Relationship roulette – a game of chance or a game of skill?

When you are asked by your wife to write about the “The Test for an Unfaithful Wife” in Numbers 5, it is hard not to worry that there is another agenda. Is she asking me to do this because she is blowing her own trumpet that she has practised extreme faithfulness or is her unconscious mind seeking for a dark secret to be discovered?

For those who have been married for 25 years, answering a direct question from our other half is never a simple path. “Does this dress suit me?” is a question to which there are only wrong answers.

Questions like “What should I wear tonight?” quickly lead to a row when you can’t actually remember any garment she owns in the Kafka-esque questioning that follows such a seemingly innocent request.

So writing on the subject of “the test for an unfaithful wife” seems about as safe as riding on a pogo stick through a minefield!

The passage describes the test which appears to be basically “drink some poisoned water and if you are OK, then you weren’t unfaithful”. But if you were, there is a chance the poisoned water will harm you or the baby you are carrying. This all seems very extreme and reminiscent of a medieval trial to see if you are a witch. If you drown, you were not a witch; if you don’t drown, you must be a witch and we’ll kill you anyway. Not much of a test.

Mad as it all sounds, the underlying need is clear. The husband simply wants to know that his other half is being faithful – a need that most couples share today. We want to know that we are each being true to our wedding vows. We want certainty that someone is being completely honest with us.

I have some bad news for anyone about to get married – fidelity and faithfulness are not the true or false binary states that they seem. Faithfulness has as many shades of grey as that infamous EL James dubious debut novel. And what is worse is that no one talks about it. The only time that faithfulness and fidelity ever get mentioned is when it is all too late and someone has had an affair with someone else and the nuclear “relationship is over” button has been pressed.

So after 25 years of marriage what can I say about our fidelity and faithfulness?

Well, we have experienced many of the shades of fidelity’s greyness. And it can be pretty painful. I can remember in one period of our relationship, Helen became, from my perspective, infatuated with a work colleague. An infatuation that by her own later admission, was all-consuming when she was in the middle of it. The thrill of the chase and the drug-like sensation that the risk of being caught provides. It was in the early days of our marriage before children came along and while we both still were naive enough to believe that a good marriage just happened. I was out at work from 7am to 7pm every day and often travelling overseas to computer exhibitions and the like. She was young, attractive and trying to make her mark in teaching which as we all know from Waterloo Road is a hot-bed of intrigue, lust and broken relationships! And then there were the school overseas trips enjoyed by all language teachers where colleagues seemed to exercise the rule of “what happens on an exchange stays on an exchange!”.

One day I came home from work early and found the said teacher was at our flat taking a shower. Red faces, embarrassed looks and at the time, all seemingly explained away with an innocent story about an after-school event or some such twaddle, but the signs were clear. We had both blindly sailed into stormy waters and had had a lucky escape. Over time, we discussed what had happened – things like snogging in the stock cupboard – and what had not happened – sex – and how close it had all come to becoming a major wedge between us. The greys of fidelity were being learned the hard way. Where did normal,healthy attraction end and relationship-breaking unfaithfulness start?

Of course, this wasn’t a one-way street and around the same time, I was attracted to someone who I worked with and it was only through good luck that I too didn’t find myself in a compromising situation. Working late and after-work events were as risky a situation for the young married journalist as the school trips were to the teacher.

I think we both realised with a great deal of clarity that we could no longer run our relationship like we did when we were teenagers. The stakes were much higher and consequences much more life-changing. It’s one thing to break up with someone when the biggest thing you have shared is a Twix. When you share a bank account, mortgage and the parenting of children, the stakes are immeasurably higher.

We have tried to be honest to the point of painfulness with each other subsequently. We have discussed on many occasions if there are people among our friends, acquaintances and colleagues who we feel attracted to. Of course, there have been times when we have each answered yes to that and have learned to trust each other to stay on the right side of fidelity’s grey boundaries.

So is there a test for an unfaithful partner? Yes. Honesty. Honesty with each other. And we have found that, painful as the route of brutal honesty is, it has created a foundation that has stood the test of time.

So my advice looking back over 25 years of marriage is that there are a few lessons we can learn:

• Be honest

Once a desire, feeling, attraction or infatuation is discussed, its power is reduced dramatically. In fact, it becomes a point for humour and friendly banter, rather than subversion, dishonesty and infidelity. Although when Helen admitted to being attracted to the postman and the window cleaner, it felt more like we were living in a dodgy 1970s “Confessions of a…” film.

• Be careful

In my experience, you are highly unlikely to be unfaithful if you are never alone with someone who you are or may become attracted to. The thrill of the chase can often lead us into tricky situations where we believe we are still in control, but once temptation looms large, suddenly being rational seems very last year. Suddenly, we are dealing with a whole host of emotions in a highly risky setting.

• Get help

If things have begun to break down, get help immediately. While trust is still largely intact, there is usually a way back. If that route back isn’t immediately clear, get relationship help and advice to see if it can salvaged and rescued. We have had formal marriage counselling once in our marriage and relationship help on several occasions. It doesn’t mean we were ever close to getting a divorce, but by seeking help early, we reduced the risk of a wedge coming between us.

So if you are in a life-long, committed relationship, are there some dark grey corners that would, in the long term, benefit from the light of honesty? Only you know what your intentions and infatuations are, but if you want to keep your relationship strong, being honest with your partner is a sure-fire way to build a long lasting foundation.