Last week I was having a conversation with a friend about her uneventful love life. She is divorced with two children, and we were talking about the challenges she faced with dating.

She came to me for advice because some moron had suggested to her that the best thing to do would be to consider starting a relationship with a married man!

It got me thinking about the nature of adulterous relationships, which are mostly a mess despite what so-called savvy people would have you believe. There are some schools of thought, which tout affairs as no-strings-attached and easy to navigate.

Married people are supposedly mature and know what they want - how absurd! If you knew what you wanted, why didn’t you marry the perfect person who you do not subsequently need to cheat on?

Anyway, just prior to the conversation with my friend, the devil put it onto the heart of some misguided soul that it might be a good idea to pursue me for the purposes of extra-marital sex.

The whole nasty episode got me thinking. Why would a man seek out an obviously married woman? For one, there are many of us (both husbands and wives) who are being taken for granted by our partners. No one tells us we look good any more. It’s a compliment we last heard in a decade.

No one catches their breath at the sight of us anymore. No one calls us to talk for more than five minutes on phone or just to see how we’re doing or to say hi.

No one dresses up specifically for us - or makes themselves look pretty because they expect us to show up. In short, we’re all too busy dealing with the ‘big’ issues of life - finances.

Enter a man (or woman) with a silver tongue. That workmate who always says the right thing, that trainee who always has a smile for you when you pass by - those are the people you will start to gravitate to. 

The breed of men who only seek out married women to toy with always find fertile ground simply by paying undue attention to women who are starved of it. And these men are hunters - skilled in the art of identifying the weak and ill prey and pouncing on it when the time is right.

Married women also make for really cheap dates. Most likely, she cannot be seen in public with you, and so you do not have to spend much on wining and dining her. A cheap out of town motel will become handy as soon as she decides to reward your attention with sex.

That’s when you find motels which are fully booked throughout the lunch hour, but very empty at night! Some people are brazen enough to cut out the motel altogether - they just juggle the hours and take their bad manners to their marital beds or their office spaces!

People imagine that they are merely looking for sex in such encounters - that they are making up for a lack of spice at home. On the contrary, I think physical roaming is a sign that you need more emotional connection with your own spouse.

I mean, there are many levels to sex: From the excitement of anticipation before it happens, to the desire to remain physically close to the person you’ve just been with.