"Missing you what’s wrong with us,” said the text. “Missing you what’s wrong with us,” I repeated. Once, twice, three times, the message reverberated in my head. In that lonely moment I realised that this was no “fling”, this was no occasional dalliance; this was serious, this was cold-hearted betrayal.

It’s a cliché, I know, but everything stopped, then suddenly my adrenalin was rushing, my heart was thumping, my stomach lurched and my skin paled, as the ghost in the mirror confirmed. In those heart-breaking nanoseconds, I saw everything disappear — my marriage, my home, my stability. I felt abandoned by hope, by my dreams of a loving and stable future with the man I had loved for years. My soul mate, how could he?

In the cold, lonely hours after he’d run out, too frightened to stand up to confrontation, I paced the bedroom floor feeling more scared, confused and vulnerable than I’d ever been in my life. I reflected on our relationship and I looked at our marriage and myself more honestly than ever before.

At 6am, exhausted, I fell asleep. When I awoke I wondered how I would tell the world. I wanted to keep it to myself, yet I wanted to tell every doubter that there had been something wrong — it wasn’t just me being irrational or angry.

I wanted to say: “Yes, he’s a good man but good men do bad things.” I felt validated. It wasn’t all my fault. Yes, I was always the one to shout and be too honest with my opinions, while he was always the “lovely” guy who helped everyone out. But not everything is as it seems; it’s not all black and white — it’s very often grey, isn’t it?

That day he came home. He wanted to pick up some things; he needed space to think; he looked broken and vulnerable.

He said that he had love-‘d’ me very much. The ‘d’ was amplified in my head and had an immediate unbearable visceral affect.

He left, again. And in that moment, began, the long, very hard and winding road back to a deeper love for each other, and more crucially, ourselves.

Do you have an affair to remember? E-mail your 400-word story to loveaffair@thetimes.co.uk

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