Never go to bed on an argument … and 19 other relationship ‘rules’ unpicked by experts

Is it wrong to flirt with other people? Do you have to agree on politics? And is it all about sex? Therapists examine the truths and myths of relationship lore - Joanna Moorhead in The Guardian

1 It’s not all about sex


TRUE “For most people, a satisfying sexual relationship is an important part of a good relationship,” says Susanna Abse, psychoanalytic therapist and author of Tell Me the Truth About Love: 13 Tales from Couple Therapy. “While sex may not be the most important thing, it’s certainly an indicator of chemistry, and it matters – especially at the start. Also, if you’re having bad sex with someone in the beginning, why would you want to carry on?”

2 Your partner should know what you feel/need

FALSE This is one of those saccharine myths we’ve been sold by romantic fairytales. However close you are to someone, says Joanna Harrison, divorce lawyer-turned-couples-therapist and author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have, you’ll never be able to second-guess them on everything. “And why would you want to? That would be boring. Also, people change; we’re all evolving.” What matters is that you each share what you’re feeling, you listen to one another, and you try to see things from your partner’s point of view.

3 No relationship can survive an affair

FALSE There are many kinds of affair, and this, says Abse, is key. “An affair can be an exit strategy, sure. But it can also be a protest – a way of bringing your partner’s attention to something that isn’t working for you in the relationship. If it’s that kind of affair, and you can work through why it happened with your partner, you can move on from it – providing apologies are given, reparations are made and forgiveness is forthcoming.”
If you’re having bad sex with someone in the beginning, why would you want to carry on?

4 A relationship is stronger if you share a bed

FALSE The important thing isn’t whether you share a bed – it’s talking about why if you don’t, says Harrison. “Whether it’s down to snoring or young kids, sleeping in separate beds reduces the intimate time you get together. So you need to discuss how you can compensate.” Make love on the sofa in the evening when the kids have gone to sleep. If snoring has driven you to separate rooms, at least have your morning tea in bed together.

5 Never go to bed on an argument

FALSE So often, says Terrence Real, family therapist and author of Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, rows happen because one or both partners have been drinking, or they’re not feeling good, or it’s late and you’re both tired. “What I say is: you’re not going to resolve anything tonight. Go to bed, and the next morning have a cup of tea together and talk it through.” All relationships are about the cycle of closeness, disruption and return to closeness. “Our culture worships the harmony phase, but a good relationship thrives on surviving the mess. The work of intimacy is the collision of imperfections, and how we manage those.”

6 It’s wrong to flirt with other people

TRUE You can be playful with someone, says Real, “but if you look into their eyes, there’s a difference between the shades being down – ‘shop closed’ – and the signal ‘come hither’. And if you’re using the sexual energy between you and someone else to feel excited, that’s like a mini-affair.” The rule is this, says Real: if your partner could hear you, and the way you’re speaking would upset them, it’s not OK.

7 People can’t change

FALSE. “I’m in the personality transplant business,” says Real. “Therapy is about understanding why we behave as we do, and making conscious decisions to change things in order to hang on to someone we care about.” Relate therapist Simone Bose, who runs her own practice, agrees that people can change, but they have to want to, and that means confronting aspects of themselves that might be uncomfortable or painful. “What’s hardest is overcoming the defensive mechanism you have as default,” she says.

  

8 Having arguments doesn’t have to be bad


TRUE If an argument escalates to violence or one partner feeling unsafe, that’s wrong, and you need expert help. But as you learn the landscape of your partner, says Harrison, arguments show you’re working each other out. “You’re finding out what your partner is passionate about, and sharing that. So these disagreements are full of useful information about what matters to each of you. If couples stop talking about what they care about, and sometimes arguing about it, they can start to feel disconnected.”

9 The ‘one’ is out there somewhere

FALSE “This is demonstrably nonsense: you only have to look at the people who find love again after losing their partner,” says Real. “We tend to fall in love with a person who we subliminally believe is going to heal us, give us what we didn’t get in our early life. Relationships tend to replay situations we’ve been in before. We fall in love with what completes us, in other words. And it’s this feeling – that we ‘fit together’ – that makes us feel we’ve found ‘the one’.” A successful relationship comes down to rewriting the script, so you’re not playing out things that went wrong in the past.

10 Once a cheater, always a cheater

TRUE and FALSE What’s most interesting about cheating, says Real, isn’t why someone does it – that’s obvious (it’s exciting, it’s sexy, it’s a thrill). No: the interesting thing is why someone doesn’t do it. “Cheating is always selfish: it’s always about overriding what you should do. So if you’ve learned from it and moved on, then no, you won’t necessarily be a cheater again. But your partner might never feel 100% assured you won’t do it again. It’s important to understand that.”

11 Marriage is just a piece of paper

FALSE “The question I’d ask a couple,” says Real, “is: who is your community? Who is supporting you, and how have you signalled you need that support, that you value it for your relationship?” Few rituals are left in modern life, he says, and a marriage ceremony is one that includes others as well as the couple themselves. “There’s something transformative about it being an experience embedded in the community,” he says. “That’s why it mattered to fight for the legal right for gay couples to marry.”

12 If a relationship needs therapy, it’s too late

FALSE Individuals are complicated, and partners who love one another and can see there’s potential for an ongoing relationship can also see there are stumbling blocks, says Bose. Having therapy, especially quite early on in a relationship, can ensure they get across those hurdles without the relationship being damaged. On the other hand, she cautions against therapy that goes on and on. “Some couples are scared to leave – you’ve got to be able to carry on without that crutch.”

13 You should always own up if you cheat

TRUE and FALSE You should usually confess, but not always, says Abse. “If we’re talking about a one-night stand on a business trip, maybe it’s OK, and better not to share it with your partner. But if you’ve had a longer-term relationship with someone else and you never reveal it to your partner, you’re avoiding something. It’s going to leave you in a sad place because you’ll have lost that sense that you and your partner share your deepest feelings.”

14 You have to agree on politics

FALSE If politics matters deeply to you then yes, says Bose, you need to be aligned. But if it doesn’t, voting for different political parties probably won’t unseat your relationship to any extent. “Much more important is sharing the same values: what’s important to you, what you truly believe matters. If you don’t agree on values, it seeps into your everyday life and can affect your relationship at a very deep level.”

15 Relationship problems always come down to money or sex

FALSE “In fact, they always come down to one thing: communication,” says Harrison. “Money and sex are taboo subjects in many families, and we all bring our family baggage to any relationship. But the issues aren’t about these things per se, they’re about being able to talk about these things – and everything else that matters.”

