The question you raise should perhaps be pondered over, rather than openly discussed with your wife. You haven’t told us if you ever initiate sex. If you do and your wife gives the impression that she is wholeheartedly, mentally as well as physically, with you in the marital bed rather than still in the office, you may well have a serviceable marriage. If this is the case, and the rest of your marriage is happy, your interests and those of your children, if you have any , might well be better served if you kept your worries to yourself and allowed time for any lust, real or imagined, to fade.

If you and your wife have sex only when she is half-asleep, and she always calls you by her boss’s name as she enjoys a dreamy orgasm, she wouldn’t pass the former US President Jimmy Carter’s test of being faithful in mind as well as body. You may remember that when Carter was President he suggested that it was almost as adulterous to have sexual fantasies about someone else’s wife as it was to bed them. My years in the genito-urinary medical clinic perhaps provided a better insight into human sexual behaviour than even the White House could offer. Certainly, endearingly whispered names would have raised suspicions in most of my patients that such a relationship was not entirely platonic, even if it didn’t involve penetrative sex.

Back to the White House. The affair with Monica Lewinsky of another former President, Bill Clinton, was, to a large extent, confined to “heavy petting”. Your wife’s affair might be even more innocent. Perhaps nothing more than lecherous thoughts that surface when she is half asleep. This might disturb Carter’s conscience but would leave most people’s unruffled. You also ask whether you should be worried if your wife did have a crush on her boss. My advice is that even if she did, you should keep your worries to yourself.

You might be falsely accusing your wife, unless you believe in the Carter doctrine. Even if she were having an office romance, it should be remembered that the most optimistic surveys suggest that about 50 per cent of women have an affair at some time in their marriage. Men are even more likely to go astray but, fortunately, most marriages survive.

Another surprising statistic, perhaps one you shouldn’t ponder too much about, is that one married woman in five has an affair — often shortlived — when they change jobs. This is not necessarily with their boss but usually with someone of a higher status within the firm.

Calling out a potential rival’s name at such intimate moments must be very irritating to you: it would be a help if your wife remembered the correct person’s name, even if she is having sex with both of you. However, if she is asleep, and her words and actions are aspects of somnambulism —the condition in which people are capable of co-ordinated body movements, even talking, although only in a dream — she could behave in a most extraordinary way. On one occasion my wife saved me from jumping out of a high bedroom window that I had smashed, together with the furniture in front of it, because in my dream the room was alight. Fantasies, too, seem real to some people and they could involve not only making love but a fantasy that their love is returned.

Possibly office sex over the photocopying machine is one of your wife’s fantasies that surfaces only when half-asleep.

Suzi Godson says:

If you had asked Sigmund Freud this question he would probably have told you that your wife’s sleepy lovemaking is simply her pre-conscious brain acting out one of her deepest desires. Freud believed that dreams are an attempt by the subconscious to resolve internal conflicts which are so disturbing that they can creep past our censorious conscious state by manifesting themselves only while we sleep. Since Freud practically invented dream analysis one has to suppose that he knew what he was talking about, although in the third edition of his celebrated work, The Interpretation of Dreams, he added a section on symbolism in which he made some dodgy associations between, for example, going up and down ladders and the act of penetration.

That said, I suspect even Freud would tell you that it doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to work out that there might be a direct link between the name of the person being screamed and the moment of your wife’s orgasm.

If you asked Carl Jung the same question you would probably have received a different answer. According to Jung, our dreams exist to enable us to understand the things we yearn for unconsciously. By helping us to identify what we wish for, they guide our personal growth and help us to achieve our potential. Jung believed that the images in our dreams reveal something about ourselves, our relationships with others, and the situations we experience in our waking life. But I guess that won’t put your mind at ease either.

Fortunately, you have asked me the question and I don’t think it matters whether your wife’s dreams are interpreted as Freudian (a product of her desire that is too outrageous for her conscious state to cope with) or Jungian (a message from herself to herself about something that has happened in her life) since, in your particular case, both theories bring me to the same conclusion. If your wife hasn’t had her boss in the flesh, she’s certainly having him in her dreams. And either way, it’s not looking good for you, pal.

Infidelity is an incredibly seductive concept for married women and men because it feeds so many unmet needs. It delivers sex, excitement and an ego massage at such high voltage that the dim three-amp glow of marital commitment pales into insignificance. And that’s what make it so corrosive. Infidelity’s unfair advantages eat away at the foundations of any marriage. So, sir, it’s time you had a little chat with the missus. Explain that you are disturbed by the fact that she fixates on her employer at such a crucial and intimate point in your lovemaking, and see how she responds. You’ll be able to tell whether she is lying if she avoids eye-contact; touches her face continually; scratches her nose; doesn’t move much; or directs any hand, arm and leg movements towards her own body (liars try to take up less space).

If she admits to an affair or an infatuation, then there are only two options and I don’t need to spell them out. But if, as a couple, you decide to stay together and work things out (with counselling), then you, as an individual, need to ask whether you are capable of resisting the temptation to throw her affair into the ring every time you have a fight. Forgiving is hard. Forgetting is harder. But you will be able to move on only if you are genuinely capable of both. Good luck.