Apparently, Successful Women often do infidelity ? who become sexual predators

Sipping her glass of chilled Chablis, Erica Waddington’s eyes wandered slowly around the bar. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. In the opposite corner, blond hair falling foppishly onto the collar of his Paul Smith shirt as he idly scrolled through his BlackBerry, was a stranger. And he was alone, like her.

As Erica’s eyes locked with his just an instant too long, she felt a surge of excitement. Crossing her legs suggestively, she knew all she had to do was wait. Sure enough, two minutes later, the stranger was standing casually at the bar beside her. For Erica, the thrill of the chase had begun.

‘Two hours later we were making passionate love in my hotel bedroom,’ Erica, 50, recalls with a smile. ‘After a long day at work, the release was exactly what I needed — my little treat to myself.’

Illicit encounters: Increasing numbers of successful women are ’unwinding’ by having affairs (posed by models)

Whether her husband and three children would agree with her is doubtful. But then, Erica’s not alone. In fact, she’s just one among a growing band of women who’ve been dubbed the Alpha Adultresses.

These high-earning, successful women are every bit as willing as men to use their power to attract younger lovers for quick flings.

Newspapers are crammed with sex scandals involving powerful men. This past week alone, Dominique Strauss-Kahn — of late the world’s most powerful banker — has been accused of rape, megastar Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted having a love-child with his housekeeper and the scandal surrounding MP Chris Huhne’s past indiscretions continues to rumble on.

However, a new academic study suggests women are inherently no more virtuous than men. It’s just that, in the past, they have lacked the confidence or opportunity to stray.

Meawhile check out more hot article by clicking on the title above.

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Like men, women are finding that power is a potent aphrodisiac. And just like men, they are giving in to the thrill of illicit lunchtime assignations and the sheer excitement that accompanies their transgression.

Nor do they feel any more guilty or ashamed about it than a man would — if anything, less so.

Professor Joris Lammers, of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, who conducted an anonymous survey of more than 1,500 readers of a business magazine, has found being powerful makes women more prone to be unfaithful.

He questioned people, from top executives to ordinary employees, about whether they’d had affairs. They were asked how powerful they thought they were and quizzed on other factors including their feelings of confidence, and what they thought their risk of being caught was.

No difference in the sexes: Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, and Tiger Woods have had well-publicised sex scandals - but it’s not just powerful men who cheat

The results revealed a strong link between power and infidelity, regardless of gender.

‘The strongest predictors are not religion or moral belief, but power and opportunity,’ says Professor Lammers. ‘Power can undermine your morality and increase your risk-taking, and the effect of power on women is just as strong as on men.’

Certainly, women like Erica are happy to admit they feel no shame in going all out to get what they want — not just in the boardroom but in the bedroom.

For Erica — for obvious reasons names in this article have been changed — treating herself to a night of illicit sex is on a moral par with her regular shopping trips to Paris, her facials and her gym membership. For her, and many other alpha females, sex is simply another trapping of success, a reward for hard work.

A millionaire businesswoman who runs her own chain of travel agencies, she lives in Cheshire with her husband, Thomas, 52, who works for her, and their three children aged from 11 to 17.

MAN EATERS

Fifteen per cent of married women have affairs compared to 20 per cent of married men

She says, ‘I love walking into a boardroom, wearing a beautiful tailored suit, knowing that every man’s eyes are on me. The success of my business — we had a turnover of £2million last year — gives me such a feeling of power and confidence, and that has translated into my attitude towards relationships.

‘I don’t feel guilty: my family have a lovely life, in a five-bedroom detached house with a swimming pool, thanks to my hard work, and my children are privately educated.

‘I suspect there are a lot more alpha women like me who but who simply aren’t prepared to admit they are using their power and money to have affairs.

‘I have had the best sex of my life in the past decade. None of these affairs, or flings, have meant anything to me, they are simply exciting and flattering.

‘My “shenanigans”, as I call them, are my way of de-stressing after my long working day. Inevitably they take place in hotels when I am away from home, and I have discovered that I can completely divorce my emotions from my sex life. I can be on the phone to my daughter talking about her homework one minute, and then gazing into the eyes of a handsome young man in a dimly-lit bar half an hour later.

‘I know men approach me because I am rich and successful, and I often end up paying the bar bill and for the meal. But that doesn’t bother me. In fact, it gives me a sense of achievement that I am totally in control of the situation.’

Lucy Kellaway, a columnist on the Financial Times, wrote her novel In Office Hours after observing the increasingly similar traits of male and female executives. Her main character, Stella, is a highly successful economist in her mid-40s who has an affair with her twentysomething trainee.

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Kellaway says her character is typical of a new breed. ‘Climbing the career ladder can do weird things to people and it can corrupt both men and women,’ she says. ‘I think it’s very plausible that it makes women more sexually promiscuous.’

