The day I realised my husband had changed the locks after I had an affair

My hand was shaking. Was that why the key to the front door of my flat wouldn’t go in properly?

It was one of those hefty Yale locks and, as I twisted and probed, I thought perhaps I was just too tired and upset even to open the door. 

But no — I tried over and over again, and it was clear this key, my house key, would not open this door. I stared at it in disbelief: my husband had changed the lock.

While I was away, visiting my elderly parents, he had called a locksmith to our marital home and locked me out of it. Even now at 53, a long 14 years later, this moment remains one of the most emotionally charged of my entire life.

And it came back in full Technicolor when I read Amanda Platell’s harrowing piece in Femail magazine earlier this month on being a wronged wife and ending her marriage.

Even now at 53, a long 14 years later, the moment he locked me out remains one of the most emotionally charged of my entire life

Except I was literally on the other side of the door. I was the wrong-doer, the one who was having an affair.

While Amanda changed the locks then sat indoors sipping whisky and listening to her husband’s ever-more frantic pleas to open up, I was the one in the hallway outside the flat, out in the cold.

When I read Amanda’s story, what intrigued me most was not her devastation at her husband’s infidelity, but her regret at how quickly she ended her marriage once she’d discovered it. 

Looking back, she thinks the abruptness of the way she did it — the very evening she found out — was too harsh, too brutal.

And I agree. Yes, I was in the wrong to cheat, but the pain and humiliation I felt at the way my marriage of eight years ended — also within hours of my husband’s discovery — affected me every single day for years. 

Was my immediate exile from the marriage really the right thing for my husband to do? Is horribly wounded pride a good enough reason to throw away years of mutual support and, yes, happiness?

I knew he knew about ten hours before I came home to the changed lock.

I was just leaving my parents’ house in the U.S. to catch a flight back to London when he rang on the landline and asked, bluntly: ‘Are you having an affair?’

For a moment, I thought I was going to be sick. He said he had ‘proof’. Photos. I thought of the laptop in our flat, which I’d left unlocked. Had he seen the pictures of me and The Other Man; read our emails?

Yes, I was in the wrong to cheat, but the pain and humiliation I felt at the way my marriage of eight years ended – also within hours of my husband’s discovery –  affected me every single day for years

I tried over and over again, and it was clear this key, my house key, would not open this door. I stared at it in disbelief: my husband had changed the lock

What should I say to him? How dare you accuse me of that? Of course I’m not having an affair? Why, are you? But I told the truth instead: ‘Yes, I am.’ Then the line went dead.

I spent the flight home from Chicago in a state of barely repressed hysteria. It felt like a chasm had opened up in front of me and I was falling into it. He had timed that call well, inflicting maximum pain with no prospect of relief. 

I tried calling and texting in the cab on the way home from Heathrow, but there was no reply. It was midday London time and I had no idea if he’d be in.

Absurdly, my bags were full of American goodies, including huge jars of peanut butter, and they weighed a ton. The driver helped me drag them to the entrance of the mansion block, but I needed help to get them up the steep stairs to our flat. I rang the buzzer once, twice, several times more, in vain. Looking up into the large front windows, I saw one of the heavy curtains twitch. Yes, he was at home but he wasn’t answering the intercom.

I dragged the cases through the communal hall and up the stairs myself.

Does my ex ever wonder today — as Amanda does — whether he was too hasty with the locksmith? Too vengeful? I have no idea. 

All I know is that as soon as I realised the keys did not work, I pounded on that door, screaming ‘let me in, oh please let me in!’ and feeling sorry and sickened and furious. I kicked the door several times, shaking it on its hinges. I swore and pleaded and wept.

I’m sure he was there. I thought I could hear him moving right by the door on the other side. It wasn’t a big flat and he couldn’t help but hear every word of my desperate begging. Was he gloating? Was he enjoying hearing how much power he had? Or was he just crushed and hurt and in agony?

Not knowing what else to do, I actually phoned the police, my voice hoarse, tears running down my face, but they said it wasn’t their business. I’d been outside for 15 minutes, maybe half an hour, maybe longer. 

I spent my days in a haze of conflicting, desperate feelings — stupid, sad, surprised, hysterical — but I also knew I wanted to work at our marriage, what shreds were left of it (stock image)

Time had no meaning in that space, on that landing, with my stupid suitcases filled with gifts and goodies and my idiotic keys belonging to no lock at all.

The truth is, my affair was a symptom of an unravelling marriage rather than its cause and yet I still maintain it could have been saved.

It began when my career as a journalist — and (irony upon irony) Agony Aunt — came to a grinding halt owing to the recession and, at the same time, my husband’s career in writing took off.

Like Amanda, who admits to prioritising her career over her marriage, he was always out while I was at home all day.

Once our flat had been a wonderful sanctuary and a place for friends to gather. We were known for the huge Halloween parties we threw in the big main room with its 12ft ceiling, but then gradually, over time, we stopped partying together.

He was no longer quite so proud to have me on his arm, or so it felt.

Indeed, it often seemed as if he didn’t care much about the marriage full stop. He was on the up, popular and in demand, making a lot of money with accolades and appreciation for his work, and I rarely saw him. He was working most of the time or out with his friends.

Meanwhile, I sat at home smoking and playing endless games of Solitaire on my laptop. I was on the outside of his life, looking in.

I daresay Amanda’s husband felt the same way when her busy life as a newspaper executive meant he didn’t see her for days on end. 

Now I look back and realise we didn’t talk about any of these problems that had begun to plague our marriage, or at least if we did, nothing changed. I tried to work on our relationship, but I felt alone in that effort.

They say resentment is the chief killer of a marriage and, yes, I think we both felt it.

