FALLING IN LOVE WITH A MARRIED MAN 3

[ Continued from part 1 & 2, missed it? read here and part two here ]

"I believe you baby, I'm just asking". Was Ben's next statement after he had gently asked if I and Barry had been intimate. I had said no fiercely and followed it up by saying 'I can't just have sex with anyone'. I thought to throw that out there just in case that's what he wanted himself.

He ordered food over to his office and we had fish and chips, we talked and laughed and I was excited about this new distraction and affection.

Three months prior, I and the love of my adult life had ended things and I guess that made me want this, whatever 'this' was, even more.

I need you to give me atleast five years then you can go, he said.

Five years plus 25 and the half years is 30 and the half years, I thought. "Nope not possible", I said. 'I can give you 2 years after which we will have to end this'.

You can't date anyone else, you have to tell me everything, I have to know where you are at all times, you need to pick my calls... his terms for the 'relationship' kept expanding, and even though I still felt flattered, I started to feel not just stifled but also getting boxed in.

I kept all my thoughts in my head and overthought it that night when I got home.

When we had our next conversation, my terms were ready.

'I need you to stop talking down on me", 'I need you to stop talking slow like I'm a child', 'I need you to stop babying me', 'I'm suppose to be your 'girlfriend' not your daughter right'? 'Yes' he said and he understood all i was trying to say and I could see he genuinely wanted to make whatever this was work.

We hung out and I got him to meet my other friend, he had a way of giving me the little things I had come to think I didn't want like authority and cater. 

He ordered the most expensive bottle of tequila for me, I enjoy liquor a lot, I am a social drinker but I enjoy tequila and trying new cocktails. After about 6/8 shots we said our goodbyes and went our separate way.

****

I can't do this, I can't be with this man, I have never been able to be with someone who wasn't experiencing similar things like I was, who would I tell about my experiences or about a twitter rant or an Instagram post that went viral, I thought.

And just like that somewhere in my head this was over.

I continued to push my thought aside but he also had a similar issue that affected what we could have been, he had trust issues. He liked me so much and put me on such a pedestal that he couldn't believe that girls like me can actually be single, he worried too much about the other guys I 'might' have. which I didn't have of course.

And because he worried and felt insecure, he started to walk on thin ice around me and started to step back from doing the little things he used to do that made me think him special.

He didn't want to be a 25 years old girl's fool or maga like the older ones call it. He also kept remembering my statement about choosing who I share my body with, he randomly mentioned it during an argument and it left me confused.

Would he have preferred a girl that was there for money not feelings and would he have preferred a girl he could control and one who was thirsty.

Well unfortunately, he got me. a girl who knows her worth and herself. A girl whose conscience would never have taken her farther than being smitten by someone else's blessing.

A girl who has her own desire to find her Mr right.

A girl who understand that no matter how long it may take to find hers, he will surely come.

*****

And just like that,

With Ben the feelings left as fast as they came, it got crushed as quick as the crush.

Though we didn't say goodbye like most people do, we said goodbye gradually with every call that wasn't answered and every message that wasn't followed up and every conversation that was awkward and turned into silence and the silence that turned into distance and distance that became memories of the man I could have loved that belonged to another woman who most definitely deserves better, just like I do as well!

****

Meeting Ben was so exciting and it was also a reminder of how the decision to choose right over wrong sometimes may seem hard because sometimes wrong is attractive, wrong is lovable, wrong truly cares, wrong says all we want to hear and we like wrong a lot! 

However, we must define and choose our standards and aspire to choose right over every other extra baggage.