We were returning from the vet’s clinic with a load of horses on a hot summer day, the sun beaming into the trailer, adding a glow to our already beaming eyes.
I recall it being an exceptionally fun trip. We were laughing, cutting up and sharing our deepest thoughts. Mav and I, 28 at the time, had become fast friends, having only met a year prior when he rented one of my barns.
It was effortless. He may have been 30 years older but we were two of a kind in so many ways: both from small country towns, with a love for hard work, an unceasing desire to win and a will to be reckoned with.
There was something different about Mav. He was strong, steady and confident but not arrogant, at least not toward me. I felt so alive and at peace in his presence, so safe physically and emotionally, it was a perplexing yet welcome feeling.
I was already having the time of my life when I felt his hand on my shoulder, gently tugging me to turn back toward him in the horse trailer just before I unlatched the gate to unload the next groggy horse.
My back was to the wall, my mind and heart racing as he stepped toward me while my husband made laps on the mower just a couple of hundred feet away.
‘We can’t do this. You’re married, I’m married,’ I whispered as we embraced, fully clothed. It lasted just a few seconds, but it was electric.
We finished unloading the horses when he said: ‘It was fun. If that’s all that happens, it’s okay. Just think about it.’
Barr was in a four-year affair with Mav, which started when both of them were married
He may have been 30 years older but we were two of a kind in so many ways: both from small country towns, with a love for hard work, an unceasing desire to win and a will to be reckoned with (stock image)
What was there to think about? More than I knew at the time.
I was raised right as a small-town girl with a deep faith in God. Born on a farm, we always had a horse or two, but I preferred raising cattle, perhaps only because I hadn’t figured out how to turn a dime with horses.
The world was black and white from my young, sheltered perspective growing up, but now all I could see was grey. It was a cliche, but how could something wrong feel so right?
After losing some dear friends and my entire church family a couple of years prior to meeting Mav, I was numb toward God. Mav showed up right on time to fill a void I didn’t even know I had.
I felt a sense of belonging, was wanted, cared for and valued in a way I had never experienced.
My marriage was already on a slow and steady decline; our couples counselor had told us: ‘You two make great roommates.’
It was true. But being roommates wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said ‘I do.’
I filed for divorce two years after I met Mav, one year after our affair began. Not for him, but because of him.
In contrast to my husband, Mav made me feel alive in a way I had never known.
We did life together as neighbors, friends and work associates – all in the light of day. But behind closed doors, I was his secret mistress.
We were constantly chasing a high, looking for every opportunity to exchange a look, flirtatious grin, sarcastic remark or even make physical contact.
We’d be sitting at dinner with a group of people and all he had to do is tap his cowboy boot against mine to light a fire that on most of those nights he couldn’t put out.
Contrary to society’s belief about the other woman, I didn’t get around. I’ve only been intimate with two men in my life, including Mav.
Nor did we plan illicit meet-ups at risque hotels. We didn’t need to.
Since we were working together every day, we would just squeeze in a little action before we loaded hay in old barns, time a haul so we’d land at the same hotel, and create every opportunity we could, wherever we could.
I’ll never forget he was returning to the farm solo after over a week away. It was one of very few times we’d actually made plans to go to dinner. I was already cleaned up and had just pulled in at the farm to knock out the chores before he arrived when he pulled in moments later.
There was something different about Mav. He was strong, steady and confident but not arrogant (stock image)
I filed for divorce two years after I met Mav, one year after our affair began . Not for him, but because of him
I could see the excitement in his eyes. He grabbed my hand, hurried me into his living quarters, closed the door behind us, and kissed me like I had never been kissed before. He said he had thought about it the whole way there.
We were good at keeping our relationship under wraps, and I was good about being his secret. But about two years into the affair, it started taking a mental, emotional and physical toll.
The trigger could be something as simple as a brief response from him indicating he had company and couldn’t talk openly with me.
Or it could be as gut-wrenching as having an evening planned only to receive a text from him: ‘Guess who just showed up’ – which meant our plans were cancelled until further notice.
He would say: ‘We have to take the good with the bad.’ And being negated, ditched, or rejected once every now and then would be one thing. But it happened almost daily – so much so, I began to question my entire existence.
There was no desirable solution. I didn’t want to lose the man who held my whole world in his hands any more than I wanted to be a secret for the rest of my life.
I went searching for someone to relate to and draw inspiration from. I was desperate to know how someone else had managed to break free from the toxicity of the relationship and didn’t just survive but learned to thrive again.
I came up short. I could not find anything from the mistress’s point of view. Rather, she was the villain in everyone else’s story.
Rightfully so, but it didn’t help me in my search for answers.
Our affair continued. I didn’t want to let go any more than he wanted to.
He made it clear he wanted to be with me, but he didn’t want to risk losing everything he had worked for. He feared losing his kids and grandkids if he left his wife, and I completely understood.
Logic would say: ‘Y’all are adults – it’s not going to work, just let go.’
But if only it was that simple. The depth of our enmeshment was beyond anything I’d ever known. Our mental, emotional, and physical lives were entangled in every way possible.
My heart said letting go would kill us, figuratively and perhaps even literally.
At the same time I realized that he could still live his life and love me without anything changing.
But for me to love him, my life stood still. I had work and the loneliness of my own home.
Barr sought out resources for ‘the other woman’ but couldn’t find anything, prompting her to write a bombshell, tell-all book about her experience
And that’s the truth about being a mistress nobody tells you: when you’re the secret you can’t exist in exclusive photos, only group ones. You can’t be acknowledged in public for who you really are to him. You can’t fully live in their world or celebrate milestones. You are number two. The person keeping you as a secret is choosing their comfort over your humanity.
Being a secret means you can’t fully show up anywhere. You’re always performing, always monitoring, one wrong word away from your whole world exploding.
Four years into my affair, I was sitting at a business conference with 1,200 women when the speaker stopped her presentation and said: ‘Someone in this room right now needs to hear me say, “Don’t have secrets.”‘
You could have heard a pin drop. I slowly raised my head, feeling like every pair of eyes in the room was focused on me, only to discover none. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I heard God through that speaker and felt the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I didn’t want this love affair to be over, but it had to be.
I found a counselor as soon as I returned from that conference, and that laid the groundwork for my healing journey. She instilled in me that I was too wonderful to be anyone’s secret and that the only way beyond the grief of everything I’d lost was through it.
The healing was hard – harder than being a secret. But it was the only option that offered me a future.
My hope and prayer is that my book, More Than a Secret, will be the resource I couldn’t find when I needed it most for the woman I used to be.
Whether you are feeling the temptation right now or are enmeshed in the toxicity of an extramarital affair, know that it is only fun until it’s not. Take it from someone who has been there.
You were created to be fully seen and fully loved. You deserve someone that makes you his first call. Don’t settle for secrecy as the price of being loved.
More Than a Secret: How a Mistress Broke Free from Her Affair by Alicia Barr is published by Resolve Editions.
