Dirty Girl Things
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Number Ninety-Two
A VERY MODERN MISTRESS
by Natasha Courtenay-Smith of the London Telegraph
She’ll go from one married man to another and is under no illusions about her lover ever leaving his wife. But is today’s ‘other woman’ really as happy as she makes out, asks Natasha Courtenay-Smith
Leanne Parker is 35, single and works as a PA in London. She lives on a leafy street in Putney and likes shopping and going out drinking with her girlfriends. So far, so ordinary. But Leanne is also a serial mistress, and not by accident. In the past three years Leanne has had affairs with six different married men, and she is sure that over the coming months there will be more.
‘Some people like men with dark hair, some like men who are tall, but I like married men,’ she says with a casual laugh. ‘It’s become almost like an addiction for me. It gives me more satisfaction sleeping with men who are married than with men who are single. It feels great to think a man might choose me over the person he has chosen to marry, and I’m not ashamed of being a mistress - why should I be? The last three years have been the best of my life.’
Shocking as Leanne’s attitude may seem, she is not unusual. An examination of more than 13,000 sex lives for Britain’s biggest ever sex survey, the British Sexual Fantasy Research Project, led by the psychotherapist Brett Kahr, revealed that 23 per cent of 30- to 40-year-olds have had sex outside their relationship or marriage. For many the rise of the internet has made illicit sex more viable, providing them with the anonymity they need to keep an indiscretion more discreet. Women - and men - in search of affairs are using websites such as Loving Links and Itsmyfantasy. According to research by Sarah Bridges, one half of the husband-and-wife team behind illicitencounters.com, a website that offers discreet and extra-marital dating for married men and women, there are about 250,000 Britons having an affair at any one time.
Of course, infidelity is nothing new. What is new is the attitudes of some of the women caught up in its web. Because in contrast to the traditional image of a mistress - desperate to get her lover to leave his wife - today’s mistress is under no illusions about the future of her relationship: she takes what she needs from her lover and gets on with the rest of her life. ‘It’s almost like we’re seeing a revival of the 16th-century courtesan,’ says the novelist Tess Stimson, author of The Infidelity Chain. ‘There’s definitely a new generation of women out there who are saying, “Yes, I do want a man but I don’t want any aggravation.” They’re usually in their thirties - any younger and they’d end up falling in love - and to them monogamy seems rather old-fashioned. As women are becoming more independent, they are turning their back on the traditional ideas of what makes them romantically happy and are writing their own agenda. A married man is not going to be too demanding and is not going to get too close. And, because he feels guilty, he’s more likely to lavish his mistress with gifts and treats, too.’
But, aside from its moral bankruptcy, is this not a damagingly shallow way to live? The psychologist Gladeana McMahon, the author of How To Make Life Happen, believes that women who choose to be mistresses indefinitely often have underlying emotional problems. ‘In the short-term, yes, there are benefits to being wined and dined by a married man, particularly if you’ve just come out of a lengthy relationship and don’t want to get serious again. But then you’d expect anyone in that situation to get bored and move on to someone who can give her more. In the long-term, a mistress misses out on emotional security, support and intimacy. When you delve beneath the surface, you usually find that mistresses are not as happy as they say they are.’ What’s more, experiencing a series of mistress-type relationships may inhibit a woman from making a more profound partnership later on.
A new BBC drama series, Mistresses, to be broadcast next year, will feature four thirtysomething friends who each have a different experience of infidelity, from an events organiser having a fling with her boss, to a GP sleeping with a terminally ill patient. The producer and co-creator, Lowri Glain, believes that many women drift into such a position, rather than seeking it out. ‘Nobody wakes up wanting to be a mistress one day; it’s a situation you find yourself in. We’re all kind of living in a rootless way, renting accommodation, moving where the job is, so you have anonymity with it, and with the anonymity comes a sort of secret life.’