16 It’s always obvious when a relationship is over

FALSE Even for an experienced therapist like Joanna Harrison, it’s often not clear whether a couple are going to make it through. “Individuals have different thresholds for what they can deal with in a relationship,” she says. “There are no absolutes, no moment where it has to be all over.”

17 You need to have lots in common

FALSE In fact, says Abse, unconsciously we’re looking for someone who has attributes we’re lacking – because being with them helps us to learn different ways, and to grow our characters. “So if you’re a shy kind of person, you might find yourself attracted to someone gregarious.” It also means you can rely on the other person for those things – it’s the yin/yang thing. “A relationship is often more interesting and dynamic where there are challenges and differences.”

18 You need regular date nights

FALSE It’s not date nights that matter, says Harrison, it’s time together. So you don’t have to spend money or go out or have a treat (though that might be lovely). The bit your relationship needs is time shared as a couple: snuggled together on the sofa watching TV or a walk in the park can be every bit as good as a pricey meal out.

19 A baby will jeopardise your relationship

TRUE It’s tempting to hope a child who shares your genes, who you created together, will bond you and keep your relationship going. But, says Abse, relationship satisfaction goes down in the early weeks, months and years after the arrival of a baby. “Having a baby changes everything – you can’t underestimate that. You lose freedom, you lose autonomy, you lose intimacy. It’s a really challenging time for a couple.”

20 You can have a good sex life for ever

FALSE Viagra has sold us this idea, says Abse, and sure, in theory there’s no reason why sex should ever stop. But in the real world, things are different. “I’m wary of putting pressure on older people,” she says. “The reality is, for most long-term couples, sex drops off after their 50s or 60s. Those who carry on usually shift from swinging from the chandeliers to a more gentle, slow sex that might not involve penetration. It can be very intimate, but not all couples want it.”

My perfect affair – how I’m getting away with it

Anonymous as told to Joan McFadden in The Guardian


Tell no one, put nothing in writing, pay in cash, don’t drink, and keep off the phone. How to have an affair for nine years and get away with it

 

‘The first time we slept together, we were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.’ Photograph: Jonathan Storey/Getty Images
Love and happiness are certainly important to me in my 20-year marriage to Stephen. They are also important to me in my nine-year affair with Michael. I didn’t have an affair lightly. I know people have affairs for all sorts of reasons and think ultimately that they have a goal in mind – the end of their marriage, a lasting new relationship or a complete change to what they see as a boring life.

I’m none of these things. I want no drama disrupting my family. I want to stay happily married and carry on my affair and I never, ever want anyone else to know, so I have every detail planned and covered. My husband doesn’t suspect, my sisters and my best friends have no idea and I make sure there’s no evidence at all that can trip me up.

I didn’t start an affair because I’m lacking anything with Stephen. He’s a brilliant dad and funny, intelligent, fit and attractive. We’ve always made an effort to keep things fresh – of course you get bogged down in daily life, but we go out for dinner by ourselves or have a day off when we pack the kids off to school and go back to bed for a few hours. We also do a lot as a family, as well as socialising with friends and enjoying a variety of hobbies, so being organised is vital and, like many working mothers, I keep a meticulous diary to make sure everyone is in the right place at the right time.


I also have a diary in my head of my times with Michael, but I never put anything in writing. No love missives – texts are about the families getting together – and any emails are work related because we work in the same field. Stephen was friends with Michael first, having met him at a school event when our youngest child was just starting. He couldn’t believe we hadn’t met professionally and soon introduced us. He’s completely different from Stephen, who is very forthright, enthusiastic and go-getting while Michael is dreamy and creative, but with an incisive sense of humour and very witty, so they get on well.

I was quite shaken when I started to find Michael attractive. I’m not stupid enough to think you can go through life fancying only one person, but I’d kept any previous little crushes firmly in my head. Stephen is quite a flirt himself and the odd little bit of jealousy never did me any harm, and tended to respark my interest in my husband.

This was different. For the first time since we got married, I could imagine myself having an affair and at first it made me uncomfortable. I started plotting how we could do it and never get found out, and almost convinced myself that I was just being academic about it. Then we all got quite drunk at a party and Michael and I really started flirting. I thought life would go back to normal the next day and it did in front of Stephen and Jane, but we had a completely different relationship when we were alone.

We started talking dirty. At first it was just a little edgy – do you still fancy Stephen/Jane? Ever been unfaithful? Ever thought of it? It got more and more explicit and I couldn’t get him out of my mind. But I got a bad shock when he sent me a filthy text one night. I was sure he was drunk as it was short but very graphic. At that point my conscience was almost clear as we’d done nothing but talk, so I said, “Oh my God, Stephen – Michael’s just sent me a text that’s meant for Jane!”

Stephen thought it was hilarious and I texted back and said, “Isn’t this for Jane? Stephen says lucky her!”

Stephen teased him about it for ages but the next time I was alone with him I was furious and told him never to do something so stupid again. He said he thought I fancied him and I said very calmly that I did, but I wouldn’t risk my marriage or kids for anyone. It took another six months of discussion and planning before the affair started. We agreed that it was to be an added extra to an already strong friendship, but organised calmly and dispassionately, so no one would suspect.

By the time we slept together, we were both in a total state and it was a complete disaster. He’d been to the first day of a conference – I arrived that afternoon and checked into the same hotel. We had three hours in the late afternoon till his flight home and despite all our talk about being calm and dispassionate we were both unbelievably nervous. We were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.

For months I’d been totally turned on every time we were anywhere close to each other, but not now. The sex was clumsy and painful and a couple of times I wondered what the hell I was doing. He had his own worries – it was over far too soon and I felt dissatisfied as well as guilty – and he clearly felt the same. We had another go before he had to rush for his plane and it was just as bad. He said he would text me and I snapped at him not to – had he forgotten all we agreed? Stephen phoned later and in the midst of the chat about the kids asked if Michael was at the conference so I said he’d popped in before he left.

Coming home the next night was hellish. I was sure Stephen could tell I’d had sex with someone else but he was the same as ever and I was pathetically pleased that I was able to enjoy sex with him as normal. It was another two days before I saw Michael again and I was desperate to phone him, despite my rules, though I managed not to. He looked so miserable I was instantly irritated, convinced Jane would have guessed something was up. I was tempted to suggest we just forget it but I didn’t want to make him even more upset so I was reassuring and said we’d sort something out.


