Sitting in the kitchen of our oldest friends’ house – somewhere we could talk away from the children – I watched, detached, as my husband Andrew tried to defend his affair.
‘It was just sex,’ he said. ‘It didn’t mean anything. I know how you must feel, but please believe me when I say that.’
Andrew, a chartered surveyor, was trying to sound calm. Logical even. As if him sleeping with another woman were a mere marital blip.
I remember looking at him and thinking that he didn’t grasp how deeply his betrayal had wounded me.
And so a few seconds later I gave him a horrible taste of his own medicine.
‘I’m glad you see it that way,’ I said. ‘Because I’ve slept with someone too. And that was also just sex.’
The colour drained from Andrew’s face, before I saw him cycle through shock, devastation, disbelief, then anger.
All the feelings, in fact, that I had experienced a month earlier, on discovering his infidelity.
I have had at least one affair for each of the four decades Andrew and I have been together, all for different reasons that reflect the different stages of life I’ve found myself in, from motherhood to menopause
Seeing him suffer too felt both empowering and satisfying.
Aged 28, we’d been together seven years, having met at a mutual friend’s party. Our twins, Sam and Emily, were only two years old.
But while it would be Andrew’s first and last affair, it wouldn’t be my only extra-marital fling.
In fact, I have had at least one affair for each of the four decades we’ve been together, all for different reasons that reflect the different stages of life I’ve found myself in, from motherhood to menopause.
As you might have guessed, that first infidelity was revenge.
I’d started to suspect Andrew was cheating when he became increasingly distant and, despite having always had a healthy sex life, he was suddenly never in the mood.
One night while he was in the shower, I went through his pockets.
Hidden in one was a yellow Post-It, scribbled with the words: ‘Last night was perfect. I can still smell you on my sheets.’
I’d started to suspect Andrew was cheating when he became increasingly distant and, despite having always had a healthy sex life, he was suddenly never in the mood
When I confronted him that evening, he didn’t deny it.
She was someone he’d met at a work conference and he said it had been going on for six weeks.
‘But we’ve got two babies together,’ I said through my sobs. He left straight away to stay with a friend.
When word of Andrew’s affair spread among our friends, a male colleague from a school where I’d previously worked – I’m a teacher – got in touch.
Years before, James and I had fancied each other but nothing happened because I got together with Andrew.
Now he swooped in with flattery and flowers.
I poured out my sorrows to him over a bottle of wine, and when he moved to kiss me I thought, why the hell not?
Sex with him – in the marital bed while the children were at my mother’s – gave me a brief respite from the heartache.
I regretted it afterwards, deciding to keep what I’d done to myself.
But hearing Andrew minimising his affair was too much.
‘I’d never have slept with another man if you hadn’t done this to me first,’ I told him.
And it was true. Cheating had never crossed my mind before.
For the next month we barely spoke except about the children. But one evening, after he came to drop something off, he stayed for a cup of tea and we talked into the early hours.
He told me that hearing I’d slept with someone else had made him realise how stupid and selfish he had been.
He was ‘ashamed and so desperately sorry’. Finally, there was some accountability.
In return, I told him I missed him and that I still loved him. When he asked if we could try again, I said we could. But underneath the hurt remained.
There was a sense of imbalance because he’d cheated first. I still felt like a victim, and I hated that.
So when Paul, a divorced dad, began flirting with me at nursery school drop-off about eight months later, I reciprocated.
One morning, he asked if I fancied going back to his for a coffee. I kidded myself that this was something I’d do with a mum friend so said ‘yes’.
But as soon as we got through the door we started kissing, and ended up having sex on the sofa.
We met up a few more times but it was less about attraction and more about tipping the emotional power back to me.
I quickly got bored, so told Paul I needed to focus on my family and ended it. We still saw each other at the nursery, but he never tried to talk to me again.
I moved on, content that both my husband and I had got infidelity out of our systems.
Like most couples, our 30s were a relentless blur of work, after-school clubs, meal plans and homework.
We often felt we were more like a logistics team than a couple and any spare money was swallowed up by school trips, uniforms, a leaking boiler.
Everything was precarious – and I felt taken for granted.
Then, in 2001 when I was 37, my mum got pancreatic cancer and died just six months later.
People thought Andrew was the perfect husband during this time. He ran errands, sorted the kids and did the weekly shop.
But, actually, what I needed was someone just to sit with me in my sadness. And he couldn’t give me that.
Now I wished I’d talked to him about it, but at the time I wanted someone who could spot my needs without me needing to ask.
Then a new teacher called Martin started at school, and he was very easy to talk to.
One night, about two months after Mum died, we sat for an hour in my car after a parents’ evening while I poured it all out and he just listened.
The following Friday, I told Andrew I was going to a staff social. Instead, I arranged to meet Martin for a meal on the other side of town.
We ended up at a hotel and after we had sex I cried, not out of guilt but because it was the first time since Mum got ill that I felt allowed to fall apart.
I really liked Martin. He was calm, clever, really funny – and married. Seven months later he awkwardly told me his wife was pregnant with their second child.
I ended it there and then.