Leanne’s secret life began when she registered with itsmyfantasy.com. After just a fortnight she set up a date with Mark, a website designer. ‘I knew by then he had a wife, but I wanted to meet up with him anyway. After all, if anything he was the one who should have been feeling guilty, not me. It never even crossed my mind to ask Mark if he was thinking of leaving her.’
Within four months Leanne had tired of Mark, and another married man, Ashley, caught her eye. ‘The only time things were slightly awkward was when his wife called just as he was pulling me into his arms one day. He took the call, while I just sat on the bed and waited. As soon as he put the phone down we were all over each other again.’
Although Leanne’s relationship with Ashley has since cooled, she still sleeps with him occasionally, as well as several other married men she met online. ‘People may think what I do is wrong, but the way I see it, there must be something not right in the marriage if a man is looking elsewhere,’ she says. ‘There’s never any false hope on my part so I don’t feel crushed when he returns to his wife. No one is getting hurt.’
Yet Susanna Abse, the director of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships in north London, believes something more complicated is going on. ‘Being a mistress is often a defence mechanism to prevent a true relationship developing. Often she has suffered a terrible hurt or disappointment herself and won’t risk depending on anyone again.’ This may be why the modern mistress tends to be slightly older - thirties onwards - and to have endured one or more serious relationships that have damaged her in some way.
‘A more complex Freudian theory is that mistresses are somehow playing out their Oedipal dilemmas. One of the most difficult phases babies go through is to realise that they are not the centre of their mother’s world, and in fact their mother has a relationship with someone else - usually their father. It is thought that those who continually have relationships with someone who is married are unconsciously attacking the relationship between the primary couple in their own life - their own mother and father - of whom they may have been envious.’
Leanne got divorced three years ago and concedes it has affected her attitude towards men. ‘Although I crave physical affection, conversation and sex, I’m not ready to have another relationship so, yes, that is a motivation in what I do now. I’m protecting myself from getting hurt again,’ she says. ‘At the same time, the more I go on, the less I can see myself entering a relationship. Some of the men I meet have been married for less than a year, and I can’t help but feel that men aren’t trustworthy. I’m beginning to think the way I manage things now may be the best way of doing things.’
Like Leanne, Sandra Addy, 41, a housewife and mother of two from Crawley in West Sussex, uses the internet to meet married men. But, in her case, she sees it as protecting her own marriage. Sandra’s 15-year-old daughter, Megan, has cerebral palsy. ‘Because of the stress caused by Megan’s condition, my marriage has been virtually sexless for ten years,’ says Sandra. ‘How we managed to conceive our eight-year-old son is nothing short of a miracle. We’ve been in separate bedrooms for five years but stay together for the children.’
A year ago Sandra logged on to illicitencounters.com and, after three months of emailing six different married men, met up with Michael, a surgeon. ‘His emails and texts just stood out over the others,’ she says. ‘I also liked the fact he had a medical background. I wasn’t planning on going on at him about my daughter, but I hoped it would mean he at least understood something about the position I was in.
‘For our first date we met at the Savoy. We had a candlelit dinner with champagne, and it was wonderful. To be honest, I didn’t really give my husband much thought when I was with Michael. I’m not saying I don’t feel at all guilty, because I do - a little. It’s just that after everything I’ve endured with my daughter I think it’s time for me to do something that makes me feel good.’
Sandra meets Michael once a week and believes her affair is having a positive effect on her family. ‘I’m much happier around the house, simply because I’ve got a bit of weekly light relief,’ she says. ‘I don’t snap at the children so much and I don’t feel so stressed out and depressed about my lot.
‘A year ago I was overweight and dressed like a frump. Since my first date with Michael I’ve lost a stone in weight, and the dowdy jeans and sweatshirts I’d slipped into wearing every day have been replaced by smart trousers and heels. I now go to the gym, and get my hair cut and coloured regularly. Overall I feel a lot happier. The old me, the woman I was once was, has finally come back to life.
‘But I wouldn’t exactly call this the perfect ending for me. I never walked down the aisle expecting I’d end up in this situation. Sadly, though, real life is not a fairytale.’
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
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