says.

Without further ado, here’s how Karina got on this week…

The following sex diary is, as you might imagine, not safe for work

Monday

I’ve been awake for a while, still in bed but contemplating the start of the work week, while Dean continues to doze.

Since we had a long-distance relationship for several years before we got married, I still appreciate the regularity of his company, and the relaxation of knowing we can have sex when we want to, and not because we feel we have to make the most of every day.

Dean sleeps in the nude and has kicked off the covers, so it’s impossible not to appreciate the significance of his penis. I’m hot, but then again I’m always hot, with perimenopause having its way with me. This doesn’t mean that the very sight of him doesn’t automatically stir me, though. 

I don’t wake him, but thumb through the calendar on my phone. I have to keep track of his schedule as well as mine, otherwise I’d be asking him constantly what his days off are. It looks like Thursday might be the most likely candidate for afternoon sex, our mutually preferred time.

Once we’re out of bed, I work from home while he’s out, but we stay connected with flirty texts and video calls.

I lived a pretty emoji-free existence before Dean, but now our messages are peppered with hearts, kisses, and the winky-tongue-out emoji that we have mutually decided means ‘horny’.

Tuesday

I’ve been working for a couple of hours by the time Dean wakes, after doing prescribed exercises for the arthritis in my knees.

There’s no cowgirl for me anymore, but it doesn’t bother me much.

I hear Dean in the kitchen so I join him there. He’s still groggy while he fixes himself a coffee, but perks up when I appear in my form-fitting exercise gear. He’s always admired women with curves.

‘Hel-lo…’ he greets me, drawing out the word with an appreciative glance. ‘You look lovely, darling.’

His validation has never stopped being important to me, and I feel lucky to have someone who’s so verbally complimentary and tactile. I slip my arms underneath his bathrobe for an embrace and take in his natural, woodsy smell, and he kisses into my hair.

‘Good morning, my love. You’re so handsome,’ I tell him. In addition to his mightily impressive member, which I can feel pressed against my groin while we hug, he looks great for 60. 

I join him at the breakfast table for coffee and the Wordle, which turns out to be BULGE. We both give each other eyebrows.

Sex would be great right now, but both of us prefer to do it when there’s no time pressure, so we agree Thursday afternoon looks good.

We’re both at home for the rest of the day. He has several Zoom calls in the afternoon, so I surprise him with a little impromptu G&T happy hour sitting in our bedroom window when he’s finished.

Then it’s dinner and a movie sprawled out on the couch.

Wednesday

Today Dean’s up before me, so I take a glance at his penis, which hangs an impressive distance down his thigh. Once back in bed, I give him a quick cuddle and a kiss, before leaving him to snooze.

In the loo I take a pregnancy test. The thing you don’t hear much about perimenopause is how much it constantly makes you fear you’re pregnant, even though your chances are next to nil.

Neither Dean nor I ever wanted kids, and I’m grateful to be almost done with this cycle forever. It’s just hard to ignore the occasional cramps and unusual sensations, especially when you’re still having regular sex.

I was on the pill until recently, mainly because I wanted to have control over when I was bleeding, so it didn’t coincide with the weeks when Dean and I could see each other. But, my blood pressure was creeping up so I had to stop.

Introducing condoms into a monogamous relationship five years in just seems… lame, and having a vasectomy when the chance of pregnancy was revealed to be less than one percent seems unnecessary.

So, as we’ve been having unprotected sex, I’ve taken more pregnancy tests in the past two years than I’ve taken in my lifetime. Today, it’s negative — a relief.

Dean and I are both out the house today but I come home to him making us a lovely dinner and singing to himself. He’s impossibly charming.

Thursday

It’s 3pm, or ‘sex o’clock’ — the playful nickname for our predetermined sex appointment.

I ask Dean if his neck is okay, partly because he suffers from joint malaise from a sports injury and I don’t want him to be in pain, but also because I want to know if he’ll be giving me oral, his favourite activity (and mine).

He twists his neck from side to side and gives it a squeeze at the back. ‘I think…we’re good’.

Dean’s tongue gets to work. He’s masterful at this: a lethal combination of both knowing exactly where to put his tongue, and more importantly, how to apply consistent pressure and motion. He brings me to orgasm in minutes.

I move to the centre of our bed, bringing my head down from the pillows so he has room to position himself so it doesn’t trigger his pain.

