I almost had an affair with a man twice my age

I was in my early 20s and he was in his early 40s. I held back because I thought it would leave me haunted… as it turns out, I am haunted just the same. It makes me question if we really did have a full-on affair, would I feel more spooked, remorseful, and regretful… because I cannot imagine feeling any worse than I do today.

I held back because I thought it would leave me haunted… as it turns out, I am haunted just the same.

I haven’t seen him in over a year; but last night I had one of the most vivid dreams I’ve ever experienced, and it was with him. In this dream, we knew it would be our final moments together, that we would never see each other again after this encounter. Knowing that, like magnets, we couldn’t help but kiss each other — even though there were other people in the room, yet we pretended that they were not watching.

This dream with him was extremely intimate — on both a physical and emotional level. I took him to my hometown where there was a carnival going on, and we rode down this big slide together hugging each other. By the end of the dream, I asked him why he chose to leave me in real life, and he told me that he had to do it, but that he still may return to me someday. Still dreaming, I knew this was our final moment together, and I begged him to see me again. But he told me that we could not be together.

They thought that our age gap was disgusting.

It wasn’t just the two of us in this dream I had. There were many other people — and all of them were judging us. They thought that our age gap was disgusting. People who had once known me in high school, in college, and at my job in my early twenties — they were all judging us. We could not bare the thought of bringing each other home to our families. We knew they would judge us. Nobody likes to see an age-gap relationship — even the celebrities barely get away with it.

Sometimes dreams are the best gift. They allow you to not only see — but feel, touch, smell, immerse yourself in a person who you thought you’d never see again. Waking up is the hardest part, knowing that with each passing hour, the dream will become blurrier and fuzzier. So, I replay the dream over and over, hoping that my memory doesn’t fizzle it out.

Sometimes dreams are the best gift. They allow you to not only see — but feel, touch, smell, immerse yourself in a person who you thought you’d never see again.

When I first met him, I thought it would be an affair. But as I got to know him more, I fell in love, and I wanted to be with him. I was with someone else at the time, and I left him because I wanted to be with this man who was twice my age. However, that wasn’t enough, because he was with someone else too — even though somedays he told me he was, other days he told me he wasn’t — or maybe that was my delusional mind pretending to see that he wasn’t.

I won’t go too deep into details, because the whole thing is far too confusing to recall. I’d much rather recall the dream I recently had — we were close, we were in love, but he had to go.

When I look back on what happened between us, I have two versions: one in which he’s the villain, and the other in which I am the villain. Although, if there is one thing that my dream taught me, it’s that neither of us are the villains — the people around us were the villains, the ones who were judging us, gossiping about us, and keeping us apart.

Neither of us are the villains — the people around us were the villains.

If I could ask God anything, I would ask, “Why do you lead two people together at the absolute worst timing — when one or both of them are taken, when they were born a whole twenty years apart?” We had every single factor going against us, it’s amazing that in one moment in time, even just for a second, that we felt as one.