Tag: married dating UK

• Three Days of Silence: Why a Lover Going Quiet Almost Never Means What You Think

  There’s a particular kind of quiet that only married daters know. It isn’t the quiet of someone drifting off, or losing interest, or quietly deciding you were a mistake. It’s the quiet of a man whose mother-in-law has turned up for four days with a suitcase and opinions. It’s the quiet of a woman whose…

• Nobody Worries About the Telly. That’s Exactly Why It Catches People Out.

  Ask anyone who’s been doing this a while what they worry about and they’ll say the phone. Face ID, a boring app name, notifications off on the lock screen, messages cleared before they walk through the door. The phone gets treated like a safe. It gets checked, tidied and second-guessed daily. And then they sit…

• He’d Written the Same Three Words in Every Anniversary Card for Nineteen Years

  The card aisle in the big Tesco at Handforth is arranged by occasion, and Graham has known exactly where to stand in it since about 2008. Past the birthdays, past the new babies, past the sympathy ones nobody lingers at. Anniversary cards are at the far end near the wrapping paper, and there are two…

• I’m Jealous of My Lover’s Wife — and I’m Married Myself. What on Earth Is Wrong With Me?

  “I’ve been seeing someone for eight months. He’s married. I’m married. Neither of us has ever pretended otherwise — that was rather the point. Then last month he mentioned, completely in passing, that he and his wife were off to Whitstable for a long weekend. And I couldn’t breathe. I’ve spent three weeks picturing the…

• The One Person Who Knows: Three Members on Telling a Friend About Their Affair

  There’s a moment most married daters would recognise instantly. You’re two glasses in with your oldest friend, the conversation has drifted somewhere honest, and there’s a sentence sitting at the back of your throat like a stone. Say it or swallow it? Almost everyone arrives at that fork eventually. Carrying something this size on your…

• Everyone Thought the Allotment Was Keeping Him Sane. They Were Half Right.

  There’s a fortnight every September when an allotment makes a man look like a genius. The beans come all at once, the tomatoes finally turn, and Graham, 57, from Chesterfield, walks up the hill most evenings to plot 12 with a carrier bag and a legitimate reason to be out of the house. His wife…

• The Seven-Year Itch Is Real — It Just Can’t Read a Calendar

  Marilyn Monroe has a lot to answer for. The Seven Year Itch gave the feeling its name in 1955, and seven decades later it remains the one piece of marriage folklore everyone can recite without thinking. Somewhere around the seventh anniversary, so the story goes, the shine wears off, the eye starts wandering, and a…

• Six Weeks of Radio Silence: How Do I Restart My Affair Now the Holidays Are Nearly Over?

  Dear Mia, My affair partner and I agreed to go quiet for the summer holidays. Six weeks, kids at home, a family fortnight in Cornwall — there was simply no safe way to keep messaging, and we both knew it. We said we’d pick things up in September, and at the time it felt sensible.…

• The Back-to-School List Had One Item She Couldn’t Write Down

  The list went up on the fridge on the first of August, the way it does every year. School shoes. Shin pads for the eldest. A pencil case in a very particular shade of purple, because there had been tears about this before and nobody in the house wanted a repeat. Name tapes, because Rachel…

• She Loves Her Kids. She’s Still Been Crossing Off the Days Until September.

  There’s a calendar stuck to the side of Rachel’s fridge in Nottingham, the kind with a column for every member of the family. Swimming on Mondays. Dan’s five-a-side on Wednesdays. And on Thursday the 3rd of September, in her own column, a small pencil star. No word next to it. Just a star. If you…