Every Thursday I Lied to Him - Part One: The Message That Awakened Me

My name is Hala, I am 34 years old, and I have been married to Samer for eleven years.

The first betrayal did not begin with a kiss…
It began with a photo I sent to a man whose number I should have deleted years ago.

I do not want to wrong Samer. He was not a bad man, but he had stopped seeing me as a woman. He would come home tired, eat in silence, scroll through his phone, then sleep with his back to me.

I would wear my nicest clothes, and he would say:
— “Going somewhere?”

He never once said: “How beautiful.”

And with time, I stopped trying.

On a Thursday evening, Karim’s name appeared on my phone screen. He was an old university colleague, the only man who had once made me feel that my entering any place changed the entire atmosphere.

He wrote:

“Crossed my mind today… Still take your coffee without sugar?”

I read the message more than once. I could have ignored it, but I wrote:

“Some things never change.”

His reply came quickly:

“Have you changed?”

I hesitated, then opened the camera and took a photo of just my face. I was without makeup, with messy hair and my house shirt. I sent it before my mind could stop me.

He kept typing for a full minute, then a single sentence arrived:

“You’ve become more dangerous.”

I felt a strange warmth in my face. He did not say beautiful… he said more dangerous, as if the years had not extinguished me, but had turned me into a woman he knew how to look at.

From that night on, our messages became a secret ritual. We waited until Samer fell asleep, then talked about everything: university, age, regret, and the marriage that quietly turns into a long waiting room.

Karim asked me questions my husband had not asked in years:

“Are you happy?”
“When was the last time someone noticed your eyes?”
“If you could go back in time, would you choose the same life?”

I would dodge the answer, but he knew my silence was the answer.

After three weeks, he wrote:

“I want to see you.”

I felt fear, but fear was not alone. There was curiosity, and a desire to stand in front of a man who looked at me as if I were still capable of unsettling someone’s heart.

I asked him:

“Where?”

He sent the location of a furnished apartment in a quiet neighborhood, then wrote:

“Thursday, nine o’clock. And if you don’t come, I won’t ask again.”

I spent the following days telling myself I would not go.

But on Thursday evening, I told Samer I was going to visit my sick friend. I wore a black dress I had not worn in years, put on the perfume my husband used to love, then covered everything with a long coat.

When I stood in front of the apartment door, my hand was trembling.

Karim opened the door.

He remained silent for moments, studying me in a way that made me forget all the words I had prepared. Then he said in a low voice:

“You were beautiful back then… but now you’ve become the woman one fears to approach and fears even more to leave.”

I entered, and the door closed behind me.

He did not touch me. And that made the moment bolder. He stood close enough for me to hear his breathing, then slowly raised his hand and brushed a strand of hair from my face.

He whispered:

“Tell me to stop… and I’ll stop.”

I looked into his eyes, but I said nothing.

Suddenly, his phone, placed on the table, rang.

Karim looked at the screen and his face changed; he quickly reached out to end the call. But I had already seen the name.

The caller was…

**Samer — my husband.**