There’s a gap that a lot of people live in for a very long time. On one side: the marriage they’re in, which may be perfectly functional and completely unfulfilling. On the other: the idea of something different — more alive, more seen, more them — which feels simultaneously obvious and impossible.
This post is for people standing in that gap who’ve started to think seriously about closing it. Not people who want to be told whether they should. You’ve already thought about that, probably more than you’d like. This is practical. It’s honest. And it treats you as an adult who’s capable of making their own decisions.
So. How do you actually start an affair? Here’s what we’ve learned from over twenty years of helping people do exactly that.
Be honest with yourself about what you’re actually looking for
Before anything else, this matters enormously — because what you want shapes everything that follows. People who start affairs fall into a few distinct types, and conflating them leads to confusion for everyone involved.
Some people want physical excitement. They love their partner but the passion has faded, and they’re looking for the charge that comes with someone new. Others want emotional connection — they’re lonely in their marriage, they want to be really heard by someone, to matter to a specific person again. And some want both. None of these is wrong. But knowing which describes you — and being honest about it when talking to potential partners — saves a lot of heartache.
There’s also the question of what you don’t want. Do you want something casual and occasional, or are you open to something that develops into a longer arrangement? Are you looking for someone local for convenience, or would you prefer some distance for discretion? Would you end things if your feelings got more serious, or are you open to wherever it leads?
Rachel, a teacher from Nottingham who’s been a member of Illicit Encounters for three years, put it well when she messaged us recently. “I spent the first six months talking to the wrong people because I hadn’t admitted to myself that I wanted emotional connection, not just physical. Once I was clear about that, everything got easier.”
Spend a bit of time with these questions before you set up a profile. You’ll attract the right people — and fewer of the wrong ones.
Choose the right platform — and why it matters more than you think
This is, genuinely, one of the most important decisions you’ll make. Where you look for an affair partner determines who you’ll find, how safe you’ll be, and how much unnecessary drama you’ll encounter.
The obvious pitfall is standard dating apps. Tinder, Bumble, Hinge — these are built for single people. Yes, married people use them, but they use them secretly, with profiles that misrepresent them and intentions they can’t be honest about. This creates problems: you’re both pretending. You can’t talk openly about your situation. And if something goes wrong, there’s no framework for handling it discreetly.
Then there are generic hookup apps — which can work for purely physical encounters, but tend to attract people who aren’t looking for anything sustained or particularly considerate.
Dedicated married dating sites — and IllicitEncounters specifically — exist precisely because none of that works well for people in your situation. Every member is there for the same reason you are. You don’t have to explain your circumstances or justify yourself. You can be honest about what you want, what your situation is, and what you’re looking for. People have signed up expecting discretion and expecting complexity. It changes the entire tone of the interactions.
After twenty years and 1.5 million members, IllicitEncounters has a member base that’s roughly 45% women — a figure that’s significantly higher than most competitors, and that reflects the kind of community the site has built. It’s not a hook-up directory. It’s a meeting place for married and attached adults who want something real, handled with intelligence and care.
Creating a profile that works — without exposing yourself
Your profile is the first impression you’ll make on every potential partner, so it’s worth doing properly. The good news is that a profile that attracts the right people and a profile that protects your anonymity aren’t in conflict — you can do both.
On the photo question: you don’t need to include a face photo to get responses. A well-chosen photo that shows something of you — your build, your energy, a hobby, a setting — works perfectly well. Many people on married dating sites deliberately use photos that aren’t immediately identifiable, and that’s completely accepted and understood. If you do include a face photo, IllicitEncounters lets you password-protect it, sharing it only with people you choose.
Your username shouldn’t include your real name, your employer, or anything else that could identify you. It also shouldn’t be something cringe-inducing that you’ll regret — it’s the first thing people read. Something neutral and vaguely interesting is fine.
In your bio, be specific rather than generic. “Looking for someone to talk to and see where it goes” tells someone very little. “Married, based in the East Midlands, looking for something genuine and sustained with someone who also has something to protect” tells them a great deal. You don’t need to write an essay, but give people something real to respond to. Mention interests, not just your situation. The members who get the best responses on IllicitEncounters tend to write profiles that sound like a person, not a form.
