Simone has a conversation with a friend

How I became a man's mistress

I met James* at a house party I had been dragged to against my will. I had gone with a friend and didn't know anyone there, so I tried to make the best of it by chatting with strangers. At that moment, a man suddenly appeared next to me.

He introduced himself and we started talking; it was very easy to talk to him. We had a lot in common, such as a list of favorite music and movies. Safe in our cocoon on the couch, we sat there talking for what seemed like hours.

James made me laugh, but not in the "funny guy" way. He wasn't loud or overly talkative, but had a quiet, understated confidence that I found incredibly charming. He flirted a little, but didn't come across as too pushy, which I liked. During this conversation, James mentioned that he had a girlfriend. I jokingly asked him why he was flirting with a woman he had just met while he was in a relationship. His answer was: "She's not here." I soon found out that his girlfriend Sheila* was often away for work.

After a few hours – and a few more drinks – James kissed me and asked if I wanted to leave the party and go back to his apartment. I made it clear that I wasn't going to sleep with him, if that was what he was hoping for. He said he just wanted to keep talking and, because I enjoyed his company so much, I agreed.

We arrived at his apartment and chatted about everything and anything until the sun came up. It was as if I had known him my whole life; it was just so comfortable and easy to talk to him. We kissed a few more times, but nothing else. He asked for my phone number when I left at 7 a.m. and said he would call me.

So much in common

I went home to catch up on sleep and when I woke up a few hours later, I had a message from James. He asked if I wanted to come over for dinner later that week and I asked about his girlfriend again; he gave me the same answer: "She's not here."

I know I shouldn't have gone, but he was so nice and I have to admit I was curious too. We had dinner together a few times and then he invited me over to watch a movie at his place. We ordered a pizza, put on a DVD, and when the movie was over, we talked all night long.

This time, James told me he had never met a woman with whom he had so much in common and with whom he could talk so easily. I brought his girlfriend up one more time and he said she was rather fickle and didn't really know how to have fun.

We kept spending time together and our relationship soon became physical. The comfort we shared during our conversations translated to the bedroom as well. James was a pleasure to be with in every way and would have been my ideal boyfriend – if only he had been single. He even introduced me to his friends, who told me they hoped he would dump his snobbish girlfriend and be with me instead, because they liked me very much. I wondered why he was with Sheila when no one – not even him – seemed to like her!

I never told my own friends about James because I knew they would tell me to stop seeing him as soon as I told them he had a girlfriend. They were right, of course, but I didn't want to disturb my dream. Besides, I thought – rather naively, of course – that things would eventually work out between us, so why would I tell anyone about the difficult situation I was in?

This relationship with James lasted five months and we saw each other every time his girlfriend wasn't home. I should have felt guilty, but I had never met a man who made me feel so comfortable and I didn't want to lose him, even though he was never mine. Moreover, he repeatedly said he wasn't happy with Sheila, but because she was almost never there, it was hard to break it off. For some reason, that excuse sounded perfectly logical at the time (not so much in hindsight, of course).

One simple rule

Then he suddenly sent me an email saying we shouldn't see each other anymore because he thought his girlfriend was getting suspicious. I didn't respond and told myself I should have seen this coming. Two weeks later, however, he asked me out for a drink and we were back to square one. One evening, we were watching TV on his couch when James whispered to me that he was going to break up with Sheila because he was falling in love with me. Part of me was happy, because I had never asked him to leave her, so I felt this was a small victory.

But of course, this never happened. It went on like this for another few months and I got increasingly tired of being "the other woman," while all I wanted was to spend more time with him and show him off to my friends.

Everything collapsed one evening when I was out with my girlfriends. We were celebrating a friend's birthday and some of them had their partners with them. I would have loved for James to be there too, so I sent him a text. He sent a mean reply back, saying I should never text him again if I knew Sheila was in town, and even added that this was the one simple rule I had to stick to.

That was the final straw. I wasn't just angry; I felt completely humiliated. But it was exactly the wake-up call I needed. I never contacted him again, and a week later he emailed me, as if nothing had happened, asking if we could meet up. I didn't respond when he called and texted me a few more times over the following weeks. It took a lot of strength and willpower, but I never spoke to or met up with him again.

About a year later, I saw him at another house party. He was with Sheila (I knew it was her because I had seen photos of them together) and I was with a man I had started seeing a few months earlier. He looked at me with surprise and tried to approach me a few times, but I managed to avoid him. Later that evening, he sent me a message saying he was still thinking about me. This time, I wasn't angry at all; instead, I laughed at how I had ever thought he was my ideal man, when in reality he was a manipulative and indecisive jerk.

*the names James and Sheila are, of course, fictitious