Men and Sex

You’re having an affair; he swears that he is gong to leave his wife. So far, so predictable. But what if he really left her? Would you live happily ever after, or would the fear of him straying again always be at the back of your mind?

Some mistresses are satisfied with playing second fiddle to the wife – or are at least realistic enough to know that the relationship wouldn’t work any other way; but most live in hope that one day the situation will change and the man will be all theirs.

Ruth Houston is a cheated-on wife who exacted her revenge by writing a book called Is He Cheating On You? and reinvented herself on TV as an infidelity expert both here and in the US. She says studies show that only 3 per cent of the cheating husbands who divorce their wives marry their mistresses, and when they do, these marriages have a very high failure rate: around 75–90 per cent. “If he cheated with you, he’s likely to cheat on you,” she says, “because cheating is his way of dealing with marital or relationship problems. Instead of seeking professional help or trying to communicate with his partner, his solution is to have an affair.”

Riahanna Godstone has been suffering the humiliation of her husband’s second very public affair within two years – yet she had formerly played the mistress herself. She became pregnant with their first child while he was still married to his previous wife, so she shouldn’t have been totally surprised when he started straying again. “I was so upset when I found out. I felt as if his ex-wife was laughing at me. I suppose the famous words ‘When you marry your mistress, you create a vacancy’ applied to my situation.”

So can an ex-mistress wife ever really feel safe? “I felt like I had to sleep with an emotional gun under my pillow – I needed to protect myself at all times,” says Georgia, 31, who married her lover after they had both divorced their spouses. “When we were having an affair, our relationship was so simple – we went to the same trade shows around the globe. We were together six to eight weeks a year with no strings attached; it was exciting. But when I left my husband, taking my daughter, and moved in with Mark, suddenly I was the woman at home. I couldn’t travel as much without having my ex cover the childcare. So I was sitting alone for weeks with Mark away.” And no matter how much Mark tried to reassure her that he was being faithful, Georgia felt she had no reason to believe him.

“I soon became convinced that if I couldn’t get hold of him in the evening, then he was with another woman. Once, he caught me looking through his mobile and got really angry. He snapped, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ I felt I was turning into his ex-wife, who I knew he despised for being so possessive. He started to have the same bored look on his face that I’d seen when he talked about his ex. Maybe some women can marry their lover and feel confident about it, but I felt like I’d made a pact with the devil. I felt I didn’t really deserve to have him all to myself when I had stolen him from someone else. Even on the day we were married, I was paranoid that some woman would shout out at the back, ‘It should have been me!’”

The biggest irony is that, even if a mistress marriage is not scuppered by the woman’s fear – real or imaginary – that she has fallen for a serial adulterer, the marriage can just as easily founder for lack of excitement. After all the thrills of an affair – the secret liaisons and romantic weekends abroad – marriage can prove a dull reality.

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