A journalist who posed as a potential match on a UK-based infidelity website says most of the married men who contacted her insisted they still loved their partners and did not want to end their marriages.
Mel Fallowfield, a reporter for The Sun, set up a profile on Illicit Encounters — a site launched in 2003 that the paper and subsequent coverage say has about 1.5 million users — and documented interactions with multiple men seeking affairs. The New York Post reported on her account, which detailed the messages she received and conversations during meetings arranged through the site.
Fallowfield, 52, told The Sun that after creating a deliberately restrained profile — noting she felt "frisky" and that she enjoyed "politics and current affairs" — she received roughly 30 messages in 30 minutes. Many respondents, she wrote, described themselves as being in "good marriages" but missing excitement or physical intimacy. "I'd say 90 per cent of the profiles I read made it clear they didn't want their marriages to end — and remarkably, they all doted on their wives," she wrote.
Fallowfield described individual encounters to illustrate the patterns she found. One man identified as Tom, 62, told her he had a good relationship with his wife and two grown daughters and was seeking "uncomplicated sex and fun that wouldn't disrupt the status quo of his marriage," she wrote. Another man, 52 and the father of a 12-year-old, said he still adored his wife but that their physical relationship had dwindled since their child was born.
The reporter said the men she spoke to came from diverse backgrounds and age groups and that there was no single demographic characteristic that marked those seeking affairs. The main through line, she concluded, was a professed affection for their spouses combined with a desire for excitement outside the marriage.
Fallowfield carried out the reporting with her husband’s knowledge, she wrote, and framed the project as an attempt to understand why people turn to services that facilitate extramarital contact. Coverage of the site has also noted a seasonal pattern: the reporter said sign-ups appeared to surge in September, a trend she attributed to pressures arising from summer routines, though she did not provide independent data to quantify the increase.
Professional "honey trappers" and relationship investigators offered practical signs they say can indicate infidelity. Madeline Smith, who describes herself as a honey trapper, told the New York Post that people seeking to conceal extramarital communications often hide their phones, remove their partner from photos, and use apps that delete messages after viewing. "There is no good reason why any man past school age should have Snapchat on his phone," she said, adding that the app’s ephemeral messaging is attractive to people sending explicit photographs.
Illicit Encounters and similar sites occupy a space in the online dating ecosystem that explicitly caters to married users seeking affairs. The sites have drawn scrutiny from journalists and commentators interested in the social dynamics of marriage, technology and privacy, as well as from users who say they prefer discretion. Fallowfield’s reporting underscores one common claim among those who use such services: an assertion that their actions will not dismantle their existing family relationships.
The accounts collected by Fallowfield are anecdotal and based on her undercover interactions; neither the reporter nor the outlets covering her piece provided independent verification of individual claims by the men she met. The broader prevalence of users who profess love for their spouses while seeking outside relationships was not established by representative data in the report.
The Sun’s article, as described by the New York Post, adds to ongoing public conversation about how dating apps and specialized sites shape intimate relationships and the boundaries people set within marriage. The reporting raises questions about motives and consequences that have drawn commentary from relationship professionals, journalists and users of online platforms that facilitate extramarital contact.
