The other day I read a story in the online version of The Times, which expounded the notion that there are many married men out there who make drunken passes at women who are not their wives. Specifically, at their wives' girlfriends and after they've had one too many glasses of whisky.
Now, while there are no conclusive stats to back up this theory, I was a little surprised at the revelations, considering that the type of affairs I've always been privy to have usually been with someone outside a couple's friendship circle.
Oh yes, I've seen married men do it all. Most recently, having just returned from a working trip to Europe (the home of horny husbands), I was accosted by a good-looking French bloke who flirted shamelessly with me and every other woman on the tour. No wedding ring on his left finger made many assume that he was fair game. So you can imagine our shock and horror when we spotted him the very next day leaving the hotel, hand-in-hand with his gorgeous wife and child.
"European men are just big flirts," my girlfriend lectured me when I returned to Aussie soil. "You can't take any notice of them. It's the Aussie husbands you have to be wary of."
She may indeed have a point ...
Over the years of writing this column, I've encountered more than my fair share of these scenarios. I've seen a very married male hairdresser pick up a very married female executive at an office work function. Their affair continued for months after.
I've been at a charity event where I watched a married man seduce a much younger (and seemingly eager to please) leggy supermodel while his wife texted him from his home.
I've seen a married TV exec conduct an affair with an anchorwoman in another state as he continually made excuses to go and check out the interstate offices. Yep, I thought I'd seen it all.
But Times writer Hannah Betts reckons that affairs with women closer to home are what married men are more into, lamenting that married blokes "frequently see no impediment to a lover who has known his partner since infancy, served as her bridesmaid, and may or may not be fully informed about his erectile dysfunction". In other words, his wife's best mate often seems like a suitable choice for a little late-night nooky.
So what's a loving wife supposed to do? Grin and bear it? Stand up to her husband? Tell her best friend to stay the heck away or their days of dual pedicures are over?
Don't wear their wedding rings
Ask a single woman why the heck she went home with a married man, ("Oh the shame!" you might think), and nine times out of 10 she'll reply that she had no idea he was married because he wasn't wearing his wedding ring.
"How was I supposed to know?" she'll say. "There wasn't even a tan line!"
So much for the universal tell-tale sign that he might already be hitched.
Yet, says Amy Sohn of New York Magazine , the old adage - that you should never trust a man who doesn't wear his wedding band - shouldn't be held in too much regard.
By her reckoning, a bloke's refusal to wear a wedding band simply indicates "an unwillingness to be publicly defined by their marital state. They want to be seen as people before they are seen as married, which presumes that one cannot be both".
Other men I've spoken to say that actually wearing their wedding band gets them more attention from women.
"I become less threatening to other women who are used to getting picked up by sleazy singles," a young married bloke tells me when I ask him about his ring-wearing habits.
"But some of my friends won't wear it when we go out to a club. Says it makes them feel old." Can't argue with that one.
Choose to renew their vows
Some men think that being happily married might keep them younger. That's if they're keeping their spouses interested, of course. Hence more and more blokes these days are opting to take part in a ritual that involves replacing their wedding bands: renewing their vows.
Of course uttering the words " 'til death do us part" might not pack the same punch as it did the first time around, especially since no one takes the vows seriously in the first place any more. So it confuses the heck out of me as to why modern men are so into retaking their vows, especially after they've done the dirty behind their wives' backs.
Take Madonna and Guy Ritchie, another couple who decided to renew their vows back in 2005, in hope of keeping their marriage alive. To seal the deal the second time, Madonna was given a ring worth £100,000 made by Parisian jeweller Fred. The headlines accompanying the stunt? "Madonna and Guy are closer now than ever before."
And look how that worked out ...