Infidelity route to saving a marriage splits court of public opinion

So perhaps it’s little wonder that January 4 has been cheerily dubbed “Divorce Day”, when lawyers receive the most inquiries from couples who can take no more.

That is also the view of Gweneth Lee, a 45-year-old businesswoman who’s been a mistress to several married men.

“When my lovers were with me, they were much nicer to their wives, so their wives were nicer back to them. The marriage stayed together, no one was heartbroken and no one ended up poorer,” she says.

It was the same need for an outlet that drove Lee – whose husband died of liver cancer when she was 31 – to seek an affair, after her next partner became impotent.

Wanting sex but not wanting to leave him, she was urged by a friend in a similar situation to join Illicit Encounters. Through it she met a married accountant with five children.

“He was a lovely man whose wife had gone through the menopause and started drinking, since when there’d been no sex for eight years.”

“After he started seeing me , he became so much more cheerful, had a lot more energy and was willing to help around the house.

“His wife noticed and as he became nicer, she drank less and decided she wanted to win him back,” she said.

The affair ended soon afterwards.

But according to Kirshenbaum, affairs can succeed only if they are kept secret; cheats can never alleviate guilt by confessing, nor must they view their lover as a potential second spouse.

Research suggests that only about one in 10 affairs leads to a long-term relationship, of which only about 10% become permanent.

So can this recipe for a happy marriage – using adultery to breathe life back into the relationship – really work? Relationship counsellor Paula Hall thinks not.

“Dishonesty causes considerably more damage to marriages than anything else,” Hall says.

“If one person is having an affair behind the other’s back, it stops the pair of you dealing with problems, or either of you moving on to a new relationship where you could both be happy.”

An open relationship, on the other hand, can work, she believes.

“If your contract of fidelity to each other doesn’t include sexual behaviour, then there’s not a problem.”

Hall says, the important question to consider is why are you doing it?

“If the answer is: ‘Because I don’t love you any more,’ then it’s likely it’s going to be the end of the relationship; if not you can work at rescuing things.”