Faithful to infidelity

Tuppy

This is frivolous wickedness. You shame yourself and the Spectator by writing it.

The Bellman

It must be terribly oppressive to be expected to honour - for absolutely ages! - the vows one makes before God and one's family and friends. Wouldn't life be so much more sophisticated if it were an endless whirl of things you really wanted to do, instead of having obligations to other people. Perhaps that is possible, even desirable, in the life of a trouser journalist.

For the rest of us, it might be thought a matter of maturity that we do things that we perhaps would rather not - for no other reason than that it makes other people happy, however temporarily inconvenient it might be for one's self.

As to infidelity being 'the last taboo' - try telling that to Roger Took.

Doug

what a waste of electrons. What next Spectator Woman's Weekly or Hello or Heat?

Gregory Troy

She's back.

Ian C

I am not sure what your inspiration is here - something to do with a chef banging another woman is what it sounds like.

That has what, precisely, to do with the aspects of political and economic life that we're here for?

To a glossy magazine for celebrity gossip with this tat.

Will J

I think I primarily object to the sentence "fetishising fidelity infantalises women". Having just made an appeal for the tastes of those who dislike commitment to be tolerated (well, approved really) you can't resist the suggestion that women who have the opposite and normal taste for commitment and family are immature and need to grow up. I don't know how Gordon's wife felt about her husband's affair, but clearly if she is a proper full-grown woman she will have taken it with a mature grace, celebrating the freedom that it gives her to go and do likewise. Anything else is beneath the dignity of woman. Has a more misogynistic sentiment ever been expressed in the supposed service of women's dignity?

Anthony

Quentin Crisp, Oscar Wilde... if you keep mentioning them often enough we might put you in their company. Only in your dreams, Lisa, only in your dreams.

And theirs isn't the only second-hand opinion on show here.

Yaffle

I'm wondering which "zealously monogamous" country Ms Hilton inhabits

dave, surrey

A shocking trivialization of adultery which so often leads to family breakdown and is deeply corrosive to society. Only a pampered journalist who's never experienced the rigors of real life could write such crap.

Polly and Alice's mum

Lisa, are you married? Do you have children? Has your husband ever been unfaithful?

PLEASE could you transfer this woman to another part of your magazine.

Henry Rogers

Dear Speccie,

Do you realy want to lose all your readers? At least on Guido we can say what we like if someone posts c**p.

JR

"Perhaps we should accept that ‘til death do us part is a bloody long time, and learn to go about our sins with a little more good manner and kindness."

I often find the attitude of the UK quite odd to look at when I come back from my italian friend's in rural Italy. They are such different cultures and the meanings of love, family life and fiedelity are simply not the same. I often wonder if the normal nature of affairs out there and apparent happiness of family life on average are a facade - that on average all those couples are desperately unhappy and not showing it. I'm not sure, my friend (who is looked at oddly as a 28 year old who isn't married and isn't living at home) doesn't think so, nor do his friends (who are mostly married) - but perhaps that is what you might expect as they are all men!

biggestaspidistra

No offence intended but why not just stick a bit of Dorothy Parker up here once a week instead. I think most of us on this side would be happier and you'd save yourself a fiver.

'She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B' might be a good place to start.

kinglear

Persoanlly, I think Lisa is right. With 3 daughters I can say that quite possibly at least 2 of them are much more interested in their own lives, rather than ending up as an appendage.
There are, and check the opinions polls, literally millions of couple who are not having sex and have not for years.They don't necessarily hate each other, and quite possibly get on perfectly well.
But they both need sex - just not with each other. And why not?

Tiberius

I'm with Tuppy.

I hope I'm usually slow to condemn writers practising their art, but this is utter rubbish in the same way that a pile of rusty exhaust pipes in a gallery are.

eeldaimun

oh please please please get a grip.

Jeremy

"Or worse still, might there not be wives who happily co-operate, and participate, in such an arrangement?"

Blimey! (or even, I say!) That's racey!

A very well-written piece, by the way.

William Blake's Ghost

People of both genders have strayed throughout time and I'm sure they will continue.

Some people believe in monogamy, some people don't and some people change their minds.

People assign blame in such matters based on their own flawed perceptions and imperfect understanding of specific situations. Mostly when it is none of their business. None of this gets anyone anywhere. So who really cares?

It seems to me Lisa Hilton should stop wasting people's time with this one-dimensional, sad, superficial, celebrity culture nonsense and get a life of her own!

Some of us have real things to worry about and feminism which I suspect this is vaguely related to has real issues to address!

Tom o' the Roads

Adultery. What a hoot, eh?

