I feel guilty about my affair but I’m hooked on secrecy

Perhaps it’s because I haven’t had from life itself much of what I'd like to have [Annie said] that I've made a world within me. Can't let life cheat us... If we can't have things one way — have to get them in another.’ From Fidelity by Susan Glaspell (US author 1876-1948)

DEAR BEL I AM a 41-year-old mother of four, working from home as a child-minder. For a long time I have been having an affair with a married man 20 years older.

Our lives are so different, he lives in a nice house in a rural area, runs his own business, has several properties and drives a sports car. I live with my husband and family in a small house in a suburban estate. It is not easy for me and him to get together — because I have had official complaints from parents for leaving their kids with an assistant when I escape to meet this man for a few hours, or sometimes an afternoon.

The dirty sex is exciting, but some of the things he gets me to do when he has taken Viagra leave me feeling grubby. I like having a secret ‘adult’ life. He is easily flattered and the power I have over him is very exciting — he is like a dog on a lead. Sometimes I am sickened when I realise he is not only old enough to be my dad, but is recently a grandad. But I also think this man might offer me and my kids a better future now he is nearing retirement. My friend thinks I am either broody or I am being dramatic. She says it is bad karma. I know I should stop, but I keep going back for more. What should I do? I cannot think of anything else.

KAY

NOWADAYS being ‘judgmental’ is a cardinal sin — and yet how can an ordinary mortal such as me avoid having a view about the way people act?

For example, I just had a letter from Anna, who’s lurching between her partner of eight years — the father of her child — and her lover of two years. She left one, then the other, finally going back to the partner, but missing the lover, then discovering that the lover is now in another relationship. So Anna is afraid she ‘will never be able to be happy again’. Somewhere in the middle of it all her child has existed but she seems to give no thought to that.

She wants help for her broken heart, but adds, ‘I ask you politely not to reply if you just want to criticise me, as I know I have made mistakes myself.’ Frankly, I wish she could stop feeling sorry for herself long enough to reflect on the effect of her flakiness on a child who did not ask to come into the world. How can I help but suggest that becoming an adult at long last and concentrating on that child’s stable future might, in the end, be the best cure for her sad ‘cheating heart’ (to quote the old country song)?

Is that criticising? Well — sorry. Anna knows she has ‘ made mistakes’ and it’s clear you do too, Kay, or else why would you write? But neither of you seems willing to transform that guilty awareness into the genuine remorse that prompts a real change.

I hope that viewing your letter here will help you judge it yourself — and realise what others will think of a registered child-minder neglecting her duty to her charges and their parents in order to sneak off to meet her older married lover for ‘dirty sex’. You say you ‘can’t think of anything else’ — which must mean you are fantasising about your slavering, Viagrapopping pedigree pal while making dinner for your four children.

Thank goodness they’re not mind-readers, eh? You feel ‘used and grubby’, yet call your secret life ‘adult’. You say you have ‘power’ over your lover, yet pathetically imagine he will one day leave his wife in order to import his bit on the side plus her brood into his smart, country life. As if!

Is your friend calling you ‘broody’ because you’d like to have this man’s child, in order to have something to hold over him apart from hot sex? If so, I beg you not to be so stupid and irresponsible. It will end in tears — shed by you, your husband and your children.

Either his wife will find out or your rich man will tire of sex games on the back seat of his Jag and leave you feeling worse about yourself than you already do. ‘Bad karma’ says your friend — but do you understand that? Your friend is asking you to see that this situation is dishonest, bad, immoral and even abusive, and therefore no good can come of it.

I suggest that your task now is to do all you can to make it less bad, for your own sake. Anna’s affair is over and I hope she starts life anew with her partner and child. As for you, Kay, you know what you have to do, but ‘keep going back for more’. Well, don’t. End it.