NEXT month, my husband, Erik, 54, and I will celebrate our twenty-first wedding anniversary, a milestone I once thought we’d never see.
Because 14 years ago, I had an affair with another woman, and, though my marriage survived — thanks to a very understanding husband — I came perilously close to losing everything.
Tess Stimson and her husband Erik in 2011 shortly before her affair started[/caption]
After moving to Vermont she built a very close relationship with her friend Freya and they began sleeping together. Picture posed by models[/caption]
As a 40-year-old mother of three, I’d never even had a teenage crush on a female friend before, never mind a physical relationship.
I wasn’t attracted to women, and I still loved my husband.
Yet I found myself caught up in a passionate affair that could have ended my marriage.
Erik and I met in 2001 at a friend’s wedding in Florida. Bruised by bitter divorce, romance was the last thing on my mind.
But I got talking to a tall, handsome American philosophy PhD student, and fell for him straight away.
I was a writer and journalist based in London, so we flew back and forth across the Atlantic for nearly a year.
Then, in 2002, I fell pregnant with our daughter Lily, now 22, and I moved to Florida permanently, along with my two sons, Henry, 30, and Matt, 27, from my first marriage.
Erik wanted us to wed, but I was burned by my divorce and kept saying no.
Finally, I realised I was just being stubborn. We got married, not once but twice — Erik and I eloped to Hawaii in April 2024 for a private beach wedding, with only the priestess who married us and a photographer for company, and then held a church ceremony in England for all our friends in December 2005.
Three years later, we moved to Vermont, a small, rural state right on the border with Canada, for Erik’s work.
The children settled well into their schools, but once more, I had to start afresh finding new friends and I was often lonely.
I worked from home, which made it hard to meet new people. I hated the freezing weather, and I was used to living in a city, and felt suffocated by the small town where everyone knew each other.
Much as I loved my husband, I craved the kind of intense feminine friendship most women take for granted.
Then, out of the blue, I got an email from a former colleague who’d moved to Montreal. I didn’t know Freya* well, but she was also British and far from home — so when she suggested meeting, I agreed.
We clicked straight away. It was so nice to have a girlfriend to talk to. Erik has always been my best friend, but there are some things only a woman can understand.
Freya and I met every few weeks, and then she invited me to a party in Montreal. It was wilder than I was used to, and we drank too much. At some point, Freya kissed me and we ended up in bed.
Sex with a woman was so different from anything I’d ever experienced with a man. Freya took the lead, and I certainly enjoyed it, but if I’m honest, I wasn’t sexually attracted to her.
Because it was a woman I slept with, not a man, I didn’t consider I’d been unfaithful, but I didn’t tell Erik.
Tess says that her marriage is now stronger than ever after the affair[/caption]
Freya and I grew closer over the next few months, talking nearly every day on the phone and texting.
We were both entering our forties, dealing with teenagers, coping as freelancers in a depressed economy. With her, I didn’t have to explain how I felt.
I confided in another close female friend what I was doing, and to my astonishment, she confessed she’d had a fling with another woman herself a few years before.
In a way, it’s not surprising women our age find ourselves turning to other women.
She started to want me to be more proactive in bed, and I just wasn’t that into it
Tess Stimson
We don’t need men biologically any more as fathers, we’ve often raised our children and we find we have more in common with other women than with men.
Sometimes, this spills over into a physical relationship and women who have never considered themselves lesbian find they ‘fall in love’ with their female friend.
But although Freya and I carried on seeing each other, we only slept together twice more.
She started to want me to be more proactive in bed, and I just wasn’t that into it.
It was the friendship I wanted, not the sex.
And the fact I hadn’t told Erik what we were getting up to began to weigh more heavily on my mind.
Slipping back into the house one evening, after another phone call to Freya, I glimpsed Erik, framed by the living room door, between my two boys on the sofa. It was like seeing a snapshot of what I had to lose.
Four red flags your partner is cheating
Private Investigator Aaron Bond from BondRees revealed four warning signs your partner might be cheating.
They start to take their phone everywhere with them
In close relationships, it’s normal to know each other’s passwords and use each other’s phones, if their phone habits change then they may be hiding something.
Aaron says: “If your partner starts changing their passwords, starts taking their phone everywhere with them, even around the house or they become defensive when you ask to use their phone it could be a sign of them not being faithful.”
“You should also look at how they place their phone down when not in use. If they face the phone with the screen facing down, then they could be hiding something.”
They start telling you less about their day
When partners cheat they can start to avoid you, this could be down to them feeling guilty or because it makes it easier for them to lie to you.
“If you feel like your partner has suddenly begun to avoid you and they don’t want to do things with you any more or they stop telling you about their day then this is another red flag.”
“Partners often avoid their spouses or tell them less about their day because cheating can be tough, remembering all of your lies is impossible and it’s an easy way to get caught out,” says Aaron.
Their libido changes
Your partner’s libido can change for a range of reasons so it may not be a sure sign of cheating but it can be a red flag according to Aaron.
Aaron says: “Cheaters often have less sex at home because they are cheating, but on occasions, they may also have more sex at home, this is because they feel guilty and use this increase in sex to hide their cheating. You may also find that your partner will start to introduce new things into your sex life that weren’t there before.”
They become negative towards you
Cheaters know that cheating is wrong and to them, it will feel good, this can cause tension and anxiety within themselves which they will need to justify.
“To get rid of the tension they feel inside they will try to convince themselves that you are the problem and they will become critical of you out of nowhere. Maybe you haven’t walked the dog that day, put the dishes away or read a book to your children before bedtime. A small problem like this can now feel like a big deal and if you experience this your partner could be cheating,” warns Aaron.
I might be able to convince myself a fling with a woman didn’t count, but I couldn’t deny I was betraying his trust.
So I sat Erik down and told him what I’d been doing.
He was remarkably forgiving, revealing that he’d guessed what was going on ages ago, but had been waiting for it to run its course.
I’d thought he wouldn’t understand what it felt like to be a woman entering middle-age, prey to hormones and the ravages of time. But, as Erik put it, he lived with me so he knew me better than anyone — male or female.
My assumption that as a man he wouldn’t ‘understand’ me was completely wrong.
My friendship with Freya fizzled out soon after — she wanted a full-on relationship, and things got tense between us.
I don’t regret the affair, because it reminded me Erik was and always will be my best friend, but I’d never do it again
Tess Stimson
We had a huge row one day, and decided it was better to end the friendship.
Ironically, my affair brought Erik and me closer. The fact he understood me emotionally made me realise how much I loved him, and that translated into more intimacy in the bedroom.
I don’t regret the affair, because it reminded me Erik was and always will be my best friend, but I’d never do it again.
There’s nothing wrong with intense female friendships, but it was a mistake to confuse that with sexual love.
And, in the end, an affair with another woman is still an affair.
I was lucky, but I risked everything just for a bit of novelty and excitement, and I could’ve lost it all.
‘The New House’ buy Tess Stimson, published by Avon.
*Names have been changed
She says that she would never stray from Erik again[/caption]