Memories of Lorena Bobbitt in the dock. Already in floods of hysterical tears, she was asked by a thuggish, finger-jabbing attorney,

"And what did you do then? WHAT DID YOU DO?"

"I threw it out of the wi-i-i-i-indow!"

J H Holloway

I assume that LH is an Oxbridge/Russell Group graduate...

If so, why are her pieces so densely overworked?

And why does the style switch around so wildly from...'It is the one crime that, all nice people concur' to 'perhaps we should accept that ‘til death do us part is a bloody long time'?

Even us Polytechnic Art School hard boys can do better than that...

Paulinus

Yeah, a belly load of larfs. How very PoMo and sophisticated.

How do you think people feel when they are betrayed by those they love the most in the world? Having seen it at close quarters, through the betrayal of siblings and friends in this way, it causes misery and pain.

What next, Speccie? The Joys of Lying? How To Really Upset Your Old Mum? Top Tips For Cruelty and Malice?

Lisa Hilton? A talentless embarrassment.

David Bouvier

There was a recent book published (cant find the review) which looked at different countries attitudes to infidelity, that suggested the "an affair is unforgivable" script is a recently constructed idea found mostly in the US and UK, and argues that couples feel socially pressured into following that script and breaking up when that may not be what they really want to do.

Don't know whether I believe that, but I wonder if Lisa Hilton is drawing on this without acknowledgment yet turns the article into celebrity tripe for no good reason.

Lisa - you may be trying to be Rod Liddle, but I have read Rod Liddle, and Lisa you are no Rod Liddle

Desperate Dan

I'm not surprised that infidelity is all LH has ever known. She's hardly likely to keep any sane man entertained for longer than half an hour.

Unsteady Eddie

"Yet so zealously monogamous has our culture become that infidelity is agreed upon as the last taboo."

Er, no it hasn't and no it isn't. Building on sand thereafter.

"The Woman Pays"?

Have you just been ditched Lisa?

Paulinus

Lisa, a bit self-serving, non?

'I cheated because I believe pleasurable sex between consenting adults is no big deal - but often the men I loved didn't see it that way'

Lisa Hilton's 'cheating career' began in her teens. Now 31, she looks back in languor at the pleasures of the forbidden and the thrill of transgression/i>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jul/08/familyandrelationships6

Aren't you getting tired of going over this old ground?

SJH

J H Holloway is right: why are her pieces so densely overworked? They're all a bit effortful, which I thought was the ultmate Speccie transgression.

And I'm with Will J on "fetishising fidelity infantalises women". Not only is it wrong and insulting it's just so clunking: it's like "Moses supposes his toeses to be" but windily portentously.

She sounds like a clever adolescent on heat.

RK

From a bad start, subsequent postings by this author have been even worse.

And as for the style of writing.... As one previous comment put it: "densely overworked".

Wilhelm

Mr Shouty Gordon Ramsey who can make French toast, is a proven liar and untrustworthy.

In Lisa Hilton's world, the Islington cocktail party set that is deemed ok.

Wilhelm

Miss Lisa Hilton asks

''Are we really so unsophisticated?''

So being a liar, a cheat and a adulterer is seen as sophiscated ?

And being honest and truthful is unsophiscated , is that right Lisa ?

And another lefty liberal bites the dust.

Tom

What is the Spectator coming to? Please ditch this silly woman - she reflects very badly on your good reputation. If I wanted to read such twaddle I'd head over to Guardian Unlimited.

Used to be a Libbo

Someone needs to stick up for the fair lass; I rather enjoy her pieces. And with her apparent attitudes and preoccupations, wouldn't mind meeting her either.... Lighten up guys and gals, she's just reminding us that there's more to life than watching our economic prosperity and constitutional freedoms dissolve around us.

occasional ranter

This whole mindset - do what feels good, not what's right -stinks. Grow up.

The future of our society still depends upon responsible adults committing to each other and sacrificing some of their selfish desires in order to provide a stable and loving home to raise children together.

If you don't want to do that personally, that's fine, but you should be ashamed of making such a siren call to those who are struggling to uphold that ideal.

Steven

Lisa, it it strange to find someone angry that marriage is synonymous with fidelity. Is it daft or prudish to presume that your GP should help you when you're sick. Anyone who doesn't fancy can easily just not get married. Marriage is big commitment and sex is just one part of it. If you want to raise children with someone and stay with them into old age and look after each other it is better to do that without the stain of adultery committed out of an impulsive desire to have a brief fling.

biggestaspidistra

"Yet so zealously monogamous has our culture become that infidelity is agreed upon as the last taboo."

and yet on the same day in the Daily Mail we read of Karen Matthews:
"Since becoming pregnant at 19 she has had seven children from five, or more likely six, fathers (such is the nature of her life that she appears to have lost count)."

