Help! I’ve Fallen in Love with Another Man

And my husband is okay with it.

Photo by JD Mason on Unsplash

I’ve always been a “good girl” — even though I hate the term. Even though I admire women who buck against society’s expectations and expect more for themselves than the pat on the back they get for their obedience, repressed desires, and failure to live up to their potential. I can see right through the “good girl” and her desperate desire for approval, and yet it’s clear this is exactly what I’ve been.

I’m not so sure I can call myself the good girl anymore, and I can feel my entire world shift and crack under my feet as I lose that safe ground.

You see, after fifteen years with my husband, I’ve fallen deeply in love with another man.

We met a year ago, when my family and I moved into a remote intentional community — a group of thirty or so people sharing many aspects of our lives together, trying to live in harmony with each other and the planet.

He first said hello in the kitchen of the shared community house. I introduced myself and he made us each a cup of black tea. We sat talking for thirty minutes while my three year old daughter played around us, and then he had to return to work — and I knew even then that I was going to fall in love with him: it was a thought which seemed to come from outside me, like a news report, or a scrap of overheard conversation. I kept hearing that sentence: I’m going to fall in love with him, drumming in my head. And every subsequent meeting confirmed that initial hunch, until, at some point, I realised that it had happened. I was in love.

Somewhere, unconsciously, I expected to be punished and humiliated for the feelings I developed.

There were no secret meetings. My daughter and I hung out in the community house with other mothers and children, and around the shared land through the winter and then summer, and most days, I’d meet this man. Sometimes we shared a few words about our day, and at other times we’d sit and talk in the community house for longer. Sometimes it would just be us — but mostly we shared our conversations and space with other…