HOW MUCH CAN ANY WOMAN FORIVE? – January 26^th 2006

 

Tess Stimson, 38, is a novelist and author of ‘The Adultery Club’. She is divorced and lives in Florida with her second husband and three children aged 11, 8 and 3.

 

 

or most of us, the lurid stories this week involving Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten and his kiss-n-tell rent-boys are no more than unsavoury – and fleeting – tabloid headlines.

 

Some may celebrate his downfall. Others regret the loss of a promising career. But this is first and foremost a personal catastrophe; not for Oaten, who deserves his misfortunes, but for his wife, Belinda, so publicly humiliated, and their two daughters.

 

The only question now on the Oatens’ minds must surely be whether their marriage has a future.

 

No doubt there is a chorus of voices telling Mrs Oaten to change the locks and leave his suitcase on the doorstep. But no woman with young children walks out of a marriage without a backward glance, however angry she may be.

 

We know too well the price our youngsters pay for divorce: poor achievement at school, low self-esteem, problems forming lasting relationships. Never mind the practical issues – a reduced standard of living, often a move to a new home.

 

Little wonder that this week a survey revealed that increasing numbers of women are shying away from divorce and believe it should be made more difficult.

 

But staying with a man who has looked you in the eye and then lied through his teeth isn’t an easy choice either.

 

It means living with doubt and fear rubbing you raw like a chafing shoe. With each step it actually gets harder and more painful; time doesn’t always heal.

 

When you have been betrayed on such a huge scale, you never stop wondering if he’s doing it again.

 

Living with suspicion is draining, exhausting and humiliating. If you can’t get a grip on it, ultimately it destroys you.

 

After an affair there are initial, obvious casualties; quite a few marriages end the moment a spouse discovers their partner has been unfaithful. But there are many more that limp on for months and years – sometimes decades – before finally collapsing.

 

I’d been married for five years when I discovered that my husband and the father of my two sons, then aged nearly four and ten months, was having a long-term affair.

 

I overheard him on the telephone to his mistress when we were on a family holiday. My first instinct was to confront him, but somehow I held back. For the children’s sake, I knew I had to think through clearly what I wanted to do.

 

Despite the incredible sense of betrayal, I took grim consolation in the fact that he hadn’t actually left me. Until this point, like Mrs Oaten, I’d believed I had a happy marriage and I loved my husband.

 

That love didn’t just disappear because I’d found out he’d been unfaithful. So I chose to wait; instead of confronting him, I prayed the affair would blow itself out.

 

I’ve never believed that an affair has to end a marriage. It all depends on what lies beneath. I lived in Rome for four years in my 20s, and saw firsthand the ‘European’ model of marriage. The Italians, like the French, have a very different attitude towards adultery from us.

 

We see fidelity as an absolute. They separate sex from love and marriage in a way that we find incomprehensible

 

The trouble with this attitude is that you become part of the problem; you enable the adulterer to cheat. In keeping quiet for almost a year before finally confronting my husband, I permitted him to develop his relationship with another woman. My silence actually contributed to his affair.

 

Eventually I couldn’t stand the strain any more, and told him I knew what was going on. For a brief while, we paid lip service to ‘giving it another go’, but in reality, it was impossible. He hated to be in the wrong, and that made him angry. I hated being seen by him as a victim, and that made me angry.

 

In the end, it was a relief for both of us when he decided to leave.

 

Some women have their own reasons for staying in a relationship after an affair. Victoria Beckham obviously felt that ‘Brand Beckham’ was more important than her husband’s choice of bedmates.

 

Others stay through fear, laziness, or loneliness. Whether the marriage ultimately lasts the course is another matter.

 

 

rs Oaten is in a particularly cruel position. Her husband hasn’t just cheated on her. He’s destroyed 13 years of her life by exposing their marriage as a sham.

 

Some affairs are just a stupid, one-off mistake. With enough time, marriages can recover. But not this one. There can be no going back for Mark Oaten.

 

There comes a time when the only thing to do is face the truth, and acknowledge that a relationship is over.

 

Then, and only then, can you start to build something new. And Mrs Oaten, you will find someone else who is able to truly love you.

 

I should know. Two days before Christmas, I married my second chance, the man who restored my trust and belief in love, and I have never been happier.