Month: Aug 2026

The August bank holiday is Britain’s busiest weekend for affairs, as two-thirds of cheats admit hiding one behind a wedding, a festival or a ‘girls’ holiday’

Key findings

  • 66% of members who admit to an affair say they have used a summer social event as cover for it. The site calls it ‘alibi season’.
  • The hen or stag do is the most trusted excuse at 41%, ahead of the girls’ or lads’ holiday (28%), the wedding (19%) and the festival (12%).
  • Only 4% say a cover story has ever been questioned by their partner.
  • Activity is forecast to run 46% above an average August weekend across the bank holiday.
  • The results come from a poll of 2,000 members by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, and the site’s own registration data.

This is the last bank holiday until Christmas, and the country will spend it at weddings, hen dos and barbecues – which, according to new research, is exactly what makes it the most useful weekend of the year for anybody conducting an affair. The diary does the work.

IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, polled 2,000 members and found that two-thirds of those who admit to an affair – 66% – have used a summer social event as the cover story for it. The site calls the stretch from June to September alibi season, and reckons this weekend is its peak.

The hen or stag do is the most trusted excuse by some distance, named by 41%. Then the girls’ or lads’ holiday on 28%, the wedding on 19% and the festival on 12%. These are events that run late, usually involve a night away, and where nobody expects a reply for hours.

It works, too. Members say they lean on about three such events across a single summer and stay out of contact for roughly seven hours at a time – and only 4% have ever had a cover story questioned by the person they live with.

Women were more likely than men to have used a social event this way, at 71% against 58%, and they lean on the hen do and the girls’ holiday – men reach for the golf, the football, or a work thing that overran.

The site’s own figures point the same way. Activity is forecast to run 46% above an average August weekend across the bank holiday, with the sharpest rises in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool.

Friday evening is the busiest window of the three days.

Nicola*, 39, from Stockport, has three weddings this summer. “I have got a hen do in September that I am not even going to,” she says. “It is in the calendar, my husband knows about it, and that is a Saturday night accounted for. I did not plan it that way. I just noticed one year that nobody ever asks.”

Jessica Leoni, sex and relationships expert for IllicitEncounters.com, said: “The August bank holiday is the one weekend of the year when nobody has to explain themselves. There is a wedding, a hen do, somebody’s barbecue. If you are out all night with your phone off, you are only where everybody else is.”

She added: “I have worked here through twenty-odd August bank holidays and the pattern does not change. What people book is not the affair, it is the alibi. And come Tuesday, when the diary empties out and there is nothing left to hide behind until Christmas, that is when we hear from the ones who got caught.”

Results

Top summer ‘cover stories’ for an affair (of those who admit to an affair; respondents could select more than one)

Summer ‘cover story’% who have used it
Hen or stag do41%
‘Girls’ or lads’ holiday28%
Wedding19%
Festival12%
Summer work social or after-work drinks11%
Golf or football with friends9%
Visiting family or helping a friend7%

*Name has been changed.

About Illicit Encounters

IllicitEncounters.com is the UK’s largest and longest-running extramarital dating site, established in 2004. The site has over one million UK members and publishes regular research on modern infidelity and relationships in Britain, with expert commentary from sex and relationships expert Jessica Leoni.

Press contact: [email protected]

The anniversary reckoning: a third say their wedding anniversary was the moment they accepted the marriage was over

Key findings

  • 34% of members say a wedding anniversary was the point they accepted their marriage was over, a pattern the site has dubbed ‘the anniversary reckoning’.
  • Of those, 42% joined the site within six months of that anniversary.
  • Asked what happened on the night, 58% said they simply ran out of things to say to each other.
  • August is consistently one of the site’s busiest months for new sign-ups, and a poll of last August’s joiners found 68% had been married ten years or more.
  • The results come from a poll of 2,000 members by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, and the site’s own registration data.

Most British weddings happen in summer, which makes August the busiest month of the year for anniversaries – hundreds of thousands of couples marking another year over a booked table, a card bought on the way home and a conversation that runs out somewhere around the main course. Not all of it is celebration.

New research from IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, suggests a good number are using the occasion for something else entirely. In a poll of 2,000 members, 34% said a wedding anniversary was the point at which they accepted their marriage was over – the site has started calling it the anniversary reckoning.

It describes the one evening a year when a couple are required to sit opposite each other, look at the photographs and account for the time.

The site’s own figures fit the same shape. August is consistently one of its strongest months for new registrations — the same pattern the site described in its recent research on the six-week itch — and a poll of 600 members who joined last August found that 68% had been married for ten years or more, the group most likely to be marking a milestone that month.

