Why I’m ok with physical infidelity | Rebecca Jane

My first husband was exceptionally unfaithful, I knew about six affairs he had (I mean, if you’re going to do something, at least do it right... and he did it really right!)

Ultimately we did end up divorcing, but infidelity was not my reason for leaving.

After that debacle, I went on to open a female run private investigation company called ‘The Lady Detective Agency’.

In the beginning it was all fun and games. I roped in the friends that had helped uncover my former husband, and we set about becoming professional spies.

The first three to five years were amazing. We toured the world in the most glamorous fashion, we investigated everything from transsexual prostitutes to missing ferrets.

We rubbed shoulders with the likes of Jude Law and flew business class to New York.

There was also a very strange time I sat being interviewed on the Swedish version of ‘Jonathan Ross’ next to the singer Emile Sande and the Prime Minister of Sweden!

We sat in cars eating donuts and Doritos and more importantly we uncovered the truth for thousands of people who desperately had no where else to turn.

Infidelity is what started my career in media, and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity of writing a best selling book about our extravagant escapades.

I got to tour Poland (fantastic country, give it a whirl when lockdown lifts!) for promotion of the book too. Imagine sitting on their equivalent of ‘Good Morning Britain’ with a Polish translator in your ear, but then your ear piece fails and you’re actually sat on LIVE National Polish television with NO idea what the presenters are asking you, and trying to wing your way out of that one!

My life was truly all fun and games.

Whilst I absolutely forgave my husband's infidelity, I like to think I got the ultimate revenge. Don’t get me wrong, I went rather crazy at the time of uncovering his antics.

I certainly threw black paint over his white car (which I owned FYI), and smashed the odd window in my time (not my finest hour), but my ‘business success’ spoke for itself.

The agency grew beyond anything I ever really imagined though and soon I found myself the glorified manager of over 50 people, and my days of active investigation were virtually over.

The friends I started it with had all gone on to have children, and I was left running a monster of a business that I no longer loved.

To stay would have been a disservice to everything I created and quite honestly, seeing so much infidelity sapped my soul!

Three years ago I took an offer to sell up, but let me tell you what I learnt along the way.

Infidelity is not the end of the world

Over 80% of the affairs I uncovered, the marriages stayed together. Face facts... imagine you’ve been married for 20 years, you deeply love your partner, you have children, a house, your family is completely entangled, you couldn’t financially survive alone and tomorrow you find out your spouse has been having an affair for the last six months.

Are you ready to up and leave? Often the enormity of ending the relationship is just too great, so people stay! Are things ever the same? No, but most people manage to make it work.

An ‘affair of the body’, physical infidelity is completely different to an ‘affair of the mind.’

It may or may not surprise you to know that most affairs are not ‘physical affairs’, where it is purely a one time physical interaction between two people. 97% of the affairs I uncovered were emotional affairs. Where two parties invest emotions, time and physical presence in each other – and THAT is what I can’t deal with.

Physical infidelity, having intercourse with someone doesn’t particularly bother me.

It is a horrendously stupid act to take part in, because essentially you are gambling with your relationship, but I can forgive someone for having intercourse with another person. I can’t forgive an emotional affair.

Emotional investment is MUCH harder to break once an affair is uncovered.

A partner telling another person all your deepest secrets, confiding in them, turning to them for emotional support, longing for them, it creates emotional distance between the two people actually in a relationship, when a partner is putting their trust in a third party and not in their relationship there are far bigger issues at play, with emotional affairs it’s only a matter of time when love turns up, and when love turns up in an affair it soon leaves a relationship (if it’s not already gone!).

Why am I talking about this now? Well, people always used to wrongly assume that New Year was prime time for uncovering infidelity, but the truth be told... spring is ‘silly season’!

Yes, we are now entering the peak time of year for affairs to start.

Everyone is coming out of hibernation from winter and a lockdown on top of that! I may have spent three years out of investigation world, but I have no doubt that things have not changed.

So, a very polite word of warning... keep your eyes peeled, because infidelity is all around us. In the most unlikely of places...