This is borne out by the volume of traffic on Illicit Encounters. The internet site which caters for married professionals looking for adulterous affairs has nearly 600,000 members, and women looking for extra-marital sex outnumber men by 3½ to 1. Most are married with children, aged between their early 30s and mid-40s, and pursuing a well-paid career.

‘Alpha women look for a partner and conduct their encounters in a very business-like fashion. They will often grill prospective partners as though they were conducting a job interview,’ says the website’s Rosie Freeman-Jones.

‘I was naïve when I joined this business. I thought women would be looking for a Brief Encounter-style romantic love affair. But it really is all about sex.’

Wealthy businesswoman Sarah Pattinson holds her hands up to that. She’s embroiled in an affair with a man eight years her junior. He give her the high-octane, high-risk sex she craves; she gives him expensive gifts and treats him to lovely holidays.

‘We met through friends and I fancied him instantly,’ admits Sarah, 49. ‘I think he was very impressed by my status and success.

‘He likes all my “toys” — the Range Rover Sport and my disposable income. I love to buy him clothes, and I recently paid for him to fly to India with a friend. In a way, he is my kept man. I have a phone that I use only to communicate with him which I keep hidden from my husband.

‘At work, I am the boss. I make tough decisions, I hire and fire, and I have to maintain this air of control. I get a buzz from the power and the adrenaline, and that has translated into my sex life.’

Sarah, a mother of two teenagers, runs her own head-hunting business in London and lives in Islington with her husband Robert, 52.

Like most Alpha Males, she regards her affair as a healthy distraction. And, like most Alpha Males, her success has given her an intoxicating sense of invincibility; she simply can’t imagine being caught out.

‘Before I ran this company, I don’t think I would have contemplated being unfaithful. But you do start to think no one can touch you and you are invincible,’ she admits.

‘On the surface, Robert and I have the perfect marriage — he works in the City in insurance, we have a beautiful five-bedroom home in Islington, our children are at a high-achieving private day school and our social life revolves around like-minded wealthy couples.

TICK TOCK

The biological clock means women are most likely to cheat in their early 30s, as fertility levels drop

‘But sex is unfulfilling. If we didn’t have the children, I might have considered leaving Robert for my lover, but our lives are just too complicated to un-pick. Besides, we do get on reasonably well and we have a fabulous lifestyle, including a villa with a swimming pool in Portugal.

‘We have a live-in nanny who also acts as our housekeeper so my domestic duties are quite light. I work thirteen or fourteen hour days, and I have evening meetings too. This gives me the freedom to meet my lover, who also works in the City.

‘Sometimes I take risks. Once my lover Nick rang me at home and Robert could have picked up. I’ll make excuses to walk down the garden and phone Nick at the weekends, and often I ring his phone just to hear his voice.

‘The sex is incredible, and I think the “edge” of ours being an illicit affair makes it even more enticing.

‘Nick makes me feel beautiful and alive, and he keeps me young. I need to feel vibrant to stay on top of the game, especially during this recession, and that adulterous sex gives me that kick, that energy, to keep me motivated at work. Sex with Nick is my reward for my success and exhausting hard work. I would die, though, if Robert or the children ever found out.’

So why do women, who have worked so hard to achieve professional success, risk losing everything for the sake of adulterous sex, however electric?

According to Rosie Freeman-Jones, risk is a key element. ‘Both men and women at the top are addicted to risk. It is part of the DNA of successful people that they are more prone to take risks and more prone to cheat,’ she says.

But you have only to look at golfer Tiger Woods to see how quickly an affair can destroy not just a marriage but a career and reputation.

Even if he is found not guilty of rape, will former International Monetary fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn ever be able to rebuild his reputation? Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger has shelved plans for a career comeback in order to deal with the fallout from his affair.

And Lucy Kellaway warns that Alpha Adultresses are risking even more than their male counterparts.

‘There is a double standard,’ she says. ‘A man having an affair might be seen as a bit of a lad, whereas a woman like Stella in my book is likely to be seen as pathetic, or a bitch and a slapper.

‘Because there are so few women executives, the ones that do succeed are put on a pedestal — and they have a lot farther to fall. The message of my book is that affairs end badly for everyone.’

And, while the figures demonstrate very clearly that increasing numbers of successful women are being tempted to stray, can women really divorce sex from commitment in the same way as a man?

Brigitte Nielsen reveals all about her passionate romance with Arnold Schwarzenegger

During the making of the action film Red Sonja in 1985, its two lead stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen enjoyed a passionate affair.


The attraction had been instant ‘and since we both knew that wouldn’t last beyond the movie, we didn’t hold back’, admits Nielsen now. ‘We wanted to try everything and so we did. There were no restrictions, no promises, nothing, and it was a great time in my life.’


