Shruti Advani: I spend thousands on luxury shopping, I hide it from my husband and don’t feel guilty

“It’s not cheating if they don’t find out,” is an alarmingly common mantra among a certain class of married couples.

Only it isn’t a lover they’re trying to hide.

No, the forbidden fruit in this instance might be a diamond necklace or a Rolex watch.

Among the one per cent, it could even be a flat or a piece of museum-worthy art.

It’s not sexual infidelity we’re talking here – not the taking of a mistress or a toyboy – but financial infidelity, where all manner of goodies are bought by one partner without the knowledge of the other.

Typically using joint funds.

Bridgerton watchers will have seen this concept in action, with Lady Whistledown squirrelling away ‘pin money’ to get her first sheaf of illicit newsletters printed.

But financial infidelity among the fabulously wealthy often involves more than incidental expenses gone astray – and psychologists warn it can be just as damaging to a relationship as a physical affair.

It’s not only the rich who are at it, of course.

Among the less well-off, it might take the form of a secret £80-a-month face cream habit, or the stashing of a new pair of heels in an old shoe box so your husband doesn’t catch on.

But it’s much more spectacular when it’s bigger bucks that are being siphoned off without his knowledge. Or hers.

For it’s not only female one percenters who massage the figures on the joint account – financial philandering is largely gender neutral.

In some rare cases, either partner could be spending hundreds of thousands of pounds without the other knowing.

And, as I discovered, sometimes both are.

Interestingly, a Forbes survey last year revealed that men are more likely to fib about the value of their investments, while women are more likely to lie about how much they save. (It’s unclear whether that means they’re claiming to save more or less than they actually do – both are equally likely, it seems to me.)

But the really eye-catching figure, according to Forbes, is that a huge 38 per cent of both sexes routinely lie to their partners about finances (though 54 per cent agree it’s equivalent to other kinds of infidelity in a relationship).

I am strangely comforted by this.

More than a third of people regularly lie!

The fact that I’m not alone makes it easier to confess my own transgressions…

I never meant to cheat – it just happened.

The first time was shortly after our wedding.

Even as I counted the cash from relatives too old to bother with the online gift registry, a man rang from the Hermes store.

A bag I coveted had unexpectedly become available, he said.

A snip, or rather not, at £8,000 ($AUD15,000) (it now retails at £12,000 — $AUD23,000 — but is almost impossible to get hold of).

That evening, I found myself neatly rolling a pile of jumpers into my new Birkin bag, then stuffing it at the back of my wardrobe.

A friend helpfully took the iconic orange box it came in, and promptly sold it on eBay for £50 ($AUD96).

“New bag?” my husband asked a few weeks later, when I finally put it to use.

“I’ve switched to a larger one so I can take my lunch to work,” I replied breezily.

“Bit of a pain, but so much healthier. You should give it a try.”

I like to think of it as distraction rather than deception.

Naturally, my husband assumed I’d banked the gifted wedding cash rather than spent it on a bag.

But the pay differential between us — he was on the up at a large US investment bank and I worked in publishing — made it awkward for him to question me explicitly about our finances.

Indeed, in those early years, before we had school fees or multiple mortgages to worry about, the means and opportunities for financial infidelity were plenty and I became a repeat offender.

Looking back, I am equal parts amused and embarrassed by my purchases and why I felt compelled to hide them at the time.

With some of the things I splashed out on — readings with Princess Diana’s clairvoyant at a couple of hundred per session, for example — honesty was obviously not the best policy.

But others, like the diamond Cartier love bracelet that I insisted at the time was a cheap fake, but in fact cost me £20,000 ($AUD38,000) (and now retails for £42,400 — $AUD81,700), have stood the test of time and are now considered investment buys.

Infidelity, of the real or financial type, often requires an alibi.

On several occasions I have been an accomplice to friends and I have also recruited friends and family into my own subterfuge.

After writing an article last year about how the wealthy have had to scrimp to afford summer holidays, I could hardly confess to spending £6,500 ($AUD12,500) on a ceramic Chanel watch to take on said holiday.

My husband did a double take when I slipped it off my wrist to get through airport security.

“Christmas present from my brother,” I said.

“In August?” he replied.

Thankfully, I was saved by the calling of our flight and subsequent rush to the gate — and perhaps by his generous decision to turn a blind eye too.

I make light of it now, but often financial infidelity can be devastating for relationships.

According to one study, 10 per cent of couples who experience it eventually divorce over it.

When it threatens family finances, or happens despite one partner trying to economise, or points to a wider pattern of lying in general, then of course it can easily become a deal-breaker.

Even so, I believe there are certain expenses that are best handled discreetly.

Grooming is certainly one of them.

What is the point in explaining to a spouse what a vampire facial is, and why it may be essential to spend £1,250 ($AUD2400) on one?

So much kinder to let them assume it’s true love that lights you up. (Should a curious husband be reading, although I rather hope they are not, a vampire facial is a gory form of microneedling, which results first in a bloodied complexion and then a much brighter one.)

