Firstly, take a deep breath, have a cold shower, perhaps have a beer and try to relax a bit. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to act rashly during a time when you need to acti rationally.
Secondly, realize that extra-marital activity happens all the time. I'm neither advocating it nor condemning it, just stating the obvious. It happens, it always has happened and always will happen.
Now then, once you've calmed down, you need to assess the damage that has been done. As I see it, there are two primary risk factors:
- Your wife may find out;
- Your young lover may make demands unsustainable for you within the framework of your marriage.
Let's first deal with the first risk factor, as it seems a more immediate danger at this time. Let us assess the ways your wife may find out:
- The other people who may have seen something could inform her;
- Your young lover could, intentionally or not, spill the beans;
- You could unwittingly incriminate yourself.
The most immediate danger is that others witnessed what happened. It sounds as though you have done the wise thing and denied everything. You are still, however, at risk. One or more of the possible witnesses might not believe you. Worse still, they could talk, or tell others. You may need to approach some of them pre-emptively and provide an explanation of some sort which recognizes that something which appeared improper may have occurred and provides a plausible explanation of why it was a mere appearance rather than an occurrence.
Next, you need to have a serious talk with your young lover about the incident. You need to be very honest with her about your feelings, both for her and for your wife. If you see no possibility of leaving your wife over her, then you need to tell her up front (with sensitivity of course). She can either accept that or reject it. The important thing is to place your cards upon the table so that she knows precisely what she is getting herself into (trust me, if you mislead her now, you will wind up in a world of hurt later). A drunken fling can usually be accepted as such; toying with her emotions later, however, would be unforgivable.
Lastly, you need to act cool about the house. If you feel guilty, find a friend to talk to about it. Get it off your chest outside of the home. Wives tend to be quite intuitive. If you mope guiltily about the house, your wife will know that something is amiss. You are asking for trouble if she gets to the stage of asking you about it, because she won't stop asking until she is satisfied that she has gotten whatever is bothering you out of you.
Once you have dealt with these initial risk factors, you need to decide how you wish to proceed. It sounds as though you wish to have your cake and eat it too. Many try to do this; some fail, whilst others succeed. The key to success is knowing what you want and accepting the steps you will have to take to make it work. Therefore, you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you willing to regularly engage in deceit and lie to your wife?
- Are you willing to accept the risk of having a mistress that may eventually want to be the primary girl/woman in your life?
- Do you love your mistress? If yes, do you think you can love two people at once?
If you can honestly answer 'yes' to these questions, then you need to teach yourself to lie convincingly and begin to pay fastidious attention to detail to make sure that no evidence comes home with you (showering before returning home, telling your mistress to hold off on the perfume, brushing your clothes and car to get rid of your mistresses hair, making sure your stories add up). It is hard work.
Now, the last risk factor, and the big one over the longer term is the mistress herself. Like I have already mentioned, you need to be up front with her as to what she can expect from the relationship. But even if you do this, you run the risk that she will later grow to love you more deeply and/or expect more from you than she was willing to accept at an earlier stage (and mistresses with an agenda have an uncanny way of 'planting' or 'leaving' evidence or 'accidentally' letting it slip out) . Ask yourself the following questions about her:
- Can she be trusted to be discreet?
- What are her motives in the relationship? Does she 'just want to have fun', or is she looking for a long-term relationship?
- If you have any reason to suspect that she may want more than just an 'affair', is she worth risking your marriage over?
If you still want to do it after this, then good luck!