We went away for a week’s holiday and I did a lot of thinking. I decided that nerves had made the sex awkward, and once we got over the hump – so to speak – we’d be fine, so I deliberately made plans. Stephen took the kids to the cinema that weekend. I phoned their house, telling Jane I had mislaid papers from the conference and asking if Michael could bring me his so I could copy them. I read one of Stephen’s porn mags to get me in the mood, opened the front door and literally dragged him into the toilet, where we had exactly the sort of sex I’d imagined.

That was the last risk I took. I’m sure no one suspects we’re having an affair. We meet as lovers about twice a month, which probably does keep the magic and anticipation going, but I’m endlessly careful; I do worry about CCTV now as it’s everywhere. We usually meet at a conference hotel or at the airport and I might say to Stephen that I bumped into Michael and had a coffee with him, though I obviously won’t tell him that was after lunch and before sex. We’ve managed to resist that temptation to tell others by talking to each other instead. There are no romantic letters, emails or texts – and because we have fairly constant contact, there’s none of that terrible panic that illicit lovers seem to have about when the next encounter will be.

This care is also my safety net should Michael ever want more. He says he still loves Jane but if he decides otherwise I would just deny everything and there’s no proof. Not a note, credit card bill or hotel receipt – everything is paid by cash – so I’d just walk away.

I wouldn’t be friends with Jane if I didn’t want the smokescreen that provides – we’re too different and there’s a slightly snobbish side to her that irks me, but a monthly coffee or occasional girls’ night makes it seem that we have a separate friendship and so she’s much less likely to suspect anything. She’s even said that I’m good for Michael as he doesn’t have sisters so it’s nice to see him have a friendship with a woman.

I love both men, I’m harming no one and have no intention of doing so. I know we’re being greedy but it’s not affecting anyone else badly. If anything, it enhances my sex life with Stephen and when you’ve got two men seeing you naked you certainly keep yourself fit. I want everything to continue as it is, whereas many people having affairs want something to change, usually other relationships, so they can be together all the time. Strange as it may seem, my biggest worry is that, years on, Michael may die first and I won’t be able to grieve properly, because although the close friendship is known and taken for granted, obviously the affair isn’t. In a matter of fact way, we also assume that, when we’re much older, if our partners die we’ll end up together almost by default. Like everyone else, I’m aiming to live happily ever after, but with both men as part of my life. The only way to make that feasible is to keep everything as tidy as possible.

Perhaps we don’t want to explore the premise that for most people it’s not fidelity and love that keeps them constant to their partner, but fear of potential messiness should they be discovered. How many people, no matter how satisfied with their sex lives and happy with their partners, would say “no thank you” to an explosive sexual encounter if it was guaranteed that they’d never be found out? Domesticity doesn’t do it for everyone long term, no matter how much we’d like it to and although that’s apparent in male behaviour over the centuries now that women are on a par with men, surely this means such potential restlessness applies equally to both sexes?

It takes a very brave person to give an honest response, but, before judging me, ask yourself just one question – what’s stopping you from doing exactly the same?

What happens when an Ashley Madison-shaped bomb goes off in your marriage?

Helen Croydon in The Telegraph

As Loraine, 43, put her three-year-old daughter to bed in their home in Windsor she received a text from her husband. Instead of his usual “almost home” cheery tone, what she opened ripped her world apart. It was an explicit message clearly intended for someone else – another woman. “It pains me to recall the words but suffice to say it was obvious they had either had sex, or were about to.” She says. “I went into shock. I felt sick. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think straight. I had so many questions for him.”

She confronted him and he claimed it was harmless flirtation with someone he’d met on an evening out with friends. But weeks later when Loraine logged on to the family computer, she found a page open at an email account under an alias name. The inbox was full of messages from women and notifications from a dating site which, like Ashley Madison, appeared to be aimed at married people seeking affairs.

“What followed was the worst few weeks of my life,” says Lorraine. “It sucked every ounce of self-confidence out of me. I started to blame and question myself. I wondered if I’d been giving too much attention to my daughter and neglected him. He admitted he had a problem, akin to an addiction. I did my best to understand it. I wanted things to be right. I wanted to whitewash it, press reset. I even stepped up efforts in our relationship – that’s how much I wanted it to work. I was super strong and thought ‘we’ll get through this – some good will come from it’. But inside I was devastated.”

Lorraine’s earth shattering discovery happened three years ago and a year later brought about the end of her marriage.

More than a million Britons fear their work and home lives could be wrecked after their details were leaked online by hackers who published the entire database of the Ashley Madison adultery website

How many couples around the world face similar ordeals this week as they deal with the fallout from the Ashley Madison hacking scandal? An anonymous group calling itself The Impact Team went through with its threat to publish personal details of its 37 million worldwide subscribers. It first dumped the data on the dark web, but it didn’t take long for the information to drip-feed on to the mainstream internet. Several sites sprung up allowing worried spouses to check whether their other halves were straying by entering their email address. One internet user who claimed to have created a searchable database reportedly saw their website crash within minutes of going live.

More than 100 UK government email addresses was among those leaked, as well as more than 20 BBC ones, but it was unclear how many were genuine users of the site. Michelle Thomson, one of the SNP’s newly-elected Westminster MPs, was along those who said someone had stolen her email address and used it without her knowledge.

Within days, relationship counseling service Relate was receiving calls from people who had discovered partners’ details among the data and had their infidelity confirmed to them. Family law firms also report they have been contacted by suspicious spouses since the leak.

Many have taken to the internet forum SurvivingInfidelity.com to express their shock and seek advice. It makes for moving reading: “I had been hoping against hope that my husband would not show up on the list but it seems that he is….This nightmare never seems to end,” says one. Others share tips on how to access the data: “I’d be HAPPY to pay someone to mine the data, package it up and send it to me. Surely this service will be offered shortly, right?”

The group behind the attack apparently have a gripe not only with the morals of a website offering an illicit playroom to married people, but with Ashley Madison’s practice of charging its subscribers to delete information. “Too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion. Too bad for ALM (the company behind Ashley Madison), you promised secrecy but didn’t deliver,” the hackers wrote last month.

Founder of the site, Noel Biderman, said: 'The reason we’ve been so successful is because monogamy is counter to our DNA'

But public exposure could prove an irresponsible means of justice. Susan Quilliam, a relationship psychologist and author of The New Joy of Sex, says discovering a partner’s infidelity can cause more devastation to the innocent party than the guilty one. “When you lose a relationship and you weren’t expecting to lose it, there is betrayal, shock, horror, bereavement, denial, depression. It impacts on family, friends, relatives. In a way it’s worse than a bereavement. With a bereavement you lose the future with them. When you discover casual infidelity you lose the past too.”

