12/16/2025
Page One: The Message
We didn’t meet in a bar or at a party or through friends who thought we’d be good for each other.
We met quietly.
Casually.
On Facebook.
Just a message.
A name.
A photo that lingered a second longer than it should have.
At the time, we were both married. Twenty years each. Two decades of shared history, shared children, shared routines. Four kids on my side. Four on theirs. Eight lives already built, already intertwined with other people, other promises. On paper, we were settled. Stable. Grown.
But something inside both of us had gone quiet.
The conversations started innocently enough — comments, reactions, small acknowledgments. Then messages. Then longer messages. Then hours that disappeared without either of us noticing the clock. We talked about life, about exhaustion, about feeling unseen. About how love can exist and still feel incomplete. About how you can care deeply for someone and still crave more — more connection, more desire, more being chosen.
We texted constantly. Morning messages. Late-night confessions whispered through glowing screens while spouses slept beside us. We laughed. We flirted. We shared memories and fantasies. We admitted things we hadn’t said out loud in years. Both of us passionate people, both of us missing passion. Missing touch. Missing the feeling of being wanted instead of needed.
S*x came up easily — not crudely, but honestly. As something alive in us that hadn’t died, even if it had been ignored. We talked about desire the way thirsty people talk about water — with longing, with urgency, with relief at finally being understood.
Somewhere in those weeks, without saying it outright, we both realized the same truth:
Our marriages weren’t broken… but they were dry.
And we were starving.
The realization didn’t arrive with guilt at first. It arrived with excitement. With energy. With that dangerous feeling of being awake again. Before we knew it, the idea of meeting wasn’t hypothetical anymore. It felt inevitable. Necessary. Like the next step in a story already in motion.
We wanted to see if the connection was real.
We wanted to see if the electricity survived daylight.
We wanted each other.
Neither of us asked the hardest questions yet.
Neither of us imagined the cost.
At that moment, it still felt like love was about to begin — not like a warning.
