A reader shares a cautionary tale about love, lust and betrayal.

When my wife and I divorced, I was 53, she was 50, and we had known each other for 50 years. Our families were very close, so we grew up together. She told me that from the earliest time, I was her prince – but we didn’t get together until we were 39 and 36.

By that time, we were both living in London with successful careers. There was a competitiveness with one another, although Lizzie* was much worldlier than me.

She was also very pretty, auburn-haired and tall – but I’d never looked at her “that” way until one Christmas, she came to my mum’s with her parents as usual, and I thought, actually, you’re a stunning woman.

A week later, she came around for dinner and, basically, she never went home.

It wasn’t so much that I fell in love with Lizzie – it was more that when I opened the door to it, it was already there. We had almost a “fibre-optic” connection – a shortcut to one another – and one thing I’ve learnt is that you don’t know the value of that until it’s gone.

We’d been together a year when I proposed to her. When I asked her dad, who was the closest approximation I had to a father (because mine left when I was a baby), he literally whooped with delight.

We had a big family wedding in 2002. I didn’t want children and Lizzie couldn’t have them, but we had each other and that was everything. People called us the “golden couple”. We entertained. We were great friends to our friends. We owned three homes, one abroad.

We were also massive foodies, and we’d spend thousands on gourmet touring holidays, where we’d drive around France eating in Michelin-starred restaurants.

For a decade, life was fantastic. Outwardly, that continued, but on the inside, I was starting to die.

The problem was that I began to believe I could have all this with anyone; I took it for granted. Lizzie started a new job that meant she had to get up at dawn, whereas I was still a party animal, so resentments grew around that.

I began to believe I could have all this with anyone; I took it for granted.

We’d always had amazing sex, but at a certain point – I shudder at my shallowness back then – I began to notice my wife developing cellulite, and I didn’t like it.

My gratitude for her had started to slip. She’d have gone to bed and then I’d crawl in, often half-cut, expecting intimacy which she didn’t want because she had to be up in four hours.

I saw that as rejection. This was how warped my mind had become.

It was in this weakened state that I made contact on social media with Belinda*, my first crush at school, who was now an actress in LA. She was coming to visit her mother in the UK, and so she came to see me.

I opened the front door when she arrived and I was stunned: she didn’t look any more than 35, although she must have been 10 years older, with an incredibly trim body. From being a bashful girl, she was suddenly this confident, sassy woman. I thought, be careful.

We saw each other a couple of times and there was flirting but nothing else. Lizzie trusted me implicitly – she was pragmatic and level-headed. Belinda and I… less so.

In 2013, there was a school reunion and Belinda came over for it. We went to a club, then back to her hotel, where she reminded me of something I’d long forgotten, saying: “Don’t you remember the letters you wrote to me?”

At 13, I’d finally met my father. I loved him madly, but he was a violent alcoholic. I’d witnessed his violent outbursts whenever I’d visited him, but I had thought I’d never told a soul. But it turned out that I’d told Belinda in these letters.

We ended up snogging in a hallway in the hotel and I remember saying out loud: ‘This could be the end of my marriage.'

When she told me this, something massive opened up inside me. I thought I’d spent my whole life trusting no one to tell this secret, but way back then, I’d trusted her.

I’d also asked her out in these letters and she’d rejected me. But now, years later, she revealed that I was “on every page” of her diary and that she wished she’d said yes. All of this was incredibly bonding.

We ended up snogging in a hallway in the hotel and I remember saying out loud: “This could be the end of my marriage.”

We didn’t sleep with one another that night, but I didn’t get home until dawn. We were both left wondering, what does this mean? So we agreed to meet again. I was thinking two things: I have to shut this down or I have to find out what’s going on. As soon as she made the first move, unbuttoning her blouse and then my trousers, I knew which one it would be.

Belinda went back to LA, but we started to communicate obsessively. My wife and I shared a computer, so Belinda taught me how to create an email address that I could access without Lizzie knowing.

