If you’ve ever been the result of an unconventional relationship then consider yourself lucky – most of us have have fallen prey to disaster.

Now, the 60-year-old wife Mary met Peter McTaggart when he accidentally sent a text was sent to her number.

When she received several messages from the wrong number, Mary responded saying they made a mistake. However, Peter apologized and the pair stayed in touch, the exchanges between them becoming more intimate as the pair confided about their ailing marriages.

Eventually Peter made the travel less awkward by travelling down from his Bolton home to stay with Mary and her husband at the time in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, something that was even bizarre for her and his family.

Peter’s wife found out about the budding relationship, which came at the same time as Mary’s split from her husband, which the couple realised the new relationship couldn’t be stopped by serendipity.

Mary said, “It was fate that brought us together. When I first received Peter’s messages, I just ignored them – I had no idea who they were from.”

She added, “I was receiving messages in the early hours of the morning because Peter worked at a similar time to me and thought he was texting his wife. Then one day I had the courage to say, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you are,’ and he apologised. But we kept in touch on and off about our days after realising we both worked similar hours.”

She explained, “We chatted about what was going on in our lives and eventually got round to talking about our relationships at the time. It turned out Peter was having the same problems in his relationship too and we used each other as a backbone really.”

Peter brought in his side of the story by saying, “I’d just bought a new phone so was saving my ex-wife’s number but must have typed in the wrong digit. There was one number different between my wife at the time and Mary’s numbers. I’d sent a few messages and Mary eventually messaged back explaining I’d got the wrong number.”

He added, “She explained who she was but I didn’t mention it to my wife because we were going through a bad patch. From the same day we started talking to each other. It was a case of messaging back and forth then. Eventually, my wife found out about Mary but I was still keeping in touch and ringing her. She didn’t like that – you can understand why. One day it just got too much and I left. I had to find somewhere to live.”

So he finally did it and he moved up to Newcastle to be near Mary where romance blossomed after a Blackpool trip. Finally after 13 years together in 2017, the pair married and put their success down to a shared sense of humour and similar experiences, as well as a decent bit of luck.

To all couples trying to get it right, really weigh the consequences before you go with the shiny new option.