1. Dear, this month we celebrate 25 years as husband and wife.

I find it
hard to believe that we have been married for a quarter of a century – it
seems just a few years ago that we said our vows to each other. So much
has happened since then.

We met on a blind date arranged by our mutual friend Anne on 1 December

1991. As I was getting ready, I changed my outfit five times – I was that
nervous about meeting you. Although there was an immediate attraction
between us, I didn’t realise that I had met the man I was going to marry.
We started dating on a regular basis and a mere 24 days later, on
Christmas Eve, you proposed. It didn’t matter that we had been together
for a little more than three weeks, I knew that I loved you and that what we
had was special.

We were married 18 months later, on 19 June 1993. We had such plans but,
six months later, I fell ill. After a year of treatment, including surgery, we
realised that my illness was chronic. Ill health forced me to retire due from
a nursing job I truly loved.

I was soon using a wheelchair when out of the house, and our hopes of
having three children were put on hold. I became more and more
depressed; I hardly left the house and I spent more time in bed.

The one constant in my life through all this was you, my darling Pete. You
never wavered in your support and love for me. Nothing was too much
trouble and you helped me in any way you could, even helping to do my
hair. Your continued love for me got me through the most awful time of my
life.

Although I remained ill, I started to live my life within those restrictions.

After nine years, our dream came true when I gave birth to our long-
awaited child in 2002. Maria brought an extra light into our life. You are a
wonderful, loving and caring father.

You work so hard in your factory job, but you never complain. Our home is
such a happy place and the three of us laugh together every day. Your name
means “rock” and you truly are the rock in my life.

I cherish you and I want to wish you a very happy silver wedding
anniversary. Thank you for the past 25 years – you have made me a very
happy woman. I don’t know what the next 25 years holds for you, but I
know that with you at my side I can face whatever comes.

I love you
2.

We’ve just seen you again after about 10 years, three marriages and four
children between us, and it feels as if nothing has changed. But of course it
has. We’re in our 40s now; both older, a bit fatter (well, me, certainly), a bit
more jaded. Those heady days of our 20s are well and truly behind us.
Gone are the days of no responsibility – and even this lunch date had to be
planned well in advance.

We’ve had two children each, you’ve had two wives – both of whom I still
felt a pang of jealously towards, even though officially you were never mine
to begin with.

Keeping in touch has been easier since Facebook has allowed me a window
into your life. I’ve seen the wedding pictures, seen the children, seen your
happiness – happiness with a woman who wasn’t me. It hasn’t always been
the easiest thing, despite our mutually agreeable arrangement.

Do millennials still have “friends with benefits”? Those friends with whom
you can enjoy the excitement of sex and the beauty of friendship without
the anguish of missed phone calls and the risk of being dumped?

We’ve had years of this ever-so-sophisticated arrangement where we would

regularly congratulate ourselves on avoiding the complications of
relationships, feelings, love even.

But I do love you. I loved you when we started our arrangement. I loved
you when you used to bring home girlfriends and I and our other
housemate would put things in her shoes (yes, immature, I know). I loved
you when you left for another city to work and I cried for days. I loved you
even when you danced at my wedding. And I loved you when I heard about
your wedding.

I once told someone about our relationship, and they asked how long we’d
been together. I remember the look on her face when I said we’d never
been together, never been on a date, never sent each other Valentine’s
cards. That I had, however, done things with you I’d never done with my
husband.

Experts say that, if you’re lucky, you fall in love only three times in your
life. I broke the rules by allowing you to be one of them. You weren’t meant
to be about that. You were supposed to be a delicious anecdote at a dinner
party, a giggle with girlfriends, a drunken, “Do you remember when…”
3.

Last December, nearly a year after my husband’s death, I realised I had

turned a corner: a friend mentioned this paper’s online dating
service, Soulmates, and I thought, “I could do that.” Barely three weeks
later, I was meeting you and your puppy on my favourite beach.