Likewise, if a man needs a monthly back wax, maybe don’t use the joint credit card to pay for it?

Ignorance is (marital) bliss when it comes to such “essential” expenses.

As the stakes — or the price tags — get higher, it becomes more difficult to keep a secret.

Not surprisingly then, my most expensive covert splurge is the only one to date I have accepted culpability for.

Several years ago, I made a high five figure down payment on a flat in Islington, north London, with money from my individual savings account.

I only came clean to my husband about it later, when I needed him to co-sign the mortgage that would come out of our joint bank account.

Flying solo on significant financial commitments is not without its risks.

It helps that the flat is on a popular street and has been continuously tenanted, but doing this kind of deal behind your spouse’s back is not something I would recommend.

My husband has never brought it up in anger but will sometimes joke about how I called him at work for a chat one lunch hour — and by the end of it, he’d committed to a mortgage of several hundred thousand pounds on a flat he’d never seen.

Come to think of it, that could be why he seems to prefer text messages now!

When the need for secrecy stems from an addiction the spouse knows nothing of, then clearly you’re on far stickier territory.

Gambling and substance abuse are the obvious examples, but I know of at least one marriage ruined by the husband’s compulsion to make big-ticket bets on what he considered sound investments but weren’t.

When the cookie finally crumbled, the wife was shocked to see not just the lifestyle she had grown used to (they had a Monet on their yacht!), but also the life she had thought they were building together, vanish.

The fall from grace is brutal, especially without the love and support of a partner to cushion the impact.

I contacted an older, twice-divorced friend to further explore the more sinister aspects of lying to a spouse about money.

Now single and living in a penthouse in Milan’s Fashion District, he was eager to talk, and our hour-long phone conversation felt like part-therapy, part-confessional.

“Considering money is a major cause of contention between couples, isn’t it better for the marriage that partners keep some financial secrets?” he started.

But it didn’t seem to do much good for either of his marriages, I replied.

I was curious to know the scale of the secrets he kept, hoping it would give some insight into male financial infidelity. (It only occurs to me as I write this that I could have asked my husband whether he has any financial secrets of his own… but I doubt he does. No one who cheats ever thinks they might be cheated on!).

What was my friend spending on – new gizmos for the man cave? Patek Phillipe watches? A high-end road bike for the middle aged man’s favourite hobby?

“Cliches,” my friend replied dismissively before admitting that at the height of his duplicity, he bought a vintage car from a well-known dealer in South Kensington.

His wife of 13 years, with whom he shared a home in the same neighbourhood, had no idea until their divorce required a full disclosure of assets.

I ask a mutual friend to corroborate this account, and, on learning of the article I am researching, he is equally keen to contribute.

Happily married, he nonetheless routinely omits to tell his wife about significant purchases.

The most audacious is a twoseater plane that sits in a hangar in Gloucester, owned in partnership with a golf buddy who joins him on Friday afternoon sorties before or after they play their regular round.Others instances of deceit are less egregious, such as a £3,500 ($AUD6700) treatment for balding at a clinic in St James’ that he underwent at Christmas last year.

A present to himself.

He received multiple injections in his scalp, then went home to sleep off what he told his wife had been a “long, liquid lunch”.

The stories these men share are not so different from the ones women will confess to.

Where one lot hides their Premier League season tickets or handmade Charvet cufflinks, for the other it is the designer dress sheathed in a discreet cover at the back of the wardrobe.

Both strike me as children greedy for a cheeky treat that they know the grown-ups would not approve of.

A notable exception is a girlfriend who has employed a virtual assistant for the last two years that not a soul, including her in-person assistant at work, is aware of.

The subterfuge is an easy one – payments are made to a company in Ireland for the number of hours worked and thus vary every month.

She jokes that she would sooner give up the husband than the fairy godmother at the other end of an email who schedules after school activities, orders uniforms and sends birthday cards and flowers on her behalf.

Listening to her, I wonder whether the financial cost involved is the real reason for her deceit.

Or could it be her need to be seen as the perfect wife and mother, a swan gliding above water while pedalling furiously to stay afloat, instead?

Whatever their particular circumstance, for anyone considering financial infidelity, I have one piece of advice.

Be scrupulously honest in every other area of your life.

If I keep an Uber driver waiting, I tell them it is because I took too long deciding what to wear.

If I miss a deadline for an article, I do not pretend I was tending to a sick child when I should have been writing.

I feel like it is only excusable to lie in this way if you’re prepared to be honest and take the harder route in every other way, otherwise you won’t like the person you become.

In my marriage, I may be evasive about my credit card statement, but I am upfront about everything else.

Whether I used the last of the toothpaste or got yet another parking ticket, I admit to my mistakes regardless of the resulting eye-roll or argument.

Most of us keep a few things secret, even from the people we love.

But it is important that the people who love us know that when it matters, we can be trusted.

Except when there’s a sale on Net-A-Porter of course.