What they describe is the evening rather than the number. Asked what actually happened on the night, 58% said they ran out of things to say to each other, and 51% spent most of it talking about the children or the week ahead.

37% said one of them raised the state of the marriage and the other changed the subject – the point, several said, at which they stopped trying.

Almost none of it is sudden. 61% said they had felt it for more than a year beforehand, and of those who named an anniversary, 42% joined within six months of the date – very few in the weeks leading up to it.

Women were more likely than men to say the occasion crystallised something, at 39% against 28% – men more often described it as the excuse they had been waiting for, rather than anything that felt like a revelation at the time.

Rachel*, 44, from Derby, joined four months after her twentieth. “We did the restaurant and the photos on the wall and the card,” she says. “Somewhere around the dessert I realised I had nothing to ask him that I did not already know the answer to.”

Jessica Leoni, sex and relationships expert for IllicitEncounters.com, said: “We get a lot of emails in September that start with the words ‘we had our anniversary last month’. Not angry ones. Very ordinary, quite polite emails from people who booked a table, got through the evening and then sat in the car park afterwards not saying anything.”

She added: “I have been reading these emails since 2004 and I have never got used to how specific people are about the date. They remember the restaurant. They remember what they ordered. Somebody told me last year that she knew it was finished when her husband ordered for her and got it wrong, and she realised she had not corrected him in about a decade.”

Results

What happened on the anniversary evening (of those who named an anniversary as the moment; respondents could select more than one).

What happened on the night %
We ran out of things to say to each other 58%
We talked only about the children or the week ahead 51%
One of us was on our phone for most of it 44%
One raised the marriage, the other changed the subject 37%
We looked at the wedding photographs 29%
We went home earlier than booked 22%

*Name has been changed.

About Illicit Encounters

IllicitEncounters.com is the UK’s largest and longest-running extramarital dating site, established in 2004. The site has over one million UK members and publishes regular research on modern infidelity and relationships in Britain, with expert commentary from sex and relationships expert Jessica Leoni.

Press contact: [email protected]

‘We talked every day for a year and never met’: 38% of affairs now happen entirely through a screen, and members say they hurt more than a one-night stand

Key findings

  • 38% of members say they have had a relationship outside their marriage that never became physical, conducted entirely through messages, voice notes and calls. The site has dubbed it the ‘pod affair’.
  • They are not brief. Those relationships ran for an average of eleven months, and 29% lasted more than two years.
  • 44% of that group would call it cheating. 78% say their partner would. That gap is the argument most of them are dreading.
  • 61% say it did more damage than a one-night stand would have, because there was more of it and it was harder to explain away.
  • The results come from a poll of 2,000 members by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site.

Love Is Blind UK returns to Netflix on Wednesday, and the premise is the same as it has always been. Strangers talk to each other through a wall for days on end, with no face, no photograph and no touching, and some of them come out the other side saying they are in love. It is presented as a stunt. New research suggests a version of it is going on in a very large number of British marriages already.

IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, polled 2,000 of its members. 38% said they had been in a relationship outside their marriage that never once became physical. No meeting, no hotel, nothing that would show up on a bank statement. The site has started calling it the pod affair.

They tend to run for a long time. The average was eleven months, and 29% went on for more than two years. Most were conducted in writing, with 71% saying the bulk of it happened in messages and voice notes rather than on the phone or on video.

The most striking finding is the disagreement about what it even is. 44% of the members who had one would describe it as cheating. Asked what their partner would say, 78% thought their partner would call it cheating. Almost twice as many people expect to be judged for it as judge themselves.

And they do not think it was the softer option. 61% said it had done more damage than a one-night stand would have done, on the grounds that there was simply more of it, it went on for longer, and there was no version of events in which it could be written off as a mistake on one particular night.

Nadia*, 41, from Bristol, messaged the same man every day for over a year and never met him. “It started because we were both awake at half six and neither of us wanted to be,” she says. “It was nothing, really. What we’d watched, his mother, my knee. Then one morning I told him my scan results before I told my husband, and I sat there looking at the message thinking, that is not a friend. I have never once been in a room with him. I would still know his voice anywhere.”

Jessica Leoni, sex and relationships expert for IllicitEncounters.com, said: “Everybody is about to watch a programme where people fall in love through a wall, and half the country will talk about it like it is a gimmick. It is not. We have members who have carried on for a year with somebody they have never once been in a room with. No hotel, no meeting, nothing you could photograph.”

