It’s official: the infidelity gap has closed, with women now cheating on their partners at the same rate as men. But the reasons behind the transgressions are completely different.
We explore them all in marie claire series, Why Women Cheat.
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The night Ashleigh* cheated on her long-term partner, Ben*, with one of his closest friends, Noah*, had been building for months.
It all began, however, on a night out with Ben’s friends.
“I was spending a lot of time with Ben’s friends, but not for the reason you might think,” Ashleigh recalls.
“Ben had moved an hour away for work, so the weekends were our only time to see one another. He’d come to stay with me every weekend but then go out with his friends drinking, so the only way to get as much time with him as I could was to go along, too.”
After a few months of weekend drinks with Ben’s friends becoming a regular occurrence, Ashleigh had formed her own friendships with the group. It was a Friday night on a long weekend when Ben, feeling unwell, decided to head home early. Ashleigh, however, did something she’d never done before and decided to stay without him.
As the night came to a close, Noah, who was also in a relationship, offered to walk her the few blocks home.
“I’m a naturally flirty person and Noah was absolutely gorgeous, so there had been a few innocent-bordering-on-flirtatious DMs here and there but as we walked home alone for the first time, there was this electricity in the air I’d never felt between us before,” she says.
“Suddenly, he was holding my hand, asking if that was okay. I let him and as PG-13 as it sounds, it spiralled quickly from there.”
Over the next few months, messages became increasingly flirty and suggestive and whenever they were in a room together, Noah would find a reason to be near her or hold her hand when no one was looking. Emotionally, a line had been crossed, Ashleigh acknowledges, and the physical was just a matter of time.
“The way our messages were going, it was clear where we were heading,” she recalls.
“One night, Noah’s girlfriend was away and Ben was back at home, and he suggested I come over. The tension became unbearable and we ended up making out for hours.”
What followed was weeks of stolen kisses in bathrooms at parties and staying up until everyone else had called it a night just so they could be alone together. Fleeting and heated exchanges eventually turned into sex – in a dark alley on a night out, in his car after work, multiple times in a row on weekends Ben stayed back home.
While Ashleigh says she never asked for anything more from Noah, it soon became clear he would never leave his girlfriend.
“I stayed with Ben longer than I should have, I think in part because I didn’t want to give up that connection to Noah and wasn’t sure what would happen to us if I did break it off with Ben.
“Finally I decided I couldn’t keep lying and doing what I was doing. I felt a surprisingly little amount of guilt during and after, and I constantly ask if there’s something wrong with me for that,” she confesses.
“I think part of me was looking for a way out of a relationship where I wasn’t a priority, and another part of me thrived on how sexy and confident Noah made me feel.”
Ashleigh admits she still thinks about her affair with Noah, but she puts that down not to the connection or Noah himself, rather the endorphins of lust and being lusted after.
“I don’t miss Noah, our connection was purely sexual, but occasionally I’ll long for that thrill or feeling I had with him – like when you’re in the early, lusting stages with someone new. In an affair, or at least in my experience, that almost felt amplified – you want each other but can’t have each other, which can be addictive but dangerous.”
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