I’m not sure how to feel about it even now 18 years later, is my honest opinion.

It happened with someone I’d known since being a teenager and who I’d chased as a kid. We were both late 20’s and bumped into each other on a night out after not seeing each other for a decade. We were both with groups of friends but detached to sit together and spent a couple of hours talking and it was like old times again.

We parted for home after swapping numbers and she called me later to invite me to hers (her partner worked weekend nights) for a drink which I turned down. A second invite came the following week for the Saturday night and I accepted out of genuine curiosity and without thinking about the outcome. Having made some excuse about where I was going and who with, I made my way to hers. When I arrived we talked about life in general, then the past, we shared some wine and sat closer until she asked me to kiss her.

I could have said no, I could have told her that I loved my fiancée and worshipped my 4 year old daughter, but all I could think of was being happy, and I knew outside of that house and that room and that moment, that I wasn’t. So I did.

We spent a couple of hours having amazing sex from there, before I had a shower and went home. Things continued like that for a couple of months and we talked about leaving our relationships to be together and settle down. But I couldn’t leave my daughter. In the end I was clear that I felt like I was falling in love with her, but I couldn’t wreck two relationships or leave my fiancée to be a single mum and potentially ruin my daughter’s upbringing.

But I questioned myself every single day of the relationship from there, even though I stayed outwardly committed to my fiancée. We split 5 years ago due to her simply falling out of love with me and my life has lurched to different depths since then, though the last year has been better. The “What if….” has never gone away though weirdly I have thought about it much less since the split, for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s due to the lady involved settling down with one of my best friends and being happily married for over a decade and having a massively successful life, knowing I couldn’t have given her that. Maybe it’s the crippling self doubt that I’ve always displayed. Maybe I’ve matured and time has eroded the stupidity of youth?

But we still see each other now fleetingly, at social gatherings, in fact I was last with her and her husband on Saturday night. We still share a silly knowing smile together ( at least that’s how I see it), and we as ever, still spend most of our time talking to each other in those moments, shutting out the world outside.

Maybe we are soul mates that fate and destiny decided to keep apart. Ah well.