SURE, the consequences of an affair can be bad, but loads of people seem to be doing it and you’ve got a bad case of FOMO. Here is a beginner’s guide if you’re naturally the monogamous type.
Be more sleazy
Any potential lover needs to be probed with preliminary flirting. You’ll find this embarrassing at first, but it will become second nature. Soon you’ll be able to strike up a conversation with a woman in the queue at Pret and make a conversational leap from ‘Bit of a queue today!’ to ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ without feeling like an utter dick.
Size up your coworkers
The obvious source of extra-relationship prey is your colleagues, but they have a habit of being happily married or f**king weird. Carry out a risk assessment of each, discarding anyone with a boyfriend in the Royal Marines or so mentally unstable it will be impossible to break it off without finding next door’s cat nailed to your front door.
Cast your net wide
Romantics think an affair is two people being attracted and, while wrestling with their consciences, having secret trysts. It’s great if you have a true soulmate itching to hop into bed with you, but that’s not usually the case and you’ll have to pull someone from scratch with limited free time due to your actual relationship. This may mean lowering your standards a bit. Obesity, Warhammer t-shirts and Wiccan beliefs should no longer be factors in your sexual decisions.
Hit the apps
There are loads of apps for people seeking affairs. Obviously users deliberately seeking out extramarital affairs are not the most trustworthy, reliable people in the world, but who wouldn’t want a romantic encounter that is like Tinder but much worse?
Practise lying
An affair requires a godawful amount of lying, often about things you’d need psychic powers to predict, such as where that Premier Inn biro came from. Start with small things like telling your partner you found a tenner in the street and work your way up. If they genuinely believe you were taken on board a UFO and a glowing alien called Aziah warned you that mankind must stop destroying the environment, your lies about cheating may not need to be too convincing.
Deduct five years from your life
The aforementioned sources of stress, plus always checking for faint traces of perfume, constantly adminning illicit shags and generally living in a state of mild fear, will be playing havoc with your blood pressure. If you want to feel on-trend, maybe just buy some stressed denim.