True wife confessions: How women's real-life stories...

Shelly writes poignantly about the state of her marriage. Karen blogs shamelessly about her secret life as a serial mistress. Amy reveals all about her adulterous affairs ...Suddenly there are any number of websites devoted to women's real-life confessions. But who uses them, and why?

Infidelity blogging is part of a bigger confessional blogging scene. Sites like Post Secret (link removed), which publishes people's anonymous confessions in postcard form, might have started the trend as far back as 2005 but the internet is now awash with places for the guilt-ridden to unburden their virtual souls.

At heart, infidelity blogging appears to be an effort to give concrete reality to relationships that often have their roots in unreality; to legitimise something that society mostly denounces. An infidelity blogger might not be able to hold the hand of her lover in public but she can create an online persona around their affair and write in intimate detail about illicit hours spent together.

Still, writing online about infidelity could be seen as a harder betrayal to understand than the adultery itself. After all, while an affair can be unintentional, or at least unpremeditated, there's nothing unwitting about blogging. It's hard not to feel pangs of pity for the partners who know less about the person with whom they exchanged vows than scores of virtual strangers. But it's not always easy, either, to condemn the choices of those for whom adultery and the internet offer a release from the realities of difficult relationships.

Either way, whether they are seeking virtual absolution or just attention, the new infidelity bloggers seem to be having their cake and writing about it too.