I knew right away that we’d hit it off: we talked nonstop and I felt totally at
ease. You had also been widowed within the past year, and although your
marriage was blissfully happy, whereas mine was more complicated, we
talked openly about the searing pain of bereavement. We laughed and
smiled a lot, too. As your mad puppy jumped around, causing me to
repeatedly move to the other side of you, I found that I kept touching your
arm.

We went to a nearby pub and continued to talk without pause. It was

obvious that we shared a great deal in terms of values, beliefs and sense of
humour. I told you I was having a lovely time, and you smiled the smile
that I have since come to love and told me that you were, too. After four
hours, which barely felt like one, I had to go. We walked to my car and you
kissed me. I was astonished, enthralled, charmed. It was clear that this was
not going to end here.

We spoke that evening and agreed to meet again a week later. We spoke
several times every day in the interim. I astounded myself by suggesting we
spend a weekend near that same beach a few weeks later. On our second
meeting, there were instant fireworks: an explosive combination of
emotional connection, physical attraction and a huge liking for each other.
We continued to spend as much time together as we could and, 17 days
after meeting, we rather crazily booked a holiday abroad.

Three months on, I am happier than I thought possible – I did not expect,
in my late 50s, to feel like this. You have turned my life around. We make
each other laugh all the time and your capacity for physical affection is
unending. You tell me I am gorgeous and are unfailingly kind. You talk
about what you see as my talents and encourage me to develop them (even
at this late stage). There have been many magical moments: dancing round
my kitchen in each other’s arms; walking, crying and laughing on that
beach where we first met; sitting in a cafe and grinning broadly at each
other at the sheer, wonderful craziness of it all.
This feels like something that could last for ever. Whatever happens, you
have shown me that, even after the very worst has occurred, unbelievable
happiness can make a new appearance. For that, my love, I truly thank you.
4.

I always looked forward to your lessons. I liked how you levelled with us.
We felt respected. And your passion for all those novels and plays could be
highly infectious. It was because of one of those plays that you took our
relationship into a forbidden realm and our lives began to mirror the
characters in which we had become so absorbed.

At an after-show party, when everyone else had dispersed to find a room to

sleep, we were suddenly left alone. Your touch of my inexperienced,
teenage body and my fumbling grasps of yours, both of us finally acting out
what we had wanted to do for some time – I had only just turned 16 and it
was an exhilarating experience. The illicit nature of our contact only
heightened its thrill.

I can’t remember how physically attractive I found you – maybe I did – but
that mattered less than knowing how infatuated you had become with me.
Although I couldn’t understand it, to have attracted your attention was
flattering and intoxicating.

Our brief affair was certainly one of my life’s defining moments, but now,
many years later, I can see the deep impact it had on me. I was left isolated
at a vulnerable point in my life. I could tell no one about what had
happened and I was forced to dodge the rumours that quickly spread. I
held your professional future in my hands. You could have lost everything,
just on my word, and you made sure I knew it. The pressure was not easy.

Of course I would never have reported you, although I know you feared I
would. I didn’t feel abused. I liked you, possibly loved you in some way. I
certainly didn’t want to hurt you. But I felt alone, with an overwhelming
secret that soon outweighed the pleasure of the original act.

Ultimately, what you did was wrong. And it was you. You had the power
and control. You left me entangled in an unfamiliar adult world, in which
rights and wrongs are not as clearly defined as we normally pretend to
children. The child in me is still annoyed that you hadn’t been wiser to the
potential difficulties our actions would put us in, even if the adult in me has
come to realise that lust and wisdom are never going to be great
bedfellows.

Now, as a teacher with children myself, I know just how much you must
have suffered. I can only imagine the anxious, sleepless nights, wondering
when things would unravel around you, sweating over the huge mistake
you knew you had made. You had placed your professional career in the
hands of an adolescent.

I regret not having seen you before you died, just to make sense of what
happened between us. My only relief was that our secret was never exposed
during your lifetime. I still wonder what your final thoughts about us might
have been. Perhaps regret for the anxiety you had caused yourself, or
maybe even a small chink of satisfaction that you had got away with it, your
good reputation intact.

Whichever, I hope you have been resting in peace. Our secret remains safe.