Having some time on my hands tonight (read my previous post), I sit at the computer, reflecting on my current situation. Not that I don't dwell upon it on a regular basis during the day, of course, but tonight I feel particularly philosophical about life in general and - specifically - how I ended up in this mess. More accurately, I know I have made a huge effort not to think of what lies in the months ahead, what I have had to leave behind and what I shall have to leave behind.

Those of you who have been reading my story from the beginning (I know each one of you, and yes, I feel you are my friends) might know that this particular Madame Bovary did not mean to unravel her inner life in the sprawling, confusing and aching way that she has; I have become acquainted with the stranger inside me and, perhaps some time in the future, might even forgive and learn to love her.

I originally perceived the 'ennui' I felt many months ago as a mark of time: the years spent being a mother, the routine I tied myself to, the steady and loyal love my husband had always bestowed upon me, these were the cogs that made my machine chuff-chuff away, steaming towards the contented life I knew was ahead.

In an effort to escape the inexplicable restlessness, the missing beat in the steady heart, I created an alter-ego, Emma, who would be free, in her fantasy world, to woo and be wooed, to excite and be excited. I would abdicate the innocence of my hitherto mutually faithful marriage to her, the girl who would dare move and shake, ask and receive without guilt.

I have married friends (of both sexes) who occasionally have inconsequential affairs; they consider them sparse lights shining over the quiet harbour of the affectionate relationship with their spouse, and think little of them. This is not the place to judge, nor am I the right person to do so.

However, being emotionally lazy, I figured that imagining an affair might be equally, if not more, exciting than a real one. I even role-played with my (much older) next-door neighbour, the famous Mr Vroom, who got very upset when he realised that I was using him for my relatively innocent fantasies.

Would I be judged less harshly if I had met Mr Lost and enjoyed a brief and intense romance, complete with real sex, and then filed him away as a fling, returning all the more refreshed back to the marital house and bed? Would opening a romantic parenthesis in the paragraph of marriage make it any less sinful if I should quickly close it and continue reading the sentence that follows? ('Sentence' being a key word.)

I have been an adulteress, and shall keep the title of my blog untouched. However, as those friends to whom I regularly send private posts know, and those who have always read this blog, almost post by post, Mr Lost was not a fling, nor was he a figment of my imagination.

How can I consider patching up the torn fabric of a marriage which was weak enough for me to tear it in the first place, when I feel so strongly about another man?

I initially thought 'Emma' could have a fantasy affair. When Mr Lost joined me on our tour researching what rocks our universes, I briefly thought I could have a real affair, maintaining husband and children suspended in the life I would go back to: I bought both of us two return tickets, laughing and leaping on him like a child at the train station.

It is irrelevant to make a distinction over the different directions Mr Lost and I have taken over 'us'; it does not change either my feelings nor the reality of now: I cannot go back to the loving Mr Husband who, knowing what he does, would still have me back. I cannot go back, not because of what he knows, but because of what I know.

At the height of his initial grief, he called me 'soiled goods'. He has a point, of course. I am, although perhaps not 'soiled'; 'damaged' is a more appropriate word.

Damaged but aware. Aware that, no matter how burning the pain and appalling the guilt for inflicting it, this adulteress here loves somebody else. To stay, or to give mixed signals, only prolongs the agony of death.

Sometimes, those who seek to limit the damage may end up manipulating the raw truth a lot more than those who own the damage itself outright. And pay for it.