Heather King - A Guide to Surviving Life as a Mistress

Heather King

Jordan Hayes

ISBN978-0-9567721-0-7

KingHayesPublishing

Copyright2010 Heather King & Jordan Hayes

All Rightsreserved.

No part of thispublication can be reproduced, stored in or introduced into aretrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise)without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Most of thecontributors to this book want to remain anonymous for obviousreasons; nevertheless, they know who they are and we thank themsincerely for their candour and willingness to share their hopes,fears and dreams with us. We thank our partners for their support,despite their shock when they realized we were actually going to bepublished, and all our friends who have not only helped us throughour bad times but have also encouraged us, proof-read our earlydrafts and given us invaluable feedback.

Jordanremembers her mother with love; who managed to hide her shock andthen offered her support when discovering, not only that her onlydaughter was a mistress but also that she was going to share herexperience with the reading public. She would also like to extendher warmest thanks to one lady in particular for her continuousencouragement.

Heather wouldlike to thank her editor, who spent her holidays and any free timeshe could find in her busy schedule to read and re-read herwork.

We areparticularly grateful to Michael Gouriet of Withers Solicitors forhis invaluable legal advice in connection with the law relating toco-habitation in Chapter 8; but any errors are the authorsown.

Finally, wewant to express our gratitude to our first publisher, who took achance on two hitherto unpublished women with a story to tell. Hissupport, help and advice were invaluable. Thanks to you all.

This book iswritten by mistresses for mistresses and aims to help them to takea realistic view of their situations and offers some advice on howto cope with their affairs. It neither condones nor condemnsextra-marital affairs, but recognizes that they do happen and willcontinue to happen. Although many books are written for marriedcouples, very little is available for the other woman and oftenshe is ignored completely. When people talk about the pain ofadultery, they rejoice if the marriage survives; few people everwonder what happened to the third party, and even fewer care. Wewonder and we care.

This is not anacademic book: we have performed no national surveys and we are nottrained psychologists. We have just talked to ordinary people withextraordinary stories to tell. We hope this book helps and informsyou. It has not been easy to write. We have encountered issues wedid not want to examine too closely and we have asked somequestions we did not truly want answered. We have been told thingswe did not want to hear and have seen things about ourrelationships we did not want to see. Both our relationships havebeen affected as a result.

Each chapteris self-contained. Chapters 1 and 2 set the context by looking atthe history of mistresses, views of society, cultural anddemographic issues and extra-marital affairs in general beforelooking at the mistresss situation. Thereafter we have analysedthe motivations and concerns of all the players and finally at themanagement of the relationship itself.

We felt it wasimportant to look at the mistress legal and financial position,and we have also included a chapter which contains statistics.During our research, we studied a number of surveys aboutextramarital affairs and infidelity but, unfortunately, the resultsare not consistent and lack information on mistresses. Therefore,rather than quoting selectively to prove a point, we decided thatour interviews with over 150 people gave us much more accurate anddetailed data than these surveys could provide.

Finally, wehave included a number of case histories. Some of the mistresses weapproached agreed to write their stories for us in their own words.They offer interesting insights into the ways these women copedwith their situations or not, as the case may be.

This has beena journey of discovery for both of us and we hope that, in somesmall way, it may either convince you to avoid being a mistressaltogether or at least help you to take a realistic view of theaffair and the ways in which you can manage your life within it.Good luck to you all.

Note: This book was first publishedin hardback by Robert Hale Limited in 1999. This version has minorcorrections but, essentially, remains the same.

Most peoplearound you would never suspect that you are a mistress and would bethoroughly surprised if they found out. In love with a married man,you will have felt in many ways you live outside normal societyand that even best friends, though sympathetic, are quick to pointout the error of your ways. If you have called one of the few helplines available for mistresses, you will most likely have receivedthe impression that you are in the wrong and were probably toldthat you lack self-confidence.

The popularpress tends to publicize only women who are mistresses to knownpublic figures; this, of course, is nothing new. If you belong tothis group, it is likely that you are seen as having motives otherthan love, such as publicity-seeking or the promise of wealth andposition. Rightly or wrongly, you are the stereotype mistress, andthe public reads about it avidly and condemns it all, whilst maybesecretly wondering what it would be like to be you.

We will lookat the dating game, mistresses through history and literature, andpublic figures of today. Societys views, cultural differences andnew phenomena like Internet affairs will be discussed. Sex and loveas well as other issues are debated and lastly, we give ourdefinitions of adultery and infidelity, affair and fling in anattempt to discover, for example, whether a sexual relationship isrequired for adultery to take place and at what point an adulteressbecomes a mistress.

~~~

British society has been established on principles ofpatriarchy and serial monogamy, and fidelity remains the goal forthe majority of marriages. Yet while 80 per cent of the Britishregard extramarital sex as wrong (1), one third would considerhaving an affair if the opportunity arose, and many do. Most peoplewill know of at least one erring male intheir circle of friends and family and many will have comforted afriend whose marriage has broken down because of an affair. Theexact number of extramarital affairs taking place is extremelydifficult to ascertain, since most studies into the subject arerarely based on any national probability samples. However, researchers estimate that between 25 percent and 50 per cent of married men have affairs.

The questionof how many mistresses there are is even harder to answer as moststudies survey the married population, and we have been unable tofind any statistics in the UK on single women having affairs.Moreover, the research that has been done is largely unreliable andno clear, universally accepted definition of a mistress exists. Inorder to interpret these figures within the context of this bookand set the scene for the chapters that follow, we will explorewhat a mistress really is. This will include whether she is of acertain type, age or characteristic, and some of the reasons whyshe became a mistress.