Don't judge me for CHEATING ON MY HUSBAND

One woman reveals why she has no regrets about having an eight-year affair

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Sinking back into the vast hotel bed, my lover and I carelessly allow flakes of croissant to fall on the sheets as we interrupt breakfast for a kiss. As a married mum-of-three, with all the cooking, cleaning, chauffeuring and general dogsbodying that comes with that role, it’s during illicit moments like these when I am happiest and most carefree. I have been seeing Tom*, an IT consultant who lives 300 miles away from me, for the past eight years. At 50, he is six years my senior.

Lockdown has been cruel to people like us, with unsuspecting husbands, wives and children at home. We are wholly reliant on anonymous hotels to steal precious evenings and weekends together. It’s a wonder I haven’t gone crazy, cooped up at home with my husband of 16 years, whose best shot at romance these days is remembering to put petrol in the car, and a son and two daughters so attached to their phones I can’t remember the last time they looked me in the eye.

For years, the prospect of my hotel trysts with Tom every few months were the one ‘carrot’ getting me through the day-to-day drudgery of domestic life.

‘I’M A MUM OF THREE TEENAGERS’

Thanks to Tom’s work sometimes picking up the bill, we stay in grand hotels — sometimes we get upgraded to a suite, which would cost thousands of pounds a night. While my husband, Martin*, hasn’t bought me flowers in 12 years, Tom always requests a bouquet of roses for me in the room. It will come as no surprise to learn that, as in many long-term relationships, there is a lot of unresolved hurt and bubbling resentment in my marriage, and that’s the reason I feel little guilt, or remorse, for having led this double life for eight years.