One thing to include, even if it feels awkward: your availability. People with complex lives find it enormously helpful to know upfront whether you can meet on weekday evenings, occasional weekends, or only at very specific times. It saves weeks of establishing chemistry with someone whose schedule will never align with yours.
Making the first move — and making it well
The first message is where a lot of people stall. The blank box, the cursor blinking. What on earth do you say?
The short answer: reference something specific in their profile. Not “great profile” — anyone can say that, and it tells them nothing. Read what they’ve written and pick something out. Ask about it. Comment on it. Respond to them as a person, not as a potential conquest.
Keep it short. A first message doesn’t need to say everything — it needs to open a door. Three or four sentences is plenty. Warm, not intense. Interested, not desperate. If they’ve mentioned they love hiking, ask where they’ve been lately. If they’ve mentioned hating small talk, skip the weather entirely and jump to something real.
Don’t open with a compliment on their appearance, especially if you’re male messaging a woman. It’s the most common opener and the least effective. It also tends to put women on the back foot immediately, which is the opposite of what you want.
Tom, a 47-year-old from Reading, told us his approach: “I stopped thinking about the message as ‘getting her attention’ and started thinking about it as starting a conversation. That shift made all the difference.” He’s been in a happy, discreet arrangement for eighteen months.
And if someone doesn’t respond? That’s fine. It happens to everyone. Move on without a follow-up message — people are managing busy lives and complicated feelings, and a non-response is always more about timing or fit than about you specifically.
The first meeting — where to go and how to handle it
You’ve been talking, things feel promising, and someone has suggested meeting. Here’s what to think about before you confirm.
Location matters. Choose somewhere you’ve been before and know — a café, a bar, a restaurant — in a part of town where you’re unlikely to run into your spouse’s friends or colleagues. If you’re not certain about that, go further afield. An hour’s drive for a first meeting is entirely reasonable, and many people deliberately choose locations between their respective towns for exactly this reason.
Tell someone where you are. This isn’t about the drama — it’s just sensible. A trusted friend who knows the situation, or simply leaving a note at home with a plausible explanation, means you’re not navigating anything completely alone.
Set a time limit — at least in your head. A first meeting doesn’t need to be three hours. Coffee, a drink, ninety minutes. Enough to establish whether you like each other in person, whether the conversation flows as easily as it did online, whether you’d want to see each other again. Ending at a natural point is far less awkward than running out of things to say at hour four.
Be prepared for the feeling. Meeting someone you’ve been connecting with online for the first time is often strange in ways you don’t fully anticipate. Either the in-person chemistry doesn’t match what you’d built online — which is fine and normal — or it exceeds it, which can catch you completely off guard. Both are okay. Neither is a crisis.
Don’t feel obligated to take things further on a first meeting just because you’ve both clearly indicated you’re interested in an affair. Chemistry needs to be established in person. Good first meetings end with the question open.
Keeping things discreet — the practical side
This is where a lot of people feel anxious, and understandably so. But discretion is much less complicated than most people fear, as long as you’re consistent about it from the beginning.
Phone and device security is the biggest practical consideration. Use a separate email address — free to set up, takes five minutes — for anything affair-related. Browse married dating sites in private/incognito mode. If you’re messaging your affair partner, consider a messaging app with better privacy defaults: Signal deletes messages after a set time and doesn’t back up to cloud services the way standard SMS does.
Payments are worth thinking about. Paying for a married dating site subscription on a joint bank statement is an obvious risk. A prepaid card, a personal card that your partner doesn’t have sight of, or a cash top-up card solves this entirely.
Plan your time in advance. Unexplained absences are where affairs get found out most often — not through digital detective work, but through someone noticing patterns. Having a legitimate-sounding and consistent reason for certain regular time windows (an exercise class, a work commitment, a standing arrangement with a friend) is far more sustainable than inventing different stories each time.
