Tag: affair psychology

• He Stopped Reaching for Her Hand at Some Point. She Couldn’t Tell You When.

  It happened to her in a Pret in Reading station, of all places. Anna was forty-seven, married for nineteen years to a man she still — by every reasonable measure — loved. Two children, both at university now. A semi-detached on a leafy street in Berkshire, a labrador called Bertie, the usual quiet rhythm of…

• Essay: How to Hide a Dating App on Your Phone: The Complete Privacy Guide for Married Daters

  The phone is where most married daters get themselves into trouble. Not through anything dramatic — not a private investigator, not a late-night text scroll — but through a series of small, boring, largely invisible mistakes that add up to a spouse asking a question no-one wants to answer. If you’ve been thinking about using…

• We Asked Our Members What They Actually Miss Most. It Wasn’t Sex.

  There’s a question we’ve started asking long-standing members of Illicit Encounters when they renew, almost as a quiet exit interview in reverse. What is it, really, that brought you here? Not the moment you signed up, not the row with your husband or the silent Sunday with your wife. The thing underneath it. The ache.…

• Essay: Is My Wife Having an Affair? The Signs Husbands Usually Miss

  James from Reading had been married for fourteen years when he first noticed his wife Laura had started taking her phone to the bathroom. Just the once, at first — then twice in the same evening. The third time he mentioned it, lightly, and she laughed it off. Said she was replying to her mother.…

• She Didn’t Expect to Like Him. That Was the First Problem.

  Rachel from Winchester was forty-three when she signed up. She’d been married for sixteen years to a man who, by any reasonable account, was decent. Mark wasn’t cruel. He didn’t forget her birthday. He put the bins out, went to their daughter’s netball matches, and occasionally remembered to bring home flowers on a Friday —…

• 7 Quiet Signs You Stopped Being Happy in Your Marriage (Long Before You Admitted It)

  Most people don’t wake up on a Tuesday and realise their marriage is unhappy. It arrives more quietly than that — settling in slowly, like damp into old walls, and by the time anyone notices the smell, they can’t quite remember when it started. Sarah from Nottingham, who joined Illicit Encounters in 2025, put it…

• Do I Actually Need a Second Phone for Married Dating? A Reader Asks

  This week in the IE postbag — Karen from Guildford writes in with one of the questions we’re asked more often than almost any other on the discretion front. Mia answers. Dear Mia, I’ve just joined a married dating site for the first time. I’m 43, my marriage has been a polite flatshare for about…

• Discreet Dating Site vs Mainstream App: Which Is Actually Safer for Married People?

  Ask most people where to go for dating online, and they’ll name a handful of the usual apps. Tinder. Hinge. Bumble. Match. The brands are so recognisable now that they’ve become shorthand for dating itself. And for a long time, married people looking outside their marriage tried to use them too — quietly, cautiously, hoping…

• Why the Best Affairs Don’t Start with Attraction

  You’d think it starts with a lingering look across a crowded room. A hand that brushes yours a second too long. That unmistakable, stomach-flipping moment when you just know. But ask anyone who’s been in a meaningful affair — one that lasted longer than a few breathless weeks — and they’ll tell you something different.…

• My Husband and I Are Basically Flatmates — Is That Normal?

  Dear Mia, I’ve been married for fourteen years and I love my husband — I do. But somewhere along the way we stopped being a couple and started being… housemates? We split the bills, coordinate the school run, argue about whose turn it is to ring the plumber. We haven’t been on a date in…