This article was written by Prof Janet Reibstein, (co-author of Sexual Arrangements: Marriage and Affairs). The views expressed in this article are not necessarily shared by Click or OnePlusOne. Twenty years ago, I began an interview study of couples in which one person (at least) was having or had had an affair. As a new parent, I could not fathom how contemporaries of mine had the inclination or energy, never mind the time, to conduct one. Yet affairs, even among new parents, were happening and some of these couples presented themselves to my consulting room. The discovery of an affair at any stage of the relationship is still a chief reason couples come into therapy. I found, and so have others who bravely try to research this most difficult area (how do you study people’s secrets, for that’s what most are?), that people usually have affairs because they feel disappointed by marriage and are estranged in some way from the person they wanted to love and honour. They’d lost their way in love. Affairs struck me as primarily a symptom of people’s inadequacy in negotiating the changes of married life.  How do affairs start? The arrival of children, work taking one or both away into different worlds, not managing disagreements and conflicts and resentment building in consequence, all contribute. Or all of these combined can lead to the start of an affair. The upshot of not catching things early is feeling misunderstood, neglected, unappreciated, unloved, or undesired. Drift sets in. With it goes hope and effort. Attention wanders. And couples find renewal arises away from home.  Affairs can begin – and sometimes remain, a remedy for what particular light has gone out: just about sex, just about fun, just about talking and feeling understood. But sometimes they grow and become about love—the most dangerous kind for marriage (this applies even to ‘open marriages’). However, it’s possible, as research has shown that sometimes those affairs that stay limited and those that stay secret do not actually disturb the stability or commitment to the marriage (and the children in them), even if they might disturb the person having one. Dealing with the consequences But once an affair – except those tiny few ‘open marriages’ – becomes discovered or revealed, all marriages will suffer. This is related to how we understand marriage. We’re supposed to marry our best friends. We’re meant to be ‘intimate’ - to share innermost thoughts, private joys and troubles, ideas and pleasures. Thus, an act of intense intimacy and pleasure shared with someone other than our partner is like a dagger thrust first and then – the final betrayal- if kept secret from your ‘best friend’, repeatedly, is continual knifing at the heart of modern-day, best-friend-and-lover partnerships. Sometimes there’s a happy ending – sometimes not. But, as with all deep wounds, sometimes not. This marital drama’s been replayed over and over again in all my years in clinical practice. First I manage the wounds, and then return to the marriage: where, when, why the lights went out, before the wandering began.

This is my first post, and I'm writing it after having just confronted my wife over messages on her phone. About 2 months ago, I start having suspicions over the amount of texts she was getting, so rightly or wrongly I managed to get her phone (which she normally guards like a monkey with nuts). I quick skim through her messages showed me that my older brothers best friend had been texting her with some really dodgy stuff. With this information, I entered my wife facebook page, and found even more messages in her trash that she obviously thought she had got rid off. I confronted the problem then, telling her to stop talking to him. For a while it seemed to be ok, then it started again last week. I walked in to the study to find her click off of a conversation on facebook she was having with someone.. i deliberately hung around till the reply pooped up on her screen, and guess who... its that fella again!!.. this time it didnt seem to be rude though. I asked her why she was talking to him again, to which I got accused of being a control freak and not letting her talk to anyone. That night I took myself downstairs to sleep on the sofa, next morning a gave her another clean slate and said nothing of it. However the issue must be on my mind, because as soon as she left her phone unguarded i checked again. Probably the wrong thing to do, but there were no sexually explicit texts this time thatI saw, just a few with some strong sexual references, suggesting sex on the beach.. and asking her if she was all wet?! (sorry if that offends anyone). I confronted it again, once again being accused of being a control freak.. and being told I should leave. However as soon as I suggested that I would seek custody for our son, stating he deserved better than a woman that would do this to her family it all changed... she wanted relationship counselling etc. What do I do? Just so you know the background, My wife was in a previous relationship, and had 3 children. She found out he was having an affair with a man at work and so they seperated, however I have heard part conversations of other versions, stating actually my wife was sleeping with his brother (yet again more secrecy). At 21 years old I took on the role of dad to these 3 boys that I now see as my own, however I know legally I have no standing. But Joseph is mine, after a very late miscarriage two christmases ago, where we lost a daughter at 7 months, we were lucky to conceive Joseph... and he is a little star.. his first word is Dada... and to be honest is probably the reason I've stuck around.

