I feel like long term affairs aren’t as common as what they were in the nineties and naughties. Growing up in that time I swear my parents were always talking about friends having affairs, work colleagues etc, now I don’t hear it as much.
Has anyone got any good stories about how affairs started and how they were exposed?
It’s always fascinated me how people keep them going.
Specifically long term affairs not just one night stands!
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weirdly, in a close friends family, an affair was exposed because the nephew heard his auntie bragging in a nightclub about her new boyfriend?
It was a double whammy because i think the nephew was only about 14 so i dont know how on earth he got into a nightclub. Like what are the odds that your nephew is in the same nightclub as you and overhears your shaboinking stories
Not a juicy story like you may have wanted, but the biggest change I’ve seen over my lifetime is the weird sort of regression into early 1900’s morals, for want of a better word.
I’ve always felt, growing up in the 80’s, that all the old nonsense about monogamy and sex being “icky and embarrasing” was long gone. We all had fun with each other and partners, and that just carried on through married life. Everyone just having fun and being open and for the most part all very amicable.
But recently it’s like having it off with someone other than your partner, even if everybody is cool with it, is some kind of shameful thing, and people can’t wait to gossip about it or talk about it in group chats and social media.
Very sad really, given all the progress that was made from the 60’s-80’s, and how “aware of our differences” we are all supposed to be these days.
The inevitable downvotes will no doubt prove my point.
TV shows in the 90s made it seem widespread. Cold Feet, Carl from Neighbours had about 7 affairs.
There was a guy in my wider social circle who was one of those very plain, average blokes who was inexplicably some kind of lothario. I knew nothing of the affair he was having until I ran into his missus on a night out and she was in an absolute state, mascara running down her face. She straight up told me, ‘Dan has been sleeping with Jodie’.
Turns out he’d being having an affair with my other mates younger sister for years, which also meant it started when she was 17 and he was 25.
I think that a part of this is because:
It’s really not expected anymore that you just marry your first serious partner in the way it was up till the 80s.
People also marry later and after longer relationships than they did 40+ years ago.
People more frequently live together before marrying.
There’s much less stigma about divorce.
And what all of this adds up to is happier, more sustainable relationships which people are less likely to feel permanently trapped in. Yeah people still cheat. But they’re less likely to be married and “stuck” in that marriage so rather than have awkward long affairs, they maybe just break up and move on.
So if you were a 24 year old in the late 70s, it was still not massively unusual to get married to someone you’d been going out with for two years, and then move in together at that point, often straight from your parents’ houses.
I don’t know about anyone else, but when I moved out into a shared flat for the first time the… culture shock? The sudden clash of “oh shit, things that were just normal in my house were definitely not universally normal, what the fuck” was pretty massive. Plus learning how to live as an independent adult and run a household. It’s a learning curve.
Do all of that, with the person you’ve just committed to for life before you’re even 25? That’s going to be a car crash sometimes.
Add in a lot of shame and stigma about getting divorced, really low expectations around how you communicate with a partner to solve problems, and probably a couple of kids?
Not surprising that marriages weren’t always rock solid. I’m sure people do still have affairs, but it looks like a really stressful thing to do when you could just split from a partner you’re unhappy with without it crashing your whole life into the ground.
The only younger people I know who’ve had affairs are scum and its mutually agreed to ostracise them from the friendship group immediately. Zero tolerance.
The friendship group is also mixed gender and I have the same loyalty to the women as the men.