My husband’s six-year affair with my close friend saved my marriage
Glance at the photograph and what do you see — a happily married couple enjoying a birthday meal with friends? after all, the handsome, silverhaired man has his arm placed protectively around the back of the glamorous blonde’s chair — his hand just grazing her shoulder — while she seems utterly at ease with his proximity and beams directly at the camera.
But all is not what it seems. For while the man is my husband, Malcolm — I’m not the buxom blonde. Rather, I’m the brunette in the background, whose head you can just see poking out behind him, almost as an after-thought.
Tessa, the woman in the chic black-and-white suit, was one of our close friends. and for six years she was also my husband’s mistress. They were together when the photograph was taken. and, while studying their body language now, it seems obvious, I was totally blind to it at the time.
I only discovered their betrayal when Malcolm tearfully confessed all in 2006. Most women would have thrown him out. after all, can you ever really trust a man who is so duplicitous he will spend years sleeping with one of your friends, right under your nose?
But instead — hard as it was — I wrapped my arms around him and said I forgave him. and now, incredible as it sounds, I believe the affair was the best thing that could have happened to our marriage — without it we wouldn’t be celebrating our 30th anniversary, as we are this year.
Thetruth is, we had become complacent about our marriage, and the betrayal was the shock we needed to make it work. Our relationship hadn’t always lacked passion. People talk about there being a thunderbolt when they meet ‘ The One’ and that’s how it was when I first saw Malcolm, now 68, in 1984. a chauffeur, he’d come to the offices of the trade magazine I edited at the time to collect a passenger.
Six feet tall with twinkling eyes, he was a year older than me and made me laugh. We ended up chatting for about 40 minutes.
he returned the next day and took me for coffee in covent Garden. although I was still married to my first husband with whom I had a young son, Daniel, now 42, our love had long since died and I had left several times previously.
Malcolm was already separated from his wife, the mother of his two daughters, Wendy, 42, and carol, 40. Within two months I’d left my husband — the irony that I started out being unfaithful to my own husband wasn’t lost on me later — and moved into Malcolm’s rented flat with my son. We married a year later, in October 1985.
Both quick- witted and mercurial, we sparked off one another. We made love three or four times a week and the occasional row was forgotten as quickly as it had begun. Our marriage felt like a fairytale. But 12 years on a perfect storm was beginning to brew.
First, we’d taken out a cripplingly large mortgage on a beautiful beamed cottage in hatfield heath, essex, in need of total renovation, which our salaries — by then I was working as a medical secretary — barely covered.
and I was beset with health problems which wore me down and left me less interested in the physical side. eventually, I was diagnosed with endometriosis.
But we both found enjoyment in our friendship with three other couples, whom we’d met after I became friendly with one of the wives at work. We were a close-knit group and our regular dinners, barbecues, celebrations and weekends away, were a distraction from the strained atmosphere at home.
While Tessa, who was about seven or eight years younger than me and a travel agent, was a shameless flirt, she showed no interest in Malcolm, at least to begin with, so I didn’t see her as a threat.
But as the eight of us socialised more, over the next two years I became increasingly unnerved by their flirtatious exchanges.
On nights out, Tessa would squeeze me out, ensuring she sat next to my husband in restaurants, never missing an opportunity to brush her hand against his.
During one weekend on the norfolk Broads she didn’t leave his side as he steered the large narrow boat the eight of us had hired, and on country walks she’d link arms with him while I trailed behind. her husband didn’t seem to notice. Or care. and Malcolm insisted they were just friendly.
For a while I consoled myself that Malcolm had always been a terrible flirt so there was nothing in it. But as her coquettishness continued — and he reciprocated — I accused him several times of having an affair, which he vehemently denied.
For a while I allowed his claims of innocence to quell the alarm bells, but by late 2005 I could no longer silence my intuition.
Malcolm was agitated, shorttempered and permanently attached to his mobile phone. he would disappear for ‘sailing weekends’ with his friends.
I discovered later that they were a ruse for being in Paris with Tessa. When he returned he wouldn’t come near me where once we’d have tumbled into bed after time apart.
looking back, I can see part of the problem was that I didn’t fight for Malcolm’s attention. In the past, he’d always said he’d never met such a formidable woman as me and yet in Tessa’s presence my self-confidence withered.