My wife and I have been together for 15 years. We are very compatible and get on well but for some years we have been drifting and not appreciating one another. We have two wonderful children whom we both adore and who we love raising together. A few years ago my wife decided to focus more on herself. Where previously I would have considered that we were soul mates it was painful to see her separate from me and I couldn’t rationalize how the desire to set up a business meant no longer sharing her thoughts and feelings with me. I realized a couple of years ago that I was no longer her priority and then about a year ago I asked if she was still in love with me. She said no, nor did she know if she wanted to stay with me. I wondered about an affair but she always said that she’s too busy and that this wasn’t her. She is obsessed with time on her own, in part because of her perception that I am clingy and also mainly because she just needs a break from the kids and her day to day life. She went away for a weekend in June with some girlfriends. She mentioned that she’d met a guy there that she used to go to school with. Because I trusted her I thought nothing of it. Sex has been patchy between us since having kids and we started sleeping together more regularly after this trip away. I just put it down to the fact that she’d had a good time and I felt happy that I had been able to support her in doing this. We spent some time with her family in France this summer. I needed to return home to work and my wife was very keen to stay in France for two further weeks. This confused me as she hates the countryside and she gets stressed with being alone with the kids. Clearly she wanted some time apart from me. Just before I left she mentioned that this guy was to visit her with some girls. Again, I thought nothing of it. While I was alone back home I think we spoke about three times and the communication from her was friendly but very matter of fact. Things were awful when she came back and she seemed very cold and distant. I felt suspicious of this guy and asked our son where they’d both slept. He said one thing and my wife had said another. She’d left her inbox open on the PC and I saw quite a passionate email between her and him and a photo of them together during the original weekend away and I knew that there had been an affair. When I confronted her, her reaction was to say I was crazy and that we have problems. I told her what I’d read and then she admitted emotional infidelity but she denied sex because she had her period at the time. I asked her why she did it and she said because he desired her and made her feel like she did when she was young. It turned out that while we were apart she spent hours and hours on her own reading letters from when she was a teenager and listening to music from that time too. I guess she’s having some kind of mid-life crisis, something that she recognized and promptly signed up for therapy with a relationship counsellor I’d located a few years ago to try to do something for our stagnation. This discovery has prompted the most amazing rekindling of our relationship. We have started to have an extremely active sex life and are close physically in a way that we hadn’t been in years. We have started to diet together and to exercise more. I recently ran my first half marathon and I have lost 15kg. We are attending a tantra course together and have two weekends alone planned plus concerts and holidays. We spend our evenings talking and planning and sharing and feeling very connected. For the last few years she has been telling me that there is no such thing as unconditional love. What this experience has shown me is that this isn’t true: that I am still in love with her and that I love her unconditionally. I have told her that I forgive her and I believe this. I have also apologized sincerely for all the million and one things that I did over the years to make her distance herself from me. She feels now that I really listen to her. Our children are so important to us, but I feel that our relationship is more central to our family now. The children see that we are in the bedroom more than before and don’t sleep with our pajamas on but they are happy to play with each other and we still do a lot with them. The one remaining cause for difference is that I don’t really know what happened between them so much as “nothing really happened”. My view is that if this is the case then just tell me what happened and let’s move on. Of course I have doubts that they slept together or at the very least shared our bed but I’d rather know that than feel that she continues to hide things from me. And I’d rather know this now than to discover this years later. Her view is that she is an individual and entitled to her privacy. I agree but not with regard to infidelity. I don’t want to bring it up any more and she has said that she won’t tell me although annoyingly that she was going to tell me. He lives in another country and I’ll never meet him. It hurts that she had him come to stay with our family in France especially that this was literally hours after I left to go home. But that’s it. She did what she did and it’s over. Things are great between us now - really great. I actually feel that she could fall in love with me again. Maybe she already has. So should I just stop wondering what happened during this brief affair or am I entitled to know?

