Confessions of a mistress: ‘We fell into bed together – two years of sexual tension washing away any nerves’

An anonymous Irish writer details how a flirtation with a married colleague turned into a passionate affair, what it’s really like to be the other woman, and why their four-year liaison came to an end

This feature from the Sunday Independent Life Magazine was one of April's most read pieces, "It was intense and exciting, and I found it surprisingly — shamefully — easy to push my qualms to one side. I’d already crossed the line." Photo: Getty

It started on an impulse on a work night out. We worked in two different divisions of the same company, so while we had been colleagues for a few years, our paths rarely crossed day to day. On the sporadic occasion we found ourselves in the same group meeting, he was loud and self-assured — and invariably flirting with the prettiest woman in the room. He was often the focus of office gossip, so I knew that he’d had entanglements with other colleagues and a tumultuous relationship with his wife. The gossips said that they only stayed together for the sake of their two young children.

He was good looking, in his 40s, but his confidence was what made him attractive — if you were into that sort of thing — and previously, I wasn’t. I’m naturally more straight-laced and I found the whole charming, bad boy persona off-putting, verging on boring. So, I’d really never paid him much attention, until that night.