'I went on holiday with someone else's fiancé. It ended with him crying on my lap like a baby.'

When I was 18, I met a mysterious man. I'd just started a restaurant job and was being initiated into the world of high-end hospitality, which, to me, felt like stepping into a whole new universe. Everyone was older, charismatic, worldly, and seemed to have an impeccable taste in food and wine. I was dazzled by all of it.

I was especially dazzled by him. He was more than 10 years older and managed the restaurant next door. A total charmer. All the women loved him. He looked like the men I used to see in my mum's Country Road catalogues: rugged in that salt of the earth way, tall and willow-y like a fashion model, smelling of smoky cologne, always with a gin and tonic in hand.

His face looked weathered despite only being in his early thirties, and his hair was this perfect mix of grease and yesterday's styling product that somehow made him look artfully undone. I had such a crush on him. Everyone did.

He was also the first person I ever got drunk with. One night after work, he invited me out the back for a bottle of Riesling. He said I'd been doing a really good job and that everyone had noticed. Said it was about time I tried some "nice wine."

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We chatted about our busy nights. I told him how much I was loving the job and all the people I was meeting. He told me how many mums had hit on him that evening. He rolled his eyes and self-deprecated his way straight into my youthful heart. The banter was great. And even though I was right at the cusp of adulthood, I could feel the flirty energy between us. I knew exactly what it was.

And I played into it as much as I dared. I was just starting to realise that my sexuality held some kind of power — that it could turn the temperature in a room, shift dynamics, work in my favour. After everything I'd been fed up until that point, I was keen to understand how far that power stretched.

But I didn't quite plan for what happened next.

'He'd chosen me.'

A few months later, I found myself in his car, driving to the countryside for a weekend away. We'd been flirting on and off for weeks, during shifts, after work, anywhere we could sneak a moment. He'd tell the women who hit on him that I was his girlfriend. "Sorry ladies, I'm in love with her!" he'd say, gesturing toward me with his hands full of plates and glasses. I'd flush from the inside out. He'd chosen me, I used to think. Out of all the women throwing themselves at him, he'd chosen me.

Nothing explicitly sexual had happened between us, but there was enough to keep the tension alive. We'd been drunk together a few times and ended up sleeping in the same bed. He'd stroke my knee under the table at after-work drinks. We'd share those slightly-too-long hugs. One night, I sat on his lap.

After that, my boss told me he had a fiancée.

"What?" I practically yelped. "He's never told me that."

"That's because they're wildly unhappy," she said. "Just… be careful."

'I didn't want to break the fantasy.'

For some reason, I didn't confront him about it the next time I saw him. Maybe I didn't want to break the fantasy. Maybe I believed it explained why nothing physical had happened, and that he'd tell me the truth when the moment was right. I was eighteen, hopeful, and very willing to fill in the blanks with whatever suited me.

He convinced me to go to the country with him on a whim. He said he'd had plans with someone else, but they'd fallen through, and he didn't want to waste the accommodation. "It's about time we spent some time alone," he said with a wicked grin. Part of me hesitated — had he been lying to me this whole time? Was I about to walk into something messy? Would I end up looking like the naive teenage girl I secretly feared I was? But the bigger part of me felt thrilled. Chosen. Adventurous. I said yes.

As we drove, my nerves kicked in. It was the first time I'd been truly alone with an older man I actually liked. I had butterflies. I'd never had penetrative sex before. I wondered if he'd end up being my first, or whether I even wanted him to be — especially now that I wasn't entirely sure he was available.

But I'd be lying if I said that wasn't part of the thrill. Even though he'd never mentioned a fiancée and everything was still technically unverified, it felt like we were doing something naughty. And I liked that feeling. I also liked the feeling of being the chosen one, even in a situation like this — messy, questionable, taboo. That's abandonment trauma for you. And being eighteen. And being in way, way over your head.

When we arrived at the Airbnb, it felt… romantic. A beautiful country house with timber everywhere, a soft fluffy rug by the fireplace, a view that spilled down into rolling hills and wine country. We'd picked up groceries on the way, so we made a cheeseboard, opened some wine, and he started the fire. It was cosy. A strange setting for an 18-year-old girl to be in with a man many years older than her who may or may not have a fiancée.

And then he started talking.

'It was a confusing position to be in.'

That night, after many wines, he completely opened up. He told me about his fiancée, about how long they'd been together, and how trying for a baby had destroyed them. At one point, he even teared up. "I feel the best when I'm with you," he said. "You cheer me up. You make me feel like my old self again."

