How to have an affair if you're not sure how to get started

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.

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'Not everyone at Durham is a wanker': Supportive things to say to teenagers getting their A-level results

IS a teenage friend or family member getting their A-level results today? It’s a stressful and emotional time, so show some sensitivity when you talk to them. Like this…

‘You’ll see your friends when they come home from uni’

Despite Clearing, teenagers with really bad grades may not get in anywhere and be stuck in their hometown. Reassure them they won’t lose touch with their friends – they’ll be back in the holidays, gushing like maniacs about uni life, bands, drugs and shags. Won’t that be fun? 

‘Not everyone at Durham is a wanker’

Your teenage acquaintance may have missed out on the prestigious Oxford place they sweated blood for, but there’s bound to be a small enclave of alienated normal people at Durham they can make friends with. And you’re sure Durham will lose its reputation for being full of sickeningly middle-class Oxbridge rejects any decade now!

‘Angela’s daughter went to Plymouth and she loved it’ 

A wonderfully comforting thing to say to someone not going to their first choice of uni. So long as they don’t remember Angela’s daughter was a total dullard with no interest in academia, or indeed knowing things in general, who now earns very little at a shitty letting agency she could have worked for as soon as she could drive.

‘Einstein didn’t have a degree’ 

This is well worth bearing in mind. Or would be if it wasn’t total bollocks and, as you might expect, Einstein was highly-qualified with a degree in Maths and a Phd in Physics. That said, it’s probably best your teenage relative isn’t going to uni if they’re thick enough to believe an urban myth that instantly sounds dodgy to anyone with a basic familiarity with the internet.

‘Lots of people go through Clearing’

Clearing is indeed not a disaster, assuming you’ve not screwed up so badly you’ve dropped down from Medicine at St Andrews to Mime & Vegan Hospitality Management at the University of Bedfordshire. The only problem is that protesting too much that Clearing isn’t for losers strongly implies it actually is for losers, so you may as well be guffawing: ‘Where are you going? The UNIVERSITY OF WOODEN SPOON? Hahaha! Suck it up, durr-brain!’

‘You can always read about history in your spare time’

A favourite of older relatives who haven’t been to uni and don’t grasp that it’s also about gaining a valuable qualification, leaving home, getting laid, and so on. Yes, a valid substitute for university is reading boring texts about the Corn Laws as a hobby which serves as a constant reminder that you have failed in life. It sounds f**king marvellous.

‘Not going to university doesn’t mean your life is over’

Very true – their life isn’t over. It’s just the alternate future where they were happier, wealthier and more successful that’s over. Definitely cheer up someone who’s had their dreams crushed this morning with a cheerful reminder that, on the upside, they’re not dead.