Belinda had previously had a failed relationship with someone quite controlling and manipulative, with whom she had a daughter, and so right from the beginning I was aware that she was in her own, slightly vulnerable position.

She came over in October – we had it organised. Lizzie was going to a conference for a few days and we booked a hotel. There was a lot of adrenaline, because we’d already been having phone sex, and that first night we basically broke the bed.

I left in a state of shock, the pleasure outweighing any guilt. On the way home, there was a point on the motorway where the road forked and, as we diverged, we shouted to one through our open windows that we loved one another.

Lizzie came home from the conference. However deeply I loved her – and I did – something else had taken over. It was almost as if in order to take sand to build this new relationship with Belinda, I’d dug a hole in the relationship with my wife. But I was too excited to notice.

Also, I was getting away with it. I had always been a fundamentally honest person, certainly in my marriage, but suddenly the honesty just went and, once it had, it got easier to lie. As soon as Belinda had gone back to America, I was already thinking, I need to go to LA.

Suddenly the honesty just went and, once it had, it got easier to lie.

So, I invented an entire fiction that work needed me to go to LA to pursue a new contract. I even invented email accounts so I could show correspondence to Lizzie. She was right behind this amazing new opportunity. It was a massive deception.

I remember thinking, this is very wrong, but the impetus of needing to see Belinda took over. I was still having sex with Lizzie at this point, but the joy had gone – it was just perfunctory.

However, I was having sex with more vigour than I had, because that would show there was nothing to worry about. Bravado having prevailed thus far, fear was creeping in; I was trying to plan everything meticulously so that I wouldn’t get found out.

I went to LA for four days – there was passionate sex, conversation and not much sleep. Plus, there was this business around my father. I felt that it was safe to explore with Belinda long-buried feelings that nobody else knew about – and that was emotionally powerful. Not to mention thinking that I’d been rejected, only to suddenly, 37 years later, be told ‘no, I wanted you all the time’.

I got back from that trip about a week before Christmas. Lizzie and I were scheduled to fly to the Seychelles on the night of December 23. I was in complete turmoil. I had feelings for Belinda and didn’t want to sleep with Lizzie anymore, but we were about to go away for two weeks to an island where there was nothing to do but have sex.

My way of dealing with this was to drink, and so on the night before we were due to fly, I drunkenly woke Lizzie up and said: “I’m really sorry, but I can’t come to the Seychelles because I’m in love with another woman.”

I couldn’t keep it in any longer. The bottom fell out of her world. This woman, whom I’d known from a child, was suddenly howling like an injured animal. And in those moments and during everything that followed in my leaving her, I had never loved her more. I knew how much I was hurting her, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Lizzie said I owed it to her to come on the holiday, and so the next day, we got on a plane to the Seychelles. So, there we were on Christmas Eve 2013, watching dolphins in the sunset, absolutely broken. Lizzie’s tears were endless.

This woman, whom I’d known from a child, was suddenly howling like an injured animal.

At that point, it felt as if she was the child and I was the adult, whereas the reality was that I was the child and she was the adult because she was displaying proper emotions, whereas I was just getting stuck into the all-inclusive bar to take the pain away.

She said: “If you leave me, I’m going to kill myself.” That’s not the kind of person she is, so when she said that, I was scared. We agreed that I would end it with Belinda. So, we got back from what was our last holiday together, and I booked a flight for two days later.

Then, when I got to LA, Belinda had a doctor’s appointment at which she was told she may have cancer. So I left LA not having finished it and not knowing what to do.

As soon as I’d landed at Heathrow, Lizzie called and said: “You have to promise me you’ll never see or speak to that woman again,” but I had to say: “I can’t do that right now.”

Lizzie didn’t come home that night. I sat in our marital home, feeling like I was a clock, a massive pendulum, which was swinging out of the casing on both sides. I felt like I was being destroyed by the feeling of loving two women intensely.