My best friend at work recently confessed that he was attracted to me and wanted to be with me physically. He is in a LTR and I am married. He told me he had been feeling that way for over a year and that he liked me a lot. He said he knew the feeling was mutual and the sexual tension between us was off the charts. I agreed that I was always attracted to him but I felt safe flirting with him because I'm married and he's 9 years younger than me. He was always honest with me about cheating on all his girlfriends. He said this is the longest relationship he's been in that he hasn't cheated yet. He hates commitment. He always said he doesn't want to get married because he can't imagine being with one person for the rest of his life. I told him this was crazy and it could ruin our lives and our friendship. He kept trying to convince me it would just be two friends having fun and it doesn't have to mean anything. I said I should be honest and say that at home everything is good. I really do love my husband and family and we don't really have an major issues. Two days after this conversation this guy kissed me. Not just a quick innocent kiss. He came up to me, held my face and looked in my eyes and kissed me very passionately. It was extremely intense. I stopped him and told him I needed a minute and he just held me tight and said "I've wanted to do that for so long" then we kissed some more. After that things got hot and heavy. Lots of sexting and some more make out sessions. Then we had sex. It was an amazing night. Without going into details we clearly both enjoyed it. He begged me to stay the night and I did. We had sex in the morning again. The next few weeks we talked a bit about it and if it was going to happen again but he started to get distant. I confronted him and he finally told me he felt guilty about cheating and that has never happened to him before. He said he wasn't over this whole thing he just needed time. So I tried to give him space. Then a few times just to see where his head was at I asked him if he wanted to hook up and he just said maybe but nothing happened. So I confronted him one more time and asked him flat out if all of it was just a game to sleep with me. He said absolutely not, he said he just felt guilty and he was still trying to process it. But then he tells me not to worry cause it's definitely happening again. Well after a few weeks I hadn't been sleeping right and tired of wondering what was going on I decided I needed it to be over. I told him I thought we should both agree that we lost our minds for a few weeks and we should just be friends. I said I need him more as my friend than I need to have sex with him. He agreed and that's where I left it. Things have been ok at work but now I find my self wondering what the whole point of this was. If he was ever really my friend why would he want me to risk everything just for sex? He's a good looking guy and I'm not really the type of girl people are making moves on. I'm cute at best but I'm not hot. Part of me thinks he had feelings for me and being with me scared him and part of me thinks he really just needed something to chase to get out of a rut with his girlfriend. I just hate not having answers. Does anyone have insight into this kind of thing?

Hi Click Community, Sorry, this is much longer than I thought it would be but I would appreciate your opinion on this as it is driving me mad. I have been in love with this man for over a year. It's the first time in my life that I have ever fallen in love, and no kidding, love really can hurt. I must confess right up that he has a GF and I knew early on about it, although I had already fallen hard for him by then if that's any excuse, so the unrequited bit was to be expected. In my "defense", he does only refer to her as his "GF", even in writing... I only found out her name and a bit more about her because I blatantly asked him, although he has spoken about his family etc. with more warmth than he ever has her. If I had to sum her up in his own words it would "short" & "boring". Why would I even want to be with anyone who is so uncomplimentary about someone he is sharing his life with, right? But the heart and all that. I did actually wonder if he was just making her up at one point, until I did some *um-hum* internet research. She was totally the opposite of what I expected. She is the girl next door, level-headed, friendly person you would expect a man would want to marry. I say this because my love interest openly admitted his GF wanting to get married, but her not being to sort of person he would marry, "he isn't that committed". Although I have found out they have been together for at least seven years now. I was so besotted with him and he seemed to me and other colleagues to be into me too, very supportive and attentive, etc. that I just could not help my feelings spiraling. I am on the road to recovery from this painfully unrequited love. A couple of weeks ago, I would not have admitted so. Yet, it still really bothers me that I did not get some of the answers from him I so needed to move on. I am hoping you might share your thoughts on how he reacted and what you make of it. Firstly, a bit of background. We work for the same company but in different locations. Because of his experience, he was sent several times here to help set things up. I have seen him in total only five times. I fell for him instantly, it took me months to admit it to myself. I wasn't looking for anyone, I have a lot going on, so I really don't and didn't need any romantic involvement . The second time we met he mentioned his GF briefly. I was still in denial about my feelings, although it was obvious when I mentioned him to friends that there was something, eyes smiling and all that. But I am usually pragmatic and sensible. I put my sudden interest down to many things and also saw it was pointless to indulge in whatever I was feeling: he has a GF, I was unlikely to see him again or very rarely and only for work etc. I had his number because of work and could have texted him (he did not have my number). I really felt like initiating, even under the guise of a working relationship, networking excuse etc. but I didn't, for the reasons I've mentioned. Three months went by before I would work with him again. In that time, I was promoted, in part thanks to his