After having an affair with an older woman, my therapist told me I shouldn't have to hide a relationship. It took 29 years for me to see she was right.

• When I questioned my sexuality and began an affair with an older woman, I started going to therapy.
• My therapist told me hiding my love wouldn't make me happy but it took me years to finally accept this.

Have you been to therapy before?" asked Barbara. My new therapist's long bushy black hair had a white skunk stripe starting at her right temple.

"Once. In college." I sat in an indentation on a soft, tan couch. The walls were taupe. A tall plant near the window was a pale green. Barbara's matching tunic and pants were beige. Everything about the room was neutral. Was that intentional?

"And what issue brought you there?" She cracked open a thick notebook and clicked open her pen.

"The question of how to tell whether you're gay."

"Is that why you're here today? Are you still questioning whether you're gay?" Her stare was direct but gentle.

I shook my head. "I've decided I'm bi." After a conversation with my friend, Allison, I'd gone with her to a bi-group meeting. There were a dozen women, ranging in ages from 20 to 50. One was a married mother of two who had fallen in love with a woman.

Another said she was physically attracted to men and emotionally attracted to women. But most, like me, were attracted to both. It had been helpful to hear their stories, and gave me an awareness that life was an endless road of choices that could be changed, and changed again.

I realized I had conflicting feelings about my affair

"Then what brings you here today?" Barbara asked.

Balling one hand inside the other, I rested them in my lap. "I'm secretly seeing a woman with a girlfriend, and she's —" I caught the dates on the framed college degrees on the wall. Barbara was my secret lover, Sarah's age, give or take a year. She might know Sarah. Or Sarah's partner, Linda. I wished I'd gone to a male therapist. Why hadn't I thought of that? But wait, I didn't have to give Sarah's name. "She's older."

"How much older?"

Was Barbara fishing for confirmation? Had Linda bugged the office?

"Does it matter?" I asked.

"No. But it could shed insight."

Insight into what? How messed up I was?

"She's thirty-four years older," I said, expecting Barbara to topple out of her seat and onto the floor. And though her eyes flashed wider for a second, she recovered quickly.

"And how old are you?"

"23. Is that bad? It's bad, right?"

"No." She shook her head. "The difference in age isn't bad. But the affair, well, that's not good."

"I know." I slumped back and stared out the window at the cars driving through Northampton.

"I'll be honest with you: it's a sizable age gap. But that doesn't make it wrong. Tell me." Barbara clicked her pen. "How's your relationship with your mother?"

I'd have to tell Sarah she had been right.

I was tired of having to hide our relationship and meet in parked cars

After our final golf lesson, Sarah and I sat in the near-empty parking lot of Holyoke Community College, watching the sky melt into a red and orange puddle behind the blurred mountain ridge in the distance. We were eating peanut butter crackers, a poor substitute for dinner.

"Did you know the Mount Holyoke Range is the only part of the Metacomet Ridge that runs east to west?" Sarah gestured ahead.

"Uh-huh." I checked my watch.

"Have somewhere to be, Felice?"

"You know I don't like the car thing." Eight months in, and we were still meeting in our cars. I still enjoyed our time together, but the time together I wanted was to be spent doing things, not hiding out in parked cars.

"I don't think of it as a car thing." Sarah took my hand. "But as time spent with you."

Therapy helped me realize my reservations about dating an older woman

"Which is more of a problem for you?" Barbara asked at our second appointment. "The age difference or that she's in another relationship?"

"In another relationship. And her name's Sarah." My uncle Mark had convinced me that if I was making the effort to attend therapy, I might as well be honest.

"So, you're OK with the age difference?"

"It's not ideal, but my issue is more what other people will think." I picked at the cuticle on my left thumbnail.

"And what will they think?" Barbara asked. A tingling appeared in my nostrils, the first indication that tears were forthcoming. "Felice, what will people think if they find out you're dating an older woman?" Her voice gentle, but forceful. I needed pushing. She knew that. A tear dripped onto my cheek. "It's OK. You can tell me."

I stared at my inflamed thumb. "That there's something wrong with me." I truly thought there was. I'd never seen two women together with such a large age difference. As far as I knew, we were the only ones.

"Why would dating an older woman make people think there was something wrong with you?"

"Because it's not right."

"Says who?" Barbara asked.

"I'm not saying it's against the law, but people would question why I'd want to be with someone so much older. Especially my parents. That's why I can't tell anyone. Well, that and because Sarah has a girlfriend."

"OK," Barbara said. "I know you're an athlete, so I want you to imagine that you just won a gold medal in the Olympics. How would you feel?"

Finally, an easy question. "I'd be psyched."

Barbara smiled and nodded. "Good. That's the correct response for such a tremendous accomplishment. But this gold medal comes with a catch. You can't tell anyone you won it." She paused. "Now, would you still feel the same about winning it?"

I swallowed down a lump in my throat, her analogy hitting me like a punch to the solar plexus.

"Felice," she continued. "Love doesn't come easily, which is why when you fall in love you're filled with this immense happiness and your first instinct is to share it with everyone. That's one of the reasons people have weddings. To experience what it feels like to have their love recognized and validated. In your situation, you're having all the normal feelings, but you're forced to hide them. Keeping love a secret is the opposite of what love is about. And until you can love openly, you'll never truly be happy." I heard her words, but I wouldn't understand what she was saying until long after I'd repeated this behavior more times than I'd like to admit.

Excerpted from "Half In: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Forbidden Love" (Dividends Press, September 19, 2022). Reprinted with permission from Dividends Press.