Getting away with it all

The double standard used to favour men. Now it's women who blithely admit to affairs, reports Markie Robson-Scott

The world is full of married men. Or is it married women? And who's being more brazen about their affairs? This week, if you'd read the tabloids, you'd think that most women, especially high-powered ones, were rejoicing in a bit on the side. Forty-two per cent of the guests who filled in a survey sent out before the Women of the Year awards lunch said they'd had affairs, and two-thirds said they didn't regret it.

That's not all. Julie Moore (not her real name, presumably) writes in the November issue of She (the magazine for women who juggle their lives and, apparently their men) that her recipe for keeping a marriage alive is to have lots of extra-marital sex. Affairs, she says, are exciting and fun. She loves her husband dearly but their sex life is a yawn in spite of efforts to revive it, so she's had four affairs in the past three years. He knows nothing about it, and she provides tips for keeping it that way in a separate box called "Getting Away with It": don't change the frequency of your love-making; don't take more baths or showers; don't appear happier or snappier than usual.

If a man wrote a similar piece, wouldn't he be vilified? If men cheat, they're immoral swine; if women do it and go public, they're empowered and liberated. A double standard or what? No, says my friend Dana, who for years had affair after affair with married men, none of whom left their wives as promised. She thinks it serves men right that women can be just as devious. Actually, says Alison Pylkannen, editor of She, women are more honest, if they're anything like Julie Moore. If a man wrote about an affair, he'd be more likely to say that this is how the male psyche is, that guys just can't help themselves, or that it was just a bit of fun that he didn't think could do any harm. "That's the kind of thing that people find so unacceptable," says Pylkannen. In fact, men's magazines like XL are starting to emphasise the grim side: the November issue includes a piece called "Nightmare Office Affairs: Survivors Tell All" in which the accent is on the pain and emotional chaos that such liaisons can bring.

If Moore's article is to be believed - and people do lie a lot when it comes to their sexual exploits - she's careful and straightforward: she only goes for men who are attached, preferably with children or at least "lots of sporting interests" which will prevent them from pursuing her. She doesn't want her, or their, relationships to be disrupted, and has seen from friends' experience that when marriages break up, the affair which caused the rift rarely sustains itself. "Too much guilt and grief, apparently," says Moore breezily, as though such emotions are alien to a pragmatist like herself.

Men have been shocked at Moore's piece, but don't they realise it's all just another sign of our greater organisational skills and perfectionism? "Women are much more sensible and practical," says agony uncle Nick Fisher. "Men rush into things while women take on the issue of guilt before they begin. Men are more pathetic and underhand; women do it with pride. But there is a double standard: men get blamed and women get away with it. If a 45-year-old businessman shags his 20-year- old secretary, women say,'How could he?', whereas if a female TV executive shags her male secretary, they say 'Go for it, girl'." Wait a second, says Kathy Lette. "How many centuries of chauvinism have we endured? Shouldn't we be allowed the odd pay-back?" Infidelity is a sign of women's economic emancipation, says Christopher Clulow, director of the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute. A couple of hundred years ago, adultery was seen as theft of the property of the husband, though it was always the wife who was stripped of property and status as punishment.

Are women becoming less faithful? According to a book on adultery by Annette Lawson, the fidelity span is shrinking: younger women are more likely to have affairs sooner after marriage than their older counterparts. Though they're not always younger. "Practically every woman I know has had affairs," says a woman in her sixties. "It's not primarily about sex but about adventure; there's relish in the subterfuge aspect. And the desire to know one is still attractive now the chase is over. It's a bit of fun, not to be taken seriously."

There's a redressing of the balance going on, says Pylkannen. "Women have more choices to make - this is just one more big decision. It's an unavoidable fact of modern life that relationships break down, but women are able to make more thoughtful evaluations than men about where we're at and how happy we are, and we're not prepared to put up with what our mothers settled for." It's true that 72 per cent of divorces are initiated by women, citing unreasonable behaviour as cause; they become concerned about difficulties at an earlier stage than men, who are far more likely to cite adultery as grounds for a break-up.

Anne Lovell, author of Second Time Around, a book about making second relationships work, had an affair when she was 40 because "I wanted to prove I was still attractive. It led to the break-up of my marriage, but that would have happened anyway." She believes that most affairs are destructive, but that, occasionally, having one can highlight what you've got and make you grateful for the partner you're with; indeed, this happened to one of her own close friends, who had a fling after she found out that her husband was having one. Julia Cole of Relate says she has yet to meet a couple who say that an affair has done them good (though they'd be unlikely to seek her help if it had). Any affair, she says, is a symptom, rather than a cause, of problems in the relationship. Author Julia Hamilton, who had a "short one" and whose former husband had many, agrees. "It's an admission that things aren't working, that the whole set-up is flaky. There are always consequences for that sort of behaviour. And you can't re-invent yourself. It's not a form of consumerism."

David (he didn't want his surname to be published) runs Loving Links, a "discreet dating service" for those attached but seeking romance. He's happy to disagree: "We're doing incredibly well at the moment with a high level of subscribers," he says. 289 women and 300 men have signed up with Loving Links. Like Moore, the barristers, artists, academics and City high-fliers who are registered with the service don't wish to rock the boat and want to retain the fabric of what they've got, though some women, says David, see it as a way of "dipping their tootsies in the water, to see if they've got marketability." "What's hugely different with women," he goes on, "is that they always think it through thoroughly and talk it over with their friends." It can take months for a woman to decide to register, while men go straight in and complete the necessary forms instantly. This is partly, no doubt, because women are more concerned about safety than men - the agency allows them to be more in control and to avoid being pounced on in hotel bars, says David - but perhaps it's also a sign of greater awareness of what's at stake. Men often tell him they want to forget their responsibilities and, said one,"Be a boy again" while women tell him they want the buzz and the tremble in the stomach of waiting for the phone call (so that's fun?) "I'm a genuine resource for people in lonely, celibate marriages," says David. "I get loads of cards from clients saying,'Thank God you're here'."

Most of the women I know who've had affairs experience guilt anyway. One, who was sure the liaison wouldn't impinge on her reasonably happy marriage - she had the affair because her self-esteem was low - found herself unaccountably overcome by fear and guilt every time she saw her husband. In the end she could hardly speak to him and had to tell him the truth. The marriage broke up and now she regrets the whole thing. Julie Moore, take note. Sometimes the best laid plans...