I resented his apparent disinterest in me and I suspect he grew weary of paying all the bills because I hadn’t worked in months. 

To be fair, he was always a generous man — but I felt as if I’d fallen to earth. I had been the big earner, now I couldn’t even afford takeaway coffee.

I should have gone to therapy, but frankly I didn’t want to ask him to pay for that.

And I didn’t think marriage counselling was something he’d do. I remember asking our cleaner, who also ran a hotel cleaning agency, if I could get a shift job cleaning hotels. ‘You’re not tough enough,’ she said, looking me straight in the eye.

That was when I began the affair. He was married, too, and we had been friends for a couple of years before the line was crossed. I crossed it because I was desperate not to feel so bleak, such a failure and so alone.

With him, I felt listened to and understood. He made time for me and that made me feel hopeful. That despite my career downturn, I wasn’t a lost cause.

The affair was honestly a desperate and stupid attempt at personal salvation, not marital punishment.

I have no idea how long my husband suspected it, but I do know that it was never supposed to break up our marriage. It was a fling and I knew it would end just as easily and quickly as it had started. It wasn’t a conscious cry for help, but it could be interpreted as one.

In my head, I justified it by telling myself that my husband no longer cared about me. My marriage made me feel like a zombie and the affair brought me back to life. But how terribly sad that it had got to that point and how stupid of me to break that trust thinking I had no other options. That is how it felt.

The day I found the locks changed, I had no option but eventually to go crawling to friends, dragging my enormous suitcases behind me. There was no question of going to my lover’s place, of course — there was never any long-term potential in it. 

A year after it had begun, it was just as swiftly over in the heartbeat it took for me to realise what I’d risked and how much I wanted my husband back.

I stayed with those friends for a week then I had to go back to the marital flat, where my husband and I lived for a fortnight in an uneasy, simmering truce. We both owned the flat so legally he was obliged to let me in.

But he wasn’t there very often and he tried to avoid me when he was. We didn’t talk about what had happened except through lawyers’ letters, which cost a bomb to reply to and always arrived on a Friday to poison the weekend.

I spent my days in a haze of conflicting, desperate feelings — stupid, sad, surprised, hysterical — but I also knew I wanted to work at our marriage, what shreds were left of it.

Alas, he did not. He had steeled himself against me. I was in despair and I assumed he was too, although it often felt there was no evidence of that. He looked anxious and angry when he came to the flat, but not sad. Mutual friends said he was coping well.

After several weeks of this mutely furious co-habitation, my husband moved out and not long after, our beautiful flat was sold. 

The day the removal men were due, I started to pack it up alone, then slumped to the floor in tears. It wasn’t like me to crumple so absolutely, but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted the life we had back.

As Amanda acknowledges now, when a bomb goes off in your marriage, you owe it to each other to take the time to find out why.

 If I had been given space to talk, explain and beg forgiveness, perhaps we could have saved what we had.

In fact, it didn’t take long for him to move on. The decree absolute came through and it seemed just a few months later he was married again.

Indeed, I admit to uncharitably wondering whether this second relationship was already in the works before we split and to pondering the possibility that he too had been unfaithful. I never got the chance to ask him.

No matter, I took all the blame. I was depressed for a long time about work and I am sure he felt exhausted by me. I know he felt betrayed and hurt and I never wanted to inflict that on him.

The fact is, I loved my husband. I didn’t marry him because I was planning on having an affair and then a noxious divorce.

Of course, people will say that the feelings of hurt and betrayal I experienced when he changed the locks so swiftly were nothing but my own fault. I was a bad wife, a bad woman, a bad person. I was the one who threw it all away, so how dare I even speak about my feelings?

Being locked out by my husband felt like being paraded through the street naked with my head shorn as if I were caught collaborating with the enemy.

Though most friends were wonderful, I did lose some because they had to choose him or me.

But when I walk past that old flat, which I do sometimes, I still feel a pang that confounds me. I still feel the trauma of that day when the key no longer fitted. The sudden realisation that I was married to a man who showed me in an instant, in the cruellest way, that I was no longer worth his time.

I do feel a wound that doesn’t heal. I fear I will feel that forever.

Amanda and her ex had an email exchange a couple of years ago in which she admitted that his affair wasn’t the only reason the relationship failed.

‘I said it wasn’t just him, it was me too who broke our marriage,’ she writes. She was working so hard, she had lost sight of what really mattered. Her marriage ended because she refused to examine the problems his affair revealed. ‘We put some pain to rest, we forgave each other.’

Being locked out by my husband felt like being paraded through the street naked with my head shorn as if I were caught collaborating with the enemy (stock image)

I wish my ex-husband and I could have such an exchange. It is such a kind, mature thing to do and, yes, it would make me feel better. But it will never happen.

I have tried to contact him many times over the years, but he has locked me out of any communication. I am dead to him. 

And while I still want that sense of closure, the ultimate vengeance is that I will never get it. As my friend once said, speaking of her own affair: ‘The pain is the price of what you have done.’

It does not have to be like this. Affairs don’t have to end marriages. Like Amanda, now I am older, I know a number of couples who have worked through infidelity and come out the other side.

I admire them. I am sure it is not easy, but it seems they have solid, realistic relationships where healing and forgiveness can happen rather than being married to Mr Vengeance. I do think a mature person keeps dialogue open as much as they can.

The only time I saw my ex after the divorce was when he walked in front of my car as I was driving in central London — but he didn’t even notice it was me.

Though I grieved for my marriage for many years, I moved on eventually and my story does have a happy ending. Today I have a lovely, intelligent, handsome boyfriend, who is also an excellent cook. He puts up with me and that can’t be easy.

What’s the difference with him? We talk and laugh a lot more. We communicate.

And I have no reason to ever cheat on him.