recommendation, although our boss obviously agreed. I hadn't been with the company long, so this was a fast-track promotion. But in all honestly, no one else wanted the job either. I did not expect it though and relished the thought HE had seen a potential in me. I am self-motivated and don't need praise, but my point is it was HIM. So three months later, he was sent back here twice to sign me off on my new role. This is when it hit me, how much I had been thinking about him all this time, and hopelessly wishing I would see him again. I was in so much shock at this realisation, I was actually avoiding being around him as much as possible. He seemed on a high. A colleague who had just met him for the first time will still say he "was so into me". In fact, some of the things he was talking about could be seen as inappropriate. I might as well give examples, however stupid they sound... for instance, I was going over something he had just done, he asked me to stop or he "would have to do a fireman's run with me". Another is that a colleague asked if we've known each other long, to which he replied "she is the mother of my child". Another colleague asked what do we do outside of work, now I understood what she was hinting at and expected him to subtly put things right by mentioning his GF, but instead he said "ballroom dancing". Why was I even taken in by this? Then, saw him once more about two months after this. By then, I was hooked, I had texted him because of work during the sign-off, genuinely for logistical reasons. He was encouraging, he made sure I had everything I needed. He would give me feedback from the main office and it clearly sounded like I had been the topic of conversation (in a good way) between colleagues I had only interacted with through email. Twice (out of the five times I saw him), we grabbed a coffee after work at his suggestion. One of those times, he actually knowingly took a later train, when he had to drop things off at the office, meaning he would get back late and risk losing out on a bonus for the drop-off (which he had mentioned before and always seemed determined not to miss out on). Our texts were always somehow work-related, even if supportive. This is what I need your take on! 1) ==> Then, I just couldn't hold it in anymore (four months after acknowledging my feelings to myself, seven months after first meeting him). I preferred facing the pain of rejection, than not knowing if there was something. I had to tell him, so I did. I sent a text saying I liked him, but not just as a friend. As simple as that. I expected him to take a day or two to process and craft a clear response. He is a man of words and I believed he would know to be brutally honest and direct. I waited ten agonising days. For some reason, the longer he took, the more I thought he must be confused and I was right about there being something between us. I initially thought it would have been easy to just tell me "hey, I've got a gf, sorry" or gf or not, just "thanks but not interested" (not so bluntly, but along those lines!). Instead, his response was "I don't know if you wanted a response but thank you." What do you make of this? I answered acknowledging that indeed I hadn't asked anything as such and just needed him to know. Of course, I could not leave it at that and a few days later, I said it seemed like he had been surprised. We got into a discussion about it, where he reminded me I did say I didn't need an answer, etc...he finally said "and you know I've got a gf", to which I said she is his problem, thinking he might at least then be mad enough to put me straight, but no...then, I just said, "so why is it so hard to just say you don't feel the same way"..."if it will help" was his answer...anyway, it felt like I was begging him for an answer and he finally said "I don't feel the same way. Sorry, I do like you though and hope we can remain friends." It should have ended there. Somehow, the rejection did not sink in. I don't know why. Instead, we continued texting. He also texted me a couple of times when he was having a bad day at work. He had a work trip abroad, and wanted to know if the boss had asked me to go (which I hadn't been). And slowly, are texts were about shared interests. Never once did he mention his gf, or even a subtle "we". It's always, "I" am doing this etc. That's what prompted me to do a bit of internet research. I suppose I was feeling guilty at this growing friendship, knowing how I felt about him. I would pull away when I felt it was getting too much. My heart was breaking, I had become the shadow of myself, not enjoying anything I used, only living and breathing for him. His rejection hadn't done anything. I decided I hadn't been clear enough about my feelings and he needed to know so I sent him a heartfelt email a year on from first meeting him. 2) ==> The email. Well, I poured my heart out about how bad I was feeling. Oh yes, I forgot to mention there is slight age gap of 10-12 years and he does go on about how young I am. Pointing this out now as in my email I did say that I didn't think he took me seriously etc. It was an email no human being could not react to, even in pity. In the email though, I did not ask him how he felt about me, I did not ask him to tell me. I just told him how his reaction to my last declaration had made me feel, the long wait, the pleading for rejection, him not standing up for his current relationship with his GF, and the fact that him not being direct had given me false hope. I ended saying that because there was at least a friendship, I felt he needed to know there was more for me and that I had to work through it for both our sake. In hindsight, I wish I had asked him to tell me straight, without a doubt, that he felt nothing, possibly not even in friendship, but I didn't and the inevitable happened. I did not get a reaction as such. Five days later, he texts me to say he received an email from me, it was in his spam, not his fault, etc. but hadn't read it yet as it was sent in the early hours of the morning and he had definitely sent emails at that time he had regretted, so if I wanted him to delete it he would, if not he would read it later. In the end, I told him to read it as I did not regret sending it or anything said in it. I don't know if if he ever read it. I don't think it's humanly possible not