I am a woman in her mid-30s in Bengaluru. Married for a decade. Mother of one. A mid-level professional, whom you would normally label as one leading the perfect life.But I am done fitting in with the stereotype of what society demands of women. Be a good wife. Be a great mother. A thorough professional who spends just the right amount of time in office so that you are not accused of compromising on your family life. In the end, you don’t get your due at any of the multiple jobs you do every day but, hey, there’s always Women’s Day, where you can pretend you are super human.I decided to break out of the box life had put me in. I wanted more. At least in my personal life, where I was feeling the most letdown, where I was not an equal opportunity player. I had been reading about Gleeden , a dating app for married people. Like everyone else who has been married for long and swapped the sheen of romance for the disquiet of domesticity, I was terribly curious. And I needed the validation that I still had some chops left in me for intelligent and funny conversations, that I could churn a man’s feelings, that I could be desired.I took the plunge. I created a fake account on Gleeden and logged in. While a lot has been said about modern-day dating apps, where women often accuse men of only wanting to jump into bed with them, one of the first things I realised was that sex was not the only thing on offer. It was just one of the things. Of course, there was the occasional, “What’s your size” kind of message, but most men on the app were feeling dissatisfied or lonely in their marriages. They too were looking for amicable companionship. Sex was a byproduct, if things went beyond the confines of the app.The protocol was simple. A couple of days of talking on the app’s chat room. If we connected and felt that the other was not a freak, we moved to another chat interface, outside the app. This is because a dating app, which invariably has more men than women, can be distracting for a woman user. You are bombarded with messages every mini-second. If a conversation is going well, you want to take it away from all that. I call it, “Going to My Living Room” where messages are exchanged throughout the day, replied to when time permitted. Just easy, breezy flirting, on an anonymous chat window. Mind you, not WhatsApp. That is considered the next level.Then I began to look forward to pillow talk. It is like the exhilarating rush of a first crush. Something that was completely absent in the customary two-minute conversations with my spouse about lunch, what the kid did in school, how we had to finish our pending errands over the weekend and other such exhilarating themes.As I got hooked to the app, over a year, I met a total of eight, whom I call good men, in person, over drinks and dinner. This happened only after our comfort levels with each other had grown. At such meetings at a pub or a restaurant, our conversations veered towards morality, marriage and the mundane. They told me of other women they had met through the app. Housewives, head honchos of corporate houses, entrepreneurs, marathon runners, et al. They were all using Gleeden.As I listened, the reality began to dawn on me. How a couple in a marriage — through years of love, conflict, comfort, raising children and wanting different things from life — begin to stop seeing each other. This, I realised, was normal and happened to everyone. Many refuse to acknowledge it because we are raised to believe in the happily ever after.It was like looking at a mirror of sorts. What the men were complaining of their wives, maybe I was doing the same to my spouse? Maybe he was lonelier in our marriage but had found a different way to cope with it, by drowning himself in work?Eventually, I did get involved with someone, taking it beyond just dinner and drinks. I call him my FILF . Or Friend I Like to F@#$. We try to keep it simple. Be an emotional anchor to each other. Offer sex to each other when we can. But it’s not easy, as human emotions cannot always be transactional.You could argue that I could put all this effort and energy to mend my marriage. But after a decade of being married I know that the fundamental problems between my husband and I will never fade.Instead of fretting over it, I have chosen to accept the imperfectness of it all. In return, I have decided to keep the count of happiness for myself constant. Because that was making me a better spouse, instead of a grouchy one.Am I guilty? No. I have decided to twist my guilt and turn it into kindness and tolerance towards my spouse’s mistakes and general idiocy. I can now laugh at our fights with someone else. And make jokes about my FILF’s with his wife’s.In a society where extramarital affairs are a taboo, I see the generation of Baby Boomers, xennials and millennials like me realising the futility of the forever. It’s more about whatever keeps the peace. Maybe it’s selfish, but what’s the point of feeding conflict and ending in an angry mess? Instead, if I find happiness, without disrupting life, isn’t that the wiser thing to do?For now, I feel like I was saved from drowning in despair. My selfworth and chutzpah are back. My spouse is surprised at the amount of humour I am bringing to the dinner table. I have picked up skills and hobbies with my FILF that are filling my life, instead of plotting the How to Harm the Husband series. That’s my version of happily ever after.