AThOMe, I was no longer fun and playful. Instead, I felt weighed down by our financial woes and spent a lot of time bemoaning my appearance — my doubts about our marriage led me to question everything from my hair and clothes to my figure, even though I have always been a size 10.
In the end, Malcolm’s confession came after a charity dinner in late 2006. I didn’t have my glasses on so hadn’t seen Tessa mouthing ‘I love you’ at him over the table, but a couple of other guests saw fit to tell me. Back home that night a row ensued as I confronted him, but he still denied having an affair.
Unable to let it go this time, the following morning I calmly took him a cup of tea in bed and said: ‘Tell me you haven’t been sleeping with her.’ eyes brimming with tears, he replied: ‘I can’t. I was — don’t leave me.’
Many women would have poured the hot tea in his lap. Instead, despite my shattered heart, I wrapped my arms around him and we sobbed together. I knew some of the responsibility was mine and also that I didn’t want to lose him. he was full of remorse. Malcolm was adamant that although he had cared for Tessa, he hadn’t loved her and had never stopped loving me.
While I was humiliated, hurt and angry, I realised we were both guilty of not tackling the problems in our marriage which had led to his affair.
he said he had done it because in Tessa, he found a woman paying him lots of attention, telling him he was sexy and fun, while at home he felt weighed down with stress over money, my health problems and my low self-esteem.
We’d both neglected our marriage and put barriers up so the only time we communicated was to have an argument.
although the affair had gone on for six years, he said he’d ended it six months before his confession. Tessa’s marriage had broken up half way through their affair.
he admitted it was only when he began to fear Tessa may reveal all that he realised he stood to lose me — in his words, ‘the most magnificent woman I’ve ever met’.
What also stung was that two members of our group, two people I considered friends, had known about the affair throughout, and never told me.
like a lot people who discover their partner’s infidelity, I became thirsty for details, almost masochistically so. I’ve since discovered the affair had begun around the year 2000. They’d met for coffee after Malcolm had told her we were having marriage troubles.
By the time they’d drained their cappuccinos they’d agreed to meet for sex in a hotel in london a week later. Malcolm admits he didn’t even feel guilty, that he believed he deserved the thrill of a mistress
as an escape from the misery he felt at home with me.
After that, he met Tessa at least once a fortnight for sex. When the affair was exposed, it split our friendship group up.
Of course, Malcolm and I didn’t turn things round immediately. It took several agonising years.
While we made love a few days after his bombshell, I couldn’t shake the images of him in bed with her. Unable to eat, I dropped from a size 10 to a size 6 in a matter of weeks.
Still, I was resolute in my decision to stay with Malcolm. We loved each other deeply and had known what it was to have a strong and happy marriage. I was adamant that divorce was not the only way.
But I found it impossible not to keeping dragging up his affair, always wanting him to provide intimate details.
Eventually he could take no more. ‘If we’re going to stay together and get through this then I am not going to pay for it for the rest of my life,’ he told me, 18 months later.
We went for counselling which taught us to talk instead of yelling, listen to one another rather than trading blame. That if we allowed ourselves to remain entrenched in the heartache of the past we’d never move on.
Two years later, we were holidaying in the Greek islands when I realised I felt happy for the first time in years. Malcolm and I were once again like playful twentysomethings and his affair no longer dominated our conversations or my thoughts.
People might find this hard to understand, but the affair liberated us. It made us aware of the importance of being kind to each other and ourselves. While Tessa had always made me feel inadequate — with her blonde hair and curves and cleavage — I stopped obsessing about my appearance and trusted that Malcolm adored me even sporting a face pack and slippers.
Eventually I moved jobs to a private hospital in London. We got rid of that big mortgage and downsized to our current home in Takeley, Essex.
Today we laugh, we make love every week and we’re tactile even when we’re sitting on the sofa watching TV. And we face up to any problems before they become insurmountable.
My only regret is that I never confronted Tessa, never offloaded my scorn or slapped her face for pursuing my husband. Perhaps she’d have told me things I didn’t want to hear. At the time it seemed simpler to deal solely with his version of events, to retreat into our marriage.
The irony is that, eight years on, our relationship feels more secure and resilient than perhaps it ever would have done but for Malcolm’s betrayal.
Interview by Sadie Nicholas