Web of sin

The website illicitencounters.com connects married people who are interested in straying, in cheating on their spouses. Or, as the website puts it, people who are ‘looking for a little romance outside their current relationship’. The site now has a million British users.

If you are old-fashioned and simplistic enough to disapprove of this, as undermining of marriage, then one of the company’s recent press releases can help you towards a more sophisticated view. Having polled 200 of its stalwart adulterers, who have been using the site for 11 years, it found that two thirds said that their extramarital adventures had strengthened their marriages. The website also claims that by helping people to stray ‘discreetly’, it makes an affair less likely to be rumbled. In other words, it saves you from seeking risky thrills with the leaky-mouthed village tart, leading to the collapse of your marriage, if it can be called a marriage. One user says: ‘I need to get my kicks from somewhere, having a secret affair is what exhilarates me the most — it’s a high you can’t experience anywhere else in life.’

Illicitencounters.com portrays adultery as sexy and natural — and it’s not alone in this. Suddenly there’s a swarm of sites advertising ‘married dating’ services: affairsclub.com, nostringsattached.com, victoriamilan.com, ashleymaddison.com (slogan: ‘Life is short. Have an affair.’). There’s even a married dating watchdog which adopts a very lofty tone of voice and claims to sort the ‘decent’ adultery sites from the rip-offs. There are films about adultery, a hit TV series (The Affair) and endless magazine features all toying with the idea that married couples can have their wedding cake and eat it.