Something on the side?

Housewife Confessions: Adultery

Only rarely do we get to hear the story of an adulterer first hand. Suppressed into silence either because they are still evading detection, or through shame after what they have done has become public. In the first of what we hope will be a regular series, we lift the lid on the thoughts and experiences of a self confessed adulteress.

Our sincerest thanks to our first confessor.

If you would like to confess – with the absolute, cast-iron certainty that we won’t release any information that might identify you, you can contact us here.

Tell us something about yourself

I’m a middle class, church going, mother of 3 … with a pierced fanny.

When did you first contemplate an affair?

I’d chosen the date knowing that my husband would be away that night.  That way I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye for 36 hours after it had happened.

I never contemplated having my first affair.  It’s the classic story which starts, “It just happened”.  I’d never considered myself anything but faithful.  My marriage hadn’t been happy for a while although I’d tried to brush the discontentment away.  When I started talking to him it was purely as friends.  Actually, we were friends of a friend on the internet.  And the internet is where it stayed for most of its duration.  I was undeniably attracted to him and we flirted outrageously but that was all that I would ever do.

Then one day the flirting went a little bit further.  We were talking on MSN and started describing what we would like to do to each other.  I honestly can’t remember who started it first but from then on we were incredibly intense.  We ’spoke’ most of the day everyday when he was at work and even when our spouses were near us at home.

How did you go about arranging it?

We tried for a very long time not to meet.  Neither of us had ever been unfaithful before and so it seemed like such a big step.  but, inevitably we decided it had to happen.  Arranging things was easy.  He took a morning off work and I dropped my daughter of at pre-school before heading to a car park at a woodland park.

I’d chosen the date knowing that my husband would be away that night.  That way I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye for 36 hours after it had happened.

Did you have any guilt after the first time you cheated?

At every stage, from driving to the meeting point, to the first moment I looked in his eyes, our first kiss … I asked myself “Is this the point when I should start feeling guilty?”.  But I never did.  Even when I was driving away, knowing he had been intimate with me in a way that only my husband had for the past 13 years, I didn’t feel anything except happiness.

I now know that I could have driven straight to my husband and looked him in the eye with absolutely no problem.

What I got out of it was fun, passion, confirmation that I was worth more than a cook, cleaner and mother

What were looking to get out of the affair?

I can’t say I was looking to get anything out of the affair.  That would suggest that I had thought about it in that way.  It was a spontaneous happening.  Nothing was planned or calculated.

What did you get out of your affair?

What I got out of it was fun, passion, confirmation that I was worth more than a cook, cleaner and mother.  I was with someone who would rather be throwing me onto a bed than folding his sweater.  I got confidence to find a new, passionate life.  And that’s exactly what I did.  That confidence has changed me forever.

How long did it carry on for?

The affair carried on for about 6 months.

If it ended, why?

It ended, bizarrely enough, as his marriage ended.  He told his wife that he needed to leave her and went into meltdown.  He needed to sort out his head and our relationship was one of the things which didn’t fit in with his new found freedom.  I was devastated.  He’d made me realise that I wanted and needed more out of life and then, suddenly, he’d moved on to a new phase and I was stuck, alone, in an unhappy marriage.

Would you do it again?

Would I do it again?  In a heartbeat!  My lover can’t take all the credit for my new life.  There is someone I love dearly now who has pushed me further towards finding myself than my first lover ever could.  I don’t know whether you’d describe it as an affair.  It’s certainly not conventional.

He is in a full, wonderful loving relationship with his wife.  And he has other lovers too.  Whether they love him as I do, and whether he tells them that he loves them, the way he does me, I don’t know.  Quite frankly, that’s none of my business.  He gives me the excitement and passion I need and accepts that I will find it elsewhere too.  With him, I have freedom, passion, love and a soul mate who knows me better than anyone else.

Through him I have realised that I am not a monogamous person.  Even if I was happy in my marriage, I’m sure I would ‘cheat’ again.  And would I regret anything?  Only the things I didn’t do.

Tags: Adultery, confessions