I’m having an affair at 70 and it’s the best sex of my life: It was the last thing she expected. But after 25 years of marriage to a man she still loves, one woman reveals how …

For 25 years I was perfectly faithful to my husband. We met when I was in my mid-40s and don’t have any children but are happy and content with one another.

Having an affair was the last thing I thought I would do at my age — I was caught completely off my guard by the sudden strength of my feelings.

It was only a few weeks after my 70th birthday, on a cold February night, that I got invited to an art exhibition of paintings. I was unsure whether I wanted to go. It was a colleague from the art world rather than a close friend, but it was her first solo exhibition and I wanted to support her.

I was introduced to a small group of people — one man and two women. The women asked questions about my life as a professional potter, but when the man tried to make conversation, I told him I wanted to look at the art and moved on.

Later, on the train home, I saw him and decided to say hello to brighten up a boring journey. Surprisingly, we engaged almost immediately and had a very amusing and reciprocal conversation. I can’t believe it was only about ten minutes as we managed to pack in so much.

When we stepped off at the same station we exchanged names — his was Nick — and I thought no more of it. I didn’t clock that he was a particularly attractive man, more that he was a good conversationalist and funny.

An anonymous woman details her three-year affair with a man she met at an art exhibition and said she wasn’t expecting to be having brilliant sex at 70 (file image)

We’d talked mostly about books and a little about football. It was hardly Brief Encounter!

I didn’t think any more of it until the next day. He had obviously gone to my website and looked up my email.

He said he hoped I didn’t mind but that he very much liked my work and wanted to continue our conversation about books because he was starting a book group himself.

He suggested we meet at a local coffee house, dropping into the conversation that it was where he often met his daughter for a coffee.

I had managed, during that ten minutes on the train, to mention I had a husband. Nick later said that women who want affairs always let you know that they have a husband! Well, I didn’t know it at the time.

Compared to all the young hipsters in the coffee house, he definitely looked like an older, not especially handsome man.

He was Irish, quite thick-set, intelligent and with a face that struck me as shrewd.

He did have rather sexy lips and dressed well, as you’d expect from his job as creative director of an ad agency.

He told me he had recently left his wife after 32 years and was living at the top of a friend’s house, but was already searching for somewhere else to live.

I sensed he was lonely and perhaps a bit rootless. What was a man of his age doing looking for a flat share? But I wasn’t into criticising and concentrated on having an enjoyable coffee.

I must have said something about how he would have some money to buy a place when the marital home was sold and he said he wasn’t going to sell, that his wife could stay in the house.

I realised he was younger than me as we had different reference points for things like music.

He was 64. I’m used to younger men — my husband, Tom, who’s a teacher, is 11 years younger, but I did slightly fudge my age and told him I was in my late 60s.

Probably we spent no more than an hour together. I suppose, if I’m honest, there was already some mutual attraction, but neither of us were acting on it.

We met again about three weeks later and then didn’t see one another for a couple of months.

We went back and forth a bit with emails — I recommended a book for his book club, he wrote a review of it and sent it to me.

I was impressed.

At some point he said it would be good to meet again and we arranged lunch. I don’t usually drink at lunchtime unless it’s a celebration of some sort, but I did on this occasion.

He told me he had left his wife for someone else, but he didn’t live with this other woman because she had a daughter who didn’t like him staying the night.

I wasn’t disappointed because, consciously at least, I wasn’t expecting this to go further.

The conversation took an intimate turn. He told me about one of his affairs and went on to admit he’d had several during the course of his marriage.

His private life was clearly complicated and he wasn’t yet divorced. I told him a little about my sexual adventures before I settled down with Tom.

After all this, I randomly said, just to change the subject really, that I enjoyed visiting churches and he said: ‘Let’s go visiting churches for the day together.’

I said I wasn’t sure my husband would like me going for a day visiting churches with a man I didn’t really know.

Despite feeling, guilty she said she has always enjoyed sex and it took her back to passion she felt when she was young – but would now would like this affair to end (file image)

So he said: ‘It’s not as if we’re going to have sex!’ Things were clearly moving in a certain direction but I wasn’t willing to acknowledge it to myself yet.

The next time we met he was waiting for me in the pub with a glass of wine. He was wearing a white jacket and looked great. A few sentences in he said: ‘How often do you have sex?’

I didn’t answer. I somehow brushed it off because the truth was hardly ever at this stage in my relationship with Tom.

Then things started to happen. We were holding each other’s hands and massaging them and I can honestly say I’ve never felt anything quite so sexy. He asked if he could kiss me and I said no.

We did do so that day visiting churches and churchyards. We were in the car in the car park and he turned my chin and said: ‘My God you’re pretty.’

Honestly, it was like something from a B movie, but it certainly did the trick. At one point he said: ‘Come on, let’s admit it, we fancy one another.’

After the churchyard, we went for a drink and light meal and back to his room for a ‘cup of tea’. We didn’t have sex but we did frolic on the bed like teenagers and I definitely liked it.

Essentially, it was a slow seduction, and one I allowed.

More emails and texts followed. He told me he couldn’t stop thinking about me and when I said the whole thing was foolhardy he countered with: ‘Yes, but life-enhancing. Life’s short at our age.’

The truth is I couldn’t stop thinking about him either and I admit the delaying of the gratification was part of the excitement.

The affair probably should have lasted three or four months, but it’s been going on for almost three years now.