And what of the danger to those whose details have been leaked in punitive regimes? Data monitoring group CybelAngel says there are 1,200 email addresses with a Saudi Arabian suffix, where adultery is punishable by death. Also included are names on Ashley Madison’s gay encounters site, many from countries where homosexuality is illegal. Blackmailers have reportedly been trawling through the database in an attempt to extort users.

The Canadian company behind Ashley Madison, Avid Life Media, has long defended its business principle, claiming humans have cheated for centuries and they are merely enabling people to meet their sexual needs free from emotional complications. The founder of the site, Noel Biderman, told me in an interview in April this year: “The reason we’ve been so successful is because monogamy is counter to our DNA…What we’ve done is created a platform where likeminded individuals can be more honest and open about their intentions than they could be on [other sites].”

There may well be plenty of anthropological arguments to support the “monogamy is unnatural” thesis, but there are plenty more in favour of a little self-control.

As Quilliam points out, too much of a good thing can lead to problems: “Men and women have always had urges for short-term sexual encounters but in previous years we didn’t have the opportunity. Now it’s available. It’s online. Because it’s so easy there is a danger of getting addicted to the high. There is a dopamine rush with every message and every encounter. We try to curb smoking by making it not readily available, banning it indoors etc. Perhaps we should be thinking about what we can access online.”

When Lorraine discovered her husband’s secret dating life, she created a fake profile to try and understand why her husband would want to betray her. “The only way to forgive was to try to understand it,” she explains. What she discovered angered her: “If you don’t log on for a while you get reminders, or incentives like a month’s free membership. They even give tips on how not to get caught. On bank statements the name of the transaction is disguised – they’ve got it all sorted. It’s actively encouraging deceit. Obviously if someone wants to cheat they will cheat, but these sites accelerate a behaviour pattern. It’s like giving a drugs to drug addicts and then putting them all together to encourage each other.”

'Despite the morally questionable tagline, 'Life is short, have an affair,' Ashley Madison’s popularity is undeniable'

Despite the morally questionable tagline, “Life is short, have an affair,” Ashley Madison’s popularity is undeniable. It claims thirty-seven million members in 50 countries worldwide, including 1.2 million in UK and reports a growth in membership of 20% since March this year (although a growing number of supposed members whose details have been leaked online insist they had never even heard of it). And it is just one of a growing number of so-called cheating dating sites.

Nor is it just men who may be feeling nervous this week. Ashley Madison recently told the Telegraph it has more female members than men, although it refuses to disclose how many are active. A source close to the FBI investigation into the leak has, morever, told this newspaper that many of the female profiles on the site appear to have been created by a relatively small number of individuals. Men pay to send and receive messages. Women do not, and it has been claimed that fake profiles are created to reel in husbands.

There are plenty who support the actions of the hackers. Denise Knowles a counselor at Relate, says: “When something like this comes into the public arena people take time and take stock to look at their relationship. When a secret like this is discovered, it can open up the possibility of talking about things and it can give the opportunity for good to come out of it.”

But for Lorraine, no amount of talking could fix her relationship. Discovery of her husband’s sordid secret spelled the end. “I absolutely did not want to divorce him but it was always the elephant in the room,” she says. “I’m still heartbroken and I can’t explain to my daughter why we separated. If I hadn’t found what I did, we’d have made it.”

What may have been intended by the hackers as a self-righteous pop at philanderers around the world is fast escalating into something with far graver consequences. The data even included extracts from profiles, quoting cringeworthy descriptions of sexual fantasies. It was perhaps an attempt at ridicule, expected to be greeted by nothing more than sniggers. The reality is that the biggest cost is not to the adulterers being exposed, but the families affected.

The Ashley Madison hack: What to do if you suspect your partner is having an affair

Following the hack of Ashley Madison, the dating site for extra-marital affairs, many people are looking to find out if their partner was signed up. So if you suspect your partner is cheating on you, should you confront them? Does revenge ever make you feel better? And can relationships survive an affair?

 Ammanda Major in The Independent

There are no two ways about it – affairs can be hugely painful. Feelings of shock, anger and resentment can quickly set in and knowing what to do about them can seem torturous. The mere thought that your partner may be attracted to someone else or actively involved with them is tough enough, but knowing what to say or do about it is usually tougher.Perhaps a starting point is to focus on what has made you suspicious. Do you have ‘facts’? Has someone said something to you? Has your partner become withdrawn or started making more of an effort with their appearance? Have things between you been difficult recently and you have noticed that they are talking more about a specific person, perhaps a friend or work colleague? Perhaps you are concerned about what they are up to online or have discovered unusual texts or emails. Any or all of these are likely to throw most people into panic.

Often, fears about affairs arise when there may be other problems. As a Relate counsellor, I see how family life stages like looking after young children, older children leaving home (or not leaving home), redundancy, ill health, becoming carers or extra work pressures can all wear down our resources and make us feel vulnerable and insecure. It is important to remember this, because any of them might lead to a partner being less attentive or available than before, but that does not mean they are having an affair.

 But what do you do if you still suspect something is going on? Firstly, try and get clear what it is you actually do suspect. Is it sex, an emotional attachment, a cyber relationship or a friendship? Do not be tempted to go down the route of bugging your partner’s devices or using similar methods to track their whereabouts. This is unhelpful, possibly criminal and very unlikely to assist you to recover what you most want, i.e your partner.

Whilst it is true that it is good to talk, beware of telling all your friends and family about your suspicions. Remember, the more people who become involved, take sides and offer often conflicting advice, the more difficult it may be to start thinking about what the two of you want to do, if and when it turns out there has been an affair. Confiding in a trusted friend or family member can be useful to help you get your thoughts straighter and work out how to best tackle your partner about your worries.

Secondly, decide if you actually want to raise it with your partner. It is probably fair to say that many relationships continue for years with the suspicion of an affair, with nothing ever being said. Long term though, this is often a really painful option with years of resentment and feelings of abandonment building up that eat into your confidence and self-esteem. But fearing confirmation of any suspicion is powerful and it is understandable that we may try to put concerns to one side for as long as possible.

Thirdly, if you decide to raise it, choose a good time. Don’t raise it in the middle of a row about something else or when one of you is about to go out. Try and make sure you will not be interrupted. Most importantly, try and stay calm and tell your partner exactly why you are worried. Give them a chance to explain themselves but be prepared for the answer. Usually, we are hoping for reassurance that will reduce our anxieties about being left for someone else and you may not get this. The reality of having a suspicion confirmed by a ‘confession’ may come as a relief for some people but for most, it’s devastating.

