My affair sent a wrecking ball through my marriage and family... I'm still living with the emotional and financial fallout 14 years later: The Mail's JEFF PRESTRIDGE makes a searing confession - and reveals 12 lessons he learnt the hard way | Retrui News | Retrui
My affair sent a wrecking ball through my marriage and family... I'm still living with the emotional and financial fallout 14 years later: The Mail's JEFF PRESTRIDGE makes a searing confession - and reveals 12 lessons he learnt the hard way
SOURCE:Daily Mail
Although it was nearly 14 years ago, I remember the moment as if it was yesterday. It was a Sunday and I was in the bath when my wife Sue confronted me about having an affair.
Although it was nearly 14 years ago, I remember the moment as if it was yesterday. It was a Sunday evening and I was in the bath when my wife Sue confronted me about having an affair.
She had found a hotel receipt in my jacket pocket. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had drowned me.
Sadly, I’d strayed before – and, quite rightly, this time Sue gave me the red card. I had sent a wrecking ball through our marriage, destroying our family including the lives of our three boys, then aged between 17 and 20, and I had to leave.
Within a week I had packed my bags, and from that moment on I have felt the shattering consequences of my actions: not just emotionally, but financially, too.
When our divorce finally came through a few months ago and our assets split, I was left scratching my head wondering how I – the expert many Daily Mail readers turn to for financial advice and help – had ended up so out of pocket.
After leaving our £530,000 family home, I slept on friends’ floors for three weeks before I rented a one-bedroom flat in Limehouse, east London, where I stayed until just before Covid in early 2020. With a mortgage on the family home, I couldn’t afford to buy.
Looking back, I am not proud that I had an affair. I am ashamed and always will be. As for my boys – now in their 30s and all successful – I feel sickened at the pain I caused them.
Can I explain my behaviour? Not really.
After Jeff Prestridge’s divorce and the assets had been split, he was left wondering how he had ended up so out of pocket
It could stem from an inferiority complex going back to my childhood in Birmingham when I was the oddball of four children: a scrawny ginger kid compared to a younger brother who had the brooding looks of Elvis Presley.
Mum and Dad never failed to remind me how good-looking my brother was. It ate away at my self-esteem.
Going to an all-boys’ school didn’t help: I never ‘discovered’ girls until I was 17. I was more comfortable with an oval ball tucked under my arm than a woman on my arm. I didn’t lose my virginity until I went to university.
When Sue came along in the early 1980s – beautiful, bubbly, and clever – I couldn’t fathom why she chose me. I’d known her while studying Economics at Loughborough University, but as a friend.
We met again by accident one morning in 1982 when walking to our respective workplaces in London – Sue to a firm of commodity brokers, me to a job as a property writer for a firm of international surveyors. We embarked on a whirlwind relationship.
When Sue agreed to take my hand in marriage, everybody was flabbergasted. Most friends thought she should have married the best man - a drop-dead gorgeous, fun-loving guy.
I suspect most men present at the wedding in Lepton, just outside Huddersfield, in September 1983, thought Sue should have chosen them.
Rather than revel in being the cat who got the cream, I never came to terms with it. While my career took off, first at a Financial Times business magazine, then The Sunday Telegraph and finally at the Daily Mail, I spent most of my 30s in self-loathing mode: drinking, ballooning in weight and railing against the world.
I often contemplated ending everything. I remember one night on a press trip in Frankfurt, fleetingly wondering whether it would be best for everybody if I jumped off the Iron Bridge spanning the city’s Main River.
My dad had occasional issues with his mental health, too. Although a brilliant salesman in the rag trade, and the life and soul of many a party, he once tried to throw himself out of his bedroom window. Fortunately, I rugby tackled him to the floor just as he was about to jump.
Dad spent time in a psychiatric hospital having the same kind of electric shock treatment that Jack Nicholson’s character McMurphy receives in the Oscar-winning 1970s film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Thankfully, Dad went on to resume his career – and return to his old jack-the-lad ways.
