Foxy reveals why dirty cheaters like to keep it clean

The TV ads are in full swing, the shops are packed with goodies, Black Friday may be three weeks away but the sales are starting early for some and I for one am coming over all Christmassy (yes, you guessed it, lucky old “all Christmassy”). So much so, that I have already got my baubles on show and have even changed my profile pic, too.

Now, apparently, many of you are literally gagging for Black Friday to arrive, not for the shopping, but for the fact it is also Unfaithful Friday, with over 80% of love rats planning to see their extramarital partner on that day before they have to spend the whole month with their other half.

But, I hear you ask, what is a sure-fire way of finding out whether you are married to a cheating scumbag?

Well, to find out, our old friends at IllicitEncounters.com asked 1,340 members what they started doing differently once their affair began, and a quarter of them said the washing, which made it the single most common change on a list of eight.

In fact, almost everything on the list is housework. An affair creates evidence, on clothes and in cars and on phones, and the first instinct is to tidy it away. Others started taking their phone into the bathroom, or keeping a second aftershave where it will not be found.

Hardly anyone does the obvious thing. Only 2% had gone to the trouble of getting themselves a second phone.

The change looks different depending on who is making it. For men, it is often the first time they have used the machine at all. Women, who were mostly using it already, describe separating their own things from the family wash and putting them on the same night rather than leaving them in the basket.

Brian, 56, from the North East, had to look the machine up.  He explained: “I watched a video on my phone, standing in my own utility room, at fifty-six years old. She thinks I’ve finally grown up. I just can’t have my shirts going in with everyone else’s.”

Heather, 60, from the West Country, joined the site eighteen months ago. Shee said: “I’ve always done the washing, so nobody was ever going to notice me doing more of it. What changed is that my stuff goes in on its own now, the same night, and it comes straight back out. Before that it’d sit in the basket for days like everybody else’s.”

Nearly three-quarters of cheaters say their partner has never once asked why any of it changed. When anyone did ask, it was almost always about why the car was so clean – not about who had suddenly started doing the washing.

IllicitEncounters.com sex and relationships expert Jessica Leoni said: “People think an affair starts with a big lie. It doesn’t, it starts with a load of washing. Nobody’s sat down and planned any of this. They’ve realised the shirt they had on smells of somebody who isn’t their wife, they’ve dealt with it, and once you’ve done that once you carry on doing it.

“It works as a warning sign precisely because it’s so boring. Nobody’s looking for a second phone, because hardly anybody has the energy for a second phone. What they’ve got is a husband who has developed a sudden interest in the fabric conditioner, and that would be a much harder thing to explain than a text message, if anybody ever asked.”

And the lesson for marketers? Why, this is surely great news for anyone working on Persil, Bold, Daz, Surf and Fairy? After all, households that contain a cheater must be going through detergents twice as fast… it literally is “double bubble” for laundry brands.

Foxy has ditched X but is still on Instagram,  just don’t get too excited as she’s never there