Schwarzenegger may be getting it in the neck from all quarters at the moment, but Nielsen still has a few kind words to say about him. His 25-year marriage to Kennedy family member Maria Shriver has ended amid allegations he had fathered at least one love child, and he is alleged to have had as prodigious an appetite for women during that time as he did when he was single.

Opening up the ex-files, Brigitte Nielsen has had a lengthy list of lovers

He and Nielsen were an item during the mid-Eighties. He wasn’t married to Shriver at the time, although they were a couple.


‘How serious it was with her, I don’t know,’ says Nielsen. ‘He never spoke about her — and the way he was living his life with me, I felt I was the only one. Then I realised about him and Maria and, wow, I felt cheated. Maybe I wouldn’t have got into it if he said “I’m going to marry Maria and this is dead serious”, but he didn’t, and our affair carried on.’


Did he ever ask Nielsen to marry him? ‘Absolutely not’, she laughs. ‘If he had, he wouldn’t have become Governor of California.’


She may have a point. Six foot one in her stockinged feet, with peroxide blonde hair, an impressive bosom and an ex-file that includes actors Sylvester Stallone (to whom she was married) and Sean Penn (‘I haven’t had many one-night stands, but he was one and oooh . . . he was amazing!’) it is fair to say that Brigitte is not average political wife material.


But then she is not your average anything, which no doubt attracted young Schwarzenegger to the Danish ex-model. ‘Arnold at the time was a lot of fun,’ she recalls. ‘He was very professional and had a very sarcastic sense of humour. He told me at the beginning of shooting Red Sonja, “One day, I will become Governor of California”, and we were all laughing, but I had a feeling he would do it one day.’


Far from being the boorish, sexual predator he is being portrayed as, Schwarzenegger was, she insists, very romantic. ‘I was about to fly home to Copenhagen for Christmas and Arnold left me this gift. I won’t say what it was, but it was a beautiful over-the-top present.’

Things hotted up in Red Sonja, The pair met on a film set and were instantly attracted to each other

Was he in love with her? ‘I think so.’ The speculation that he may have fathered further love children in addition to a 13-year-old son Joseph, by the family housekeeper Patty Baena, shocks Nielsen.


‘There’s more? It breaks my heart because he and Maria have four kids and you don’t just have a baby with someone else. I’m surprised Arnold thought he could get away with it and I feel bad for Maria.’


Then she lapses into cryptic mode. ‘One day I will write another book about what I know. There is so much that I’m not allowed to talk about.’ She sighs. ‘It’s not fair.’


For now, however, we must content ourselves with Nielsen’s current autobiography, You Only Get One Life. She’s certainly lived the one she’s got to the full, with the book detailing everything from her rise from shy schoolgirl to Amazonian model, taking in five husbands and four children.


She doesn’t gloss over unsavoury aspects of her life, including domestic abuse, alcohol addiction and a suicide attempt. It’s a surprisingly painful and sad read at times. ‘But I’ve had so many great times,’ she says. ‘You can come out the other side.’


A constant refrain in the book is the dichotomy between brassy, intimidating Brigitte, with whom we are most familiar, and the girl born Gitte Nielsen — the shy and vulnerable creature who comes through in her writing.

Irresistible, Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger predicted to Brigitte he would have a political career

‘There’s Brigitte and Gitte — two different people under the same roof,’ she says. ‘People want me in a mini-skirt, but when I get home, I’m Gitte who’s sensitive and in need of affection. Men didn’t really understand that.’


Her relationship with Stallone was a case in point. They met in New York during a promotional tour of Red Sonja, although they didn’t consummate their relationship until later at Stallone’s beach house in Malibu, California. She says they made love for the first time on a big chair. ‘It was weird,’ she says, ‘and that was not the most incredible memory to have.’


Within weeks, Stallone had offered her a part in Rocky IV and later proposed marriage. But she says: ‘Something changed when we got married. We went on honeymoon to Hawaii and Sly brought about 15 people with us — agents, lawyers, a whole entourage. I was devastated.’


Stallone commissioned statues of Brigitte which filled their garden. ‘To start with it was flattering, even though I had to pose for hours,’ she says. ‘And then it just became embarrassing.’


He was obsessed with her, she says. ‘And I think he still is today with all due respect to his daughters [Sophia, Sistine and Scarlet] and Jennifer [Flavin, his wife of 14 years].


‘He’d never allowed a woman to leave him and I was probably the only one who did. My girlfriends said I was mad because any woman would like beautiful jewellery and a house and a nice car with a man you adore.


‘I was 22, a Danish Viking who wanted to explore, but we were surrounded by people and bodyguards all the time. I’d say to him “You can’t buy me”, so I left him and he never got over it.’ They divorced in 1987 after 18 months of marriage, with Stallone downgrading his assessment of her from ‘the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life’, to ‘the ex-pain’. She received a £350,000 settlement, loose change by today’s standards, but struggled to find work in Hollywood.