to be curious at least. He never told me what he did. Instead, we continued texting. He sent me a picture of himself and sharing things about himself. We have a love of books and I found out he writes. He should me some of his work, early stuff, unfinished for some, raw, etc. I am probably completely insane by now, but it felt intimate to share something like that or at least, it made me feel special. It also gave me an insight into who he is. In art & writing, there is a lot that can be interpreted from silence/empty spaces/the unsaid, and I can't help but think that his lack of decisive response to my declarations means something. He hasn't encouraged my attention, but he hasn't clearly discouraged them. I do believe he genuinely likes me as a friend and thinks highly of me, but I can't help but feel more for him and it sometimes feels there's more in it for him too. I just wished he had made it clear that it's only in friendship or even just straight up not interested romantically. A person in love reads into everything, the slightest glimmer of hope. In the end, it's our own expectations that hurt us. I've never felt like this for anyone before and I am not usually needy. The normal me would just say get over it, we all deserve someone who puts in the same amount of effort, etc. But I am interested in what you think of his reaction to my declarations, and you can be brutally honest about me being delusional or whatever. Thanks for reading. And good luck to all those suffering from a broken heart. You do find yourself again, I promise! ;)

So my boyfriend of almost 2 years told me the other day that while I was away staying at my mother's house he had someone over to our apartment and received oral sex from them. We do not have a very good sex life because of the medications I am on and I just don't have much interest. But we do have sex on occasion. He is VERY sexual and needs to have sex every day to "de-stress." He justifies his action because I "don't give him any" and he has "urges." He takes me not being sexual very personally. It is like a drug to him and he is very addicted to it. He thinks that I understand why he did what he did and that we are moving on but I have been thinking to myself over and over if this is going to work or how to move on from this. I'm not sure what I should do next to address the situation?

I met the perfect girl about two years ago who ended up being my first love and first serious relationship. She became my girlfriend, my best friend, my EVERYTHING! Then almost a year into the relationship I was going through some stuff that made me very stressed out and less available to spend quality time, which put a huge strain on our relationship. My girlfriend began to go out with her friends all of the time and I never thought anything of it because I trusted her and was busy myself so I wanted her to have fun. One day later on down the line I see a picture that she was tagged in on Facebook with this guy behind her dancing with her. We had a rule that we wouldn't dance with anyone else and when I questioned her she said they took the picture right when he got behind her to dance with her... Being the (dumb) trusting boyfriend, I accepted what she said without question and just asked her to remove the picture. Then a couple of weeks later, she had a falling out with her roommate who supposedly posted that my girlfriend cheated on me on Facebook and my girlfriend told me about it and how it wasn't true and being once again the (stupid) trusting boyfriend, I was receptive to what she said without question. Cheating was something that i didn't think she would ever do because I knew that she loved me dearly. I began to feel myself becoming more and more unhappy primarily due to the great amount of strain that was put on our relationship because of what I was going through. My girlfriend was somewhat supportive but complained and didn't like it at all one bit. I thought about things for weeks and decided to break up with her because I needed time and didn't wanna do anything bad to her like cheat or anything. She was heartbroken and begged for me back but I refused. Months later I tried getting back with her and she was not making it easy for me at all. There was another guy who she was seeing but she still loved me and it showed and I knew I just needed to be patient so I was. She then decides to get some type of birth control that required her to have an STD test and come to find out she has syphilis and I was likely to have to it as well because we had sex on several occasions. Being focused on wanting to get her back I completely brushed that off when she told me and she felt like she couldn't make me wait for any longer because I was the best thing that's happened to her and she dropped everyone and got back with me. Weeks following I found out that she lied about a guy she said she didn't have sex with and that she cheated on me back when I was going through that stuff and her roommate had posted it on Facebook and told me it wasn't true when it really was. I was completely crushed! I couldn't do anything but want to work things out because I had just gotten her back and wasn't ready for things to end. She made a 360 degree change  for the better and has shown me that she was sorry and loves me and would never do anything like that again. It has been seven months and still to this day, I can't seem to forget about it and I feel like its preventing me from moving on with her. Things will be good for a couple of weeks and then something will happen or I'll see something that reminds me of what she did and it just brings me back to the situation and how much it hurt me. Still to this day there has been a lingering unhappiness that I just can't get over because of what she has done and I do not know what to do with myself! I wish I could just get over it so I can move on with this girl and my life! She has done everything she possibly can to show she is sorry and to make things better. Although I do want to move on with this girl I'm not most concerned with that. What I'm mainly concerned with is what the best thing for me to do for MYSELF is. Advice would be greatly appreciated.. I have been having way too many sleepless nights..Thanks! By the way... my girlfriend and I are both in college. I'm 20, going on 21, and she's 19, going on 20.