I reach for his c**k as he comes into the bed, and give it a few appreciative strokes with my mouth. His erection never fails to shock me.

Size has never been a problem but it’s still intimidating, and it always has to be eased in before he can really begin thrusting.

Because of our physical limitations, missionary is our go-to, but neither of us have complaints. ‘Brace yourself…’ he teases, easing himself in until my body relaxes enough to accept his fullness. I move my hips to match his rhythm, and squeeze when I can to add to his sensation.

What really drives him to ecstasy, though, is dirty talk. ‘I want to watch you f**k a whore…’ I whisper into his ear, as he moans and falls fully on top of me.

The fantasy of watching him with another woman is extremely powerful for me, though I’ve never been tempted to follow through with that idea in reality, especially given our history.

Our sex talk is way more graphic than our everyday relationship speak, which is mostly sweet and flirty, but it doesn’t feel out of place or uncomfortable.

After, we lay in bed together holding hands. I only leave the sheets to make us some steaks and open a bottle of red, a nod to one of our affair days, when hotel room service after sex was also part of the thrill.

Friday

It’s a mutual working-from-home day, which is one of my favorite ways we spend time together. There’s lots of embraces, kisses, and suggestive touches as we go about our business in separate rooms.

We meet when we sit down for lunch together, or when we each make it a point to go check in on each other.

After he showers there’s a ‘naked man alert’ announced from the hallway as he passes into the bedroom in his full glory. He’s proud of his huge member, and frankly, he should be. It’s magnificent.

Occasionally we like to have sex before one of us has to go on a Zoom call, still flushed and sweaty, smelling of sex, but today isn’t one of those days, since we slept together yesterday.

At some point we sort out our gas bill and check in with the contractor working on our holiday home. In the early years after our affair, after he’d finally broken up with his then-partner, one of the arguments I made against getting together was that I didn’t think the glamour of the circumstances in which we met would hold up in the bill-paying real world.

I never asked Dean to leave his partner, and I’d never had anything long-term with someone, so I couldn’t understand how committed relationship could be sexy. I worried things would get boring and he would stray.

‘When a bill comes you pay it,’ he told me at the time, ‘don’t dwell on the possibility of it being a passion killer.’

He was totally right. Apparently there’s a reason they call it domestic bliss. Having a real life together is just as exciting as the illicit sex that defined our early days.

Saturday

Our affair meant we pretty much couldn’t be seen outside of the hotel room I basically moved into while he was in town, so date nights are still precious to me.

I usher him to one restaurant or another I’ve heard about whenever our schedules, energies, and budgets will permit it.

I always find him especially gorgeous when we’re sitting across the table from one another. It reminds me of the infatuation in our early history when we officially got back together.

‘What was I thinking?’ I’d asked once over a similar dinner, about the years he was so adamant that we should have a real go, and I was so hesitant. ‘You needed to get there on your own terms,’ he’d generously replied.

We had sex that night, though now we really prefer the cheeky afternoon sex, when we’re not full and tired.

Tonight, sitting across the table I still feel that sense of incredulity that it took me so long to get on the same page.

Sunday

Dean’s career means he works two weeks street, and he’ll be at work tonight until after I go to bed.

He works with a large number of women, many of them younger, one who definitely had or maybe still has a thing for him, and even one that he considered dating at one point, but it’s never really been an issue.

He’s mine now, a feeling I know in my marrow.

Even though our story began while he was cheating on someone else with me, jealousy and suspicion have never played a part in our married life.

This is mainly because many, many years went by between when we first hooked up, and when we actually got back together — more than a decade — during which time we both healed and evolved pretty significantly.

Without this time, we would have been doomed to failure, and with this time, we both feel like we really earned the relationship we now have, and neither of us would do anything to jeopardise that.

Still, it’s fun to think about the sex we had during our week-long affair in the past.

It was the kind of adventurous, several-times-a-day, in-front-of-the-mirror, everything-on-the-menu sex which is to be expected from two people holed up in a swanky hotel room who shouldn’t be having sex to begin with.

That’s not our sex life now, but our reality is equally as exciting, and I wouldn’t trade it for our antics of the past. Not for anything.

“I love you, my darling. That is all!” I text him.

“That is everything!” he replies.

I’ll go to bed without him tonight, a sensation I am very well accustomed to given the long distance relationship we had for several years before we got married, but I’ll wake up with him beside me, which is a sensation that continues to thrill me.

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