Infidelity is as old as humankind, but thanks to the internet, we have a platform that allows people to share their lives on a global stage.
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Infidelity blogging is a part of a bigger confessional blogging scene where sites like Post Secret and Secret Regrets allow us to anonymously purge our sins.
These "true-wife" confessions have become an online sensation as women take to their keyboards to shamelessly reveal their secret shenanigans.
Are these blogs an outlet seeking a cathartic conclusion to their broken relationships or are they harmful to unknowing partners, children and ultimately themselves?
Karen Marley aka Serial Mistress is from Richmond in North Yorkshire, a middle-aged divorcee who dates married men and writes about her experiences across five different blogs.
Since creating The Life of a Serial Mistress blog in 2009, she's achieved a somewhat infamous status and now hits the British TV circuits as a "cheating" expert.
“I started blogging to help people understand that mistresses aren't all home-wreckers and unpaid hookers,” explains Karen.
Marley advocates that the typical mistress has always been portrayed as a damaged woman who falls for a man she can't have and spends the rest of her time either pining over him or trying to wreck his marriage.
In an attempt to justify her actions Marley says, "people are real and very important to me, my blog would never be written to the detriment of a relationship."
Yet Marley goes on to admit it is difficult to overlook the fact that there are unwitting wives whose husbands' extramarital exploits provide much of the content for her and other such blogs.
“I'm not interested in wrecking homes or destroying lives, I make no demands of the men I date, so I have nothing to be ashamed of. I refuse to hide because that's what society says the 'scarlet woman' should do,” asserts Marley.
In defence of her love of the single life, Marley believes she has every right to enjoy the company of successful, charismatic men who have other lives to go to when they're not with her.
“I love living alone and close relationships with attached men, without it becoming mundane or having to pick up pants off the floor and without the grief and hassle most relationships endure,” concludes Marley.
Yummy is a 37-year-old wife and mother whose sexually graphic blog Sexual Adventures of a Married Woman, reveals intimate stories and photos. The content, a reflection on her sex life, fantasies and extramarital trysts with her lover, YSL, all the while she is living with a husband she says still truly loves.
Other websites like True Wife Confessions gave a platform over 3500 confessions between 2006 and 2012 from married women having affairs.
Dawn Rouse, the founder, gives her insight into why women are so eager to reveal such personal details in such a public domain. "I felt there was definite lack of space for women to say the unsayable,” Dawn explains.
Rouse believes that while some women would go to therapy, others may only have access to a blog like this, “sometimes you just need to get it out, then that gives you the impetus to say it to your partner or confirms that you have some different choices to make in life,” says Rouse.
Kimberly, author of The Errant Wife has now made her blog invite-only, describing the dangers of discovery to her readers after coming very close to being caught out, "we know we could be caught but our needs are such that they are worth the risk," Kimberly writes.
"In the cost/benefit analysis, our destruction doesn't seem so bad when compared to our craving ... and we all think we are too smart to get caught,” proclaims The Errant Wife.
For so many of these women, the risks of being caught are outweighed by the addiction they develop in this cleansing kind of communication, despite the risk, to not just their partners but the other innocent and unsuspecting parties involved.
Is there a need for guilt in cyberspace when no one knows your name? Infidelity blogs … are they healing or harmful?