Other people's infidelity is oddly fascinating - unless, of course, it's your partner who's straying, writes Róisín Ingle.
It took three years for Jennifer Keegan to make Unfaithful, a documentary about one of the last remaining taboos. "We got lots of people phoning up, telling us these incredible stories of betrayal that they had never told anyone before. They got it all off their chest, said 'Thank you, I feel much better now,' but then most of them told us there was no way they could talk on TV about what they had done," she says. The difficulty of finding people who would go public explains why the programme, part of RTÉ's True Lives series, took longer than expected to film.
Luckily for Keegan, some people did agree to talk about their extramarital liaisons and the hurt they caused. People such as Noel, a bachelor, who talks about his promiscuity as the camera closes in on the religious statues dotted around his mother's house, where he lives with his brothers. "It's just the way I am," says the Portlaoise man. "Once I have my way with a woman she is of no interest to me any more."
On his wedding day he spent part of the reception kissing another woman on the floor, an incident he describes as a bad start to any marriage. Unsurprisingly, the union fell apart. Noel was almost married again, but the wedding, to "a Swedish woman", was cancelled when the bride-to-be found him in bed with her mother.
Whether it's Brian McFadden, the pop star, having sex with a lap dancer a few weeks before his wedding, Twink going public about her husband's affair or the latest allegations about David Beckham, other people's infidelity is oddly fascinating - and perfect documentary fodder, even if legal issues mean at least one of Keegan's subjects had to be disguised.
In Unfaithful we also hear the stories of those left behind after the betrayal. Anita, a pregnant mother of one, was living in England when she discovered her husband's affair. She had gone on a holiday back home to Ireland; when she came back a neighbour asked whether her sister had been visiting, because a woman had been living in the house.
"It was quite depressing being exposed to that amount of betrayal," says Keegan. "There was one woman we spoke to who lived in a small rural village and had just discovered her husband was seeing someone else. The whole village had known, but she didn't. It was a terrible story."
According to Anne Sexton, Hot Press magazine's sex columnist, monogamy is still the most popular choice for couples, even if for some people it proves unrealistic. "In my experience that is what most people aspire to," she says. She says that, as a woman who has had affairs, she understands why people feel the need to stray. "In the past I was unfaithful as a general rule. It was something I wanted to do, but I was always very upfront and honest with my partners about it. They needed to be able to handle that," she says.
"I snogged someone when I was with my current partner, and it caused him a lot of pain. I think the difference in this case was that I love my partner, and I didn't want to hurt him like that. I won't be doing it again."
Godfrey Devereaux, a yoga teacher, provides a different take on monogamy. He and his new wife, Shirli, have agreed that they can both be with other people, with no recriminations. "In my vows I promised to take Shirli into the core of my life, but I didn't say I wouldn't take anyone else in," he says. His justification for taking different lovers while in a relationship is that when he and Shirli are sitting side by side in rocking chairs, near the end of their lives, they will know that they "didn't take any opportunities" from each other.
So is monogamy an unrealistic expectation? Prof Gabriel Kiely, head of the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at UCD says many people continue to live happily under monogamous guidelines but a different attitude is emerging.
"In the past, people would have stayed in the marriage because of a belief in the institution, whereas these days there is a belief in the relationship. It is not so important to keep the institution alive at any cost, which is what is leading to serial marriage," he says.
Kieley believes affairs can sometimes be good for a person's physical and mental health. "If you are in a very stressful relationship, where you are unfulfilled or unsatisfied, the side effects can be anything from poor physical health to depression or addiction. When the relationship ends, that person is left with the symptoms of the stress in the relationship, but an affair acts as a kind of cushion. It should be said that, while it may help you through a difficult time, your affair won't help your partner."
Sexton believes fidelity is a "difficult idea" but one worth pursuing. "People want to make promises to each other and they want to keep them. If those promises prove difficult to keep, some people find ways around it by having open relationships or by looking into 'swinging'. "
She says that if people find being faithful too difficult they should be honest about it and explore ways to help them cope. "Monogamy is a lot easier if you have an interesting and varied sex life. If things are kept interesting the temptation to stray is not as strong."
True Lives: Unfaithful is on RTÉ 1 at 10.15 p.m. tomorrow night