However much you ask for information, your partner may not give you what you want. They may deny it outright, or tell you ‘it’s just a friend’. Either way you may be left feeling the matter is unresolved. Once it has been raised though there is often the overwhelming urge to come back to it time and time again, usually with the same outcome. Getting to this point is exhausting for both of you so it could be useful to get some professional help to try to find a way forward – whether that’s together or apart. Ultimately, if you keep suspecting and they keep denying, you may need support to help you make decisions about what to do next.

It is not uncommon for people to consider some form of revenge when they feel they have been betrayed by their partner. Some people might think it is a good idea to have an affair themselves for example, to damage the person’s property, or to name and shame the guilty party. While this may make them feel better at the time, in the long term not only do they end up having to deal with the hurt if it turns out there was an affair, but also the consequences of the revenge. If you find yourself wanting to seek revenge and even more so if you have not got all your facts straight, take a step back to recognise this is because of the level of hurt you are feeling at the time.

People tend to be pessimistic about whether their relationship can recover – indeed, Relate’s 2014 The Way We Are Now survey of over 5000 people found that only 33% thought a relationship could survive an affair. However, this was in stark contrast to the optimism of our counsellors, 94% of whom believed that a relationship can survive and potentially thrive after a partner has cheated.

So the good news is that many relationships recover from suspicions or confirmation of an affair. Despite the pain and anxiety, some couples say that an affair has given them the opportunity to examine all sorts of relationship issues and they feel stronger as a partnership afterwards. But this usually comes after a lot of soul searching and acknowledgement that no one has made your partner have an affair and that by doing so they have turned your world upside down.
Ammanda Major is a Relate Counsellor and Sex Therapist

If you cheat on your partner, it’s probably about more than just sex

Phillipa Perry in The Guardian

According to a study published this week, the likelihood of people cheating on their partners rises if they are financially dependent on them – and especially if they are male. From the research carried out by a Connecticut sociology professor, Christin Munsch, it seems that men still expect to be breadwinners in the family, and that they can still feel emasculated when their female partners make more money. Old scripts die hard, it seems.

Babies and toddlers, as anyone who has lived in close proximity to one will know, are not always terribly good at articulating what they feel, but they are very good at acting out their emotions: they bite, they scream, they lie on the floor and beat their fists and generally try to squirm out of situations that don’t appeal to them. We adults do our best to put into words how they are feeling so that they will eventually learn to talk about their emotions, which in therapy-speak we would call “processing feelings”. If you don’t learn how to process feelings, you tend to carry on “acting out”. We don’t dispute that when a baby throws his toys out of the pram, he is actually doing his best to show how he feels.

A man or woman who has an extramarital fling is also very possibly doing their best to manage their feelings by acting out and having an affair. It can be hard to start a conversation with a spouse who is doing their best to provide for the family about how dissatisfied you are with the lack of meaning in your life, about your envy, or your boredom. You don’t want to appear ungrateful. You don’t want to rock the boat.

When unpicking the fallout of affairs in couples counselling, quite often the person who has had the affair says things like, “it just happened”, “it didn’t mean anything”, “it wasn’t anything to do with you”, “I was drunk”, or “it was just a one-night stand”. The financially dependent party might wish they didn’t feel how they feel, and try very hard to push what seem like ungrateful feelings away. But even if they do try to process how they are feeling with their partner, that partner might find it understandably hard to listen to and easy to dismiss. Feelings don’t go away just because we want them to, and unconsciously we look for a way to deal with them.

So when a distraught couple is in the counselling room and the so-called guilty party is saying “it didn’t mean anything”, the counsellor might try to help them find out what it really did mean. It’s probably true that the straying partner does not prefer their one-night stand to their long-term lover, but it might mean that they do have unresolved issues with their partner, that they could not find a way to articulate or have heard. And the so-called innocent party may have even contributed to the event by not being sufficiently open and sympathetic to their partner’s feelings. Too often people in a relationship do not want to listen to their partner’s woes because they feel that means they are to blame, or that they have to fix them, but actually, being heard non-defensively and sympathetically goes a long way to restoring equilibrium.

 An affair is often an enactment of some deep, pushed away resentment. The fling can seem to temporarily cure feelings of an imbalance or a lack of meaning. This is but one explanation for something complicated that probably has many determining factors. It may be that the stay-at-home wife or husband is someone with attachment issues. For example there are people who seem to always need to have a lover as well as a partner because they dare not rely on just one person in case that person abandons them. This situation may be heightened if they are financially reliant on their partner. Such a situation can arise from early attachment issues with their first primary caregiver. Likewise some people feel they need secrets, otherwise they fear merging with their spouse. This feeling may be heightened when their spouse seems to have a stronger identity than they do.

There are probably as many reasons for why people act out in the form of an affair as there are people, but Munsch’s research does show us that inequality between partners can be a problem, and it’s something worth considering in any relationship.

She took a year off from her marriage to sleep with strangers. What could go wrong? The Wild Oats Project Review

Carlos Lozada in The Independent

Get ready for “The Wild Oats Project”. And not just the book. Get ready for “The Wild Oats Project” phenomenon — the debates, the think pieces, the imitators and probably the movie. Get ready for orgasmic meditation and the Three Rules. Get ready for “My Clitoris Deals Solely in Truth” T-shirts.

Robin Rinaldi, a magazine journalist living in San Francisco by way of Scranton, Pa., initially wasn’t sure she wanted children, but she knew that Scott, her stoic Midwestern husband, did not. Over time, Rinaldi decided a baby would add purpose to their lives, but Scott wouldn’t change his mind. “I wanted a child, but only with him,” she explains. “He didn’t want a child but wanted to keep me.” When Scott opted for a vasectomy, she demanded an open marriage.

“I refuse to go to my grave with no children and only four lovers,” she declares. “If I can’t have one, I must have the other.”

If you’re wondering why that is the relevant trade-off, stop overthinking this. “The Wild Oats Project” is the year-long tale of how a self-described “good girl” in her early 40s moves out, posts a personal ad “seeking single men age 35-50 to help me explore my sexuality,” sleeps with roughly a dozen friends and strangers, and joins a sex commune, all from Monday to Friday, only to rejoin Scott on weekends so they can, you know, work on their marriage.

