"For now, it seems we’re both happier getting our needs met elsewhere, and in that way, our marriage is strong." Photo / Getty Images
"For now, it seems we’re both happier getting our needs met elsewhere, and in that way, our marriage is strong." Photo / Getty Images
I now have a boyfriend I met on a dating site for married people.
The worst part of it all was that she was so ordinary – the woman George* had sat opposite in the restaurant that Tuesday night, the one that had always been our “somewhere nice”. She wasmy age, with the same haircut and the same mum-of-two, Buckinghamshire sense of style.
I’m not bitter enough to claim that she wasn’t even attractive, but truly, you wouldn’t look at her twice in the street. In another life, where George had married someone else, that could have been me, holding his hand and listening to all of his deepest thoughts in a stolen moment of illicit romance. But it wasn’t.
The image of him and her together is etched into my head, but I never actually saw it with my own eyes. George and I had been married for 25 years when I hired a private investigator to follow him on his way to “football with the lads”. I had been going through the laundry, picking out tissues and crisp packets from pockets, when I looked down and realised that I was holding a receipt. It was clearly from a dinner for two, at that nice restaurant on the high street, but it had been some time since we last went out together. I was clever enough to know then that something was going on.
I couldn’t un-see it after that, how George had changed. By that point we weren’t exactly close. It’s not as if we lived separate lives, but the precious emotional bond, the unique thing I’d married him for in the first place, was totally non-existent. We had two kids together, at that time both in secondary school, and our relationship mostly hung around making sure they were fed and happy. The new clothes, the exercise routine he’d managed to stick to for the first time since we turned 40, the moisturiser on the side of the sink, the fact he’d been going to football twice a week rather than once – I’d put it all down to a midlife crisis, both of us being in our 50s, but clearly he had a new lease of life.
I didn’t have the confidence to confront George at that point. Who makes an accusation like that off the back of a receipt and, what, a better-looking husband? More than that, though, I couldn’t bear the thought of bringing it up and being lied to. I knew George well enough to know that he wouldn’t come clean, and the thought of it going on behind my back, as an open secret, was more than I could bear. But I knew I had to do something, and what I thought I needed was more evidence. I confided in a friend, who suggested I try a private investigator. She’d heard about women using them when they suspected similar things.
Plucking up the courage to call a private investigator
I thought that in our quiet Home Counties town, such a person would be hard to find. But there he was on the first Google search, a gruff but friendly-looking guy who I could have passed a hundred times in Sainsbury’s. Plucking up the courage to give him a call was another matter. I’m just a normal person, and it felt like such a stupid, extreme thing to do. But my friend was right that it was far from unusual. Most clients were women who suspected their partners of cheating, the PI told me when I rang. He had an hourly rate of £100 ($220), and a four-hour minimum booking. I set him on the trail one Tuesday, when George was due out for football. It was all very matter of fact.
At first, the PI found absolutely nothing. Just a man on a field with his mates. It was a huge relief. I just parked it, getting on with life, feeling a bit silly but able to let go of my suspicion. But a few weeks later, George said that he was going out for a meal with friends, a birthday night out. Then he mentioned the same lovely restaurant. I felt my stomach drop.
That afternoon, after George left for work, I got back on the phone to the PI. It felt like being in some sort of sad cop drama. The Tuesday night football session soon came around. I gave George a kiss goodbye as the PI I’d hired waited at the end of the street, and while I watched George get into his car, I gave the PI the go-ahead to tail him. I felt like someone had taken over my body, and I was watching myself from a distance. I was embarrassed, and a nervous wreck, and at the same time exhilarated by the idea that I might finally have answers.
When the PI called me from outside of the restaurant, he asked if I wanted him to go in and take photos, but I just wanted him to tell me what he saw. I knew who George had been sleeping with as soon as the PI started describing her. It was a colleague, who I’d met at a Christmas party at the end of 2022. I suspected nothing then, but I’ve no idea how long it had been going on for at that point, whether they were already an item then or still only friends. George had never mentioned her at home.
