My Friends Are Cheating on Their Husbands—But Not Sexually

‘He hasn’t got a clue,’ my friend Marylyn declared gleefully as we settled down to tapas.

The patatas bravas were not the only thing bringing some heat to the table. As the rioja flowed, Marylyn shared more about her eight-month affair with a man called Phil — and the increasingly elaborate methods she used to keep her husband, Sam, in the dark.

‘I tell him I’m going to the gym, then take a shower when I get home. He stopped asking how my day was ages ago.’

‘But don’t you have to change into gym clothes? Wouldn’t he notice that you hadn’t exercised?’ I asked. ‘I keep a pair of trackie bottoms in the car and pull them over whatever I’m wearing. He barely looks up when I walk through the door — he’s usually glued to his phone.’

I couldn’t summon much sympathy for Sam. He had always struck me as an irritable, challenging man. Marylyn often spoke about his erratic moods and his habit of criticising her appearance.

So I had no real concern to pretend on Sam’s behalf. The more interesting question was why Marylyn came to me whenever she needed sympathy.

Because, increasingly, this appears to be my role in life: the friend people choose when they want to confess to an affair.

I’m sociable, I listen well and I’m usually at parties or social events, so perhaps I’m simply accessible when someone needs to talk. But I suspect there is more to it. They believe my own marriage is entirely stable. I have never experienced sexual betrayal myself, which makes me a safe audience — someone who can nod, wince and laugh at the appropriate moments without expecting the conversation to turn to my own life.

There’s Marylyn, Becky, Laura and Rachel — and that is only the group of friends currently having affairs. Others have previously had Other Men in their lives but are now determinedly faithful. I know because I have heard every detail of their long, emotional break-ups.

Face to face, I am unfailingly understanding.

In private, though, I am also studying and judging the women who have allowed these complicated situations to develop.

I never voice those opinions, but I do roll my eyes internally. Occasionally, I wonder whether I would remain their preferred confidante if they knew how frequently I was doing so.

Consider Marylyn, a 53-year-old events manager in the hospitality industry. Nothing she tells me about Phil sounds particularly pleasurable. The sex is unremarkable, while the sheer administration required to conceal the affair sounds tiring and absurd. Sometimes I suspect she is carrying on because her children are seldom around now and she needs something — anything — to arrange and manage.

Just imagine Sam’s face if he ever discovered her current To Do List.

Sam’s only redeeming quality is that he is not a ‘beige’ husband. If he were a colour, he would be puce red. For many of the other women, however, an affair represents an escape from lives that have become painfully predictable.

Their husbands would rather return from work and watch sport than do almost anything else. At parties, they gather in corners to discuss their latest EVs and pension plans. Some vanish into online rabbit holes, emerging with ever stranger opinions about raw milk or the alleged dangers of green vegetables. They do not organise holidays or day trips, leaving their wives to manage all the social arrangements.

I can understand why my friends want to escape that sort of existence, although I do blame them for refusing to be honest about what they really want.

They have already withdrawn emotionally from their marriages but do not have the courage to bring them to an end. The house, shared bank account, his generous pension and the children become reasons to remain. Life is short, yet apparently there is still too much to lose for them to face the future alone.

I sit through endless dissections of the sex too, though sometimes I tune it all out. Becky was only sleeping with her husband Pete on anniversaries and birthdays, and even then it was ‘the most vanilla sex you can possibly imagine’. Rachel hadn’t had sex with her husband for two years. Naturally their new lovers were far more enthusiastic and proficient.

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I wondered if these men had wives at home who were also bored in bed. Is novelty all we’re looking for?

Becky’s chap David was ‘trying out every position in the kama sutra, like he might run out of time’, she giggled. She met him at a Bikram yoga class in Chiswick, west London, and they got talking afterwards.

‘I suspect I’m not the first woman he’s had an affair with,’ she told me. ‘He’s in his early 40s and very good looking, but I don’t care if he’s seeing other women. It’s just fun.’ And yet I know she’ll call me in a few weeks or months’ time to share a bottle of wine and pour out her heart because he’s dumped her.

Laura, 49, works in an art gallery in London’s Chelsea, and has been married for 17 years. She only communicates with her lover Dan on Instagram, then quickly deletes their message history.

She texts him more than she texts her two children, friends and husband Michael combined.

‘When we meet it’s like fireworks. It’s such an amazing connection,’ she tells me.

But is it? Why doesn’t she just leave beige Michael and start again as a single woman, I think to myself. She suspects Dan is playing the field a bit and doesn’t want to settle down. ‘I’m so attracted to his enthusiasm about everything. He’s a journalist and I’d never met a writer before. He’s always interested in everything I say, which is so different to Michael.’

Even so, they’ve only had sex a handful of times since meeting a year ago, usually in a local hotel.

‘It’s the messaging that feels most addictive,’ she told me. ‘Michael doesn’t talk to me about anything meaningful anymore and I don’t know the minutiae of his life like I know Dan’s.’

Sometimes she’s messaging Dan in the passenger seat while Michael drives her to work. ‘At first I set myself a rule not to text Dan when my husband was around. Then after six months I realised I enjoyed doing it with him there. It made things feel more exciting. Is that wrong?’

Well, yes.

‘I guess we’re trapped in a Mexican standoff,’ she once told me of her relationship with Michael. They have stopped communicating their feelings to each other and bicker more than talk.

But she doesn’t think he’d ever have the guts or the chutzpah to have an affair himself.

And yet I happen to know that he did, a few years back. Laura was going through a cancer scare at the time, and of course it wasn’t his finest hour. How do I know? Because the woman he was sleeping with was another friend of ours, and she told me.

None of it is very edifying and almost everyone, it seems to me, is lying to someone else. I admit the details are often juicy and some of the sexual techniques rather eye-opening.

But if my now-extensive knowledge of the midlife woman having an affair has taught me anything, it’s that they’re fooling themselves just as much as their husbands. They think they’re getting back in touch with their feelings when in fact they’re blocking them off.

If you’re unhappy or bored enough in your marriage to have an affair, the honest thing to do is see a divorce lawyer.

But I never say that to them. Sometimes friendships, too, are built on deceit.

Jennifer Haldon is a pseudonym. All names and identifying details have been changed.