It was rather strange to have some sort of an affair with a married man, especially if he was only 7 years older than us and helped in bringing out the woman in us.
We continued as really close friends after raya and xmas hols. There were times when I didn’t know whether it was really because of him or the fact that I was blooming into a womanly woman, my nearest guess was both reasons complement each other. Closely related. As I continued befriending him, my relationship with other Malay communities, especially my officemates got better and better. I gradually received more and more attention from other men in my company as well. That included the top engineers, management people , both married and single ones. Soon we had another new lady engineer, a malay girl with a penchant for overly dressed in an engineering company. Me and my colleagues would want to tell her that that kinda dressing styles were much suitable in banks, KLCC sort of offices and so on. But I couldn’t be arsed about it.
Somehow, I was compared to that miss overly dressed (OD). I didn’t know how or when it all began, but those gossips reached me. As an engineering company, majority of the employees from the top level to the pembantu am rendah were men. Couldn’t blame it really. One of the things I heard was, I was a natural beauty, curvaceous and voluptuous, while miss OD was a malay-model lady who looked pretty in kebaya (especially if that kebaya has a long slit up to her thighs…..now that was something men love to ogle). All those comments also came up from his own mouth. He is in fact a man too.
Anyways, remember the night when I cried my eyes out. Well, I also said some prayers for him and his family. I’ve asked forgiveness from God that I got attracted to the wrong person and I asked the strength and holy guidance from Him so that I will never wreck his marriage. I also prayed for his and his family’s protections.
Those men in my old company have started to become more and more bold with me. Sure, I was a young engineer. As I was not a girlfriend to him or anything like that, therefore he has no rights to control over my life including going out with other men. Fair enough. Come the third month of our friendship, I went out with our computer maintainer. He knew it and approved it. That maintainer apparently adored me a lot, but I had no chemistry with him except as friends only. Nevertheless, the maintainer, being another gentleman and all and trying hard to win my heart, we too spent one evening sitting nearby the seaside, and on another occasion, we went to a famous waterfall resort. I didn’t fancy dipping in that cool water with a guy, too intimate for me...It’s ok if I do that only with my family members around me. But never with a non-mahram (i.e. a man that I can legally marry with).
I guess having befriended to my officemate has made me more a charming lady than I was before. I learnt a lot on how to talk to a man and how to "offend" him without putting my life and dignity at stake. I learnt on identifying my own people skill and understanding my strengths in many aspect of social skills. Not that I only got to polish those skills because of him. He was acting as a catalyst for all that. And not that my social skills was so poor before. But, truth to God, I got to improve myself so much! He was so patient with me. The only song I could think of to describe what he has done to me is: Because you loved me by Celine Dione.
There was even one time when he accompanied me on a food shopping trip that he managed to tell me off without me getting defensive. Normally, my mood will reflect the person who criticizes me without hikmah (wisdom) or blatantly saying words as if they were meant to make me feel so undermined and low. But not him. He has this clever way of advising me that I broke down and cry and not even feeling angry towards him. It was direct yet with a lot of subtlety and wisdom. Those words gone absorbed right to the bottom of my heart and had stayed there ever since. From that moment on, he was officially my angel.
In the hindsight, I have also become his angel when it came to his relationship with his wife. He told me of how easily we clicked in comparison to his struggle in trying to win his wife’s affections and attentions. Before that, his wife thought it’s gross to hold hands in public and many, many other romantic things a couple normally do. It was all due her reluctance of marrying him in the 1st place. She was “forced” to marry him because her brother saw her and him alone together kissing and making up in her family’s house. She wasn’t ready for such commitment and so had to put up with being a wife and a mother to their child. All that coldness and taking him for granted has finally resolved when he befriended me. She found out that her husband got close to his female officemate (i.e. me) from their friends who also worked in our company. Obviously she was shocked and got jealous and all. Which was definitely a good sign for him that she has then realized how much she needed him and how far has she neglected on taking him as her lawfully wedded husband.
As for my part, I have always reminded him of contacting his wife and so on. On how important their family were and how he must be patient that one day his perseverance on winning her ultimate love will soon prevails. That he should never think that all his efforts were in vain.
And thank God for that, my prayers were answered. He told me and his fellow countrymen colleagues that his wife now kept saying that she missed him and she started to say “I love you” more openly and sincerely than before. He got so ecstatic for that, that he felt liked he owed me a LOT. I just told him, “ditto”.
This was my first and last close encounter of a married man. As much as I had avoided it before, I still got to experience what it was like to being in a relationship with one, and how painful it was for both of us to fight such wonderful, and yet forbidden feelings.
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