The background story

I grew up in a big city in southern Africa. A quiet, shy kid but my early years were happy ones. Well mostly happy. When puberty hit and I started to become more aware of the opposite sex, my quiet and shy nature started working against me. I was never a confident child and that developed into a “sexual late bloomer”. First two sexual encounters were with sex workers at about 22. First girl I really kissed I ended up marrying. It was a fantastic relationship. A merging of two separate cultures, we embraced our differences and lived a happy life together. We struggled to have kids but they eventually came and just like London buses, 2 at the same time. A complete happy family. Except like with most families that look happy and all smiles on the outside, something darker hides behind the curtain.

Eight years into our relationship (the twins were a year old) I had a one night stand. It wasn’t accidental, I spent some time looking for it. It was fantastic and it ticked that box, it was a one off. That’s what I told myself at the time. But of course it wasn’t long before it happened again, and again and … It happened for this reason or that … whatever, it happened! No reason to make excuses, the facts are there, it became a pattern and is now imprinted on who I am. We are “defined” by our actions and I am ok with that. I now realise maybe married life wasn’t for me. But it felt right at the time, as did having children, so no need to dwell … deal with it. All this woulda, shoulda, coulda is pointless. Deal with it, your life is where it is, deal with the facts.

When I moved to London I befriended A who I opened up to and became an important friend to me. This was the first person I was truly honest with and it was such a relief opening up to someone about all this. Her advise to me at the time was spot on. “You have to make a choice, either way. But you can’t carry on doing this to your wife.” She also expressed that she didn’t feel comfortable being stuck in the middle, when she met my wife, knowing what she did. I think it was this, my indecisiveness with the whole situation and my continued behaviour, that eventually cost us our friendship. Were it not for this I don’t think we would have fallen out.

Some three years into London life and before any talk of divorce, I finally took that seemingly huge step into the world of kink. Getting the courage to get past the mental barrier was the huge step, actually stepping into that world was so easy. Super friendly people who are not judgmental, no matter what your background or what you were about. It felt so right … I was home.
I now know that I was virtually kinky from birth. Definitely kinky before I knew what kink was. I just knew a lot of my behavior was not “normal”.
I stepped into this world quite lightly and slowly met some people in it and eventually some play partners. One of these was K. K went on to become my regular play partner. It was initially just casual and “drama free”, something light and easy. She was getting divorced and was just months from finalising this. I was not honest with her and told her nothing about being married or having kids.

The day came when I had decided I was going to ask to divorce. I needed to approach this with carefully, my wife has a vicious temper and the kids futures also need to be considered.
In the week leading up to this day I went on a sexual “bender”. I slept with 5 different women that week. Two of those I felt I needed to be honest with. Most importantly K. I told her I hadn’t been honest and was married with kids and getting divorced. I fully expected this to be the final goodbye. I needed to focus on getting divorced and I expect a “goodbye, hope it works out, maybe next time try being honest from the start”. Instead she said she understood and it felt to good, lets just see what happens.
Our relationship grew and we both allowed ourselves to let our emotions flow. I never dreamt I would meet someone like this. We bounced off each other so well. Her submissiveness and my sadism flowed and intermingled so well. We spent as much time together as we could. Kink events, vanilla events, lunches, dinners, met some of each others friends. We fell deeply in love. Her divorce was dragging but that was ok, it gave me time to work on mine.

I should probably mention that I had been wanting to leave for years prior to taking that step. But she had given up her career to mind the kids and I couldn’t just abandon her. So I waited until she was back in stable employment before asking for a separation/divorce.