And the emotional discretion side: don’t confide in more people than necessary. A single trusted friend who knows is often invaluable and keeps you sane. A group of people who know is a liability. The more people who know, the more likely it is to leak — not through malice, but through the sheer human tendency to tell a story.
Related Reading
- Why the Best Affairs Don’t Start with Attraction
- I Want to Join a Dating Site but I’m Terrified of Being Caught
- Creating the Perfect Dating Profile When You’re Already Married
If you’re considering married dating, it’s worth understanding what works — and what doesn’t — before you take the first step. And if you want to see what the research says about why people stray, our press team recently covered where 26% of affairs actually begin.
The emotional side that nobody quite prepares you for
Practical discretion is learnable. The emotional experience of having an affair is harder to prepare for, and worth going into with your eyes open.
Affairs tend to feel more intense than ordinary relationships, partly because they exist outside the structure of ordinary life. You don’t do the boring logistics with this person. You don’t argue about whose turn it is to deal with the boiler. You meet in hotel rooms or quiet cafés and talk properly and feel desired. That intensity is real, and it’s one of the things that makes affairs so compelling.
But that intensity can tip into something harder to manage. It’s not uncommon for feelings to develop beyond what either person anticipated. This isn’t a reason not to have an affair — it’s a reason to stay aware of where you are emotionally, and to talk honestly with your affair partner about feelings as they shift.
Compartmentalisation — the ability to keep your affair in its own space in your life, without it contaminating everything else — is a skill. Some people find it comes naturally. Others have to work at it. Feeling guilty isn’t inevitable, but if guilt is heavy, it usually means either the affair isn’t aligned with your values, or there’s something in the marriage that needs addressing regardless of the affair.
Many of our longest-standing members describe their affairs in terms that might surprise people who’ve never had one: as something that made them better at their marriage, not worse. More patient, more present, more themselves. That’s not a justification — it’s just what some people honestly find. And it’s worth knowing that the narrative of inevitable destruction isn’t the only one.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to find an affair partner on IllicitEncounters?
This varies enormously by person, location, and what you’re looking for. Some members find someone promising within days. Others take a few months. The members who tend to find connections fastest are those with specific, honest profiles and who put genuine effort into their messages. Patience and persistence both help.
Is it possible to have an affair without my spouse finding out?
Yes, absolutely — and the vast majority of affairs are never discovered. The key variables are digital hygiene, consistent and plausible explanations for your time, and a level of discretion from your affair partner that matches your own. Choosing a partner who also has a relationship to protect is often an advantage here — they have as much incentive as you do to keep things private.
What if I catch feelings?
It happens. It’s more common than most affair guides will tell you. The honest approach is to acknowledge it — to yourself first, then to your partner if appropriate — rather than letting it build unaddressed. A conversation about what you both want, and whether the arrangement is still working for both of you, is nearly always better than letting mismatched feelings simmer.
Should I tell my affair partner I’m married?
On IllicitEncounters, everyone on the site is married or in a relationship, so this is already understood. In other contexts, yes — you should be honest about your situation. People deserve to make an informed decision about what they’re entering into, and an affair built on fundamental deception is more likely to end badly.
How do I know if someone is genuine on a married dating site?
Take your time before meeting. Anyone who pushes to move quickly to in-person before you’re comfortable should be approached cautiously. A genuine person will have a real profile, reply consistently, and be willing to have actual conversations rather than rushing towards anything. Trust your instincts — you’ve been reading people your whole life.
Starting an affair isn’t a decision that deserves to be taken lightly — but it doesn’t deserve to be taken in fear either. Most people who have affairs are decent, thoughtful people whose marriages have left them with a gap that’s hard to live inside indefinitely.
The people who handle it best go in with clear intentions, a realistic understanding of what they’re doing, and a genuine respect for their affair partner as a person — not just a solution to a problem. That’s not naivety. That’s how you build something that actually works.
If you’re ready to take the first step, IllicitEncounters has been helping people in exactly your situation for over twenty years. You’re not the first. You won’t be the last. And you’re in better company than you might think.
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