As for me, only an uncanny ability to remember conversations when dining to excess with key contacts ensured I kept my job: I broke money stories rival journalists failed to get.
It was only in my late 30s and closing in on 20 years of marriage, that I went on a health kick and turned my life around.
Ever the obsessive, I stopped drinking and starting running, racing every weekend. We had fantastic family holidays, and Sue and I would occasionally enjoy long weekends away – with my mum and dad looking after the boys, who were then at primary school.
Home was a three-floor, four-bedroom townhouse just outside Watford, Hertfordshire, with a wood at the back where I would walk our rescue dog Tara, while I also ran round the local fields in winter.
Everything was hunky dory until I turned 40 and the urge to stray began to creep up on me. Was it because of a new-found confidence from no longer looking like a balloon? I don’t know. Shameful.
Although my parents have now departed this world, they never forgave me for what I did.
‘God will strike you down,’ my mum said after I told her why I’d moved out of the family home. She wasn’t religious, but she was a one-man woman. She never wavered in her condemnation of my actions.
She refused to meet the younger woman I left Sue for and never once asked after her. When she met my current partner – no, the relationship that ended my marriage didn’t last – all she would talk about was Sue.
Dad wasn’t as angry, probably because his own dalliances at work gave him no right to take the moral high ground. Did I inherit a philandering gene from him? If I did, it bypassed my three siblings.
Yet Dad was disappointed in me. He liked Sue from the moment he met her at a French restaurant in West London. She was flirtatious, liked a drink and melted hearts. She ticked all of Dad’s boxes. And, worst of all, I was disappointed in me. Consumed by guilt, I let everything drift, especially when it came to separating our finances.
Sue loved living in the family home and had a network of local friends. So, I agreed to continue paying the mortgage (interest-only) and provided her with a monthly allowance. I also supported the boys through university.
My parents never forgave me for what I did, writes Jeff. ‘God will strike you down,’ my mum said after I told her why I’d moved out of the family home. She never wavered in her condemnation of my actions
Being the main earner – Sue worked as a financial administrator – it felt like the right thing to do. Yes, it was hard, but given my career and salary, I was able to cope.
Slowly, Sue and I became friends again, rejoicing at key family events: graduation ceremonies, the marriage of my middle boy and the arrival of delightful grandchildren.
Yet, with the deadline for the mortgage to be paid off, we knew we couldn’t park our divorce in the long grass for ever.
In January 2023, just short of 11 years after that fateful evening she found the damning receipt, we started divorce proceedings by appointing solicitors.
The original plan was for Sue to keep the family home, while I kept my pension. But it was a mismatch. For the sake of fairness, my sizeable pension had to be split. Although Sue was working and had a couple of pensions in her own right, my pot swamped them.
Disclosing finances to each other – and providing supporting documents - was time-consuming. As was digging out our bank statements so we could scrutinise each other’s transactions, looking for suspicious receipts and evidence of non-disclosed assets.
Our solicitors encouraged us to be combative, which reignited some of the resentment from the original split.
At times, especially when I was also dealing with the stress of sorting out my mum’s estate after she died in 2024, and coming to terms with a prostate cancer diagnosis, I again found myself considering whether my life was worth carrying on with. Love for my boys and life in general fortunately quelled such thoughts.
Eventually we agreed to sell the family home and Sue bought a home up north near her mother with the proceeds. I’m currently renting a flat in Berkshire, but hope to become a homeowner again soon.
Agreeing on selling the family home was painful, but dividing the pension assets was a far more torturous and expensive process, involving a £3,300 report from an actuary on how best to cut the cake.
When the calculations had been done, I was left with a defined benefit pension (from my early years at the Daily Mail), which will pay me a monthly income in retirement for the rest of my life – albeit an income reduced by Sue being awarded a chunk of the fund’s value. Sue also received the proceeds from my defined contribution plans. Absolutely fair.
When the court approved everything in the summer of this year and our divorce was granted, we were both relieved, but even then, it took five more months for the pension funds to be split.
Colleagues had warned me that the only people who come out of a divorce smiling are the lawyers. They were dead right.
