FOR years the St Ann couple lived what many thought was the ideal life, she a teacher, and he owner of a plumbing business which provided them with a decent living in the country. She laughs today as she remembers how often persons would say how much they respected and envied the couple -- they were in careers and contributing to society, they had two sons and were the shining churchgoing examples of their community.

Until her husband's death in early 2009, this wife, who asked not to be named to protect her family, didn't know that he was leading a double life -- a life that involved him having another family in St Elizabeth, complete with a 'wife' and other children.

"We met at his funeral, she told me that she had to come," she told All Woman, still smiling wryly. "She told me bluntly that for all intents and purposes she was his 'wife' too. She showed me a ring. She was accompanied by three little girls, no more than a year apart. The oldest girl she told me was 11, the same age as my younger son.

"The worst part was when she told me afterwards that all those years she had known about me, that she was OK with the arrangement," she said. "That floored me, to think that a woman would knowingly do that to another woman."

She said what surprised her most about her husband was how good he was at living the lie, and how well he kept up the pretence.

"To understand how flabbergasted I was, you would have to have known my husband," she said. "He was a perfectionist -- everything had to be just so... he preached all the time about the virtues of living in God's way. The biggest disappointment was knowing that he was a hypocrite."

She said the worst part about moving on, is not getting a chance to ask her husband why he lied, as he's not there to provide the answers, and his other 'wife' has refused to talk to her about it.

Stan Allen, who asked that only his middle names be used for privacy reasons, is caught in a secret that threatens to tear a family apart, if revealed.

The man who put him in the "middle of the mess" is his friend, a man who has been in a long-term relationship for the past nine years; a father of a little girl; a friend who he says he's convinced is gay.

"I know this, but the problem is, who do I tell?" he asked. "Do I tell the girlfriend, who is one of my best friends too, but she's under the illusion that they'll get married someday?"

His information he said is real and solid -- after all, it came straight from what he said was an advance his friend made while they were drinking one night.

"We all suspected that he was rowing the funny boat since high school," Allen said. "But you could never be certain, as he was a girls' man. But then he would come to us with these jokes, jokes about dudes and we'd all laugh nervously, embarrassed for him."

It didn't help the friend's reputation, when rumours started flying, especially when he found employment at a company, "not through his own merit, but because the boss liked him", Allen emphasised.

But, he said, his friend proceeded to go through girlfriends, have a child, and when he settled down with his current girlfriend, "we all kinda forgot about his past".

Forget, that is, until a few months ago when they were watching a basketball game at the friend's house, and in a drunken state, he said his friend "made an advance at" him.

It's details he said he's too embarrassed to share, but he said it was "serious stuff".

"Now I'm at a loss about what to do," he said. "On one hand I figure he was drunk, so that could explain it. But this dude has been strange since high school! I don't have a problem with him being gay, what I have a problem with, is with him being that way, and leading his girl on. She's my friend too, and I don't want her to have any illusions that he is fully focused on being with women."

Stories have been told and retold about men who lead double lives, without their partners knowing until they're caught.

Popular examples are many -- there's the democratic party nominee for American vice president John Edwards, who, with a wife who is suffering from cancer, finally admitted in January this year that he fathered a child with a woman, Rielle Hunter, he had been denying was his mistress since 2007. The child is almost two, and Edwards and his wife are now separated.

On a small scale, it's the man who has a steady woman and then another on the side, a situation which seems widely accepted; and on a larger scale, it's men who have entire families outside, without either woman knowing about the existence of the other. Then there are men who have heterosexual relationships at home, and then have homosexual relationships on the side; or men who have wives at home, yet dabble in the services of women of the night.

"Many men develop from adolescence or young adulthood, a sexual permissiveness that is modelled by male figures in their family of origin and other relatives, and encouraged among their peers," said Dr Sidney McGill, marriage and family therapist and sex disorder therapist. "Their sexual values therefore are not compatible with marital/long-term relational commitment with one partner. There is a double standard at play -- in theory (a religious principle) a life-long commitment to one partner is the ideal but in practice, many men attempt to follow the ideal but give up after a short stint at monogamy and continue having sexual intercourse or short/long-term affairs with other persons other than their committed lifelong partners."

Another male interviewee, who admitted "some embarrassment" with sharing his name, latched on to the 'sexual permissiveness' theory explained above.

Though he visits night-clubs here and overseas and even admits to having sex with the girls there on a "fairly regular basis", and though his wife of seven years doesn't know, he said he prefers to call it "plain cheating" than tag "secret life" to his actions.

"That sounds incredibly morose, like I'm doing something unnatural, or like I intentionally set out to deceive or to hurt my wife," the man, a business owner said. "I wouldn't call it a secret. Sure I avail myself of outside pickings, sure my wife doesn't know, but I'm not doing anything that hundreds of married men don't do too, and can't help doing!"

It was Eliot Spitzer, New York governor who perhaps, in recent times, exposed how seriously popular the practice of married men using the services of prostitutes is.

Spitzer, dubbed model husband and governor, served as the 54th governor of New York from January 2007 until his resignation on March 17, 2008 in the wake of allegations that he was linked to a federal investigation of an international call-girl ring and spent thousands of dollars for a night with a prostitute named 'Kristen' at a glitzy Washington hotel. The New York Post reported that Spitzer had been soliciting prostitutes at least since 2002 and was known only as 'Client 9' in a federal affidavit about a high-priced prostitution ring that became public. The Associated Press said Spitzer's running tab for the trysts could have been as high as US$80,000. He cited "private failings" upon his resignation.

"To reduce the incidences of more than one life, men should be transparent from the outset with their committed partners, which would prevent future heartaches for all concerned," Dr McGill warned. "Transparency may mean not being in their current relationships but they would be happier with themselves in finding the backbone to expose their true selves from the start."

He said women caught in these situations, upon finding out, can do several things.

"Confronting the problem with a mutual friend or a counsellor could be useful. The offended partner must show respect and wisdom in approaching the issue. The level of denial usually is very strong among offending men so she should have evidence to prove her point," McGill said.

And what happens when it involves children?

For the wife who found out that her late husband had another family, including other children, her decision was final.

"They were never a part of my family and will never be," she said. "I would never expose my sons to the knowledge that they have sisters existing somewhere else, and make them lose the respect they had for their father."

She said she and the other 'wife' came to a mutual understanding that the children would never know.

Said Dr McGill: "Children can lose trust in their fathers and initially react negatively towards him but in adulthood follow the same behaviour unless counselling from a relative or counsellor is done."

And for women who accept as 'normal' their men having a mistress, leading to situations where men feel free to have secret lives, Dr McGill had this to say:

"When a woman accepts as 'normal' her man having a mistress, she gives him permission to continue having extramarital relationships with the condition that he fulfils his other family responsibilities including giving her good sex. She needs to have financial independence in case his allegiance shifts further elsewhere," he said. "A man in this position gives his wife and children the impression that he is a slave to his sexual desires thus engendering a sense of insecurity and distrust by the family members -- he is not a model leader."

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