A double life - the one you live and the one you want to

Double lives aren’t built by villains, they’re built by ordinary people who got hungry for a version of themselves they lost touch with.

Who’s leading a double life? It’s the ones you’d least expect.

The mum at school gates.

The devoted dad

The couple posting sunsets on Instagram.

The therapist. The banker. The yoga teacher. The “nice one.” All ages, all genders.

Double life keeping you awake at night? Secret flirting at work. Deleted messages. A favourite cam girl. A lover who knows a different name for you. The version of you who loads the dishwasher and the version who feels electric with your secret fantasy love.

You might think this is a male thing. You’d be wrong, very wrong.

This is a human thing.

Most double lives don’t begin with lust. They begin with silence. With a relationship that went polite and bloodless. With a body that stopped being touched like it mattered. With a part of you quietly starving while you kept the show on the road.

Let’s be honest, no one taught us how to do the hard conversations. How to ask for more without sounding greedy. How to say “I’m lonely” without blowing everything up. So people outsource what they can’t speak.

There’s a line I love: when you’re busy, ask a busy mum to get the job done.

Well, when your love life is complicated, speak to a therapist who understands complexity, swims in it daily, and doesn’t flinch. Because when life gets messy, you need someone who has lived it and returned to calm.

I know, because I lived a double life for years. The open relationship my husband knew about and then the secret way of life that that had me torn into pieces trying to get it right for everyone.

And it wasn’t all glamorous. It wasn’t a Netflix affair with great lighting. It was me hiding in the laundry room texting the lover, it was me, over-functioning and under-fed, calling intensity “connection.”

My need for validation was huge. I was addicted to love-bombing and intermittent reinforcement, that hit of being chosen, wanted, seen. The chemistry kept me hooked like a drug. Sex became glue. I used it to regulate parts of myself I hadn’t even met yet.

I was over capacity and calling it passion.

I was exhausted and calling it freedom.

There was a part of me that believed: try harder and you’ll be loved, everything will be ok.

Another part that whispered: be strong, suck up the pain and no one will leave.

That wasn’t narcissism. It was armour.

And I wasn’t good at hearing feedback, not because I didn’t care, I cared so much. Because listening to one relationship meant betraying the other. They both wanted more of me. I could never get it right for both, so my state became freeze.

That’s the psychology of double lives.

Not evil. Not even always selfish.

Just a nervous system trying to survive unmet needs whilst digging deeper holes that take you further away from yourself.

And it’s everywhere. Roughly one in five adults in the UK admit to having had an affair. Men and women in almost equal numbers. Millions of ordinary people carrying a second story in their pocket.

Cheating isn’t just sex now. It’s emotional affairs, secret messaging, dating apps, favourite sex workers, a private world that feels safer than the life you’ve spent creating.

Many people aren’t living a secret affair, they’re living two versions of themselves:

the one they became, and the one they ache to meet.

In the therapy room I hear the same themes: emotional hunger, boredom that feels like grief, a body that wants to be woken up, a self that got lost somewhere between mortgages and school runs, bills and bins as I like to say.

When someone touches a buried part of themselves, desire, play, power, it feels like oxygen after years underwater. And suddenly the life they’re in feels too small to exist in alone.

Technology didn’t create this. It just gave it abetter access . We used to need motels and lies. Now we have instant connection at our finger tips.

Living a double life splits you down the middle.

One part says: I deserve to feel alive.

Another says: you’re ruining everything.

That is the messy part, living in the middle.

You become a committee of selves: the good partner, the hungry lover, the terrified child, the rebel, the teen. And sex becomes the language, the comfort, the way to regulate through the mess.

That was my story. I didn’t know how to feel without performing. Didn’t know how to ask for love without earning it. I thought I was choosing adventure. I was managing pain.

This isn’t about excusing harm. People get hurt. I hurt people. I hurt myself. But shame has never repaired a relationship or a nervous system.

People are just human, searching for connection, intimacy, themselves. Double lives seem like an answer to both stay in one relationship and cause less pain whilst also have the parts met which have been yearning for years.

They’re lonely. Tired. Unmet. Trying to feel something real.

The better question isn’t: “What’s wrong with you?”

It’s: “What are you trying to feel?”

Maybe you’re texting someone you shouldn’t.

Maybe you have a lover with a secret ringtone.

Maybe you have a secret Grinder app that you can’t explain even to yourself.

Maybe you’re paying for intimacy you can’t ask for.

Maybe you’re just staring at your life wondering when it stopped feeling like the life you want the main role in.

You don’t need another lecture.

You need understanding and non judgmental conversations.

I’m Jemma Hardelle. I work with people who live in the grey zones, affairs, non-monogamy, shame, desire, power, secrets, the messy middle between who you are and who you’re becoming. I don’t flinch. I don’t moralise. I help you think clearly enough to choose kindly.

Because the real work isn’t choosing between two people.

It’s learning to meet the parts of yourself you’ve been outsourcing and building a life that doesn’t require a hidden door.

Happy Valentines Day

❤️