The arrangement is unorthodox enough to succeed as a story, and in Rinaldi’s telling it unfolds as a sexual-awakening romp wrapped in a female-empowerment narrative, a sort of Fifty Shades of Eat, Pray, Love. “I wanted to tell him to f— me hard but I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth” is a typical Rinaldi dilemma. At the same time, she constantly searches for “feminine energy” or her “feminine core” or for a “spiritual practice guided by the feminine.

But more than empowering or arousing, this story is depressing. Rinaldi just seems lost. Still sorting through the psychological debris of an abusive childhood, she latches on to whatever guru or beliefs she encounters, and imagines fulfillment with each new guy. She still rushes to Scott whenever things gets scary (a car accident, an angry text message), yet deliberately strains their union beyond recovery. “At any cost” are the operative words of the subtitle.

Robin and Scott agree to three rules — “no serious involvements, no unsafe sex, no sleeping with mutual friends” — that both go on to break. He finds a steady girlfriend, while Robin violates two rules right away. “In truth, I was sick of protecting things,” she writes about going condom-free with a colleague at a conference. “I wanted the joy of being overcome.”

The men and women she hooks up with — some whose names Rinaldi has changed, others too fleeting to merit aliases — all blur into a new-age, Bay Area cliche. Everyone is a healer, or a mystic, or a doctoral student in feminist or Eastern spirituality. They’re all verging on enlightenment, sensing mutual energy, getting copious action to the sounds of tribal drums. The project peaks when she moves into OneTaste, an urban commune where “expert researchers” methodically stroke rows of bare women for 15 minutes at a time in orgasmic meditation sessions (“OM” to those in the know). “Everyone here was passionate,” Rinaldi writes. “Everyone had abandoned convention.”

Rinaldi holds little back, detailing her body’s reactions along the way. At first she is upset that she can’t feel pleasure as quickly as other women, but she finally decides she’s glad that her “surrender didn’t happen easily, that it lay buried and tethered to the realities of each relationship.” Her clitoris, although “moody,” was also “an astute barometer. . . . It dealt solely in truth.”

And truth often comes in tacky dialogue. “Your breasts are amazing,” one of her younger partners tells her. “You should have seen them in my twenties,” Rinaldi boasts. His comeback: “You’re cocky. I dig that.” (Fade to dirty talk.) When they do it again months later, he thanks her in the morning. “Something happens when I’m with you,” he says. “I feel healed.” I’m sure that’s exactly what he feels.

Rinaldi can’t seem to decide why she’s doing all this. The project is her “rebellion.” Or “a search for fresh, viable sperm.” Or a “bargaining chip.” Or “an elaborate attempt to dismantle the chains of love.” Or just a “quasi-adolescent quest for god knows what.”

If exasperation could give you orgasms, this book would leave me a deeply satisfied reader.

One of her oldest friends calls her out. “How is sleeping with a lot of guys going to make you feel better about not having kids?” she asks. Rinaldi’s answer: “Sleeping with a lot of guys is going to make me feel better on my deathbed. I’m going to feel like I lived, like I didn’t spend my life in a box. If I had kids and grandkids around my deathbed, I wouldn’t need that. Kids are proof that you’ve lived.” It’s a bleak and disheartening rationale, as though women’s lives can achieve meaning only through motherhood or sex.

For all her preoccupation with feminine energy, Rinaldi seems conflicted over feminism. “I would die a feminist,” she writes of her collegiate activism, “but I was long overdue for some fun.” Later, she pictures women’s studies scholars judging her submission fantasies, and frets over “those Afghan women hidden under their burqas” who could be “beaten or even killed right now for doing what I was so casually doing.” But when she finds a sexual connection with a woman who backs away because of “emotional issues,” Rinaldi channels her inner alpha male: “I was drawn to her body but shrunk back when she expressed unfettered feeling. . . .  It only took sleeping with one woman to help me understand the behavior of nearly every man I’d ever known.”

When the year runs out, Rinaldi returns to Scott, even though she soon starts an affair with a project flame. She’s no longer so upset about the vasectomy, regarding it as a sign that Scott can stand up for himself (though it may also mean she now cares less about him, period). No shock that post-project, their chemistry is off, and when Rinaldi makes a casual reference to their time apart, Scott finally explodes. “Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep when you moved out!?” he asks. “Do you care about anyone’s feelings but your own!?” She was “too stunned to reply.” But the fate of this marriage, revealed in the final pages, is anything but stunning.

“These are the sins against my husband,” Rinaldi recounts. “Abdicating responsibility, failing to empathize with him, cheating and lying.” After blaming him for so long, “in the end, I was the one who needed to ask forgiveness.”

In a rare moment of heartbreaking subtlety, the book’s dedication page simply says “For Ruby,” the name Rinaldi had imagined for a baby girl. Except, “there is no baby,” she writes at the end. “Instead there is the book you hold in your hands.”

And that is a frustrating book, with awkward prose, a perplexing protagonist and too many eye-rolling moments. Yet it is also a book I see launching book-club conversations and plenty of pillow talk — not just about sex and marriage, but about the price and possibility of self-reinvention. You don’t have to write a great work to cause a great stir.

Does Rinaldi reinvent herself? She survives the aftershocks and even seems to discover some happiness, however fragile she knows it to be. So maybe she needed this after all. Or maybe sometimes “empowerment” is just another word for self-absorption.

Adultery is good for your marriage – if you don’t get caught, says infidelity website boss

As global membership to the world’s biggest infidelity site soars to over 24 million, its founder explains the international appeal of adultery

Noel Biderman is the Canadian founder of Ashley Madison, a controversial but globally popular adultery website that connects married men and women and discretely enables them to have affairs Photo: Rex

By Danielle Demetriou,The Telegraph, Tokyo

6:21PM BST 12 Apr 2014

He receives regular death threats, websites are devoted to his demise, the Vatican has sent letters of complaint and the Queen of Spain has sued him.

The man in question is not a criminal, a terrorist or a dictator. Instead, he is the businessman behind the world’s biggest website for extramarital affairs.

Noel Biderman is the Canadian founder of Ashley Madison, a controversial but globally popular adultery website that connects married men and women and discretely enables them to have affairs.

Famed for its catchy motto – “Life is short. Have an affair” – the dating service is free for women but paying for men. Its array of features include virtual “winks”, instant messaging and “travelling” services for members seeking an affair during business trips.

Its mobile app uses GPS technology to track down the nearest available potential lover.  

The website is currently in the throes of a rapid global expansion: since launching in Canada on Valentine’s Day in 2002, it has attracted more than 24 million members in 37 countries, with South Korea launched last week.

