Key findings
- A partner who gives up the booze for a month is a cheat’s worst nightmare: 59% of those whose other half has gone dry say the worst part is that they now remember exactly what they were told.
- A whopping 62% say the trusty pub alibi is dead, because nobody at home believes four hours in the pub any more.
- The long lunch is back: daytime activity on the site has jumped 35% in the first fortnight of October as affairs move to the middle of the day.
- Study of 1,215 members by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site.
They say what happens in the pub stays in the pub. But what happens when your other half stops going?
For Britain’s cheats, a partner doing Sober October is the stuff of nightmares, according to a sobering new survey by IllicitEncounters.com, the UK’s leading extramarital dating site.
The site asked 1,215 members what changes when they or their partner go dry for a month. Among those whose partner is on the wagon, 59% said the worst part is that their partner now remembers exactly what they were told – what time they said they’d be home, who they said they were with, and what they said about it the next morning.
And the trusty pub alibi has gone too. A whopping 62% say it no longer works, because nobody at home believes a four-hour session in the pub any more.
A clear-headed partner also notices the little things. 45% have been asked why they jumped in the shower the moment they walked through the door, and 40% have faced a grilling the next morning about something they’d already explained the night before.
So what’s a cheat to do? Take a long lunch. Activity on the site between 10am and 4pm jumped 35% in the first fortnight of October compared with the end of September, while the evenings have gone quiet. The affairs haven’t stopped. They’ve just moved to the lunch break.
Back in January, a third of members told the site that a booze-free month killed the spontaneity at home. Now it seems a dry spell causes even more trouble outside it.
Elaine*, 43, from Leicester, says her husband has given up drinking for a month three years running. “It never bothered me before. This year it’s a nightmare. I used to say I was out with the girls and he’d be asleep by ten anyway. Now he’s up when I get in, and he remembers what I told him.”
Jessica Leoni, sex and relationships expert for IllicitEncounters.com, said: “The drink was never really the point. What a shared bottle of wine on a Friday bought people was a partner who went to bed early and didn’t ask many questions on the Saturday morning. Take that away and you have somebody sitting up, clear-headed, who can repeat your own story back to you.”
She added: “Hardly anybody gets caught out by one enormous slip. They tell the story slightly differently the second time, and somebody is sober enough to spot it. That’s why the evenings go quiet every October and the daytime fills right up. Eleven in the morning is a lot easier to explain than one in the morning.”
Results
What a sober partner has picked up on, among members whose partner has given up drinking for a month. They could pick more than one, so the figures do not add to 100.
| What the sober partner noticed | % |
| Remembering exactly what they were told | 59% |
| Asking why they showered the moment they got in | 45% |
| Follow-up questions the next morning | 40% |
| Being awake when they came in | 37% |
| Noticing a change in their phone habits | 32% |
| Commenting on what they had chosen to wear | 25% |
| Checking the mileage or the sat nav | 17% |
*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]