My mother was in South Africa, visiting my sister, so I went to stay at her house. Lizzie’s grief was so unbearable that I knew that, despite Belinda’s cancer scare (she didn’t have a diagnosis at that point), I had to break it off with her and try to save my marriage.

As it was, my mother came back from her trip very ill, so I agreed to stay and look after her. Eventually, I had to tell her why I wasn’t going home. She was heartbroken because she adored Lizzie. By this time, other people knew too because Lizzie had told them. They were coming in droves, incandescent, telling me I had to end this thing with Belinda.

When one of mum’s friends agreed to come and look after her, I took my chance to go to LA and for the next two and a half months, I was backwards and forwards trying to end this relationship with Belinda.

I kept going to LA to be met by this person who was so joyful to see me, and suddenly – because I was so weak – I was right back in the thing I’d come to leave.

Things came to a head in May. Belinda was due to come over and I was going to end it, but then that morning, my mother died. So now I was reeling from the catastrophe of my marriage having ended, plus the grief over the death of my mother.

I spent an entire three years in turmoil, not with Lizzie and trying to have a relationship with Belinda.

When I called Lizzie’s mother, who already hated my guts, she said: “You killed your mother.” (Something she has since apologised for.)

The first alarm bells with Belinda were when I asked her not to come to the funeral (because she would have been lucky to get out of there alive) and she got upset. All that mattered to her was being seen to be with me.

I had given up hope of a reconciliation with Lizzie. I was still in love with her, but I knew there was no coming back from the hurt I’d caused. Anyway, by this point, she’d sought a divorce settlement and I handed over everything, including our joint pensions and our homes. She told me later that she’d structured that settlement in such a way that she hoped I’d come to my senses and come back to her, but when I signed them, she knew I’d gone insane.

And I had. The insanity was loving two people and being loved by two people at the same time, knowing none of this was viable, and the degree of agony that brought. My main regret is that I was in so much fear, I wasn’t able to know myself emotionally, and in the process, I lost my best friend (my wife) and everyone I’d known in my life up until that point.

At around that time, I had to go back to the marital home to collect some work stuff while Lizzie was out. While I was there, I saw a homemade card on the side, which I realised was from my father. Inside he’d written: “I am so ashamed of him.”

Everyone hated me, I hated myself, and I felt so completely alone in the world apart from Belinda.

I spent an entire three years in turmoil, not with Lizzie and trying to have a relationship with Belinda. Having finally got together with me, however, Belinda was letting out all her resentments. For the next seven months, she made my life hell.

I would say now that she has borderline personality disorder, but I was so immersed in the drama of it all, I couldn’t see it.

I kept trying to make it work for much longer than I should have done because otherwise, I thought, what the hell had this all been about? It reached a point where I couldn’t carry on, but then on the day I had planned to tell her, it was confirmed that she had breast cancer and it had spread to her lymph nodes.

She had no health insurance in America, so I managed to sufficiently construct a life for her here that meant she could get treatment.

We lived together and I looked after her for the next year, during which time she was physically and verbally abusive. Eventually, in 2017, I had to take her back to the States, where she was able to get government-funded Medicaid, and that was the end of our relationship.

When I look back on the relationship I had with Belinda, it’s impossible to find any happy memories. When I look back on my relationship with Lizzie, there are almost too many for me to bear.

These days, I am completely skint as I gave everything away. Materially, and in terms of the pain it caused, I would not do the same thing again. Lizzie is now happily married to one of my ex-friends – she has a fantastic life – and Belinda is alive and well. Knowing that each of them would not have arrived at the place they’re in now if I’d not been in their lives brings me comfort.

I have to take responsibility for the fact it took one moment at a school reunion for a weakness in me to be exposed, but I’ve been forced to reach a place of humility where I hope that I’ve become a better, kinder person than I was before.

*Names have been changed