Key findings
- 36% of members say being back in the office has made arranging an affair easier than it was when they worked from home. Almost none of it happens at work.
- 52% say the commute is the only part of the week a partner cannot account for.
- Two thirds have used a drink near the station before the train home, and 55% have blamed a train that was late or never turned up.
- Midweek sign-ups are up 32% on the same period last year, peaking on Tuesday and Wednesday between 5pm and 7pm. The site calls them rail-mances.
- From a poll of 1,400 married members by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, and the site’s own registration data.
The train home is the one part of the week nobody checks. Not the office, where there are colleagues. Not the house, where there is a partner. Just the forty minutes in between, and the hour before it that nobody can account for.
Bosses have spent years ordering people back to their desks, and office attendance is now at its highest in five years. Hardly anyone has gone back five days a week. What most people got instead is a fixed day or two in town, and IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site, asked 1,400 married members what that has done to their marriage. 36% said the office day has made arranging an affair easier than it ever was when they worked from home.
Almost none of it happens at work. The office day itself is a day at a desk — what changed is the hours bolted onto either end of it. 52% said the commute is the only part of the week a partner cannot account for, and asked what they actually do with it, two thirds named a drink near the station before the train home. 55% have blamed a train that was late or never turned up.
The site has started calling them rail-mances.
Chris*, 43, from Reading, is in the office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. “That’s it, that’s the whole arrangement,” he says. “Nobody at home knows what time the 18:42 actually gets in, and nobody has ever checked. I’m not clever about it. I just get the later train.”
The site’s own figures say the same thing. Midweek sign-ups are running 32% above the same period last year, and they peak on Tuesday and Wednesday between five and seven — the two days the offices are fullest, and the two nights a partner is least likely to ask.
Hannah*, 39, from Leeds, goes in on a Tuesday. “My husband thinks Tuesday is my late one. It is a late one. It’s just not late because of work.”
Jessica Leoni, sex and relationships expert for IllicitEncounters.com, said: “We have started calling them rail-mances, because they nearly all start in the same place — a drink near the station and a later train home. A partner knows what the office looks like and they know what home looks like. They have no idea what the forty minutes in between looks like, and they have never once had a reason to ask.”
She added: “Working from home was terrible for affairs. There was no reason to be anywhere and no gap in the day that anybody could use. A mandated office day hands people back a reason, a postcode and a train time, and that is all anyone has ever needed. The bosses who called everybody back have done more for our business than any advert we have ever run.”
Results
What the office day is used for (of the 36% who say office days have made an affair easier; more than one answer allowed)
| Use of the office day | % who have used it |
| A drink near the station before the train home | 67% |
| “Working late” on an office day | 62% |
| Blaming a delayed or cancelled train | 55% |
| A hotel near the terminus | 40% |
| Meeting someone who uses the same line | 31% |
| Lunchtime, well away from the home postcode | 25% |
| Getting an earlier train in | 17% |
*Names have 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]
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