‘I know he did certain things to make sure I was history,’ she says. ‘I don’t want to say he told people not to employ me, but for three years no one would even talk to me.’

Two sides of Brigitte, The brash and busty blonde says her softer side - ’Gitte’ - needs affection and sensitivity

Photographer and director Sebastian Copeland became her third husband in 1992 and they divorced two years later, although Nielsen has claimed the marriage was never legalised.


The fallout from the split with Stallone continued to 2005, when Brigitte was a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother with racing pundit John McCririck and feminist writer Germaine Greer. A surprise house-guest was Stallone’s mother, Jackie, who had previously branded Brigitte ‘a slut’ and ‘a lesbian’.


‘It was a low blow by the producers, who wanted to stir up trouble,’ says Nielsen. ‘I don’t know what happened before we got married, but Sylvester didn’t invite her to the wedding. I think she didn’t want her son to have any feelings for another woman.


‘But the craziest thing was that in the Big Brother house after all those years that she’d been so mean, I looked at this woman who was old, eccentric and confused and felt sorry for her, so we buried the hatchet.’


Marriage to Stallone had, however, made Brigitte feel better about herself. In her book, she tells how she’d transformed from the gawky, insecure Gitte who had been bullied at school and somehow found the self-confidence to become a model. Then came movies and Stallone.


‘But deep down inside there is that part of you that wonders are you really that cool or are you that same old kid in school?’ says Nielsen.


How do Arnie and Stallone compare? In her book, she calls Stallone ‘the sexiest, most delicious man I’d ever met’. But she is also on record as calling Arnie ‘the sexiest actor I’ve known in real life’.


She claims that two of her former loves — American football player Mark Gastineau, with whom she lived for two years, and ex-husband No 4, Swiss racing driver Raoul Meyer — physically abused her.

Red hot, The couple may have had a steamy affair but Brigitte is shocked Schwarzenegger has fathered a child behind his wife’s back

Gastineau, with whom she had a son, Killian, now 22, hit her and once tried to drown her by holding her head under water in the bath. ‘He was on steroids and spun completely out of control,’ she says.


Meyer, whom she divorced in 2005 after 12 years of marriage and two sons, Douglas and Raoulino, was, she says, also violent. ‘But most men are, darling, most men are,’ she adds. ‘They think it’s their right on earth that the woman is less than them and, trust me, physical pain does not hurt as much as psychological wounding’.


She says that she has been called ‘a fat pig’ and told ‘you’re a piece of s***’. When I ask her who said it, she replies that a lot of people did. But it takes two to tango. I invited myself to have every man tell me this because they fell in love with Brigitte Nielsen, and when I reverted to shy, vulnerable Gitte, they realised they could take advantage of that person.


‘I don’t know why I allowed it,’ she says softly. ‘I never thought these men would do that to me. If I knew from the beginning a man would be beating me from morning to night, I’d walk away. But I went in with an open heart, thinking “This is going to be great”, and all of a sudden things change.’


During her marriage to Meyer, she became an alcoholic and attempted suicide. ‘But I wanted to prove my marriage could work’, she says. ‘My parents were together for 36 years and I wanted the same.’ She ditched Meyer — live on an Italian reality show — checked herself into rehab and has been sober since July 9, 2007.


‘It wasn’t easy. But all of a sudden you see new colours and you’re so happy because life is exciting again.’


Five years ago, she married ex-model Mattia Dessi, who at 32 is 15 years her junior. ‘I worried about the age difference,’ she says. ‘I’m a realist and he is so young and gorgeous, but he was the one who wanted to get married. Now we are, I’d like it to be for ever.’



True love: Brigitte Nielsen wants to be with husband Mattia Dessi forever


Three years ago, she was filmed on a German TV show having plastic surgery. ‘It was because of being married to someone so much younger. After I had my sons Julian [by first husband Danish musician Kasper Winding] and Killian and done breastfeeding, my breasts just felt like skin and I was so upset, I got implants for the first time.


‘I’ve had a little liposuction and Botox, but even though I don’t have an upper lip, I look at my girlfriends who have had theirs done, and they can’t even talk, so I won’t be doing anything there!’


Brigitte heads off for a photographic session and her manner — friendly and outgoing — suddenly changes. ‘I look like a housewife,’ she declares, although the statuesque peroxide blonde in mini- skirt and stilletos in front of me looks every inch a movie star.


Is this the insecure Gitte taking over?


‘Please don’t make this interview about all the bad stuff,’ she implores. ‘I’ve had a good life and lots of great times and whatever people think about me, at least you can say I’m a survivor.’


You Only Get One Life by Brigitte Nielsen is published by John Blake at £18.99.