This article was written by Prof. Janet Reibstein, a psychologist and Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter. The views expressed in this article are not necessarily shared by Click or OnePlusOne.   Unsurprisingly, many couples argue about flirting and fancying others. You don’t start affairs without fancying. It’s a firmly held belief that partners should command each other’s sexual attention. But how far that ‘attention’ extends is not well defined; it's not always clear what constitutes an ‘affair’. When does fancying someone else or giving off sexual signals in a relationship even without physical contact, constitute danger or betrayal? But clamping down unnecessarily courts a different sort of disaster. I once was on a forum with a clergyman, who gamely confessed that women assumed that because he was a married vicar, that that meant he wasn’t sexually alive. When he flirted, they were shocked. Plaintively, he cried, ‘I may be a married vicar, but I still have eyes, and I’m not dead from the neck down! I’d never have an affair but these are two different things!’ It’s my reading – of both research and clinical data — that what seems at stake around flirting are two things: whether you are ‘enough’ to keep your partner and insecurity about the relationship’s future. We’re deluged with sensuality in our culture, reminding us that most are still alive from the neck down and most have eyes to see others - who are also sexual. So, that’s part of normal interactions. And if we like the person we’re talking to, and he or she also pleases our senses, that inescapably confirms our own sensuality. If we try to ignore this (the vicar would argue we can’t), it might mean we also ignore our basic sensuality. That affects our partnerships. In Esther Perel’s book, Mating in Captivity, she cites research showing that over time most couples get into a sexual rut, and argues that couples can redress this partly by making their sex lives conscious and deliberate. One way, she recommends, is to observe each other’s sensual effects on others: to give permission to flirt. As you do, you become aware of your own power to attract as well as your partner’s. It does mean we need to be alert to boundaries though. But what are acceptable ones? Boundaries make people secure. By establishing them, you make things explicit, agreeing what makes you secure, and why. Talking about boundaries clarifies why you’re scared, what sets it off, and why. You reassure each other, redefining activities that might have set off feelings of insecurity in the past but don’t have to any more. For instance, if your ex-boyfriend’s flirting led to infidelity, you are likely to feel threatened when your partner flirts. But if you are reassured of his fidelity to you and that he still finds you attractive you may find over time that ‘flirting’ needn’t mean ‘affair’. By being open, you also undermine the damaging role secrecy plays in flirting. Talking intimately about sensuality can also invite sensuality into the relationship. Talking to establish boundaries can reassure both of you that there’s nothing concealed, or to conceal. Flirting is undeniably dangerous: it can be heady and therefore lead to a wish for more. The implication of shared sexual desire for another does challenge a committed partnership and so as it grows there is usually a wish for concealment. But if you conceal or exclude your partner from your activities with others you might fancy, two things happen: firstly, you are signalling something suspicious is occurring and secondly you are defining your flirting as unacceptable to the partnership. When Perel suggests openly flirting she’s pointing to a couple talking honestly with each other, finding a way to bring into the relationship excitement that occurs outside it. That can’t happen with secrecy. That’s why talking and reaching common understandings is central to establishing boundaries. Central are the ‘meanings’ of flirting or fancying. If the meaning you give to your partner’s attraction to someone else is that they are less attracted to you — you’ll feel threatened. If the meaning you give to flirting is betrayal, trust in your partner and your future together will be undermined. But if, as the vicar suggests, fancying others means you’re sensually alive while still a faithful partner, you can feed sensual life back into your relationship.

