A bit on the side

I've always been baffled by how many men have mistresses, and see it as totally normal behaviour. How do they justify it? Why do they feel the need for something so dubious and clandestine?

I've never been tempted to have a mistress. That might be because Jenny and I have always had a strong and enduring relationship, and I never felt there was something lacking, something I needed to look for elsewhere. Or it's a simple aversion to the very idea of "something on the side".

Having a mistress seems like a sign of failure, a sign that you haven't tried hard enough to make your main relationship work. I also couldn't go through with all the deceit and subterfuge it calls for. Plus I'd suspect I was motivated by some quite unreal idea of the person I was getting involved with - that they're stunningly beautiful or clever or sexy - and a few months later I'd be disillusioned and it'd all end in tears.

But everywhere you look men are revealing their secret mistresses and acting as though they're doing nothing wrong, they're just yielding to their masculine instincts and needs. Or they're just exercising their teeming virility. Some women even go along with a man's trail of mistresses on the basis that "it's just the way they are."

In virtually very novel I read there are men with mistresses, either carefully concealing them, or going off them, or being suddenly found out and begging forgiveness. In the world of fiction mistresses are normalised.

It's interesting that the marriage vows include all sorts of pledges to look after your spouse but say nothing about adultery or sticking to one partner and not being tempted by anyone else.

As the saying goes "I can resist anything except temptation".

PS: I see there are several versions of the marriage vows, some forbidding adultery, some not.

A bit on the side

Adultery is something that always puzzles me. Most people these days are so busy with one thing or another, I wonder how on earth they find the time to have a second relationship on top of their existing one.

I also wonder how they endure the stress of constantly keeping the other relationship secret and preventing their regular partner from getting suspicious.

And what about the extra expense, if you're barely solvent as it is? The hotel rooms, the restaurant meals, the travelling around, the presents.

I've never had any desire for a clandestine affair. Not just because I'm very happy with my existing partner but because I'm a fairly straightforward person and deceit and subterfuge doesn't come naturally.

When you're putting all your effort into maintaining a long-standing relationship, surely putting a similar effort into a bit on the side must be totally exhausting?

But it seems to be amazingly common. You can't open a newspaper without reading about someone's affair. Or some randy Don Juan who's had one affair after another for decades.

What's also intriguing is the very different attitudes of the person who's been cheated on. Some go completely crazy, physically attacking their partner, destroying their clothes or possessions, even walking out. But others shrug their shoulders and accept that their partners will never be faithful so they may as well get used to it.

I've never been tempted into infidelity. There was a woman once I was strongly attracted to, but I quickly decided that the damage it could do was simply not worth a bit of furtive and possibly disappointing sex. In any case, she was much younger than me and wouldn't have been remotely interested.

A bit on the side? Not for me, thanks.

A woman's honour

Whatever next? Italian judges have ruled that it's okay for a wife to lie about her adultery in order to 'protect her honour'. And that includes lying to the police.

Having a lover, said the highest appeal court in the land*, could damage the person's honour among family and friends. It's therefore quite reasonable to deny it.

A 48 year old Tuscany woman, known only as Carla, had denied lending her mobile phone to her lover Giovanni so he could make threatening phone calls to her estranged husband.

This peculiar decision raises so many questions I don't know where to start. Adultery damages the person's honour? Surely what really damages your honour is being blindly loyal to your husband however inadequate and disappointing he is? And doesn't it damage your honour again to lie about something that's so important to you?

But no, the judges' definition of 'honour' is some old-fashioned concept of slavish devotion to your man and propping up his reputation as a virile, masculine breadwinner. Doing anything that undermines that shiny image and suggests he is falling short is unfeminine and disloyal - and 'dishonourable'. So it should be hushed up.

I suspect what it's really about is not the woman's honour but the man's. How can a man hold his head up among his peers if his wife is blatantly giving him the brush-off and running around with someone else? Can't he keep his woman in line?

And of course Italian males are particularly hung-up on their masculine image and particularly put out by anything that compromises it. But they can't admit it's their problem, so as usual it's women who carry the can. And naturally they enjoy the 'honour' of doing so.

* The Court of Cassation, La Corte di Cassazione
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Victims of domestic violence in Northern Ireland are abused on average 35 times before they contact police. The Police Service is currently campaigning for women to complain and get help as soon as possible and not let the violence continue. Good for them.