The High cost of playing away...

Extra-marital affairs, in prospect, may seem like delicious fun. But when things get serious the fallout can produce broken hearts and battered wallets.

Story Gill South

The summer just gone gave everyone time to get away and relax. But not all of us. Some with complex private lives see holidays as a prime opportunity to ‘play away’ while the family is stowed safely at the far-distant bach.

Using the excuse of an excessive workload, partners on the prowl spend the week in town, wining and dining paramours and returning to the legitimate partner on weekends.

It may sound like something from a TV soap but it happens all the time. Arbeth & Co private investigator Julia Hartley Moore marvels at the expensive tricks used by people trying to keep extra-marital relationships secret.

She remembers a man who flew from Auckland to Queenstown on a supposed business trip. He created a paper trail by checking into a hotel, and then flew back to an Auckland hotel to join his mistress, leaving instructions for the Otago reception desk to take messages and generally behave as if he was there.

Hartley Moore, the author of Infidelity: Exploding the Myths, is also amazed at the longevity of some affairs. “I’m finding more and more men in their fifties who’ve had lovers for five or 10 years. They have two lives and two wives. They’re buying a fridge for one and an overseas trip for another.” And somehow they manage to keep the extra spending from their wives who often don’t know where their money goes, even if they’re earning and contributing to the pool.

Prudent wives would pay a little more attention, says Hartley Moore. “If men are making all the big financial decisions, that allows them to play.”

The more money men have, the more they can spend on a mistress, sometimes even buying her a property, perhaps a beach house or apartment, where they can be together.

It is not just men, of course, who have affairs. Just as many women are doing it too. And they are craftier than men. While a straying man rarely confides in his mates, women often have a girlfriend in on things, perhaps lending out her place for trysts.

When secrets come out, revenge often follows. One wife who has learned her husband is cheating is going to leave him – but she’s taking her time and spending up large on his income in the meantime. So far she has spent $50,000 on new appliances for her next home. Her girlfriend is storing them in her attic until she needs them. “She’s spending all her husband’s money. She’s even been to the dentist and had her teeth capped.”

But such determined cunning is uncommon. Hartley Moore reports that even when women have cast-iron proof of ongoing infidelity, 95 per cent of them choose to stay in the flawed marriage because they like their lifestyle too much. “But they never have emotional peace; they are selling their souls.”

Christian Destrieux calls playing away a “dreadful euphemism”, trivialising behaviour that often carries “awful and serious” ramifications for families.

He and his wife, Michele, are life coaches with a practice called Families in Transition. They “coach people to rediscover” that they do have the resources to cope with distressing or challenging change.

When they returned to New Zealand after 13 years overseas, they were struck by “the appalling level of dysfunctionality in New Zealand families”. Destrieux says while not all society’s ills can be blamed on infidelity, it is often a contributor to family break-up.

“Its impact lasts well beyond the dramas of separation and divorce. Children model their parents’ behaviour and attitudes to relationships. When there has been a breakdown in a marriage through infidelity, there is a high risk these values will be transferred from one generation to the next.”

Aucklander Roz Burkitt runs her Ex-Factor weekend workshops to help people recover from the trauma of being abandoned. Affairs killed the relationships of nearly all her clients, both men and women. “Usually, their partners have gone straight on to the next partner. They had it all in place, and then left one home to go on to the next.”

Burkitt, whose own former husband suddenly walked out of their long marriage to be with a new woman, describes such situations as the “epidemic of the middle years”.

Those left behind can find new contentment, she says, but her heart goes out particularly to older women who elected to stay home for the family and who then find themselves thrown out onto the job market with few up-to-date qualifications.
“One of the biggest things for older people who’ve been dumped is how to support themselves. The fear of trying to find employment at 40 or 50 or more, can send people looking to the Harbour Bridge,” she says.

Why do people have affairs even though it is likely to bring their kids huge anguish?

Family lawyer Deborah Hollings says everyone agonises over it, but notes that despite recent high-profile custody cases, most parents are doing better these days at keeping kids on an even keel after separation. She sees people really trying to share the responsibility for the children, rather than being just weekend mums or dads.

And she does not judge her clients either, because when people start playing away it generally means their marriage is already in trouble. When people come to her in shock to say they think their partner is having an affair, she tells them they would not be doing it unless there were problems.

“A lot of it is a symptom, not the cause.”

Destrieux also sees infidelity as the outward sign of a deeper problem. “The external search for happiness is never-ending. People are trying to find something they perceive to be missing from their relationship. If they’re disconnected from their real emotions they can sometimes confuse pleasure with happiness. Sometimes this can be an addiction – a behaviour masking unresolved emotions. They need to heal past wounds and love themselves unconditionally before they can find true happiness.”

Reprinted by permission. Copyright 2007 Plenty magazine Autumn 2007 published for Hanover Group. Subscribe to Plenty today.

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