He told me she'd become mean. That sometimes she hit him. That they screamed at each other. That he was scared of her. I didn't understand what to do with any of this information. I couldn't comprehend the complexity of their relationship or how heavy that situation must have been for either of them. I just felt sad for him. No one deserves to be hit, I thought. I'd always sensed a sort of melancholy about him, and now I had the story that explained it. I gave him a hug, and we drank more wine.

As the night went on, the confession deepened. He told me she'd just found out she was pregnant. She'd told him a few days earlier — the same day he'd finally found the courage to break up with her. He said it felt like she was using the pregnancy to make him stay, even though they were both miserable. He told me he wanted a child, that he was actually happy about it, but he didn't want to bring a baby into a relationship so toxic it had become unbearable.

He cried again, and suddenly I had his head in my lap, cradling him like a child. It was a confusing position to be in, to be deeply attracted to someone you're also comforting. To be giving advice to a man who was drowning in adult problems I couldn't comprehend. He was looking to me for wisdom, reassurance… and I had none of those things. I barely knew what heartbreak felt like.

And yet, I liked being this person for him. I liked being the escape. I liked being chosen, especially at a time when choosing me seemed wildly inconvenient. Men were meant to be stoic, unemotional, impossible to crack open. This version — vulnerable, sad, soft — made me feel powerful. Desired. Needed. It was intoxicating.

'He was like so many men.'

Now that I'm older and have had a lot more sex, relationships, and therapy, I see it very differently. He wasn't unique. He was like so many men who don't know how to open up to anyone except their mothers and the women they sleep with. He fell into the arms of a younger woman because he didn't know how to face his reality or unpack his emotions. And, yes, it was cowardly. How could an 18-year-old possibly hold a man of that age, and in that kind of crisis?

And I see myself differently too. Back then, it all felt sexy, thrilling, grown-up. I felt like I had so much love to give. I liked being a distraction. I liked being desired by someone I shouldn't have been desired by. He was the first taken man I got involved with, and he was not the last. It took me a long time to understand why that dynamic appealed to me — abandonment trauma, sexual power I didn't yet understand, and a sheltered upbringing that left me genuinely shocked that men cheated at all.

But that weekend? It was surprisingly wholesome. We didn't have sex. He never tried. I think I would've said yes if he had. Instead, we drank wine, went on long walks, visited restaurants, and he continued to pour his heart out onto my lap, night after night. On the second day, we invited a few colleagues up for a dinner party. They were definitely suspicious, but no one asked any questions.

A few days after we got back, he walked into work covered in bruises. He gave me this sad, droopy, puppy-dog look and I knew instantly that she'd found out. Whether she'd discovered our weekend away, or just sensed him slipping, I'll never know. But the timing said enough.

After the shift, he pulled me aside.

"I can't hang out with you one-on-one for a while," he said, sounding genuinely cut. "I need to work some things out. I honestly have no idea what I'm going to do."

'I felt relieved.'

And truth be told, I felt relieved. His life seemed too big, chaotic and dangerous for me to be orbiting. I didn't want to be in the middle of something that involved violence, pregnancy, or whatever emotional explosion was clearly happening in their house. I also noticed that I wasn't as attracted to him anymore — something I picked up on immediately but couldn't explain at the time.

Now I know why. I'd sensed that he needed something from me that I wasn't equipped to give. I'd sensed that he wasn't strong enough to face his own decisions. And deep down, that wasn't sexy to me. It didn't feel powerful anymore. It felt heavy.

But we didn't cut ties. We worked together for a year after that. He'd still call me at 1am, mid-crisis, whispering into the phone like I was his lifeline. We still flirted at work. I still had a crush on a version of him, the version I'd built in my head, the version he portrayed on the surface.

It took me years to understand why I chased that dynamic. Wanting to be chosen — even briefly, even by the wrong person at the wrong time — can feel intoxicating when you're young and trying to figure out your own worth. It can feel like power. It can feel like love. But it isn't. It's just the easiest, quickest kind of attention to receive: the kind that finds you when someone else's life is falling apart.

These days, when I look back on that version of myself — sitting in a countryside Airbnb, stroking the hair of a man who should've been in therapy instead of in my lap — I don't feel ashamed or embarrassed. I feel protective. I see a girl who didn't know yet that she didn't need to be anyone's escape hatch. I see a girl who thought being chosen was the same thing as being valued.

It's not.

*The author of this story is known to Mamamia but has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy.

Feature Image: Getty. (Stock image for illustrative purposes).