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.

Bed hopping

It seems practically obligatory these days for men to have a mistress, or at least a regular hooker. Any man who's happy with one woman must wonder if he's settling for too little or if he's a bit of a cold fish.

Every day there's some celeb who's been caught with someone not his official partner. Or I hear about a friend of a friend who's been shagging woman number two on the quiet. Not many men admit to seeing prostitutes, but it's a good ten per cent of them.

As one of those men who's always been happy with what he's got, and has no desire for second helpings, I don't understand how other men can be so greedy, or sex-starved, or possessive, or whatever the motive might be. But having occasionally been knocked for six by unexpectedly sexy women, I'm not going to judge other men who don't stop at being smitten. Temptation can sometimes be overwhelming.

But I do judge men who visit prostitutes. It's a sordid, inhuman activity that always degrades the woman, whatever spin you put on it. I've never in my life used a prostitute and I have no sympathy for any man who does.

It's also routine for a guy who's two-timing to keep it secret and deceive his partner about what he's up to. Routine in other words to spit on his partner's trust and goodwill and treat her as a gullible idiot who can't put two and two together.

I can't fathom this either. How can a man see it as natural to be seduced by a sexy woman but equally natural to hide it as if he's doing something shameful and disgusting? It's not convincing to say he didn't think it would last very long and then no one would know and no harm done. It's still deceit and betrayal.

No, it's not just effeteness that kept me from sneaky bed-hopping. It was just as much the accompanying tangle of dishonesty and connivance. For me it wouldn't have added a guilty thrill, only nail-biting anxiety.