I slept with my SON-IN-LAW

Laura McGill* justifies her affair, and says her daughter is partly to blame

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My mother always taught me that if you’re not sleeping with your husband enough, he will look elsewhere. It’s a lesson I tried to instil in my own daughter, Jane. But she shrugged off my ‘antiquated’ views, condescendingly telling me no self-respecting modern man would ever act in this way. But I was proved right. After they had their three children and Jane was busy juggling her career and motherhood, my son-in-law did indeed have an affair. With me. Yes, you read that correctly. I slept with the father of my grandchildren, my beloved daughter’s husband.

But I’m not a heartless monster. This wasn’t just no-strings sex; we had developed real feelings for each other. My own husband, Pete, worked away from home for weeks at a time. And when he was home, I felt like he didn’t really ‘see’ me. Whereas Mike looked at me like I was a goddess. He was the first person in years who really listened. But I know what we did was wrong. So how can I live with myself?

It helps that my daughter and I live in different countries – if I had to see her every day the guilt would finish me off.

I was 19 when I fell pregnant with Jane while studying English literature. I was desperately in love with her father, but sadly, he had no intention of sticking around.

Working away

By the time I considered dating again, I found most young men didn’t want to be saddled with another man’s child. I was incredibly lonely.

Aged 30, I had my own marketing business and when Jane was eight we moved into a rented home. It was five years later, when I was 35, that I met Pete, then 40, at a networking event. Pete worked – and still does – in technology sales, and joked that airports were his second home. I knew from the off that he’d be away at least one week in four. A year after we met, Pete and I were married.