The cheated wives who admit having a revenge affair ...
and don't regret it for a minute! By Sadie Nicholas Published: 02:33, 25 June 2024 | Updated: 02:45, 25 June 2024 e-mail View comments As Harriet lay in the arms of her lover after a romantic rendezvous in a hotel, her husband James was thousands of miles away in the Middle East on a business trip. A well-respected teacher and governor at a school in Hampshire, Harriet, then 39, felt little guilt about the affair she was having with the brother of a friend. If anything, she believed that her infidelity was perfectly justified.
That’s because her afternoon tryst was part of what she considered a ‘revenge affair’ — the emotional payback for her husband’s betrayal six months before. A recent study from California State University found that people whose partners had an affair were then nine times more likely to have one themselves ‘That’s the only reason I did it,’ she insists. ‘It’s really not something I’d ever have contemplated but for the fact James had been unfaithful to me.
’ Remarkably, a decade on, the couple are still together. In fact, Harriet suggests her adultery, which still remains a secret from James, may even have saved the marriage. ‘I’d never have felt like an equal in our relationship had I not done it,’ she says.
‘I needed the emotional strength I drew from my lover, and I needed to feel like a man wanted me again.’ It is, of course, a highly risky response to the discover.