Looking back, it has taken a heavy toll on me both financially and emotionally, but I’m not complaining. I deserved it.
If you’re having a difficult time or are worried about someone else, you can call the Samaritans for free day or night 365 days of the year on 116123 or go to samaritans.org for help and advice.
12 lessons I learnt the hard way
These are the lessons I’ve learnt which may help you if, God forbid, you go through this process, too.
DON’T DIVORCE UNLESS YOU HAVE TO
Think about counselling: Maybe our marriage could have lasted if we had sought counselling when I first strayed – or I had been brave enough to see a psychologist to explain my irrational behaviour.
I did see one post-separation, and he identified a number of childhood issues that explained my lack of confidence and low self-esteem.
TRY MEDIATION
Post-separation, we went from doing nothing for years to employing solicitors who didn’t come cheap.
Try to work out between yourselves a way forward that works best for you in terms of what to do with the family home and finances. It will save you thousands of pounds.
CONSIDER A LEGAL SEPARATION
We didn’t consider this route, but it can give you breathing space to work out whether you really want to end the marriage. Unlike mediation, it’s a court-approved process.
DON’T PROCRASTINATE
If divorce is the only option, don’t dilly dally like we did. You’re just kicking the can further down the road. The quicker you divorce, the sooner you can both move on with your lives.
DON’T FORGET YOUR PENSIONS
Just 12 per cent of people consider pensions in divorce settlements. As Joanna Newton, a partner at Stowe Family Law, tells me, it’s invariably women who lose out.
She says: ‘Divorce exacerbates the gender pension gap, especially when women ask for the family home as opposed to a split of their spouse’s pension pot.’ It’s exactly what would have happened to Sue if we hadn’t agreed to a pension sharing order (PSO).
This order isn’t a legal requirement, but, as Newton says, it should be obligatory for solicitors to advise their clients about PSOs.
DIVORCES ARE NEVER QUICK
A modern ‘no fault’ divorce takes a minimum 26 weeks. But as James Osborne, a partner in the family team at HCR Law, told my colleagues at This is Money recently, it typically takes between eight and nine months for both divorce and financial matters to be concluded amicably.
If there’s a disagreement over finances, the timeframe is usually between ten and 18 months. It took us two and a half years to get our divorce over the line, and nearly three years to get our finances sorted.
IT PAYS TO BE ORGANISED
Dig out all the documents you need to go through divorce: for example, finding your marriage certificate, completing the required divorce form (D8), and gathering together key financial information (bank statements, details of ISAs, pensions, savings, and investments).
A GOOD SOLICITOR IS WORTH IT
Divorce will be costly if you engage a solicitor: You can’t escape it. My solicitor was fantastic, but at the end of the day, I racked up a bill north of £19,000. Was it money well spent? Yes. Without her calmness and assuredness when things were progressing at a snail’s pace, I’m not sure I would have coped.
USE THE SAME SOLICITOR
Although it won’t be every divorcing couple’s cup of tea, it will help keep a lid on both costs and emotional stress.
OTHER WAYS TO KEEP THE COSTS DOWN
For those whose financial arrangements are not complex, consider an online divorce service. For those who want certainty over how much it is all going to cost, seek out a law firm prepared to offer a fixed-fee divorce service.
CONSIDER GOING PRIVATE
Some divorcing couples are now using private judges to reach quick and confidential financial settlements. This involves a hearing set up by the spouses where a hired judge – usually a barrister or retired judge – gives them an indication of how a court would probably rule in their case.
The couple then usually reach a ‘financial dispute resolution’, which becomes a financial settlement that still needs to be ratified by the court, but that stage is typically handled over email.
Costs range from £2,000 for a straightforward hearing to £10,000 for a complex case with an experienced judge. Hearings can be arranged quickly, avoiding long delays in the family court and publicity under new transparency rules.
DON’T STRAY IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Finally, I should have heeded the advice of a former colleague long ago who would always finish our regular telephone conversations by warning me to stay faithful to my wife. If only I had.