‘MY AFFAIR SAVED MY MARRIAGE’

Confessions of ‘nice’ women who cheat.

Quite what has been going on between Colin Firth and his wife Livia – whose 20-year marriage seemed to be one of the strongest in showbusiness – and the man they say has been stalking her is hard to fathom. According to their official statement, Livia became ‘romantically involved’ with childhood friend Marco Brancaccia two years ago, during a ‘period of separation’ from her husband, and he has ‘stalked’ the couple ever since.

However, some newspapers have questioned this version of events, pointing to photographs of the Firths looking very much together throughout this ‘period of separation’ when Livia was involved with Brancaccia. Meanwhile, Brancaccia strongly denies the stalking allegations (he says he sent two WhatsApp messages and an email) and insists he was deeply in love with Livia. The real story, he says, is a famous couple trying to cover up an affair. The case is now in the hands of lawyers, but whatever the truth, the tale leaves one big question unanswered: why, when you’re married to Mr Darcy, with two sons, dream homes in Umbria and West London and a red-carpet lifestyle, would any woman look elsewhere?

Yet more and more of us are doing so. Reliable statistics are hard to find – after all, infidelity takes place under the radar – but the evidence points one way. Where once the research found more men admitting to affairs than women, this has changed. According to a YouGov survey, the male/female split is now fairly even, with one in five British adults having had an affair – 20 per cent of

men and 19 per cent of women. Studies by the Kinsey Institute have found that the number of women who admit to being unfaithful has risen by 40 per cent since 1990 while the rate for men has stayed the same.

Dr Alicia Walker, US sociologist and author of the book The Secret Life of the Cheating Wife, spent a year interviewing 40 women who were unfaithful to their husbands. She expected to find the old cliché to be true: that men cheat for sex whereas women, stuck in unhappy marriages and seeking a way out, cheat for emotional connection. ‘What I found challenged that idea,’ she says. ‘Most of the women described marriages that were good – their husbands were good people, good parents, best friends. The women weren’t cheating because they wanted to get out of the marriage, they were cheating to stay in it – while also getting their needs met.’

The most common of these ‘needs’ was fulfilling sex. ‘Their marriages were either sexless or not sexually satisfying,’ says Dr Walker. ‘For many, this had been a problem for years or decades. They had approached their husbands numerous times, begged, pleaded, cajoled, suggested therapy, but the men didn’t see it as a problem. Instead of wandering through this sexual desert, having an affair met the women’s sexual needs without breaking up their families.’

Women also talked about wanting to be ‘someone else’ as a driving force for having an affair. ‘They felt the roles of wife and mother didn’t leave much space to be anything else,’ says Walker. ‘At home, some found it difficult to be the person they used to be, or to try out different versions of themselves.’ An affair allowed them to escape from that – to be wild, free, dangerous or

“THE NUMBER ➤ OF WOMEN WHO ADMIT TO BEING UNFAITHFUL HAS RISEN BY 40 PER CENT SINCE 1990 ”

spontaneous – but they didn’t want to behave like that all the time.

Relationship therapist Esther Perel, author of bestseller Mating in Captivity, has noted similar feelings among her clients. Marriage meets our need for safety and dependability, but we also thrive on mystery and adventure. Although it’s often assumed that men are the first to tire of their partners and to lose sexual attraction, research shows that it’s women who lose sexual interest in their partners first – and more suddenly (for men, it tends to be gradual; for women, it can free fall). Women also tend to cheat sooner – typically within six to ten years. (For men, there’s no clear window but it’s commonly later than this.)

Marital therapist Andrew G Marshall, author of How Can I Ever Trust You Again?, says the desire to ‘escape’, to be someone new is something he hears a lot in therapy. ‘Women who have been unfaithful often say, “I just wanted to have something for myself.” Women are very good at looking after everyone else, at making everyone else happy as they’ve been raised to believe that this will make them happy, too. Instead, they end up feeling empty and taken for granted – and that can lead them to look elsewhere.’

For women – unlike men – cheating tends to be deliberate. It doesn’t sneak up on them. ‘Men can fall into it,’ Marshall says. ‘One pattern is that when men have problems, they tend to confide in one person only – their wives. When their marriage is the problem, they can’t confide in their wife so instead they start talking to a female colleague, an old friend or another woman. They become closer and closer – and that’s how it starts.

‘I don’t see that with women,’ he continues. ‘When they have problems with their marriages, they have lots of girlfriends to confide in. They’re not drawn into intense relationships unknowingly.’

Marshall has also found that women tend to crack from the guilt of having an affair more than men. ‘Women are more likely to confess. Men get found out,’ he says. And the result when they do confess or are caught out is the same as it is for cheating men: shattered lives, anger, feelings of betrayal and a lot of mess. ‘Having an affair makes a bad situation 100 times worse,’ warns Marshall. ‘If you believe you’re improving your marriage by doing it, then you’re lying to your husband, to your children, to your lover and to yourself.’

“HAVING AN AFFAIR MAKES A BAD SITUATION 100 TIMES WORSE ”