Maria-Louise lets her boyfriend sleep with other women to stop him leaving

show ad

Dream home built on the WRONG lot: Couple outraged after contractors built their $680,000 mansion across the street
Atomic bomb spy David Greenglass, whose false testimony sent his own sister and her husband to the electric chair, dies aged 92
'Not on our street': Angry neighbors slam Gwyneth Paltrow after she throws political party for Barack Obama in their community
Dallas Cowboys running back on a $2.3m contract arrested for 'stealing cologne and underwear' from department store
'I rebelled by turning vegetarian - then dad went vegan!' Chelsea Clinton talks to Stella McCartney about trying to defy her parents while growing up
Water temperature of the Great Lakes is over 6 degrees colder than normal - threatening an even earlier and COLDER winter for Michigan
Ebola patient Nina Pham's condition upgraded to 'good' as her beloved dog is saved: Pet named Bentley removed from her home by Hazmat team and put in quarantine
There were NO Ebola protocols: Nurses at hospital where Nina Pham contracted deadly virus say protective gear left their necks exposed when Thomas Duncan was first admitted, union president reveals
Ebola-stricken nurse breaks her silence from quarantine unit to say she is 'being cared for by the best team in the world' at Dallas hospital
WHO warns there could be 10,000 new cases of Ebola every week for next two months - as death rate increases to 70%
Bus driver being monitored in Los Angeles after masked passenger leans in and declares 'don't mess with me, I have Ebola'
PIERS MORGAN: The CDC say we need to 'rethink' Ebola. No s*** Sherlock. But what ELSE aren't they telling us?
One sick joke: Man who sparked full-scale panic after saying he had Ebola is arrested after tests showed he had just been drinking
NBC chief medical correspondent blames her team for violating Ebola quarantine despite the fact SHE visited a restaurant as colleague Matt Lauer says she was wrong
'Origami' condoms, Michelle Obama gardening games and poop-throwing chimps: NIH spent millions on wacky projects but now complains cuts killed off Ebola vaccine research
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan donate $25 million to help fight Ebola epidemic
American owner of Mexico wildlife sanctuary, 60, killed by CAMEL after it escaped from its pen and sat on him
'What the hell were you thinking hiring this plastic has-been wannabe?' Seafood company ditches Heidi Montag commercial after being abused on social media
Kesha suing producer Dr. Luke for '10 years of physical and sexual abuse' ...but he counter-sues claiming the singer is 'lying to get out of record contract'
Coast Guard airlift woman to hospital after her car rolls 500ft down mountainside, trapping her in the wreckage for 17 HOURS
Parents of 'struggling' bipolar actress missing for more than a week accuse police of not doing enough to find her 'because she is Native-American'
Life at 1,396 feet: Inside the $95m New York City penthouse at the top of the tallest condo building in the Western Hemisphere
Ohio televangelist ‘forced members to have vasectomies and abortions, told women to treat pregnancies as tumors and allowed children to be sexually abused’
UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon says destruction in Gaza is 'beyond description' as he explores Hamas tunnels on official visit to disputed territory territory

Maria-Louise has been married twice, to men who refused to have sex
She met her current boyfriend Tim while married to second husband Carol
Six months after they first had sex, she found out he'd indulged in a fling
According to Tim, 55, he had the ‘right’ to have sex with who he liked
Likened choosing women to sleep with to browsing at a supermarket
At 57, Maria-Louise feels she can no longer afford to be choosy

By Maria-louise Warne For The Daily Mail

Published: 18:10 EST, 13 October 2014 | Updated: 23:28 EST, 13 October 2014

1.1k

View
comments

Constant betrayal: Maria-Louise accepts her 55-year-old lover's infidelities

When I received a late-night call from my lover inviting me to his home, I was already tucked up in bed. Giddy with excitement, I slipped into my best silk underwear, got into my car and made the quarter-of-an-hour journey to his house.

I’d been seeing Tim for four years, but his shift work as a doctor meant that it was rare that we’d get to spend the night together.

When I pulled into the drive of his pretty three-bedroom detached cottage, the door opened and my 53-year-old tall, dark and handsome boyfriend greeted me with open arms.

We walked towards his huge, warm kitchen, arm-in-arm — yet the moment I passed over the threshold I froze at the sight of an attractive 20-something woman sitting brazenly at Tim’s kitchen table.

Calmly, I sat down and tried to make polite conversation while they finished a bottle of wine. I tried not to react when the young woman, Lucy, brushed her hand up and down his arm.

