What the Japan-Netherlands Summit Taught Me About Calling My Lover

I was scrolling through the news one morning, half-awake, coffee not doing its job, when I stumbled across this headline: Japan-Netherlands Summit Telephone Meeting | Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.

Must be nice.

Here are two countries an ocean and eleven time zones apart, and they just pick up the phone. There's a press release. There are talking points. There's probably a translator on standby and a whole diplomatic team who scheduled the damn thing three weeks in advance. The Prime Minister of Japan rings up the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, they chat about semiconductor supply chains or Ukraine or whatever, and afterward someone writes it all up for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Official. Documented. Published for the world to see.

Meanwhile, I couldn't call my lover without hiding in my car in a grocery store parking lot like a fugitive.

That's the gap between diplomacy and adultery, honey. And it's wider than the Pacific.

Here's what kills me about that summit call: they made it official. They announced it. "Yes, we spoke. Here is what we discussed." I'm over here deleting texts like I'm covering up a murder. My lover and I went six weeks without hearing each other's voices — I wrote about our eventual FaceTime in an earlier post — because there is no Ministry of Adultery Foreign Affairs to coordinate our communications. No press secretaries, no scheduled windows, no translators.

Just a lot of praying your spouse doesn't grab your phone to Google a pizza place.

This is where most people having affairs completely fall apart, by the way. The physical side? People work that out. It's the communication that becomes a rolling disaster.

You want the holy shit moment? Here it is: most people having an affair have never once had an actual phone conversation with the person they're sleeping with. Not one. Not a real call. Because you can't explain that number on your phone bill. You can't explain why you're whispering in the bathroom at 10pm with the fan running. You can't explain why you flinch every time your phone lights up at dinner. So you text instead. You use WhatsApp. You make doe eyes at each other over Signal while sitting three feet from your spouse watching the news. And then you wonder why you feel disconnected.

The leaders of Japan and the Netherlands had a better, safer, more documented communication channel with each other than most affair partners do. Let that sink in for a second.

So what do you actually do about it?

Get a second phone. Not a Google Voice number that shows up on your home WiFi router logs. An actual cheap prepaid phone that lives in your car, your gym bag, or your office desk drawer. Somewhere it will never be casually picked up by anyone. This isn't paranoia. This is minimum viable adultery infrastructure.

Establish windows. The Japanese and Dutch diplomatic teams didn't wing that call — they scheduled it. You need to do the same. My lover and I have an unspoken understanding about when we check in: briefly in the morning, once during the day, and after the dinner chaos dies down. Not constantly. Not needy. Just consistent. Like diplomats who know each other's time zones and respect them.

Agree on what radio silence means before it happens. Because it will happen. Life intervenes. Your spouse grabs your phone, or the kids won't go to sleep, or you're stuck at a work dinner until nine. If your AP doesn't know that silence isn't abandonment, they'll spiral. And a spiraling affair partner is how perfectly good affairs end badly and messily. The rubber band snaps.

Say some things out loud. Text is fine for logistics, but "I miss you" hits completely differently when you actually hear it spoken. Find a window, find a quiet parking lot, find five minutes alone and use your actual voice. It matters more than you think, and you won't know how much you needed it until the call ends and you're sitting there in your car in the dark, a little stunned.

The Japan-Netherlands summit had an agenda, interpreters, and a press secretary.

You've got a burner phone and a locked bathroom. Work with what you have, but work smart.

They published their conversation notes on the internet.

Make sure yours never see the light of day.