Throughout her nearly decade-long marriage 38-year-old *Fi has, to varying degrees, cheated on her husband. Everything from seemingly small indiscretions (sexting strangers) to the extreme end of the spectrum (attending sex parties with both men and women).
“Before we got together, I was very sexually active. Going to BDSM clubs was really part of my identity,” she says. “I was in my twenties and wanted to explore those different parts of myself. But my partner wasn’t into [my more kinkier sexual preferences].”
She began finding people she could colour outside of the lines of matrimony with. “I think it’s unrealistic that we can get everything we can possibly need from one partner,” Fi argues. “And if the other partner isn’t up for an open relationship, that means the other person is making a sacrifice.”
Stories like this are still laced with a certain shock factor, but mostly because of a traditional lack of female perspectives on affairs, and indeed on expansive sexual desire. The word is very much out on the multifarious sexual needs for all genders in academic circles — and pop culture to a degree, post-Fifty Shades of Grey. In social circles, there is now less of a taboo. Fi is far from a lone woman breaking free from monogamy.
Since 1990, the number of women who admit to cheating has risen by 40%, according to researcher Esther Perel. In 2022, according to website The Truth About Deception, 67 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women had cheated at least once that year.
Recently, London was found to be UK’s epicentre for affairs. One survey revealed that 168,322 of London’s eight million residents admitted they were currently having affairs.
Illicit Encounters, known as the UK’s “leading married dating website”, revealed this year alone they had seen a 50 per cent increase in women signing up to their affair matchmaking services.
Netflix’s highly-anticipated erotic thriller, Obsession, is doing its part to highlight that women are just as willing to explore their sexuality as men — which means they are capable of being unfaithful. The TV show follows celebrated surgeon William (Richard Armitage) who begins an affair with his son’s fiancée Anna (Charlie Murphy). It’s based on Josephine Hart’s 1991 novella, Damage, and while the book is told entirely from William’s point of view, this new adaptation brings Anna much more to the forefront.
What makes it so distinctly thrilling is the equal distribution of desire on screen, the way Anna explores her power and control, which means the female gaze takes precedent over the male gaze. Writers Morgan Lloyd Malcolm and Benji Walters explore Anna’s motivations behind the affair just as much as William’s.
“[In the book] Anna is portrayed as some kind of vamp who comes into his family, blows everything up and then just disappears,” said Lloyd Malcolm in a recent interview.
“Her primary function is to serve the purpose of what the male lead needs. I said: ‘If I’m going to do this, I want to make sure I dig into Anna and why she behaves in the way she does’.” Dark secrets unfold, but despite there being a destructive element to the plot, she’s a woman in charge of her own sexuality — she knows what she wants and, confidently seeks it out. It’s refreshing to see this kind of balance on-screen, which actually mirrors what’s going on behind closed doors in real life.
“I think talking about women and sexuality is always taboo and filled with shame in our culture,” journalist Jo Piazza tells me. She recently launched a podcast about female infidelity called She Wants More, after noticing dozens of women in her own social circle cheating on their partners. “We have set marriage up as the ultimate goal for women for so long that the idea that a woman would do anything to compromise that seems like the ultimate sin. Culturally, we have been led to believe that it’s okay for men to stray, to get sexual pleasure outside of marriage. It has become a punchline. But we don’t allow that kind of leeway for women.”
Sociologist Dr Alicia Walker, who specialises in sexual behaviour and interviewed hundreds of men and women about their motivations for having affairs, argues that we too often position women as being ruled by their emotions, as though they can’t have sex without love.
“All of the men (and just seven of the women) were cheating for emotional reasons,” she says of her study. “[Most of the] women were cheating for sexual fulfilment. They were not looking to fall in love, as they have that at home.” The experts I spoke to who have spent years studying and speaking to those who had engaged in infidelity, unanimously agreed that the most common misconception is that men have the higher sex drives and a deeper desire to engage in casual sex, while women are looking to settle down.
Emerging research though suggests that in fact it’s women who tire more easily in monogamous relationships. Not necessarily because they’re tired of their partner themselves; it’s more to do with a need for more sexual variety.
Women are more likely to suggest open relationships, for instance, according to openminded.com, a website community for those in open relationships. London-born dating app Feeld has seen a surge in users post-pandemic, with search terms for “ethical non-monogamy” and “polyamory” seeing an almost 400 per cent increase among women in 2021.
Desire for sexual experimentation appears to be a huge driving force. “I was a serial cheater, it was always motivated by sex, and the variety of experiencing that intimate side with many different people,” says Jo*, 30, from south London. “I think women and men cheat in equal amounts, but women are more detail-orientated and think things through more so just don’t get found out as often.”
In Obsession, we see the sex Anna has with William is different. It plays with power, swapping dominant roles, but always keeping her in control. It brings out a side to her that she isn’t willing to bring into her primary relationship with Jay — William’s son — who is sweet, young and caring towards her.
Women and men cheat in equal amounts, but women are more detail-orientated and don’t get found out as often
Ultimately, we need to feel — in our relationships — comfortable and safe but also deeply desired. If we’ve been in a long-term relationship it can sometimes be difficult to achieve both. “There’s this Esther Perel quote where she says cheating on your partner isn’t meeting another person and falling in love with them, it’s meeting another version of yourself and falling in love with that,” says Cara*, 32, from London, who has cheated in all her past relationships. “We can get sick of ourselves can’t we, and meeting someone else can inject so much excitement. Women are more likely to have an affair to find themselves again,” adds Mig Bennett, who has worked as a relationship counsellor for more than 25 years. “I think women [can at some point] lose their own sense of their sexual self in a relationship. An affair can be a new start. It doesn’t have to mean the end of a relationship. Fifty per cent of people [I work with] who have affairs work through it.”
In other words, infidelity is not as black and white as it’s often made out to be. It is not always symptomatic, say, of a deeply unhappy and loveless, relationship. When we view cheating through this narrow lens, we ignore the multi-faceted nature of female desire and sexuality. And while Obsession is playing out the darker impact of what happens when we lean into certain desires, it showcases how sexual satisfaction can often arrive from getting different things, from different people, all at once.
