Oscar Wilde said that one of the charms of marriage was that it made a life of deception essential for both parties. I agree; the opportunity to commit adultery is surely one of the few advantages of wedlock.
Yet so zealously monogamous has our culture become that infidelity is agreed upon as the last taboo. It is the one crime that, all nice people concur, is Absolutely Unforgiveable. Amidst all the prurient judgments cast on poor Gordon Ramsay and his alleged mistress Sarah Symonds, the consensus is that he has committed a dreadful evil and that The Woman Pays. Sure you can accuse Ramsay of hypocrisy, if you think that his private life is our business. But it is the second judgment which I find so insidiously depressing. The Woman Pays, it goes, because all we really want is a man to love us and give us babies.
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