I am 62 now and have been married to a Chinese wife for 22 years. For the the past 7 or 8 years she has been going back to China to look after her mother who has been suffering from Altzeimers. I have always gone along with this despite being on my own for upto 9 months a year. As time as past she has become used to living there again and tends to stay there even though her mother is now well looked after with live in home helps and also her brother who lives with her and her sister who also lives in the UK and spends time there as well. I have been going out for a month every year but I really didn’t want to live there more or even permanently, I’m no good with foreign languages, let alone a difficult one like Mandarin.
When I was 60 I decided to get out a bit more, I started going to Sunday Assembly which is a bit like going to church but without the religion. I joined a few other groups as well and this led to a chain of events which has led me to seeking a divorce which I think my wife is going along with and hopefully will be done amicably.
Firstly nearly 2 years ago at one of my group meetings in a bar one Thursday evening in late September I started talking to a girl who was only 27 and we just become great friends, a completely non sexual friendship. She had just come out of a period of depression and she also had health problems suffering from Crohn’s disease and IBS. Her Father was Egyptian and Mother Portuguese. She had no problem getting boyfriends and always told me that she found Arab boys very attractive but didn’t like their general attitude which was always a great conflict for her. Anyway we went to the theatre, had days out, because of her health problems she was a vegan so she introduced me to vegan food which I still eat sometimes now and she loved different kinds of tea and that’s something else I continued with. I only saw her for about 6 monthsand then she became depressed again and I received a message from her saying she could no longer hang out with me and she disappeared from all her friends again ,not just me. I have never been so upset over anyone more thanJessica , I cried every day for a few weeks, I lost my best friend and that seemed 10 times worse than losing a lover. To this day I still don’t know if she’s okay.
Whilst all this was going on my Uncle, He was my Dads youngest brother he was only 11 years older than me died aged 70.
I went to his funeral with one of my cousins and afterwards met his 4 daughters who were cousins I barely knew. I only vaguely knew one, Tracey who went to my Dads funeral 30 years ago when she was about 15.
Since then we have had a couple of family reunions and back in January at the end of one Tracey said to me I’m off next week ,would you want to meet up for lunch as we live fairly close. I said ok, so we agreed for a coffee in Greenwich. When I met her we changed the plan and went to the pub and after several ciders and wine found that we were getting on rather better than cousins should. We both said no this shouldn’t be happening but the feelings wouldn’t go away and as it’s legal in the Uk for cousins to marry anyway we decided that we wouldn’t care what anyone thinks and we are now in a relationship. We have only told close family and a few friends all of have asked ‘Is that allowed?’ but apart from that have all been very supportive. We can’t have children anyway so no risks of any babies with 6 fingers although even there I have read up about it and risks of anything going wrong are only a bit more than general population.
So that’s my story, maybe a bit strange and may raise a few eyebrows and what happened Was like a bolt of lightning, that was not remotely 5hought about in my wildest imagination.