‘My affair with the ski instructor was proof of my bad marriage’

Joëlle (38): “It was a tradition before I started working there, the annual ski trip with the office. From the first year, now eight years ago, I was there. My children were too young to go on winter sports and my husband Sjoerd could not be dragged into the snow with thirty huskies. Sjoerd was happy for a long time that thanks to the office trip I was no longer nagging about winter sports. Moreover, it was the perfect excuse for him to go to Closing Weekend in Ibiza, something I was not waiting for. Do me Dutch music, beer and parties instead of hip DJs with ditto people.

Friends sometimes asked me if I didn’t mind: my husband in the party sun with gorgeous women around him. But I think it’s healthy that everyone in a relationship keeps their own life. I did not see how Sjoerd’s days in Ibiza differed from my weeks on the slopes, there were also men there? “Yes, der Anton aus Tirol, in his Lederhose,” they would laugh.

Affaires

Call me naive, but it came like a bolt from the blue when Sjoerd confessed to me over a year ago that during his last trip after a night of partying, he had ended up in bed with one of the women from his club of friends. I certainly would have exploded a few years earlier, but strangely enough I now remained icy calm. He must have had a good explanation, I hoped. So I decided to give him space to tell his story calmly.

Sjoerd mistook my calm for acceptance and seized the opportunity to make a few other outpourings right away. A similar thing had happened a year earlier, he said, and while out walking in our hometown he had kissed other women a few times. “All pure sex, not love,” he assured me. After all, I was the mother of his children.

I didn’t know what to say. This was something different from a slipper, this was ordinary cheating. Precisely during that period, October last year, my colleagues were looking for a location for our winter sports in January. “Whatever happens, I’ll be there,” I shouted. I slipped into survival mode, slogged through the holidays sick with misery, trying to keep up appearances for the kids. A few days after the worst New Year’s Eve of my life, I got on a plane.

A gigantic French chalet

My colleagues had obtained a gigantic French chalet on the slopes, including a private chef and jacuzzi. It looked like a fairytale, so romantic. Or rather: the Whams clip Last Christmas, although my children of eleven and nine laughed when I texted that with the video I sent of the area. “Mom, just act normal: clips, nobody watches them, right?”

Our cook thought it was fun, such a large group of Dutch people who wanted nothing more than to enjoy culinary delights. The wine flowed freely, there was laughter and flirting and dancing and talking; my colleagues became friends that vacation. So I told them about my situation with Sjoerd. About how indifferent he was about his cheating and my doubts about our marriage because of it. For the first time, I spoke openly about my problems and only then realized how much the situation hurt me. It felt so unfair, in eleven years of marriage I had never thought of another man, let alone touched one.

Off-piste

On the third night of our week in the French mountains, our cook had a surprise for us. A friend of his worked in the area as a ski instructor and offered to take us for a day off piste as a guide. We were all experienced skiers, but we had not dared to do the serious off-piste work until then. This offer was great.

The guide turned out to be called Luc, and from the moment he slipped his ski goggles on his helmet and I looked into his eyes, my heart skipped a beat. He let his gaze rest on mine just a little too long and my color changed. This was ridiculous, I looked like a teenager. He wasn’t even really handsome, but the naughty twinkle in his eye was irresistible.

Luc took us to the most beautiful places. We had lunch in a mountain hut with campfire and animal furs that was only accessible off-piste and made one crazy descent after another. Luc clearly favored me. As soon as he noticed I wasn’t skiing right behind him, he yelled, ‘Jo, viens! Show me what you can do!‘

Apres ski

Like a teenage girl, overjoyed to his approval, I chased after him, praying to hide my sloshing armpits during après-ski later. Après-ski is a bit different in France than in Austria, it turned out. While the rest of the group parked their skis in front of the cabin door at the top of the final descent into the valley, I walked to the restrooms to straighten out what could be straightened out.

