Anita Chaudhuri Body Language Feeling betrayed is like feeling happy: most of us think we know what would make us feel that way. But in reality, the most unexpected events can end up provoking those emotions. And just as winning the lottery might make you happy, but not in the way you imagined, the discovery that the love of your life has been unfaithful doesn’t always hurt in the ways you think it will. This point is borne out in Passion Play, a West End production that concerns itself with a middle-aged married man who cheats on his wife when a predatory young woman seduces him. The wife is stoical throughout her ordeal. Not only does she forgive her errant spouse, she remains friends with the other woman. And as if being her best friend wasn’t enough, they go shopping for sexy lingerie together and discuss her husband’s tastes.
It is a highly unlikely scenario in a play that was written by Peter Nichols nearly 20 years ago. Critics (male) have raved about its emotional honesty, though in truth it seems reactionary and out of date in its assumptions. Nevertheless, there is a single moment, when both women are trying on wispy pieces of silk, in which the wife suddenly realises that her “friend” is continuing the affair. She has survived feelings of sexual rejection and despair caused by her husband’s behaviour, yet the pain caused by the younger woman’s betrayal of their friendship is the most raw and truthful moment in the entire play. Perhaps the reason why this scene still has emotional resonance is that the actual mechanics of infidelity no longer have the same power to trigger an emotional response from us. We are becoming desensitised to extracurricular lust. These days, adultery has spawned a growth industry. The back pages of magazines used to concern themselves only with lonely hearts; now we have agencies for cheating hearts. On the Internet you can log on to alibi.co.uk, a service that facilitates infidelity by providing fake phone calls, receipts and other paraphernalia for the feckless – and for those without an adulterous rendezvous, they provide a handy link to Loving Links, the biggest agency for the already attached. In this climate, discovering that your partner has been unfaithful, however devastating that may be, feels oddly familiar. We know how we are supposed to react because we read about it in magazines, so it feels all the more puzzling when our responses are more complex than the kneejerk pain of sexual rejection. The truth is that there are many different levels of betrayal. Catherine Texier, a writer who lives in Manhattan, wrote movingly about the end of her 18-year marriage to fellow author Joel Rose in Breakup, published by Review last year. The text is one long angry howl of rejection. And yet it is Texier’s melancholic sense of domestic betrayal, of being left to cook supper for their two daughters without him, that emerges most strongly. “I pulled four hamburgers out of the freezer and laid them on the counter … and when you came down from your office upstairs … and saw the four hamburgers, you said, coldly, ‘I’m not having dinner here tonight.’ I feel a little twinge but not more than that because that’s our new unspoken deal. So I say, OK, and put one hamburger back in the freezer. And right after that I feel fine.” Only I bet she doesn’t. I think this kind of mundane detail has the power to wound our hearts most deeply. And I remember only too well being on the receiving end of it. I had arrived home a day early from a trip and, on walking into the kitchen, came face to face with evidence of romantic betrayal: cake. Two plates, the remnants of two slices, chocolate and raspberry fondant, from a favourite patisserie. Other couples have “our tune”, we had “our cake”, only now it had been served up to woo someone else. Even now, I marvel at the sense of betrayal this elicited: emotional death by chocolate cake. One might imagine attitudes about fidelity to be more relaxed among the young, yet a recent survey indicated that those aged between 15 and 24 were the most unforgiving group when it came to infidelity, perhaps because theirs is the generation that has the highest number of divorced parents. The post-war generation can have unexpected attitudes, too. For these women, particularly those brought up to define themselves through marriage rather than professional life, the issues are equally complex.
“I felt betrayed financially,” says Anna Rodgers (60). Her husband had an affair last year. “OK, so he fell for a younger model and wanted to have a fling. I could have lived with that. What I couldn’t forgive was the fact that he had cashed in an insurance policy and used the money to wine and dine her … I felt that if he was capable of stealing from me, my future with him was untenable.”
Rodgers was surprised by the reaction of female friends of the same age group. “Many of them told me they thought I was mad to throw him out, that I should think about my future. I think there is still this stigma among my generation about divorce. One friend asked me whether I felt I had failed. Failed! Marriage isn’t an exam. My one big regret is about money – I wish I’d been more shrewd.”