I have been with my boyfriend just over two years. It's been the best and happiest relationship i have ever had and we moved in together early May this year. It was the best our relationship had ever been (or so I thought) and he was talking about marriage, having a family, etc. This all came crashing down when I received a message whilst we were on a couples holiday from a girl telling me that she had slept with my boyfriend a week prior. Ever since this has happened I think I have felt every emotion in the book and it is so exhausting. I have tried having a ‘break’ from the relationship but just couldn’t do it. I feel so weak for not being able to leave and I don’t think I have fully come to terms with the fact that this person probably isn’t who i thought he was. It hasn’t helped that he lied about it for weeks until I confronted him with evidence. I don’t know whether the lies or the cheating hurt more. The woman he cheated with is gorgeous, a stripper and older than me. I feel completely inadequate. I can’t stop wondering what it is about me that led him to do that? Why did he lie so much? How could he jeopardise a relationship like ours? I feel so low and it's affecting my daily life. I can’t sleep properly and constantly have flashbacks. We are now three months on. I feel like I should be over this by now but I just can’t move on. I love him so much and feel like i don’t know my own identity without him and I just don’t know what to do. Any advice whatsoever would be so appreciated x

I have recently found myself in an incredible relationship with a lady that i adore. Knowing we all have a past, i am finding hers a hard one to overlook the reason why she wants to maintain a friendship with her ex that she now has been his side piece in his affair for a few yrs. Its more convoluted than that so i am trying to be open minded here. She dated him and lived with him, broke it off but saw each other in a non committed way. Said that they would end it with each other if the other got into a relationship, but she found out he was dating someone while they were non committed sleeping with each other. Although mad about it, and his new gf found out he stayed with the new girl. My gf then continued sleeping with him on the side in secrecy for yrs now. She maintains its his affair not hers. He has helped her move, been there when she needed someone. A bond. But now being with me she wants to maintain a relationship with him. But not with me included as "he" would have issues with it. I said i would be reluctantly open to it if she met up with him with me present and she said that it would make him uncomfortable and I'm being jealous and insecure. My thoughts are she is not over him and she needs to break the tie to him in order to move all into our relationship. I maintain she can have guy friends like i have girl friends but this relationship I'm not happy with. They have spent seven years from start to now, dating and non-committal sex and affair sex. It sounds so obvious writing this down but am i overthinking this?

I was seeing him when he was still in a relationship. He has since then split from his partner but has a daughter from that relationship. When I told him I was pregnant he told me I had to have the baby (I was planning on another abortion until I found out I was five months). But couldn’t be involved straight away as the split from his partner had affected his daughter and he needed to put her first. This was in April. He carried on seeing me throughout my pregnancy but never asked anything about it. I told him about scans and how it was going etc. I gave birth to my beautiful boy nearly three weeks ago, which I told him when I gave birth. I asked if he wanted to see baby and the response I got was that I should rest since I had a c-section and he’d get to see him when he does. Since then he’s spoken to me normally and occasionally asks how baby is doing but it doesn’t move past that. I also asked about a middle name and what surname to put down on the birth certificate and he said that it was up to me and I should choose. He didn’t seem too keen to give him his surname. Am I wrong to question if he wants to be involved again? I feel like he’s not very interested. Yet wants to see me for sex etc? I’m really confused about what to do in regards to this.

I met a wonderful girl two months ago , she is 10 years younger than me and I was over the moon as she is very attractive. I saw her on her day off at the beginning of the week but then, when the weekend arrived, she just disappeared, no texts or anything and when I text her then she telling me to stop annoying her as she got other issues in life , a day before her birthday she told me the first time that she loves me and she said that she will come over to mine so we will be together on her birthday , but then that was weekend , she never came , no texts , nothing at all , few days later she told me she got some personal issues and she is worry about lots of things , she even said that she didn't have drink on her birthday , but I seen photo on her facebook dating on her birthday , she was out , looking rough or drunk , taking pics with some guys cuddling up , not said anything but things goes always the same , when she is with me and drunk she declare her love for me but then she again stop texting and ignoring me , what do I do ? I don't want to loose an angel as she is something so special , never fancied anybody in my life like her but again is she just playing the games with me ??