Mr Biderman, 42, is a man clearly used to defending his business. In an interview with The Telegraph last week during a visit to Japan – the fastest growing country in terms of membership – he reeled out a string of polished reasons as to why infidelity is the way of the modern world.

“Infidelity exists in every culture in the world,” said Mr Biderman, who refers to himself as the “Emperor of Infidelity”. “There’s no place you can point to on the planet where there is no unfaithfulness.

“In the lifetime of a relationship, on the male side, close to 70 or 80 per cent of men are going to be unfaithful at some point or another in their marriages. And the female side is incredibly on the rise – it’s well past 40 per cent.”

This appears to be the case in Britain in particular. Since the UK launch four years ago, more than 825,000 members have joined – in particular, married women aged between 38 and 42.

^{The computer screen displays the 'online personals and casual encounters' website of Asley Madison (Getty)}

“Our brand really resonates well with a married woman, 15 plus years into her marriage who doesn’t feel that celibacy should slip into the marriage at this time,” he said.

Japan is another success story, with one million members joining within nine months of its launch last summer.

“It seems to me that culturally, this region does the best at separating sex and marriage,” added Mr Biderman. “You can do sex outside marriage much more liberally here. That’s not to say that they don’t present a traditional face, as most societies do. But I think that if we had to measure the infidelity economy in Japan, it’s incredibly sizeable.”

The reasons for soaring infidelity around the world are multiple, according to Mr Biderman.

The site is particularly popular in recession-hit nations such as Spain, while affluent communities with large disposable incomes are also major players in the “infidelity economy”.

But Mr Biderman ultimately believes that the human race is simply not biologically programmed to remain faithful – and that this can be good for a marriage.

“People have affairs because we’re not engineered for monogamy,” he said. “Monogamy didn’t come about from some great scientific research. If anything, the current social science tells us the opposite.

“That the longer the couple is together, invariably, after six months, their sexual encounters decrease, two years, they decrease even further. Twenty years into a relationship, we’re no longer sexually attracted.”

Needless to say, the company is rarely far from controversy. Mr Biderman has incurred the wrath of the Pope, with the Vatican sending a disapproving letter to Ashley Madison in opposition to its sponsorship of Rome’s basketball club Virtue Roma.

More recently, Singapore’s government banned the site, following a public outcry against its “flagrant disregard” for public morality. Mr Biderman plans to challenge the ban in court.

In response to claims of amorality, he believes that precise act of having an affair – without getting caught – can actually help save a marriage, the only other option normally being divorce.

“There was tons of infidelity before I got here,” he said. “The only encouragement I give is to say to people, there is a way to have the perfect affair.

“So the perfect affair is not only meeting someone like-minded, it’s also not being discovered. That’s what I’ve built: a platform where everybody here has put up their hand and said I’m interested in an affair, and the technology to keep it discrete.”

Perhaps most surprising are Mr Biderman’s revelations about his own private life: monogamously married for 10 years with two children, he describes his wife as unwaveringly supportive.

However, he candidly admits she does not share his views on infidelity: “If in the next decade, my sex life evaporates, I have no interest in being celibate.

“Because I have these wonderful children, an extended family I cherish, great economic success and homes – I have not worked for all of that just for sex. I wouldn’t get a divorce, therefore, if that happened, I’d try to have an affair."

The recipe for happiness? An enduring marriage and an affair with lots of sex

By Catherine Hakim

7:00AM BST 20 Aug 2012

The setting is the quiet corner of an Italian restaurant in the City; the players are George, an IT specialist, and Zoe, who wears a pretty dress and a big smile; they drink an especially good bottle of wine and when they get to coffee he reaches over and kisses her on the mouth. She surprises him by kissing him back. To onlookers it might be the classic opening scene of a traditional romance.

Yet both parties are married to other people, whom they have no intention of leaving. Although they will go on to enjoy all the spoils of a relationship, from intimate phone calls to Christmas shopping trips and, of course, regular sex, this is understood from the outset. They are in fact launching into a “playfair”, a 21st-century affair in which would-be adulterers meet, via specialist dating websites, to enjoy the excitement of an illicit relationship without any of the domestic fallout.

Alongside the internet dating revolution, these “playfairs” are evidence of a potentially dramatic shift in British marriage. As dating websites open up a global shop window of sexual possibilities, as life expectancy continues to rise and we become increasingly sexually aware, how can we still take the crushing old rules of fidelity, that turn marriage into a prison, for granted? Why should we not be able to recapture the heady thrills of youth, while protecting a secure home life?

The time has come, alongside the technology, to redraw the rules of marriage for the 21st century. Just as the Pill opened up premarital sex in the Sixties, the internet is opening up a whole new culture of affairs among married people. Sex has become a major leisure activity of our time, accessible to everyone, married or not, rich and poor. It’s time to start honing our seduction skills and join the playground.

Yet it is the most puritanical nations, including Britain and America, that have traditionally resisted the notion of adultery most rigorously. Here, couples endure the challenges of child care, work pressures, mid‑life crisis and dwindling marital sex against a backdrop of repressive Anglo-Saxon hang‑ups about infidelity, seen always in pejorative terms such as “cheating”.

And they do so at a cost. Statistics confirm that British and American divorce rates are among the highest in the world. Around half of American first marriages end in divorce, closely followed by a third of first British marriages, floundering under unrealistic pressures, often celibate marital beds and drastic overreactions to infidelities.

I have always been baffled by the sour and rigid English view of affairs. Marital love and passion only rarely provide an equally rich source of the exalted feelings, transports of delight and misery associated with love and romance. Affairs are about excitement, being alive, seduction, flirtation, love, affection, sexual bliss, lust, caution, eroticism, fantasy, danger, adventure, exploration and the determined refusal to grow old gracefully.

There is also evidence that the more permissive the attitudes of a country, the longer marriages last. In France an affair is dubbed an aventure, free of insinuations of betrayal. It is estimated that a quarter of men and women are enjoying casual flings and affairs at any one time. Indeed, the conventionality of affairs is displayed in the concept of le cinq à sept, the magical space between 5pm and 7pm when men see their mistresses.

In Japan a tradition of geishas has evolved into a modern society where sex is seen as a pleasure to be enjoyed. Japanese pornography is consumed openly, by women as well as men, on the metro and in other public places. Sex is everywhere and it is also clearly separated from marriage.

Meanwhile, Nordic countries are already way ahead of the game. Couples openly discuss “parallel relationships” within marriage. These range from affairs between work colleagues lasting years to holiday flings lasting a few days. Almost half of Finnish men and almost one third of Finnish women have had at least one significant parallel relationship. Yet marriage is a protected and respected institution in these countries, where families can function and flourish without compromise.