After the first few months, it became more difficult because my sense of betraying Tom felt more acute. Also, Nick is a tricky if charismatic character.

He told me he was in debt and that he had had a drink problem in the past.

And, of course, there was the woman he had supposedly left his wife for, whom he admitted he was still seeing, albeit infrequently. But the sex was brilliant and I wasn’t expecting to be having brilliant sex at 70.

There was a very brief moment — probably about three weeks after we started having sex — that I thought I could leave Tom for him.

I was on cloud nine at that point. I wrote to my best friend and told her I had never been happier in my entire life.

I was on a sexual high. I saw myself in the mirror and I was bright-eyed and vibrant and shiny-haired. Another friend said, ‘You’re zinging!’ Foolish, perhaps, but I did tell some friends what was going on. I couldn’t stop talking about him.

Around that time I said to Nick: ‘When I see you it’s like when I was at boarding school and my parents came to visit. It was that special recognition when I see your face.’

He replied: ‘You’re in love with me, aren’t you?’ And then he said, ‘I know, if we still feel like this in two years, I’ll divorce my wife and you’ll divorce Tom and we’ll get married.’

It was flippant and silly and obviously untrue, and it would never have worked. He would have behaved with me as he did with his wife.

Nick was, without doubt, a serial seducer, good for an affair but not marriage material.

Did I feel guilty?

Right from the start. I have a good marriage, a husband who has always treated me wonderfully for the 27 years since I met him.

I was 46 back then, he 35, and the truth is I was getting a bit desperate. I had never been married or even lived with anyone. I’d had plenty of relationships, mostly lasting months rather than years, with only one I would call serious.

It was too late for children, but that didn’t trouble me. I love children, and in the years I worked as a speech therapist, before I went to art school in my 40s and became a potter, I hugely enjoyed working with and helping young people. I’m close to my friends’ children.

Tom wasn’t necessarily what the doctor ordered. He’s not particularly educated and he’s rather short, though good-looking.

Slowly, though, I realised he was creative, considerate, honest and that our love kept growing.

Companionship, acceptance, kindness, that’s what I have with Tom. Maybe there wasn’t a great deal of passion, but I’d had that with other boyfriends I’d had over the years before I met him.

I suppose this affair with Nick takes me back to the passion I felt when I was young. I once asked Tom: ‘How would you feel if I had an affair?’

‘I’d leave,’ he replied. I’m quite aware that I’ve been playing with fire. I would be devastated if Tom left me.

And yet, when you get to 70 I guess you start to re-evaluate.

A lot of my friends were doing grandparent duty and posting pictures and talking about their grandchildren all the time on Facebook.

Maybe if I’d had children and grandchildren of my own, then I wouldn’t be behaving so badly now.

There is definitely this need to regain my younger self. The younger woman who had passionate affairs. And maybe part of me thinks this is my last chance.

You’re not really supposed to get to 70 and still be a sexual being, unless it’s with your husband.

The few friends I’ve told know Tom and are fond of him and, basically, would prefer me not to talk about it.

I think it disturbs the married ones and the single women who are looking for a man may be envious. One cut me off completely. She said: ‘You want to have your cake and eat it.’

I have told my friends it’s over now — which it almost is — so they can clear their own consciences and don’t have to feel that they have been made to collude any more. But what is true — and I can hardly believe I’m saying this — is that I think I’ve enjoyed sex in my 70s with Nick more than at any other time.

And the curious thing is that my relations with Tom are starting to become more intimate again.

Something in me has been awakened that is starting to reflect positively within my marriage.

A lot of women of my age have given up on sex, but I’ve always enjoyed it.

I suppose I still have a degree of sexual confidence.

It helps that I’ve managed to maintain my weight and stay slim. I’ve lots of thick hair, but it’s salt and pepperish with lots of dark hair remaining, so I don’t bother to dye it.

And I’m thinking about a non-surgical facelift. I’ve always taken pride in my appearance, but the affair reminded me that I am still attractive and that I enjoy making the effort to look good.

I would hate to give the impression there’s anything wrong or lacking in my husband — this is about me. I’ve always had a naughty streak. I like intrigue and secrets, though I’m not so good at keeping them.

Apple Tree Yard, which was about an affair, was one of my favourite books of recent years and I loved the BBC adaptation with Emily Watson.

I would say those first six months of the affair were a heady mix of bliss and pain, which is what one must expect from an extramarital affair. Nick is neither empathetic nor kind — the opposite of Tom, in fact — and maybe that is part of the attraction.

And I know he sees other women because he tells me. But he got under my skin and it was akin to an obsession.

I would like this affair to end and become a friendship rather than be the on/off thing it has evolved into, but I admit I keep getting drawn back in.

During the first lockdown I did manage to break it off. Ours was never going to be a Zoom relationship.

But just prior to the second lockdown we got back together.

Nick had been texting and emailing to say he missed me. I felt the same, and I weakened.

The thing is I’ve got a full life, a good husband, good friends and my work as a potter is hugely important to me.

I wouldn’t ever do this again. I might develop a flirty relationship with a man — perhaps that’s something we could all do with —but I would not start another affair.

I suppose I vacillate between celebrating and regretting my actions but, ultimately, I would firmly come down on the side of celebration.

A guilty secret, perhaps, but one I treasure.

Names and details have been changed. Ghostwritten by Linda Kelsey