They lie to you from the very beginning about love. You know in fairytales, they end with the cliche 'and they lived happily ever after'. For one, there is no after. Love fades, it fades until one day it dies and snaps you out of your trance. They make you live in the hope that one day you will find the so called 'true love'; hope itself is a piece of infinity. So you end up waiting you're whole life, hoping for the lie to come true. Love is nothing but a sudden injection of thrill, sometimes it takes little time, sometimes a while, but it will definitely wear off.

You must be wondering why I'm hammering on about love fading away, you must think I'm wrong. It all came to me when Anna, my five year old daughter, asked me, "Mummy! Do you love daddy?" As any 'happily married' parent would, I assured my wild eyed daughter that I did love her daddy, very very much. It wasn't a lie, I did love her father. He was a good friend: he's kind, supportive, smart, handsome. His job financed the family's needs, he was stable and rarely we got into arguments. The problem was, I loved him to the maximum extend I could love a friend, nothing more.

Late at night lying beside him, I couldn't help but feel that something was missing. An ache in my heart that I was no longer young and naïve about true love. A pang of sadness that I no longer felt the same thrill kissing my husband that I once did. I'd thought about leaving, more than once but when I brought this to my mother's attention, she smiled kindly and said "When I got married to your father, we were deeply in love. We didn't want to be apart so we decided to get married. Then you came along and we were more in love than ever, or so we thought. I took me a while to realise that love gets you married, then children become the reason for you to stay together."

I cried into my pillow that night, my tears muffled by the cotton stuffing inside. Rory snored loudly and squirmed around before falling silent once again. It was painful, realising that mother was right, for me at least. My parents were a perfect wedded couple, a role model for my life yet that shattered in front of me. I felt so lost, imprisoned. I didn't want to end up forever silent in a suffocated marriage. I wanted to breath again, live my life one more time. Just live a life where I'm not expected to pretend I'm still in love: Every. Single. Day. Maybe surrender to infatuation, the thing they call love in movies and books that makes you go weak in the knees and spark electric shocks and whatnot. No, live a life free of any complications. I hate love.

Only one problem. I am a married woman at the age of 30 (next month), with a five-year-old daughter, living under a high status family name. How could I be free without endangering everything I care about?
They tell you to follow your instincts and so, I decided to risk it.
The following week, at my seventh wedding anniversary party, I announced "Honey, I'm leaving."