My Secret Sins - A Long Hidden Affair

I've been married for ten years now...to a wonderful woman who loves me deeply. We have two kids together and our life is great on the surface, but underneath there's this dark little secret that I've been hiding from her all these years. It started when I was working night shifts as a nurse in my late twenties. The hospital where I worked had an older doctor...let's call him Dr. Lee. He was forty-five back then and he just had this magnetic pull about him, like he understood me in ways no one else ever did. One night after a particularly grueling shift, we ended up talking for hours outside the ER entrance while I smoked my cigarettes to calm down. As the conversation turned more personal, there was an unspoken chemistry that made both of us uncomfortable but exhilarated at the same time... Dr. Lee suggested we just be friends and keep this moment between us, and as silly as it sounds, those words gave me permission to act on some long-repressed desires. Over the next few weeks, I would occasionally get paged late night for an emergency patient in his care. When that happened, he'd always ask if I wanted a drink before starting work... we talked about everything, our childhoods and dreams, but there was this electric tension between us too. It felt like flirting but also not at all appropriate so it stayed unspoken. Eventually one night after a call, the tension got to be too much for both of us. We ended up in his office talking softly and then...kissing. I remember how hesitant he was but also how needy; we agreed right away that this had to stay secret. That's when it became an affair - sneaking around while at work, finding excuses to see each other just so we could touch one another again. It's been a decade since then...since I finally stopped seeing Dr. Lee. But the guilt and shame of that time still eats away at me daily. My wife trusts me implicitly but she doesn't know - can't ever know - about these months when my loyalty to her was broken. This confession feels like a step towards forgiving myself, letting go of this weight...