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I have a horrible confession: I cheated on my husband in the first year of our marriage.
Of course I regret it – the shame I felt was so brutal, I’d have done almost anything to turn the clock back.
Yet the harsh truth – one I have learned through my own experience and from working for the past three years as a therapist and coach, exclusively with women who have had affairs – is that the betrayal of a spouse isn’t really about the marriage at all. Instead, it reflects a crisis going on within the disloyal partner.
In my case, it was about my identity: if I wasn’t the perfect wife of my imagination – and I clearly wasn’t – who on earth was I?
I first met my husband when we were 18 and at Royal Holloway University. I was drawn to his handsome looks and his quirky sense of humour, and though he was hard to read sometimes, a bit of a closed book, that only intrigued me more.
We had an on-off fling until finally becoming a couple when I was 28.
Six years later, in 2017, both of us well-established in lucrative careers, we had an extravagant three-day wedding that cost more than £40,000.
At a country house in Norfolk, we partied all weekend with 100 friends, and in my speech I described the pair of us as magnets, always finding our way back to each other. We were a great team. Weren’t we?
Alex Croxford (pictured) admits: ‘Less than a year into my marriage, I bumped into a male friend from childhood. From the moment we reconnected, I knew it was going to be trouble’
Certainly everyone saw us as the perfect couple. I was slim with the Botox face, the Gucci handbag, and a glamorous job in TV, working as a production executive on shows for Sky, Disney and Netflix.
He was a management accountant, and together we shared a beautiful four-bedroom house in east London. The only thing missing was a family.
So, two months after we married, I came off the pill, assuming I’d get pregnant straight away. But that didn’t happen.
After five months of crushing disappointment, and a diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), we decided to pursue IVF treatment while continuing to try to get pregnant naturally too.
We’d barely framed the photographs from our incredible wedding and yet now we began to pull away from each other. As I focused on the IVF, my world shrank.
He was 34, meanwhile, and studying hard for professional qualifications, with long hours and a tedious commute. He’d arrive home late and then be in his office studying until bedtime.
Worse, sex was no longer fun but just another thing we had to do. IVF felt like a lonely experience for me – I went to a lot of hospital appointments on my own – I just didn’t know how to ask for his help.
Then, less than a year into my marriage, I bumped into a male friend from childhood, who was now in his late 30s. From the moment we reconnected, I knew it was going to be trouble.
Put simply, he gave me the attention I craved. At first it was tiny things that did it, like him wanting to sit next to me at the pub when we were out (without my husband and with friends he didn’t know) – so trivial in the grand scheme of things, but something my own husband had stopped doing when we were out with our friends.
‘It was an opportunistic affair. He became a way to numb the pain of infertility and the distance I felt from my husband. We weren’t having deep emotional conversations, and we weren’t dating, but we would get drunk together and cross the line’ (posed by models)
He wasn’t my normal type physically, but he was charming and attentive. He knew how to talk to a woman and, despite being married himself, made himself very available to me. I guess that was a red flag, but to be honest, I was too busy running my own up the pole to care.
He’d flirt, make me feel special, shower me with compliments, and while I knew it was wrong, it made me feel alive, giddy even, like having a teenage crush.
It was an opportunistic affair. He became a way to numb the pain of infertility and the distance I felt from my husband. We weren’t having deep emotional conversations, and we weren’t dating, but we would get drunk together and cross the line.
When I was with him, I could forget the IVF appointments, the very real prospect of a future without children, and what felt like my failing marriage.
Of course, what I should have been doing is talking to my husband about all this.
But we were like passing ships. It wasn’t unusual for me to travel overnight on shoots or work late or at weekends. He was used to me not being around and so never batted an eyelid when I told him I’d be away ‘with work’.
The morning after I was first unfaithful, I remember waking up and thinking, ‘What the hell have I done?’
When I called my husband later, he was so lovely to me it made the guilt ten times worse. He was never suspicious, never asked any prying questions. If he’d asked me outright – just once – I couldn’t have lied to his face, but he never did.
‘The morning after I was first unfaithful, I remember waking up and thinking, «What the hell have I done?»,’ admits Alex Croxford (pictured)
And so I lived in constant fear of being found out. I knew I could lose my husband, who I still desperately loved, my opportunity to have children, my house. And for a man I was never in love with and never wanted to be with long term! Yet still I didn’t end the affair; I needed the attention and the validation.
Today, I look back at that sad, trapped version of me, outwardly trying to play the role of ‘perfect wife’ and yet inside utterly confused and broken.
Then, seven months after the affair started, I ended it. By now my husband and I were far down the IVF road and ready for the first embryo transfer. I called my lover and said: ‘I’m done, this has to stop now.’
And he didn’t argue or try to contact me again, to be fair, but took it on the chin. I deleted his number from my phone and him from my life.
The day of the transfer, my husband at my side, I tried to forget what I’d done. But the guilt was eating me alive, and that round of IVF failed.
Quite quickly after that, we both decided not to continue. I’d had no idea how traumatic the whole process would be; he had no idea how much more I was dealing with at the time.
And yet now I was on the edge of a breakdown. I had constant pain in my chest from anxiety and knew I needed help, so I booked myself onto a retreat hosted by a coach who helped women work through their ‘emotional blockages’.
