Over a year ago my husband died of a massive heart attack in his sleep. We had The Talk a few times over 20 years together, because there are multiple health conditions in his family including cardiac disease, myasthenia gravis and ALS. He was starting to show symptoms consistent with ALS and was just starting evals with the neurologist when he passed so there were no conclusive results. Thankfully it was his heart; I would not wish ALS on my worst enemy. So a lot of The Talk was of my spouseless future, and he insisted he wanted me to start moving on quickly and not hang on to a memory.

In the months since I put myself back out there, I’ve had a string of men slithering into my inbox. All local and all acting like they want a relationship. But, BUT! They had to keep me a secret because as they said their ethnic community “wouldn’t understand.” We couldn’t go out publicly but could see each other in private, preferably in a nice cheap hotel somewhere. Turns out these jokers are all married and all want a one-nighter with someone who would let them do sex acts that their wives don’t allow, for cultural and religious reasons.

So when N came around we talked every day for a couple weeks then I brought up meeting at a public place. I wanted to see if he was the seventh guy to pull this “secret girlfriend” business. He was very agreeable and we had the nicest afternoon out. Most importantly he wanted to see me again!

It went really well and of course I had to give my friends the full play by play and one of them thought it was terrible that I started it off as sort of a test to gauge how serious he is. People from his part of the world don’t date like westerners as a rule and I didn’t want this to turn into yet another argument about why I don’t do hookups or the things the married guys’ wives refuse.