“How’s your marriage?”
“Fine.”
The word should be neutral, but in marital contexts, it’s often a death sentence. Fine means nothing’s actively wrong. Fine means the bills are paid, the children are cared for, there’s no abuse or conflict. Fine also means nothing’s actively right—no passion, no joy, no sense of being truly alive together.
“I described my marriage as ‘fine’ for fifteen years,” Sarah, 48, from London, told us. “And it was fine. We didn’t fight. We cooperated effectively. We were good parents. But ‘fine’ became a cage—I couldn’t complain about something that wasn’t broken, but I was slowly suffocating in a marriage that wasn’t really living either.”
The Fine Trap
Modern marriage advice focuses on identifying problems: abuse, addiction, infidelity, chronic conflict. But there’s a whole category of marriages that are problem-free yet deeply unsatisfying—the “fine” marriages that drain the life from both partners without providing any clear justification for departure.
“My husband asked me once why I was unhappy,” David, 50, from Manchester, recalled. “And I couldn’t give him a reason. He doesn’t drink, gamble, or cheat. He helps with housework, remembers anniversaries, tells me he loves me. Any complaint sounds like ingratitude. But I feel like I’m fading, becoming less real, less alive, less myself. ‘Fine’ is killing me slowly.”
This is the trap: when there’s nothing to point to as “the problem,” you have no legitimate grievance. Society expects you to be grateful for “fine,” to accept that adult life involves compromise, to stop expecting fairy tales.
The Gradual Acclimatisation
The danger of “fine” is how gradually it becomes acceptable. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to accept mediocrity. You simply stop expecting more. Each small disappointment gets normalised. Each unmet need gets dismissed as unrealistic. Until eventually, you’ve convinced yourself that this is what marriage is supposed to be—functional, cooperative, empty.
“I remember exactly when I gave up,” Helen, 46, from Leeds, said. “We were on holiday in Spain, supposedly a romantic getaway. We spent the week reading separate books, eating meals in near-silence, going to bed at different times. And I thought, ‘This is fine. This is what marriage becomes.’ I was thirty-five. I’d accepted a lifetime of ‘fine’ before I was even middle-aged.”
The Breaking Point
For many IE members, the breaking point isn’t a dramatic crisis but a sudden clarity: “fine” isn’t enough. Not because they’ve become greedy or unrealistic, but because they’ve realized that life is finite and “fine” represents a tragic waste of it.
“I turned fifty and looked at the next thirty years—if I’m lucky—and saw ‘fine’ stretching to the horizon,” James, 51, from Edinburgh, explained. “Fine meals. Fine conversations. Fine sex once a month if I initiate and he agrees. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t accept that this was all there was.”
This realisation—that “fine” is a choice, not a fate—is what brings many to Illicit Encounters. They’re not fleeing disaster; they’re seeking something more than acceptance.
The Permission to Want More
Acknowledging that “fine” isn’t enough requires giving yourself permission to want more—not because you deserve it, not because you’re special, but because wanting is part of being human. The suppression of want, the acceptance of “fine,” is a kind of self-abandonment.
“I had to stop apologising for my own desires,” Mark, 47, from Bristol, told us. “Yes, my marriage is ‘fine.’ But I want more than fine. I want electric. I want passionate. I want to feel like my life is actually happening rather than just passing by. That’s not greedy. That’s honest.”
What “More” Looks Like
For IE members, “more” isn’t necessarily about leaving their marriages—though some do. Often it’s about refusing to accept that “fine” is the ceiling of their experience. The affair provides the intensity, connection, and aliveness that “fine” lacks.
“My IE contact makes me feel like I’m actually living,” Emma, 44, from Glasgow, said. “Not because he’s necessarily better than my husband—though in some ways he is—but because the relationship exists outside the routine. We don’t have bills to discuss or children to coordinate. We have each other, pure and simple. That feels like more.”
Related Reading
- The Marriage Problem No One Admits Until It’s Too Late
- Roommates with Rings
- Red Flags in Your Relationship You Shouldn’t Ignore
If you’re considering married dating, understanding the full picture can help.
The Honest Assessment
If you’re in a “fine” marriage, you face a difficult question: is fine enough? Not by society’s standards, not by your family’s expectations, but for you. Is this the life you want to have lived?
There are no wrong answers. Some people genuinely value stability over intensity and find “fine” perfectly acceptable. Others discover that “fine” is a slow death and choose to seek more—through improving the marriage, leaving it, or finding fulfilment elsewhere.
IE exists for those who’ve decided that “fine” isn’t enough, who want to feel truly alive even if that means complicating their lives. The affair isn’t a solution to a problem; it’s a rejection of mediocrity, a demand for more than functional existence.
Because life is too short—and too long—to spend it being “fine.”
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