She added: “Twenty-two years I have been doing this, and the ones who get caught this way take it hardest. There is nothing to point at. No receipt, no hotel bill, no lipstick on anything. Just eleven months of voice notes and the fact that he told her things first. Try explaining to a wife that nothing happened. She has read it. She knows exactly what happened.”

Results

What made it stop feeling like a friendship (of the 38% who had a screen-only relationship; respondents could select more than one).

What crossed the line %
Telling them something before telling my partner 74%
Messaging first thing in the morning and last thing at night 66%
Deleting the conversation 57%
Talking about my marriage to them 49%
Saving them under a different name 35%
Making plans we both knew would not happen 23%

*Name has been changed.

About Illicit Encounters

IllicitEncounters.com is the UK’s largest and longest-running extramarital dating site, established in 2004. The site has over one million UK members and publishes regular research on modern infidelity and relationships in Britain, with expert commentary from sex and relationships expert Jessica Leoni.

Press contact: [email protected]

Two weeks down, four to go: the ‘six-week itch’ sees affair site sign-ups jump 34% as parents hit the school-holiday wall

Key findings

  • Sign-ups to IllicitEncounters.com are already running 34% above the school-term average, just two weeks into the six-week summer holiday.
  • Women account for 58% of new members so far this holiday, and 46% of those are aged 35 to 44.
  • The busiest hour for joining is 9pm to 10pm, once the children are in bed, accounting for 22% of daily sign-ups.
  • Asked what tipped them over the edge, 61% said having no time alone as a couple, ahead of constant childcare rows (48%).
  • The results come from registration data and a poll of 2,000 members by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site.

Britain’s schools broke up a fortnight ago and there are still four weeks of it to go – which, according to new research, is about a fortnight longer than a good many parents can comfortably stand. The novelty, it seems, has a short shelf life.

IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, has recorded sign-ups running 34% above its school-term average since the schools shut – a figure it expects to pass 45% in the final fortnight of August. It has a name for the pattern: the six-week itch.

The site also polled 2,000 members who have joined or become active since the start of the holidays. Asked what pushed them to join, 61% pointed to having no time alone as a couple, followed by constant childcare rows (48%), a partner who had checked out on the sofa (44%) and a sex life shelved until September (39%). Respondents could pick more than one.

The summer intake also looks rather different from the rest of the year. Women make up 58% of new members so far this holiday, against 51% in term time – and of those women, 46% are aged between 35 and 44, the bracket most likely to have primary-school-age children at home.

The registration data also shows when the itch tends to bite. Sign-ups have climbed every week since the schools shut, and the average member who joined this holiday did so 11 days in.

And there is a clear hour for it – 22% of daily sign-ups now land between 9pm and 10pm, once the children are down and the house has finally gone quiet.

The pattern fits what the site records later in the year, when registrations climb again in the first week of September, once parents have the house back and the school day to themselves. The summer sign-up tends to come first; the chance to act on it arrives a few weeks later. It is the same August spike behind the site’s recent research on the anniversary reckoning, when a wedding anniversary falling in the school holidays can be the moment a marriage tips.

Claire*, 38, from Warrington, joined in the last week of July. “I love them to bits, but I don’t think I’ve had a conversation that wasn’t about snacks or screen time since they broke up,” she says. “Me and my husband just tag in and tag out. He does the morning, I do the afternoon. By nine o’clock he’s on his phone and I’m on mine, and that’s it, that’s the evening. I signed up on one of those nights. I wasn’t even really looking for anything. I just wanted somebody to find me interesting for ten minutes.”

Jessica Leoni, sex and relationships expert for IllicitEncounters.com, said: “We are two weeks in and it has already started, which tells you something. Most parents can get through a fortnight of packed lunches and soft play – it’s weeks three, four and five that do the damage, when the money has gone and September still feels a very long way off.”

She added: “I have been doing this for over 20 years and August is always our busiest month for parents. The holidays don’t break a marriage. They take away the distractions that were holding it together, and people notice what has been missing. Nobody signing up this week is running away from their children. They are looking for one hour where somebody talks to them like an adult.”

Results

What tipped parents into joining in the first fortnight of the school holidays (respondents could select more than one).

Trigger % of those polled
No time alone as a couple 61%
Constant childcare rows 48%
Partner checked out on the sofa 44%
Sex life shelved until September 39%
No conversation beyond logistics 33%
Money stress over the holidays 27%
Feeling invisible to a partner 24%

*Name has been changed.

About Illicit Encounters

IllicitEncounters.com is the UK’s largest and longest-running extramarital dating site, established in 2004. The site has over one million UK members and publishes regular research on modern infidelity and relationships in Britain, with expert commentary from sex and relationships expert Jessica Leoni.

Press contact: [email protected]