Anna Williamson is a TV personality, therapist, coach and relationship expert. You might have seen her on reality TV programmes such as Celebs Go Dating. Her latest project, launched in 2025, is a podcast The Affair with Anna Williamson, which is already regularly at the top of the podcast charts in its category.
Welldoing spoke to Williamson about how the podcast has opened up a secret and complex world that is very rarely spoken openly about, in spite of the fact that statistics say one in five people have had an extra-marital affair.
To what does she attribute her success with the topic of relationships? “I’ve been a therapist and coach for 15 years, and become more and more involved with relationships, bringing the topic of infidelity and cheating to the mainstream, wanting to understand what goes on.
“These are emotionally charged topics, and I use a lens of curiosity, wanting to understand in order to help, by making the jargon of therapy more accessible.”
As for the success of the podcast itself, “It really is a direct response from people who have found it cathartic to listen to stories about affairs, not matter whichever perspective they take.”
She is adamant that her first responsibility is to the person who has agreed to speak to her, usually anonymously. She agrees that her interviews are similar to therapy sessions, “So any conversation comes from a place of ‘unconditional positive regard’. I am non-judgmental.”
The range of people who open up is wide, from “I had an affair with my lecturer” and “It was a toxic affair but I loved him” to “My child told me about my husband’s affair” and “My dad’s affair tore our family apart”.
Why, I asked Williamson, when they usually have such devastating effects on the principles and the people around them, do we glamourise affairs?
“My stereotype, when I took off my therapy hat, is Jilly Cooperesque— something only very sexy, glam people do . But as you say, affairs on the whole are destructive, grubby, complicated, deeply emotionally loaded, and the blast zone of the people affected is very wide.
“Crucially though, everyone from your neighbour to Tracy on the checkout to your GP are all potentially having an affair or affected by one.”
Williamson and her producer Naomi Channell of Curve Media are rigorous about the duty of care they owe the people who agree to speak to them. “We take responsibility and are always there for them to check in. Also, listeners will have opinions and we want to make sure our guests are held and protected from that. We check on where they are mentally.”
As she says, “We all make terrible mistakes as human, and there is a lot to be gained in understanding that behaviour. I praise any man or woman for coming on and speaking about it."
It’s noticeable that most of those speaking are female. Williamson says, “We have had fewer men coming forward, but having said that, the men we have had have been among the most emotionally intelligent men I have ever met.
“We know that men are less likely to talk about their mental health. And that is a problem. The statistics about male mental health are shocking.”
Among the stories she has included on The Affair is one of a woman talking about her father’s affair, 30 years earlier. As Williamson reported, the daughter had judged him all her life, and it was only listening to the podcast episodes that she started to see the different sides to stories of infidelity.
The woman told Williamson, “I now view it from a different perspective and I have given myself and him, some grace and understanding.”
For Williamson it is stories like this which make her project so fascinating. “I would like my legacy to be helping people understand themselves better and feel more empowered when it comes to their choices.”
As she has said previously, “What I love most is that [The Affair] gives us the full picture. Not just what happened at the time, but how people have lived with it, learned from it, and in some cases healed or rebuilt in ways they never expected.”
