Every night around 10 or so, my
phone dings, and it's her. Her profile picture is a tasteful shot of her smiling in a garden, but I know the woman behind it. She's 60, married, and she tells me everything.It started innocently enough on the app. We matched, and I was just curious. But then the texts started. She told me about her husband, how they sleep in separate rooms now, how he hasn't been able to get an erection in years. She says he's given up, that he just takes his blood pressure meds and goes to sleep, leaving her alone in that big, quiet house.
Our conversations have become my nightly ritual. She'll text me, "Just got into bed. All alone again." And I'll reply, "Thinking about you." We don't send dirty pictures or anything like that. It's all in the words. She'll describe the silk nightgown she's wearing, how the fabric feels against her skin. She'll tell me how lonely it feels to have a body that still craves touch when the one person who's supposed to touch you can't, or won't.
I find myself getting aroused, not just from her words, but from the situation itself. It's the taboo of it, the fact that I'm this 30-something guy giving this neglected woman what she's missing. I'll text back, describing what I'd do to her if I were there, how I'd touch her, how I'd make her feel wanted again.
She told me once that our conversations are the only thing that makes her feel alive. She says she lies in the dark next to her sleeping husband, her phone glowing in her hand, and she touches herself while she reads my words. She says she imagines it's me, imagines what it would feel like to have a man who actually wants her, a man who gets hard at the thought of her.
I know I'm the other man, the secret, the fantasy. I'm the one she turns to in the dark. And the worst part is, I love it. I love being her escape. I get off on the fact that I'm giving her something her husband can't, that my words are making her cum in a bed he'll never touch her in. It's a fucked-up power dynamic, and I'm hooked. Every time my phone buzzes at 10 p.m., I feel a rush of guilt and excitement. And I know I'm going to reply.