Hi, I am Kartik Khanna (name changed) who got married around 3.5 years ago to the person I dated for 8 years. I started working for a bank three years ago. The story goes like this.

Six months prior to marriage, I was not happy in the relationship as my wife (then gf) was asking more and more time from me.

Although I would give her all the time I was left with after my job and taking care of my mom (she was on her deathbed), she was still dissatisfied. We would fight all day and she would blame me for everything, I would take it in my stride but I was getting suffocated. We didn't call off the marriage since everybody from both the families knew about our affair.  And, she couldn't back off either because this was the first time an inter-caste marriage was accepted in her family.

We didn't have a good start to our married life. She wanted my attention all the time and hardly let me spend time with my parents and niece.

This was not the case for 8 years. One of the primary reasons I loved her was because she gave me my freedom till 7.5 years and needless to say, I was very happy. She was a person like ‘jiyo and jeene do’ types. But things started changing after marriage. She wanted the afternoons of weekends to be in the bedrooms.

She would get angry if I even sat with my mom watching TV in the drawing room. And the fights would start and ruin the entire weekend.

Six months after my marriage, my mother passed away, so now we were alone on all weekends but this didn't end here. She always thought I was cheating on her that to all the time, till six months of my marriage I worked in an agency and they had a proper party culture. If I would get late by even one hour from office, I would have to keep the explanation ready for each and every minute I got late. Every day there was a scene from Golmaal returns where Kareena Kapoor doubts on Ajay Devgan for sleeping around with girls.

I tried my best to make her understand that now since I am married I need more money to take care of her as well, hence the long hours of work. But she misunderstood it as infidelity.

I swore on her, my mom, my niece (who is like my daughter) but then too, she always thought that the next girl I talked to was in my arms and my bed. She used to leave my home every month on the slightest of fights and not return for two weeks, this continued for a year. Her parents also blamed me because I couldn't give her that satisfaction that I was only her husband.

Only my heart and my God know how true I was with her, with respect to other women.

I have never seen other women nor tried to attract them or sleep with them because of the stress in my marriage. But still, we were thinking of divorce since we couldn't stand each other. But then we thought of giving our relationship one more chance. She came back home and life started normally. Although the fights were still on and she still doesn’t trust me, I knew the love was gone.

I was alone from inside. I was physical with her but could not be with her mentally or emotionally.

Still, I accepted the change and thought that this was my destiny and I had to live with it. Just when I thought that things were getting smooth and life was on track, I had to go on a company offsite in December 2017 to a hill station in Uttarakhand, and I didn't know that a twist was waiting there for me. The twist was that there was somebody whom I caught staring at me. She was staring at me from different angles or from the mirror and whenever I caught her staring, she used to hide her face. We spoke eventually and became friends, now the thing is that every day we talked and had coffee in the office. Somehow it had been a case that unknowingly, I didn't want anybody else to come between us, in our coffee sessions.

The bigger surprise was that even she did not want anybody else to come between our coffee breaks.

We were meeting in office like chup chup ke and avoiding everybody in canteens and coffee points. I gave her a gift on Christmas when it was secret Santa in our office and she received three gifts (the compulsion was two gifts from your Santa). Instantly she messaged me that she knew it was me who has given her a gift. She was happy and surprised. Whenever we spoke, we both knew that there was something special between us. She has a boyfriend who was in Chennai and I was married but we never talk ever about them.

We both were so complete with each other that we didn’t need anybody else.

We WhatsApp each other at any hour and we talk like we had spoken just 10 min back. We don’t indulge in ‘Hi, How are you kind of stuff,’ and our smiles don’t fade 5 even before and after our meet. We make efforts to be with each other in the office, she climbs down two floors by stairs only because we can talk and be together. Now the thing is maybe we both want to be with each other but can't and we both can't leave each other as well. What do we do? Right now, it’s only friendship and nothing physical only emotional. But is it right? Is it wrong?

Is it ok to have this kind of friendship where without saying anything you understand that we are more than friends?

Share This Story