There may be, as Paul Simon put it, 50 ways to leave a lover, but there aren’t nearly enough decent ways to be left. Tradition dictates that life’s romantic disappointments be eased with a good cry, followed by a stiff cocktail or seven. And you can always angrily demand your CDs back. But now times are changing.
The British Conservative MP, Patrick Mercer, stands accused in the tabloids of promising to leave his wife for his lover, only to renege on the deal at the last minute. So far, so predictable, except in one unusual respect — the abandoned mistress Sarah Coyle’s demand that he reimburse her for bills run up under their “love pact”.
Mrs Coyle complained to the Conservative deputy chief whip after allegedly being stuck with more than £8 000 in bills for furnishing a flat she thought they were going to share (once the pesky business of Mercer’s re-election was over, natch). Like the efficient Westminster secretary she is, she even kept the receipts.
At the grimmer end of this scale of retribution, meanwhile, stands Saber Kushour, whose casual fling with a Jewish woman he picked up on the street in Jerusalem ended in court when she found out he was Palestinian — and married to boot.
He was convicted of “rape by deception” on the grounds that, while the sex was apparently consensual, she wouldn’t have been interested had she not thought, in the judge’s words, he was “a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship” (albeit a relationship comprising a quickie on the roof of a nearby office block).
Obviously, the latter tale involves far more than a soured romance. It’s hard to believe Kushour would have faced jail had his deception simply been the usual one of forgetting to mention the wife — the judge’s talk of preserving the “sanctity of our bodies and souls” suggests disturbing echoes of racial and religious taboo.
But what links these very different episodes is the women’s bracingly practical approach to romantic betrayal — less weeping into the pillow, more recovery of assets. Vengeance comes not from cutting up his suit but from filing one. And once you start viewing a break-up essentially as a breach of contract, really the possibilities are endless.
After all, what drives both cases is the timeless cry of the lover deceived — you’re not the person I thought you were! And when it comes to romance, who of us is?
It’s not just all the devious marrieds passing themselves off on dating sites as “single but mysteriously unavailable at weekends”. It’s the smaller deceits that everyone employs during the “still trying” (as opposed to “gone companionably to seed”) phase of a relationship. Done well, three children can arrive before anyone realises she hates his best friend, and he quite fancies hers.
The instinctive response, of course, is that this is madness — you can’t reduce affairs of the heart to a bloodless legal wrangle. Who benefits except the lawyers? Have we not watched Ally McBeal? Do we not know this stuff never ends well?
Yet love has been formalised by contract for centuries, albeit worded more prettily than your standard merger and acquisition and enforceable by a higher authority even than the whips’ office. Marriage evolved as a legal framework for preserving assets, and arguably for buying sofas, until we muddled it all up with the messiness of love and desire. Perhaps we’re just going back to our roots.
Besides, a quick flick through British tort suggests several statutes that could be adapted. Surreptitiously slipping off the wedding ring in a bar? That’s fraud, obviously. Partners who charm their way into cohabitation by acting domesticated, then never lift a hoover again? Obtaining benefits by deception. Pretending to love football, or secretly wearing make-up to bed so as not to be caught au naturel during early courtship, might be dealt with under the Sale of Goods Act.
As for online dating, it’s surely what trading standards officers were born for — no more decades-old photos and if your date’s “bubbly personality” turns out to be a euphemism for “deeply irritating”, then why not just sue their inadequately effervescent ass?
But there are other options. According to Coyle, deputy chief whip John Randall was “extremely supportive and concerned” about her furniture bills.
So, banishing the unworthy suspicion that party whips just love acquiring dirt on a potentially rebellious MP, this is surely the way forward: employers operating as tribunals of romance. What is the “big society” for if not HR departments mucking in and sorting this stuff out? It’s no sillier a use of public resources than, oh, giving people a tax break to stay married.
Except, of course, for the glaringly obvious hitch. As Coyle put it, despite it all: “Really what I would prefer is to be with Patrick.”
Compensation doesn’t keep you warm at night, neither can judicial revenge soothe the pain and humiliation of being deceived by a lover. For that, at least, the traditional ways may be best. —