Back to the Spectator:
"Are we really so unsophisticated? Is it beyond us to imagine that there might be many women who are perfectly content with a timeshare in a property they might not be interested in buying?"

The price of employing relatives perhaps.

Mo

Oh my gosh, I thought it was just us silly Americans who are so self-righteous that we can't see straight (because we're constantly lying to ourselves and others through our teeth clenched with moral indignation). Open your eyes - people make mistakes - they stray, both men and women, and all it makes them is "human". Or, maybe all the gasping-in-horror people who are posting here are the only people on the planet who are truly moral, upstanding and perfect, never faltering...er, androids...whose feelings never change from the moment they say "I Do" until they take their last breath. LH has written a piece about reality, like it or not. Considering all the temptation Ramsay has undoubtedly been confronted with, if this is all he's done, both he and his wife are very lucky indeed.

Herbert Pocket

@Used to be a libbo: I would delight in the chance to find something in her articles worth defending. But, given the editorial staff's apparent enthusiasm for her talents, I feel like I'm stuck at a cocktail party where the host's knickerless 8-year old daughter is doing handstands in a tea dress to the enthusiastic applause of her parents and mild discomfort and embarrassment of their guests.

And not in a *good* way.

occasional ranter

@Mo: I think we all accept that we are flawed and we make mistakes. Lisa Hilton is wrong to say that "infidelity is agreed upon as the last taboo. It is the one crime that, all nice people concur, is Absolutely Unforgiveable." She doesn't understand our capacity for genuine love at all, does she ?

What we object to is the suggestion that betrayal of the trust of our partners is unimportant, or even that it isn't wrong at all, e.g when she says "the opportunity to commit adultery is surely one of the few advantages of wedlock".

Try reading "Any Human Heart" by William Boyd, for a sense of the drift and loneliness that comes with this kind of attitude.

Unsteady Eddie

Oi Herbert Pocket.

I wish I'd said that. Good belly laugh ta.

Mo

@Occasional Ranter: Thank you for writing and explaining, and for the Boyd suggestion. I did some checking on the book and from my impressions, and from your post, I'm coming to understand that you feel that LH is advocating infidelity and dismissing the possibility of love. I saw the piece differently...I saw it as positing another possible way to look at the situation, aside from the obvious. I suppose her opening paragraph laid the groundwork for your and others' negative reactions, but I saw it as irony, seeing as how she began with a Wilde quote. Human behavior is rich and multi-layered, and denying it doesn't change that fact.

I am unable to follow your translation of her remark about infidelity being absolutely unforgivable (societally) to denying the capacity to genuinely love...I interpreted her remark as ironic social commentary. As much as we wish we were all moral and true, the fact is, we are all too often, not. That is not to say that we should stop trying, if that is our wish, but we can only control our own selves, and to impose our personal decisions upon others (outside of our own marriages), and thereby *decide* for others what they are feeling and thinking, is disrespectful, and frankly, offensive. We don't know that all women (or men) feel a certain way about infidelity, so I interpreted LH as emphasizing that point - sometimes by using ridiculously absurd statements, such as, "Fetishising fidelity infantilises women." That is so annoying it makes one not even want to consider what in the world she is trying to say...nevertheless, her point is made. (The obsession with fidelity is not an affliction that all women carry, and it is insulting to assume that it is...some things are more important to some women.)

In fact, I saw the entire piece as social commentary, including the hypocrisy of all of us, and the often impossible task of living up to high moral standards we may impose upon ourselves, not to mention those which others choose to impose upon us. Things like this are mirrors - social commentary pieces should be held in front of ourselves and we should look deep inside and consider whether we see ourselves or our loved ones in them...while resisting the urge to throw blame and derision like mud upon others instead.

Having said this, this is the first piece I've read by Lisa Hilton, so you may all know something I don't - perhaps she's a horrible person and this is merely the latest in a long line or hideous pieces.

Personally, I was widowed at 28 years old when my husband died a horrific and tragic death. Neither of us was unfaithful during the marriage, as far as I know. I haven't remarried, but if I ever do, I've come to realize that although it would break my heart, it would be naive for me to expect complete faithfulness from a spouse...I've met too many really good people who "cheat", and I know that sometimes things just happen, despite our best intentions.

Thomas

I wonder what Lisa’s Italian husband thinks of her views on infidelity.