What drives us to affairs?

In the second extract from her new book Sex and the Married Girl, Mandi Norwood looks at infidelity - and how to repair a marriage post-affair.

Few marriages can be expected to stand the course these days without the occasional sexual hiccough and infidelity is on the increase. An affair is always devastating. But when a woman has an affair it rocks the foundations of society. She¿s rejecting her husband. She¿s compromising her children¿s wellbeing and security. She¿s putting her desires first.

There's a common myth about affairs: women seek out emotional attachments while men seek sexual thrills.

The truth is, men and women generally have affairs for the same reason: because they crave intimacy. If a woman feels neglected or unappreciated she will be vulnerable to a man who makes her feel valued or heard.

Once valued or heard, she¿ll want to cement the relationship by making love with him. If a man feels neglected or abandoned, chances are he will seek the physical reassurance of sex with another woman and then he¿ll feel valued and heard.

Trish¿s husband Jason worked long hours and often at weekends as well.

"It got to the stage where I was living like a single woman and I started going out alone with my girlfriends again. It was on one of these nights that I met Rob. We went to a bar and he offered to buy me a drink. It sounds corny, but that's how it happened. He was sweet and made me feel sexy.

"I didn't see him alone for ages and even then I kept him at a distance. I certainly wasn't looking to have an affair.

"But two months later we met for lunch and I told him how much I loved Jason and he said that Jason was a lucky guy. Then during our second lunch I really opened up to him. I had hardly seen Jason in two weeks and I told Rob how lonely I felt.

"The next week we went to the cinema and that was it. We were like teenagers in the back row and then we went back to his flat and made love. It was wonderful because he was so attentive. I felt needed and valued as a woman again. Everybody needs somebody to make them feel special and Rob made me feel very special."

To this day, Jason has no idea that Trish has been unfaithful. His work began to ease off a bit, he started spending time with her again and Trish broke off her affair with Rob because she loved her husband.

Had Jason discovered her infidelity, conventional wisdom maintains that he may not have worried about her emotional affection for Rob, but would have hit the roof once he knew they were having sex, because men have an instinctive need to protect their chances of impregnating their partner.

The theory is all well and good, but despite the fact that Married Girls are more in touch with their sexual needs than we¿ve ever given them credit for, most women also need an emotional connection before they consider having sex with someone.

It's this emotional connection plus sex (which, during an affair is often explosive) that poses the biggest threat to a marriage. Women know this. And they apply this perception to their husband¿s potential to cheat, claiming that they feel less threatened if their partner¿s affair was based purely on sex than if love and emotions were involved.

To read Mandi Norwood's After the affair repair guide, see the Mail on Sunday's You magazine.

  • Mandi Norwood's Sex & the Married Girl is to be published by Hodder and Stoughton on June 9, price £10.99. To order a copy for just £8.99, plus 99p p&p, call the YOU Bookshop on 0870 162 5006, or send a cheque, made payable to YOU Bookshop, to YOU Bookshop, Uni 17, St James's Court, Warrington WA4 6PS (www.you-bookshop.co.uk).

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