Why didn’t I react? The honest truth is that as a woman in my late 50s, I no longer feel I can.

Desperate not to be alone, I have to accept a relationship on any terms offered to me. At my age, the brutal truth is that I feel I can’t afford to be choosy. It’s sad, but true.

At 2am, Lucy announced she was tired, and I watched, flabbergasted, as she walked up the stairs. I looked at Tim, my heart breaking into a million little pieces.

He urged me to go upstairs, too, casually adding: ‘We’ll go upstairs, we’ll go to bed and we’ll invite her to join us.’

This was too much, so, managing to control my tears, I haltingly explained that I, a then 55-year-old woman, wasn’t available for such tawdry threesomes and left with a heavy heart.

Two years on, we’re still together. For six years now I have been in the most significant, loving relationship of my life with Tim. We’re a couple, but in order for us to exist as such, I must allow him to sleep with whoever he likes whenever he likes.

You may wonder why I, a successful career woman (I was a sales executive for most of my life) who owns a detached, mortgage-free £250,000 cottage, would put up with such disgusting behaviour from a man who claims to love me. But the truth is today, at 57, my chances of finding anyone else are so remote that I’ve no choice but to accept it.

After all, as I revealed in the Mail five months ago, I was a virgin until I was 51: even though I was married twice before I met Tim, both my husbands had refused to have sex with me.

Then, two years into our relationship, Tim made it crystal clear to me that fidelity was out of the question. Since we’ve been seeing each other, to my knowledge, he has slept with three other women.

I was a shy girl who grew up in Bovey Tracey, a sleepy Devon village. My mother drummed the mantra ‘nice girls don’t’ into me. So while boys were interested, I shunned them until I was 18, when I was invited out by a local chap who worked in the village where we lived.

We married at 20 — too young, I can see with the benefit of hindsight — and our marriage was over by the time I was 25.

I met my second husband, Carol, a shopkeeper, in Tiverton, Devon, when I was 25 and he was 47. It was 1982 and, at 22 years my senior, he was suave and sophisticated.

We moved in together after five years and eventually married in 1995. I was on the road for my sales job throughout the week, and had many offers of extra-martial affairs, but I wasn’t ever tempted.

Out of the question: Tim, pictured, said that he needed to be able to sleep with other womem

Carol was ill with heart problems throughout our completely sexless marriage, and in 2002 we moved near to Bordeaux, hoping country living and the more relaxed French pace of life would help him.

But he was never really well and our marriage was never a huge success. In June 2005, when he was 70, he suffered a stroke. He left hospital after a three-week stay to recuperate at our home. The doctor assigned to look after him for the following two years of his rehabilitation was Tim.

When I first opened our front door to Tim, I thought: ‘Goodness, you’re gorgeous.’ But I tried to resist his flirtations, reminding myself that he was in our home to nurse my husband back to health.

Nonetheless, he was easily the best-looking man in our village. I would speak to him several times a week, seeking information about my husband’s care.

Second husband: Maria-Louise met Tim while married to Carol, pictured on their 1995 wedding day

As the months passed, I began to look forward to our conversations; they became the highlight of my week. I loved spending time with someone my age, even if he was just in our home to take Carol’s blood pressure. We enjoyed the same music, we liked the same films and we had the same sense of humour, too.

At first, nothing happened between us, He was in the process of splitting up from his wife but I was still firmly married.

Then, Carol’s health improved, and we invited Tim to a meal at our house. He stayed late and, since he’d had too much to drink, I offered to drive him home. Before he got out of my car he kissed me and said: ‘You know I love you, Maria-Louise.’

Flattered, and somewhat flustered, I put his declaration out of my mind, assuming it was the wine talking. Yet when I saw him the following week, he asked if I remembered what he’d said.

Of course I did. My longing for him was by that point almost overwhelming, but while there were many faults in my marriage, I wasn’t going to let infidelity become another one. I was determined to look after Carol in his twilight years.

Then, six months later, in February 2008, Carol — completely out of the blue — told me he was leaving me, explaining that he wanted to live out his days close to his two daughters in Cornwall. I felt sadness tinged with relief.

We’d been together since I was 25. Now, after 24 years of devoting my life to caring for him I was a 51-year-old woman facing the prospect of a lonely, single life. I admit that I also felt a renewed sense of freedom.

Less than a month after Carol left, Tim invited me to dinner at his home. The atmosphere between us was electric, we shared a bottle of champagne, and in under an hour we were making love on his sofa.

It was the best night of my life. I told him how much I loved him, and that I’d never felt like this before.