At the start I felt completely out of my comfort zone. There was sage burning, panpipe music playing, crystals laid out everywhere. I sat down in front of 20 strangers… and burst into tears.
Over the next two days, everything poured out of me. I began to see patterns: how I never asked for help, never allowed myself to be vulnerable, even with close girlfriends.
After the retreat I began working with the coach one-on-one, looking at my avoidance of conflict, my need to be validated by men and my inability to acknowledge my feelings. I would realise that in all three of the serious relationships I’d had in my life, I had cheated on the man.
By June 2020 I was ready to confess everything to my husband.
‘I’ve cheated on you,’ I blurted out one evening through tears, with no preamble or explanation.
Of course he was horrified and very angry. He wanted to know everything – and so I told him.
That night he went to stay at a friend’s house, and we muddled through the following weeks before I suggested couples’ therapy, naively believing we could fix it.
It was in therapy that he told me I was distant and emotionally unavailable, just as I had accused him of being. He blamed me entirely for the affair. I understood why but there are other ways of betraying your partner – like working all the time, not giving them any attention, not replying to text messages.
I told him I still loved him, but he couldn’t say it back. I wrongly believed we were close because we were still having sex, but I came to understand we had a deep lack of emotional intimacy.
I couldn’t stay in a marriage waiting for a man to love me. I was heartbroken but told him I wanted to separate for good and he agreed it was for the best. In May 2021 we filed for divorce. It was my rock bottom.
‘I have learned from working for the past three years as a therapist and coach – exclusively with women who have had affairs – that the betrayal of a spouse isn’t really about the marriage at all. Instead, it reflects a crisis going on within the disloyal partner’
The only way I could get out of the hole I’d dug for myself was to make major life changes. I quit my job and retrained in holistic health, then becoming a relationship coach to help women also carrying the shame of infidelity.
I realised every time I gave my body to a man who didn’t deserve it, I wasn’t loving myself. This led to my decision, at 39, to be celibate for eight months.
When you come out of a marriage, you attract men who match you. And when you’re coming from a place of shame, guilt and fear, as I was, you’re not going to find decent men.
Living without the pressure and complication of sex was like a rebirth and led me to meeting the man I am with today. Adam waited six months to have sex with me and that’s resulted in us having a deep connection with each other.
It’s the first relationship of my adult life where I know I won’t be unfaithful. I love and respect myself far too much for that now.
I’ve come a long way since my days of hurtful infidelity. But over the many conversations with other women affected, I’ve learned so much about why we do it.
Why women have affairs – and it’s nothing to do with better sex
She’s tired of being the good girl
I hear this time and again. A woman spends her entire life meeting and exceeding expectations. She’s formed her personality around being a high achiever but also suffers from perfectionism and believes deep down she’s failing to hit the mark.
The pressure of maintaining it all eventually becomes too great. That’s when she unconsciously goes looking for something that makes her feel alive again – often a sexual affair.
You may think you’re stuck in a boring relationship but that’s often because you’ve lost yourself in the marriage.
Are you asking for what you need? If you are and that need is not being met, have you stopped to notice what part of you keeps trying to make it work? Why are you still there?
Women talk of boredom because it’s what they think they experience. But it’s often deeper than that and about their own lost identity. They often realise they’ve had years of abandoning themselves in their marriage and decide to rediscover who they are in an affair.
It’s revenge
Women say to me: ‘I had an affair because he had one five years ago and we brushed it under the carpet.’
That resentment and hurt doesn’t disappear, it hardens. For some women, an affair is an unconscious attempt to reclaim power after years of feeling unseen, unheard, or silenced.
For some women, an affair is an unconscious attempt to reclaim power after years of feeling unseen, unheard, or silenced
For others, it’s the only way to escape their marriage for good. They’re unfaithful so their husband is forced to end it.
What you should be doing is confronting the unresolved pain you have and doing the work to love and respect yourself more.
She fears rejection
My biggest fear was being rejected, which is why I made myself so perfect and so overachieving. If he rejects the perfectionist, it doesn’t feel as painful as someone rejecting who you truly are.
In my most messy, raw state, when IVF had failed and I admitted to an affair, I was rejected by the man I loved. I had to face that pain head on. I had to feel the shame, the grief and all the sadness. Only then did the fear of rejection pass because I knew I could cope with it.
It’s not the life that she wanted
So many women are not only suppressing who they really are but what they really want in life. It was only when I started to ask the difficult questions that I began to wonder, am I actually happy?
This is why so many women have affairs. They get everything they were taught to want – the house, the holidays – then realise they don’t really want it and never did. It doesn’t make them happy.
The one reason they don’t have an affair…
She wants better sex
I am yet to work with a woman who had an affair because she was looking for better sex. There are plenty of women having bad sex in their marriages, but I don’t think that’s why they stray.
True, women who struggle to have a sexual connection with their husband often find themselves having wild sex with an affair partner. That’s because at some point they decided to stop allowing themselves to feel both desire and love for their husband.
It’s often unconscious or I see it in very religious women or those who have been raised to believe that sex is impure and feel shame about their sexual desires.
It’s possible to have wild sex with your husband, but you need to heal the part of yourself that decided you can’t be both loved and desired sexually by the same man.
- As told to JADE BEER
- To find out more about Alex’s work visit alexcroxford.com