And let’s not ignore the past in drawing up a new 21st‑century road map of adultery. If the internet offers a direct line to affairs, with a proliferation of websites for adults seeking a sexual partner outside of their marriage, it is worth remembering that our richer ancestors practised their own privileged version. Emperors cavorted with courtesans, kings chose their wives for political manoeuvres and their mistresses for company, the aristocracy married for money and took lovers for pleasure.

So why have modern British couples resisted for so long and are they finally ready for this new 21st‑century approach to marriage? Inevitably there is the morality question. Even as religion has lost its influence, Britain has remained coy about openly embracing sex for pleasure, stubbornly conflating sexuality with procreation.

There is also the army of therapists and counsellors who continue to pedal their own secret agenda of enforced exclusive monogamy. This killjoy attitude frames affairs as deviant escapism and fantasies without merit for people who have failed to grow up. Counsellors form a kind of emotional and intellectual police intent on keeping the door to infidelity locked.

Meanwhile, British feminists have already missed the chance to find a new kind of modern sexual morality appropriate to the 21st century. In practice, Anglo-Saxon feminism never liberated itself from the Puritan morality that downplays or rejects all forms of pleasure as sinful.

But sex is no more a moral issue than eating a good meal. The fact that we eat most meals at home with spouses and partners does not preclude eating out in restaurants to sample different cuisines and ambiences, with friends or colleagues. Anyone rejecting a fresh approach to marriage and adultery, with a new set of rules to go with it, fails to recognise the benefits of a revitalised sex life outside the home.

Already two American economists, David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald, have attempted to measure happiness through sexual fulfilment in monetary terms. They estimated that increasing the frequency of sexual intercourse from once a month to at least once a week was equivalent to £32,000 a year in happiness. They also estimated that a lasting marriage provided the equivalent of £64,000 a year. If you add the two together, an affair providing lots of sex and an enduring marriage, that’s a recipe for a lot of happiness.

It is also a handsome sum when you consider how much longer people are living. In pre-industrial Britain marriages only lasted about 20 years, due to early death. Today, marriages can last 40 to 60 years. It is no coincidence that the peak ages for affairs in Britain and the United State is 45 for a woman and 55 for a man.

Of course, it would be misleading to suggest that married dating does not have a certain morality of its own. Just as there are rules for dating non-married people, a new set of rules is necessary to navigate the way through the secretive world of married dating on the internet.

For many interviewees that I spoke to, whose names have been changed, negotiating the new rules can be a fraught business. Married people have less spare time and are often more specific and cautious in their search. Amy liked a man in his advert, but was put off by his wearing a shabby grey cardigan under his suit jacket; Kate was delighted on meeting Benjamin, elegant, clever and amusing, until it emerged he was into very experimental sex; when Oliver met Scarlett at her house for a first date, a swinging party was already under way, which was not what he had in mind.

But regardless of who you meet, the first rule is “never in your own back yard”, where you are most exposed to discovery. This is one of the successes of the websites: they allow everyone to reach well beyond their own social circle. Both parties can quickly establish that they want the same thing and that they are equally committed to secrecy and discretion.

It is also a world away from the deeply unfair old-style “asymmetric” affairs, in which hapless wives would be left at home while older, richer husbands wooed younger, poorer women – often in the workplace – disparagingly referred to as a “bit on the side”.

If anything, married women are at an astonishing advantage in this 21st-century world of modern adultery, not least because of the disparity in sexual desire in modern marriages. Recent sex surveys all prove that the received wisdom about men wanting more sex than their wives is not an unfair stereotype but a fact. The gap in sexual desire between men and women is observed in every country and culture where such surveys have been carried out.

Unsurprisingly a sexless, or low-sex, marriage, in which couples have sex less than once a month, appears to be the most common root cause for married internet affairs. In Britain, according to the British sex survey of sexual lifestyles, couples aged up to 60 had sex around 10 times a month in the first two years of their relationship, with a sharp decline to an average of twice a month after six years together.

This puts women, entering the new online “meet-market” of married dating sites, in a dramatically stronger position. While dating websites for singles are dominated by women looking for “the one”, those for married people are dominated by men looking for a sexual adventure. The ratio is around one woman to every 13 men, giving the women the power to dictate terms, from dates at the most expensive restaurants and luxury gifts to financial rewards.

Take the case of Peter, a rich 62-year-old judge who lives in a beautiful historical country house with his lively wife. He regularly travelled into central London to sit as a judge in important commercial disputes. He also stayed in the same hotel, with views over the Thames. After several years of this routine he began to welcome the idea of a sexy girlfriend to entertain him during his weekday stays. He signed on to a dating website.

When he met his first date, Maya – beautiful and in her thirties – he could not believe his luck. They had a cheerful and flirty lunch, sitting in the sunshine. At the end, they discussed meeting again. Maya suggested a monthly fee for unlimited time with him at his convenience. Peter laughed, assuming she was joking. He considered an expensive dinner generous enough.

But as he worked his way through a similar series of first dates, that were also not followed up, he realised that Maya was right: a crucial rule in this modern world of adultery is that the women are able to call the shots, especially when the men are past their prime.

There are, however, as many success stories. Claire had been happily married all her life to a much older man. When the marriage became sexless she started a sexually rewarding affair with a younger man that lasted eight years. When her husband died, she remarried another kind, loyal and considerate man. But she sought out an affair again, on a dating website for married people, because she wanted the excitement of a lover who would always be a novelty. Already, for Claire and others like her, the new adultery is a way of life.

Crucially the globalisation of sexual cultures facilitated by the internet, where it is said sex in one shape or another constitutes half the traffic, has helped to bring far more varied and adventurous practices into closer view. As a result, we can no longer assume that our own perspective is the only one going, and that it is inevitable and “natural”.

On the contrary, the emphasis on sex as a leisure activity in consumer society allows people in celibate marriages to see their situation as something that can and should be remedied, instead of something to put up with. Websites make it easy and provide mass access to finding your own mistress or lover. Something that used to be a luxury of kings and millionaires is now open to all. Many get lucky, some go away empty-handed, but either way British marriage is finally taking a walk on the wild side.

'The New Rules: Internet Dating, Playfairs and Erotic Power’ by Catherine Hakim (Gibson Square Books) is available to pre-order for £9.99 plus £1.10 p&p from Telegraph Books. Call 0844 871 1515 or visitbooks.telegraph.co.uk.