During that long, sex-fuelled evening, I had high hopes for our future together.

Indeed when I asked him ‘Why me?’ he held my face in the palm of his hands and whispered that I was not only beautiful but that I was an honest, faithful, perhaps naïve, but trustworthy woman. I melted: I could hear the tinkle of wedding bells and already picture us hand-in-hand, growing old together.

Was there a fly in the ointment? Of course — isn’t there always?

Six months after we first made love in March 2008, I discovered that he’d had sex with someone else. A mutual friend of ours, who hadn’t realised we were a couple, casually confided to me that Tim had indulged in a steamy fling with a woman — ironically, another sales representative — who had been passing through the area.

Relief: In February 2008, after 24 years together, Carol, pictured, announced that he was leaving Maria-Louise

When I returned home that evening, I burst into tears. I didn’t know what to do. Create a scene? I knew I’d lose him. Challenge him? I wasn’t in a position of power to lay down the law. Have him followed? What would that achieve? As a woman over 50, I just didn’t feel I could make a fuss.

By now, I was menopausal and staring down my sixth decade. At 48, he was a handsome man in his prime. I genuinely believed if I pulled him up over his behaviour he’d dump me.

So I held my tongue. Then, in January 2009, almost a year after we began seeing each other, I pressed him about ‘our’ future. His divorce was under way, as was mine, the paperwork being processed was just a formality. We were free to be together, so surely that would put an end to his wandering eye?

I was menopausal and staring down my sixth decade. At 48, he was a handsome man in his prime. I genuinely believed if I pulled him up over his behaviour he’d dump me

So I raised the subject of fidelity and how important it was to me. Oh, how I wish I hadn’t.

According to Tim, he had the ‘right’ to have sex with who he liked. Hiding my shock, I explained that, for me, sex is the closest two people can possibly be, and that making love was an expression of my feelings for him. He merely replied it was better for me that I knew this was how it was going to be. Defeated, I said I’d accept it, as long as he was discreet. What other choice did I have?

After that conversation in 2009, life was, on the surface, wonderful. We’d enjoy long nights together, cooking wonderful meals and listening to jazz. If he slept with other women, well, at my time in life, what could I do but turn a blind eye?

Of course, that’s not to say it was easy. There were those moments when we were making love when I’d compare myself unfavourably with the other women he was inevitably seducing at the same time.

But I forced my anxieties to the back of my mind and quietly started to make plans for our future. With my divorce finally through in 2010, I sold the marital home and hired an architect to build a family home for us. Tim has two children by his ex-wife, a 20-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, and I wanted them to be a part of our future, too.

That night when he tried to make me sleep with him and another woman, however, threatened to destroy everything.

Fly in the ointment: Six months after they had sex, Maria-Louise discovered Tim had slept with someone else

It forced me to take stock of the stark realities of my partner’s infidelity. I took an STD and HIV test, a sobering, not to mention humiliating, ordeal to put yourself through at 55.

For months I tried not to call him, but after a while I just couldn’t help myself, but he wouldn’t take my calls and refused to see me.

The showdown came in February last year at his home. I told him I loved him and pleaded that I wanted him to reconsider his attitude towards fidelity.

He replied that it was out of the question: sex, according to Tim, is akin to browsing at the supermarket: one week he might fancy a rump steak, the next roast chicken. The choice was his to make.

Sex, according to Tim, is akin to browsing at the supermarket: one week he might fancy a rump steak, the next roast chicken. The choice was his to make

In floods of tears, I walked out. While continuing to oversee the house I’d planned for our future, I’d cry myself to sleep. I was lonely and acutely aware that as each day slipped by I was getting closer to 60.

Friends tried to pull me out of my gloom, reassuring me I was better off without him, that there were plenty of other men for an attractive woman such as myself. But the truth is that there aren’t.

This January, I turned 57. I was desperately lonely and in May I couldn’t take it any more. I called and begged him to take me back.

While friends are genuinely concerned that I’ve resumed our relationship, I’ve simply forced myself to accept that Tim will sow his oats when and with whom he wants to.

Today he’s 55 and I reassure myself he can’t go on doing it for ever. Granted, he’s handsome now, but sooner or later, women won’t want to sleep with him any more.

Things are back to normal between us and we’re a proper couple now, albeit one harbouring a rather tawdry secret.

I cherish having someone to hold my hand and tell me he loves me. What he does when he’s not with me I would rather not know.

Instead, I focus on our future: sitting on the terrace of our new home that I built for us, growing old together. After all — what other choice do I have?

How to find out if your partner is cheating on you (related)