A little later, with my helmet and coat over my arm, combed hair and freshly painted lips, I walked into the bar almost nonchalantly. My colleagues were already hanging on the pinot noir, on benches and pouffes around a fireplace. Luc had kept a spot next to him. ‘Finally, there you are‘he laughed. ‘Finally‘a colleague repeated in a rutted voice, gave me a knowing wink and discreetly turned away from me. Luc and I were dependent on each other. My heart raced in my throat, butterflies fluttered in my stomach that I hadn’t felt in ten years.

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‘What happens in France’

Of course we drank way too much. We had a holiday, no children with us, and our cook was with us, so we didn’t have to take into account dinner time. When Luc wanted to refill me for the second time, I tried another weak ‘No, no, I don’t drink and ski‘, but it turned out that a ski lift was going down, there was no excuse.

A few hours later, rosy and giggly, we shuffled to the gondola with our skis on our shoulders. Luc intentionally passed the cabin with my colleagues and urged me to hurry up. “You care, get it!” one of my co-workers still screamed as the gondola doors closed.

I willingly let myself be pulled into the next one, alone with Luc. While I was choking on nerves and wondering what the hell I was doing, he kissed me. ‘I’m married‘I stammered, without letting go of his mouth. ‘What happens in France, stays in France‘, he said. He spoke those words to all his babies, of course.

Sex of revenge

Meanwhile a thousand things were flying through my mind. Revenge sex is never good. It was one thing that Sjoerd had cheated me, but if I now paid back with the same coin, I would drag ourselves even further into the deception. We had children, I couldn’t do this to them, could I? Yes, as if he had thought about it all those times, I thought at the same time; it wasn’t that my flirtation could make the situation much worse.

So I surrendered. It’s strange how such a thing works. Because where I still felt guilty at the first kiss, I initiated a second myself and threw all my inhibitions overboard. In fact, I invited Luc to come with us to our holiday home; after all, his friend was the cook. At home, with Sjoerd and the children, it seemed worlds away from me. The only reality that existed at this point was my bedroom high in the mountains, my ski instructor and the jacuzzi.

A holiday love from the books

My female colleagues agreed with me, the men kept a little more straightforward about my affair in the snow. Felt solidarity with Sjoerd. Okay, he had been a jerk, they thought, but did that justify my behavior? It didn’t impress me. I saw those same colleagues enjoying themselves while going out without their wives, they weren’t saints either.

Luc had to teach in the morning for the rest of the week. So I skied with my colleagues and had him pick me up from the restaurant after lunch. We rolled through the snow like teenagers, messed around in picnic huts and kissed until we could jump out of the chairlift at the very last moment. A holiday love from the books. I didn’t want Luc to come home again, that would disrupt the dynamics of the office outing. I did spend one night in his apartment in the village a little further. On the last night of our vacation, my colleagues invited him to dinner. That night I said goodbye to him crying. Not because I would miss him, but because of the realization of what I was returning to.

Luc continued to text. He missed me, he said. Wanted to buy me a ticket to come to him and invited me to Paris weekend. But I was not in love. Luc was proof to me of my bad marriage. A wonderful memory, but also a confirmation of what I had to do.

Space

Last summer Sjoerd and I went to live separately. Me with the children in our house, he is temporarily sublet in a flat a bit further down the road. We told the children that mom and dad need some space for themselves. That’s the truth: we don’t want a divorce yet. We follow relationship counseling and investigate whether there is still a basis for our marriage.

I told Sjoerd about my affair when I got home. “I deserved it,” he responded resignedly. I don’t think so; by deliberately giving him a taste of his own medicine, I have only widened the gap between us. I lost my respect for Sjoerd when he appeared to be cheating on a structural basis, but in fact I am no better. I don’t know if this can ever work out again. I will be skiing again soon. In Austria, this time. With Anton aus Tirol, the nights stay a lot quieter for me. ”

This article has previously appeared in Kek Mama.

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