I don’t mean to brag (toot toot), but my Instagram inbox contains enough private messages to destroy at least a dozen marriages.
Two of the men involved are particularly well known.
You would think men might hesitate before contacting a sex and dating columnist who regularly writes about the highs, lows and spectacular disasters of modern romance. Apparently not. Their attitude seems to be: “Why not take my chances?”
A glance at their profiles usually tells me within seconds that they are married.
Why do the men who post the most blissful couple photographs so often turn out to be the biggest fools?
In the past, when a man became especially arrogant or disgusting — and, frankly, that describes most of them — I would screenshot the messages and share them on my Instagram Stories. Consider it a little public accountability.
Before anyone accuses me of exposing them unfairly, let me say this: their behavior nearly always catches up with them eventually. Recent scandals involving successful men jeopardising their marriages because they were unable to resist an affair have once again demonstrated how breathtakingly careless some people can be.
On one occasion, I even tagged the man’s wife. And, astonishingly, she was angry with me.
I don’t mean to brag (toot toot), but my Instagram inbox contains enough private messages to destroy at least a dozen marriages
According to her, my tops were too revealing, my skirts were too short, I wrote about sex and my – insert rude word rhyming with mutt – articles somehow encouraged men to behave badly.
What she still refused to acknowledge was the inconvenient truth: her husband was simply a pig.
She told me I needed to “find God”. I suspect she and her husband are still trapped in an unhappy marriage.
Then there was the Australian politician who entered my Facebook messages several years ago with an offer to become my sugar daddy.
I was working on breakfast radio when a message arrived from an older man, perhaps in his fifties or sixties, sporting the unmistakable store-bought copper hair of someone in the middle of a midlife crisis.
As a blonde woman with breasts, I am hardly unfamiliar with messages from strangers. My friends and I have, unfortunately, accumulated more unsolicited d**k pics than anyone should ever have to see. So an unexpected message was not unusual.
This one, however, said:
‘Hey Hun, I want to spoil you, got your details off Bumble. Don’t stress I don’t bite. You ever had a sugar daddy??’
My immediate reaction was disgust. Had he honestly imagined this was an appealing proposition?
There was one major problem with his story: we had never matched on Bumble. He had ignored the app altogether and gone searching for me on Facebook.
I replied: ‘*Beep right off, you *beeping creep! Why would I need someone to pay my way. You sad creep!’
A useful tip: never send an offensive message to someone working breakfast-radio hours, particularly late in the week.
He answered: ‘Don’t be like that.’
I wrote back: ‘How sad that you need to pay someone to give you attention.’
As a blonde woman with breasts, I am hardly unfamiliar with messages from strangers
He attempted to retreat, saying: ‘Please calm down, you have taken this all the wrong way. Sorry for upsetting you.’
Curiosity took over, so I searched his name online. I was not expecting to find that he was a reasonably prominent married Australian politician with considerable influence.
I returned to the conversation and told him that, if he was employed where I believed he was, approaching women he had found through dating apps and asking them to become his sugar baby was a remarkably poor decision. I also warned him that another message to me — or to any other woman — would result in reports to the police and his wife.
He blocked me almost instantly, unsurprisingly.
And that was the end of our brief exchange.
How many men have put their marriages, money, families and public reputations at risk for a few minutes of sexual excitement? All because they wanted attention from someone other than their wife.
Technology has made infidelity easier to arrange. Dating apps, private messages, disappearing chats and social media provide countless ways to maintain a secret second life. But those same tools have also made it easier than ever to catch someone cheating.
For starters, almost everyone carries a high-quality camera in their pocket.
My friend James Sexton, a divorce lawyer who has witnessed every kind of marital disaster, likes to joke that Apple paid for his holiday home.
iCloud, he says, has a great deal to answer for.
Many men forget that their iPads and Apple Watches are linked to their phones, making supposedly private conversations surprisingly easy to uncover.
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James once told me about a man whose son borrowed his iPad, discovered messages containing intimate photographs sent to a mistress and then innocently asked his mother why Dad was sending pictures of his penis.
The marriage was over.
And that is only one example.
Keeping a questionable exchange secret has become increasingly difficult
A quick look at their profiles often reveals within seconds that they are married
Another friend discovered her boyfriend’s betrayal while he was moving into her home. He returned to his former house to collect another load of possessions, and she briefly checked his iPad.
That decision proved disastrous for him. Within moments, she was reading a live text exchange in which he arranged to meet an escort before coming back to their new home.
Apparently, he intended to fit in a quick sexual encounter between trips with the moving boxes.
By the time he returned, my friend had packed every one of his belongings back up.
I hope those 20 minutes were worth it.
Location tracking, Uber receipts — including orders sent to a mistress’s address — suspicious dating profiles and online groups where women compare notes all add to the problem. Today, a cheating husband can be exposed by almost anyone with an internet connection.
Sis, Is This Your Man? is one example. The Facebook group allows women to post photographs of men they are dating and ask whether anyone else is seeing the same person or has useful information about him. It is essentially a crowdsourced background-check service, turning one woman’s warning sign into another woman’s valuable information.
Then there are the increasingly common “honey trap” tests.
In these scenarios, a woman asks a friend — or occasionally a stranger — to message her partner, flirt with him and see whether he responds.
The test may begin with a compliment, a playful message or a suggestion to meet for a drink. Sometimes, a single flame emoji is enough. The woman then waits to discover whether her partner rejects the attention or eagerly joins in.
My friends have even started using reverse-image searches on suspicious dating profiles to investigate the men they meet online.
Despite all these digital safeguards and traps, men with extraordinary wealth, influence and power continue to expose themselves in spectacular fashion.
These are people who have built companies, negotiated multimillion-dollar deals and outmanoeuvred some of the smartest people in business. They possess the confidence, determination and ambition that helped carry them to remarkable success.
Yet the moment they are caught with their pants down, that supposed intelligence appears to vanish.
Even men with immense wealth and influence repeatedly manage to expose themselves in spectacular fashion
Digital tools have made secret affairs easier to arrange — and easier to uncover
I suspect the explanation is connected to the very qualities that made these men successful.
Ego is probably the biggest factor.
After years of being told they are brilliant, powerful and extraordinary, some successful men begin to believe ordinary rules do not apply to them. Money and status can create the dangerous impression that sexual attention is something they are entitled to receive whenever they want it.
It is as though they are thumping their chests and declaring, “Me, alpha.” Embarrassing.
Novelty also plays a role.
Some men thrive on pursuit, whether they are chasing a business deal or a woman. That may explain the men who contact me: She writes about sex for a living. This could be exciting.
They charge forward like an overexcited bull — straight into my DMs.
For many, the goal is not necessarily to leave their wives or replace their comfortable lives. They are chasing the ego boost of being wanted by someone new, along with the secrecy, danger and thrill of believing they have gotten away with something.
Most damaging of all may be the belief that success makes them untouchable.
When someone is accustomed to getting what he wants, he can begin to assume he is clever enough to escape the consequences of anything. Assistants, lawyers, publicists and other professionals are often available to repair the damage. Why, then, would one more problem seem impossible to manage?
But an affair is not a business negotiation. Money cannot simply make it disappear, lawyers cannot bargain away the emotional fallout and a public-relations team cannot erase the betrayal.
Eventually, the man who believed he was untouchable may watch his carefully built life collapse because he could not control himself.
Take it from me, gentlemen: keep it in your pants.
