4 years ago I started working at my family´s business and met one of the waitresses, Anna. Anna´s life hasn’t been easy. She grew up poor, the 6th of 9 siblings. Her dad insisted she wasn’t his so he made a huge difference between her and the other children. She had to start working picking vegetables when she was 7, she dropped out in middle school bc her brothers said that she didn’t need schooling since she was a girl and would get married and supported by her future husband and then she was kicked out at 15 when she got pregnant, product of rape. So yeah, kind of a hard life.

I´ve never seen Anna in a bad mood. She is always smiling, talking to everyone. She is extremely hard working and loyal and we became close – not like best friends but we would talk about personal stuff. She used to talk a lot about a friend of her, Daniel. Daniel was a married guy 10 years older than her and she insisted they were just friends. One day she asked me what did I thought about dating married guys. I told her that it isn’t something I would do but to each their own. She then confessed to me that she and Daniel have been in a relationship for 4 years. It was the typical cheating guy scenario: His wife was a bitch, she just wanted her money, their daughter was sick so he couldn’t leave, like textbook cheating guy. I told anna that she just needed to be aware that he wasn’t going to leave his wife and that if she was ok with it then keep on going but if she wanted something more he wasn’t the guy for her. However, she was deeply in love with this guy.

I met Daniel bc he is a contractor and I needed some work done in my house. He wasn’t anything like what I was expecting. He was very cool and when making small talk he mentioned that he was very in love with Anna but that his family was one of those “married for life” type of families and he didn’t want to hurt his parents (they are in his 80s) nor his daughter.

Daniel usually works outside the city we live in and only comes during the weekends and would only see Anna one day a week. She told me that when they saw each other, he was her king. She would do anything for him, cook for him and have sex all day. She never asked about his family, she focused on him having a relaxing day for him a week. When she talked about him it was as if she was talking about Brad Pitt. Even her voice would sound sweeter than usual. One day I asked her why she did all of that for him if he wouldn’t be official with her and she told me that it was because she loved him so much that she wanted him to feel special, at least if it was only once a week.

Last year she started feeling like she needed a serious relationship and she knew she could never have it with him. She broke up with him and a couple weeks later a costumer of the restaurant asked her out (rich and handsome Canadian guy, I must say). He was head over heels for her and she seemed happy with him too. However, Daniel found out and went insane. He would call me to ask for her, he would go to my house and leave gifts for her because she wasn’t answering his calls. One day he showed up at my house and I had a chat with him. He told me that the issues with his wife were true, that they didn’t love each other anymore but that his greatest fear was hurting his parents and his daughter. He told me how his wife said that she couldn’t stand him anymore but that she would never be a divorced woman. I told him that if he truly loved Anna that he would let her be happy with someone else and that if he planned on leaving his wife he had to do it for him and take time to heal from their divorce, not jumping from one house to another.

Two months later Anna´s boyfriend went to Canada for a while and Daniel called her and told her that he was already living on his own. He had left his wife and had his own apartment. They met for coffee and he told her that he should have done it earlier, that he wanted to be with her. Anna broke up with the Canadian and Daniel moved in with her a couple months later.

You have no idea how happy they are now. Talking to him he told me that no one has ever made him feel like she does. She even goes to work with him and learned how to cut tiles and stuff and helps him out. She makes herself hats made with newspaper to make him laugh while they work. His wife never even asked him about work, he would get home and she would complain about everything. Anna quit her job with us last month. Daniel got a contract to build several homes in another city and she is going to be working with him full time.

Their story made me think a lot about how people behave in relationships. I´ve been the selfish complaining partner instead of being the one my partner wants to go home to relax. I understood that love is about making the other person feel special, not about how they make you feel. I know most of their behaviors aren’t RP, but I think that some of them are. I think this is a perfect example of the shrew wife/easy going mistress. Guys don’t necessarily cheat because they are horny, they also cheat because they don’t feel welcome at their own home. I don’t know if Daniel talked to his wife or tried anything to fix their relationship before cheating on her, but his story made me understand how a relationship needs to be worked on every single day. How is it to put on an effort to make your man feel like he matters. For my next relationship, i want to be an Anna.