My name is Busi. When I met Berry (his real name) I was 18, naïve, never had a boyfriend before and I was waiting for prince charming to sweep me off my feet. I have always been the good girl. My parents were strict when I was growing up so I studied hard, arrived home before dark and generally stayed out of trouble.

A Teenager Falls In Love with a Married Man

However, my affair with a married man was going to change all of that. I had completed high school and wasn’t yet ready to go on to university. I needed a break from all the studying and so took a year off to have fun. I had wanted to travel overseas, but that plan had not materialised so I ended up doing a short computer course and meeting new people.

Berry was never the man I imagined myself with. He was short, attractive in a small-time gangster kind of way, extremely attentive, sexual, but he was also a married with two children. To say I didn’t know he had a family would be an outright lie. I knew, but I sincerely believed the married couple was having problems and that him and I were made for each other.

He Becomes My Lover

He lived next door to my family. One day we both happened to be going into our respective homes at the same time and ended up having an innocent chat about the weather and so on. The next time we met he told me I was beautiful and invited me to his house for tea. Looking back now I can’t imagine what I was thinking; if I was thinking at all.

His compliments excited me. His attentiveness thrilled me, but I was very aware I was crossing a moral boundary that shamed me. And yet I didn’t stop whatever was happening with this married man. Then talk turned into action.

Becoming the Other Woman

Over tea we made inane conversation for about half an hour, then he leaned in to kiss me. That was the beginning of our adulterous affair. I had never had sex before. I had never even kissed a boy before and here I was in the same room with a man just over twice my age. I had always hoped that my first sexual experience would be romantic, special even, but in the darkness of the room Berry opened up some pornographic magazines and coerced me to look at masturbating women.

He was turned on by the fact that he had a virgin lying naked before him while perusing old, dog-eared magazines. I don’t remember my first time. I just remember he had his orgasm before he even entered me. That is how excited he was. In my innocent mind that sacredness of sharing my body meant he was now mine and I was his. He never corrected me.

The Secrets of Having an Affair

The truth is there are very few cases where married men will leave their wives for their mistresses or lovers. In almost all adulterous affairs the man has no intention of leaving his wife and children to pursue a relationship with the other woman. Promises made are just that – promises meant to keep you close until he has had his fill of you.

It sounds harsh I know, but the reality is harsh. I was so happy in our affair. We met covertly at his house during the day when his family was not there. At night he would come over to my house. We had sex and then, afterwards, while lying in the afterglow we would discuss our future: the number of children we would have, our jobs, where we would buy our home and the cars we would drive.

Only Just a Lover to Him

I hardly allowed myself to think of how I might be hurting his wife and children. My affair with this married man initially didn’t feel like an affair because we spent so much time together. There were times I would see his wife and children, but I swallowed the guilt by believing he was doing them a favour when he would finally leave them and we started our own life together.

The truth is I don’t think I understood back then the intensity of the hurt I might be causing. After the honeymoon period things began to change between us. I am unaware if it is because his wife found out, or she had sensed his distance and threatened to leave him, or if he was merely just tired of me.

The Married Man Moves Away from Me

Suddenly where we used to spend everyday together I started seeing him once a week, which quickly turned into once every fortnight. I hardly saw him during the day anymore as he always told me his wife had stopped working and spent her days at home. When we saw each other it was late at night when the whole neighbourhood was asleep.

He always made sure that my parents were not home. After about four months into our affair, a moving van arrived at his yard. He was moving house and hadn’t bothered to inform me. In fact, he didn’t bother to tell me to which area he would be moving. Somehow Berry had never carried a phone so I couldn’t possibly ask what was happening.

Am I Cheating When I Love Him

I do know that I sat staring out at the window into his yard feeling incredibly sad that I had no way of finding out what was happening between us. I believed I was absolutely in love with him. I believed he was my Prince Charming and the father of my children. It is amazing how quickly all good sense can leave you when you believe you’re in love.

My only concern was being with this married man. Suddenly I had no desire for university or friends or even my family. I became obsessed with my affair and Berry. He was never there for any important dates. Now that he had moved and didn’t carry a phone there was no way I could reach him. The only time I saw him was when he contacted me, which was increasingly becoming a rare occasion.

My Lover’s Promises Turn to Lies

My heart broke over and over when he started breaking promises; when I would ache to see him and yet there was no way I could reach him. I didn’t know where he lived. I stopped caring about everything except Berry. I would sit in my pyjamas late into the night bargaining with God that if he brought Berry to me that day I would go to church for a month. My life had become a joke.

There are two incidences that finally brought me to a point where I realised I was little more than just the other woman. One night when I hadn’t seen my lover for weeks, he suddenly turned up at my house at three o’clock in the morning with a friend of his. He had blood spatters on his jacket and that night he was carrying a gun and a few diamonds.

The Scales Start to Fall From my Eyes

It suddenly became clear why this man was never at work during the day. His friend, also carried a gun, but that hardly terrified me. I was so thrilled that my lover had come to see me, but that changed when his friend, a mature white man, turned to him and asked, ‘Can you organise one of her friends for me as well?’ I knew then that Berry had spoken of me to his friends as a girl he was sleeping with; whose virginity he had taken.

The second incidence was when Berry eventually told me that the neighbourhood he had moved to was not far from my own, but he wouldn’t give me the precise location. One morning, missing him greatly, I walked around this neighbourhood until I found his BMW parked in front of a house. Too scared to walk up to the door, I asked a young boy to take a message to him.

The Adulterous Affair Crumbles

The boy came and told me he had passed on the message, but there was no response. A few minutes passed and finally I walked to the door and knocked. Berry opened the door, obviously not pleased to see me. Within seconds his face contorted angrily and he threw a slur of verbal abuse my way; accusing me of breaking up his marriage.

Dazed, I walked away wondering how the man who once said he loved me suddenly had no time for me. I cried all the way home, but as I walked I knew I had fooled myself long enough. Our adulterous affair could not go on. After eight months of lies and foolish promises and, yes, ultimately disrespecting myself, I was no longer so naïve.

Never the Other Woman Again

Berry tried on numerous occasions to get hold of me and though we talked and he tried to seduce me, I never allowed him back into my life. Leaving him was like untying a noose from around my neck and though I was grateful he was never my husband or father of my children, I was filled with remorse at how foolishly and selfishly I had acted, especially towards his wife and children.

Maybe his wife knew about our affair, though I’ll never know. But I knew about our adulterous affair and I promised myself never to put another woman in that position again. I promised myself never to be the other woman again.