I asked for a divorce. My wife didn’t understand. Why? We have a perfect relationship. There is nothing wrong.
I didn’t tell her everything. I told her very little. Just enough to warrant a separation. I was stunned she was still happily in love, when I hadn’t felt that way for years. Many unhappy days followed … me waiting for the penny to drop … but it didn’t so I told her a little more about what had been going on. Anger… Shouting… Tears…
One day she came across a photo of me and K on a night out. I couldn’t say that’s the woman I am having a relationship with, so I said she was a work colleague who was part of the group that went out that night. For some idiotic reason I used her real name. There is something to learn here: A compulsive liar (which I was and am, although I am trying to correct this) will always interweave truth and lies. This is to prevent getting caught out. If I made up another name for her (say I called her Pam), if ever it came up and I couldn’t remember or called her Sarah instead, I would get caught out!
My relationship with K continued and grew. At the same time trying to find a way to maneuver my way out of my marriage.
Then came the day my wife found another series of photos of me and K. Under a barrage of questions, I eventually came out with it all (most of it anyway). The shit hit the fan. Rage… Tears… Death threats… Talk of suicide… I found myself agreeing to give the marriage one last try. Why? To calm the situation but my heart was not in it. But if I walked out now I feared the consequences. K’s divorce could not be compromised. I really didn’t know how far my wife could go, but I felt that K and her child could be in real physical danger. These were just some of the reasons but I knew I had to break it off with K. Gut instinct!
I met K a few days later and broke it off. The second I saw the huge tears falling from the eyes of the woman I love, my heart shattered. My hands started shaking uncontrollably. We sat together for several hours, not saying much, crying together, holding each other. I hadn’t ever broken up with anyone, I didn’t know what to do. I thought the best was to go hard breakup (no contact). So that’s what we did. Holy shit!! I had never dealt with real heartbreak either. I was a mess! I am a mess! 10 months on now it’s still crushing!

I continued trying to find a way to free myself from my marriage. I told my wife about the number of women I had been unfaithful with (25 or so) and alot of other shit. The shit I have gotten up to in my past will have most woman running for the hills. Not my wife, she just wants to keep it going and focused all her rage on K.

I never wanted to be doing this for the wrong reasons. And now that K wasn’t there I hopefully could deal with getting past this barrier. Hopefully she would be open to trying again when I did. Hopefully it could happen quickly, but it didn’t. I lost the woman I loved. I lost the life I loved. My life was misery!
My life took a dive. I put on weight and lost any drive I had. I had lost my job just before breaking up with K and had lost my mother too. But all I saw was heartbreak.

I tried to keep some sort of social life going. None of the events that would bring me into contact with K. That would crush me and that would not be fair on her. I also wasn’t interested in going to any. I want to go with K and until that becomes a possibility I will stay away. Anyway during this time a handful of months after the breakup M who I knew for a while but never gave myself a chance with showed some interest. A stunning young woman (vanilla but still) and fun to be around but my overriding drive to jump into another casual fling was the opportunity to get K off my wife’s radar. She was obsessed with K and if I gave her another target maybe she would “forget” about K. I had to protect K and her child.
So I started hanging out with M. Just casual and I was honest with her, so she knew I was just using her and my heart belonged to K. After 6 weeks M decided to call it quits.
This was the point I suddenly though, right this is it, you have to seize the opportunity, stop faffing and move the fuck out.
So in that week I found a place, took the day off work, packed and moved out. I waited for the kids and explained that I was moving out and why. We had already spoken to them about this so it wasn’t a huge shock. They understood but were obviously nervous for the future. I waited for my wife to get home to tell her face to face and then I could leave…
2 hours later my apartment was full of police and my wife was being led away in cuffs!

What followed was straight out of a soup opera … nothing I want to share at the moment, but lets say things got worse and everyday was torture.

I have had 2 very clear opportunities to leave (one just after the episode described above) but bottled them both. Why? I am so desperate for my freedom (it’s something I have wanted for so long) and I am even more desperate to have K back in my arms. I don’t love my wife but I care for her. This is insanely difficult on her. I don’t want any harm to come to her, even self inflicted. I want to make sure she is ok and have offered to basically pass on all our financial wealth over to her. I don’t care about looking down the barrel of financial ruin because I know I can sort myself out. i am fearless that way, always have been. But when both those opportunities to leave were presented to me they came with a barrage of rage, threats, sorrow and emotion and I just cave in.

So what we have is a life and marriage in limbo. A wife who will fight tooth and nail to keep it together. Children that need to be given the best life possible, irrespective of the situation we find ourselves in. And my heart is with a woman I haven’t seen in 10 months.