For the first time, I thought of his wife – who previously hadn’t troubled my conscience – and how easily we could have destroyed two families.
A couple of times, I considered confessing to Andrew but thought, what would be the point? We were rebuilding, slowly, and it felt needlessly destructive.
I’d cheated to make myself feel better, not to make him feel bad. I would have to live with the guilt.
After that, I became the best version of myself at home.
I found joy in the everyday: packing lunch boxes, ferrying the kids about, Friday night pizza, the cup of tea Andrew brought me every morning.
Instead of domestic drudgery, it suddenly all felt part of a life I didn’t want to lose.
Compounding this was the appearance of Andrew’s new colleague, Claire. I met her at his work’s summer barbecue and watching them looking so easy in each other’s company set off alarm bells.
‘She’s just a colleague,’ he said, when I asked if there was anything going on. ‘But I get it. I’ll step back. My affair was the worst mistake of my life.
‘And knowing you’d been with someone else nearly destroyed me. You taught me the biggest lesson I’ve ever had. I’d never do that to us again.’
Seeing the remorse on his face, I believed him.
I realised that for a decade I’d been framing him as the adulterer in our relationship, when the truth was that label belonged to me. I felt a deep-seated shame.
That night, I promised myself there would be no more secrets.
For the next decade I was true to my word, always reminding myself of how much Andrew loved me whenever I felt mildly dissatisfied with my marriage. But when I hit my mid-40s there was a shift.
In the throes of the perimenopause, the hot flashes, sleepless nights and weight gain started to get me down.
The kids were at university, starting to make their own way in the world. I wasn’t sure who I was any more.
One day, I looked at my reflection and thought how middle-aged and frumpy I looked.
Even if I wanted an affair, I told myself, no one would have me.
Andrew and I were barely having sex; I wasn’t interested and he rarely initiated it.
Desperate to feel better about myself, I joined a gym and hired a personal trainer to help get me back in shape.
Tom the PT was 24, gorgeous and when he started flirting, I flirted back.
Deep down, I knew he was more interested in his fees than me as a person. But I didn’t care. As my weight dropped and my body toned up, my confidence grew.
Six weeks in he suggested we go for an outdoor training session early one morning in a local park. Alone together, the sexual tension ramped up. There was no one around – we ended up kissing.
It felt wildly exciting, and when he suggested I go to his flat after work, we both knew exactly what for.
In total, we slept together four times when his flatmates were out. I felt absurd – a grown woman sneaking around like a teenager, the ultimate middle-aged cliché.
But I still got a thrill from being desired by a younger man.
Then our friend Marcus got caught cheating.
His wife Joanna was absolutely heartbroken.
And then one afternoon she asked me: ‘How did you ever forgive Andrew?’
She didn’t know about my infidelities and I felt such a hypocrite counselling her, because my behaviour was much worse than my husband’s.
I finished with Tom straight away and cancelled all of my PT sessions.
By the time I was 56, in 2019, I thought I was beyond affairs.
Andrew and I had settled into a quiet, predictable rhythm: Sunday papers, pub lunches, working on the garden together. But then Alex, an old friend from university, got in touch with me through Facebook.
Visiting from his home in Australia, he asked to meet up. Alex turned out to be the greatest threat to my marriage of all. We slept together a couple of times, but the betrayal was more intellectual than lustful.
He made me feel sharp and interesting and funny again. We’d talk for hours, exchanging books and poems we loved.
I would compare all this with having a husband whose idea of conversation was discussing what time the car was going in for its MOT.
It was only when Alex asked me to consider moving to Australia that I came to my senses.
My roots were here. And despite all of my betrayals, I still loved Andrew.
We both retired last year. And today, with both of us at 62, given my history, you might expect that we are miserable together.
In fact, it’s as though we’ve come full circle.
With no children to raise, no job stresses or money pressures, we’ve slipped back to being how we were in the early days. There’s space for ‘us’ again. We hold hands as we walk the dog and have more sex than we ever did in our 40s and 50s.
We talk about books and discuss documentaries we watch together, as well as the things our grown-up children are doing.
I’m so glad we stuck it out. This is the life I want. I don’t want to risk it. This is the reason why I will never tell Andrew the truth about my affairs.
When I’d challenged him about his colleague, Claire, he asked me if I’d ever been tempted to sleep with someone else again.
I remember kissing his cheek and saying: ‘No. Of course not.’
Sometimes I wonder what he would say if he knew. I hope never to find out.
I think that more women have cheated like me than would dare to admit it.
Unlike men, for us it’s about validation, a sense of control or wanting to emotionally escape for a while, rather than just sex.
Men seem to want to get caught. Whereas women just carry the guilt quietly.
In fact, I’d go as far as to say my affairs saved my marriage.
They distracted me at specific times in my life; when I was broken, furious, bored or insecure. They gave me a secret spark that helped me to stay.
Given my past behaviour, people might be sceptical, but I know for a fact I won’t ever cheat again.
I’m finally happy with my marriage, just as it is. If I want the thrill of an affair, I’ve got all the memories I need.
Audrey Phillmore is a pseudonym. All names have been changed.