"I suppose we never knew each other as well as we might have thought." Photo / 123rf
I felt very small, and rejected. Sort of insignificant. I still didn’t have the confidence to confront George, though I had all of the evidence I needed. My thoughts raced when I lay in bed next to him every night. Was it just sex, or were they in love? I didn’t know which would be worse. We hadn’t had sex in months. In that department, things had never been electric, but they tailed off as soon as we got married and really died a death when our oldest was born. When George looked at me after that, I knew he didn’t want me in that way.
My thoughts turned to whether he’d leave us to go off with her – I had no idea whether or not she was married – and how when an affair is found out, it can trickle down and really blow apart all those other relationships, with the in-laws and extended family. I still couldn’t understand his attraction to her. Eventually, the real depth of the anger and the confusion I felt over that made me realise just how little I liked myself. I just couldn’t imagine him wanting to be with someone like me. So I decided to build my self-esteem back up, brick-by-brick. I started going to the gym, spending more time with my friends, and dressing up more for work. Not that George noticed.
I wasn’t really looking for sex. I wanted an emotional connection
I started to feel better, and I would have been happy to confront George if it wasn’t for the fact that, once I’d given up on having a romantic relationship with him, I realised that I quite liked him, and our life together. We’ve always had this amazingly in-sync sense of humour. It was what attracted me to him at the house party we met at all those years ago, as 25-year-olds, the way he’d make fun of me or other people without actually being mean at all. We were instantly partners in crime, and that feeling made us move quickly, getting a flat together and then getting married not long after. Everyone else was doing it, after all.
But I knew that I couldn’t live like that forever. “Aren’t there any guys at the gym you go to?” suggested a friend over a glass of wine, but I’d never been the sort to approach someone. Even when it came to George, I’d had to get one of our mutual friends to set us up on a date. Instead it was back to Google, where this time I looked up dating for married people. I came across a site called Illicit Encounters. Making a profile was nerve-racking, but it was empowering, too – I was still a fun, smart, sexy person, with lots to fill the space, I realised. Clearly other people agreed. I got plenty of attention.
It all sounds quite scandalous, but I wasn’t really looking for sex. I wanted an emotional connection, just being able to speak to someone and have them care about what you say. That’s what the men I met all said too, and they were all surprisingly normal. I went on six or seven coffee dates before I met Ben*, in November, and everything changed. I felt like I had known him for years. He grabbed my hand as we walked out of the cafe. It was that kind of closeness that I had really missed. Ben is in a similar situation to me, he’s not ready to end his marriage, at least not yet, but he’s my boyfriend now, so to speak, and he really brings a lot of calm into my life. He’s always checking in to see how I’m feeling, something George never really did.
We’re both happier getting our needs met elsewhere
I don’t see my relationship with Ben as a “revenge affair”. Don’t get me wrong, the sex is good, but it’s only because of how much we care for each other in the first place. And really, that’s the only reason why we can keep living like we do, having this lovely but restricted romance inside of two other marriages. We see each other about once a fortnight, always in the daytime, because we both have flexible jobs. If we do have sex, it has to be in a hotel, so mostly we just spend time together, talking about our weeks and sharing stories. We’re each others’ emotional support, but find each other desirable, and most of the time, that’s enough. It’s everything I wanted from my marriage and never got.
We’ve talked about leaving our respective marriages, but for now it’s just a fantasy, until my kids are older at least. I do find myself daydreaming about life with Ben and how much happier I could be. When I look over at George, while he loads the dishwasher or mows the lawn, I wonder if he’s doing the same, living another life with someone else in his head. I don’t know whether he and her are still seeing each other. I assume that they are, and I like to think that, even now, I’d be able to tell if he was going through some kind of break-up.
Then again, I suppose we never knew each other as well as we might have thought. Maybe George has hired a PI to tail me, too. For now, it seems we’re both happier getting our needs met elsewhere, and in that way, our marriage is strong.
