It was about six months after my seventh wedding anniversary, when I became aware that I was finding random men attractive. I was interested in nearly every man I met, including my son’s gay headmaster. Before marriage I had been very discerning, but after seven years of marriage it was a different story.
What was going on? Perhaps it was because my children were out of nappies and I no longer felt like a joint proprietor of a small, noisy, nursery school. Perhaps I was worried about growing older and wanted to be admired. Conversations with my husband had become predictable. We no longer talked about art or literature or film; we talked timetables and children. One lunchtime, I realized with shock that we were scheduling operations, him something to do with his knee and me a hernia. It was all so mundane, and unsexy and middle-aged. To make sense of it all, I began to write a fictional column for Tatler Magazine. The woman had been married seven years and inevitably looked outside her marriage for love, something I didn’t dare do.
My agent suggested a novel, The Seven Year Itch, and sold the idea to Penguin UK. I began to think more about the subject from a woman’s point of view. Why is that men have traditionally been the ones to stray from their marriages? Is it because when a couple divorces, the average income of the woman often plummets by 20% or more? But the man’s stays the same or in some cases rises. Traditionally after women start a family it is assumed they will want to stay stable, mostly for the sake of their, children. Women may daydream about having affairs, but don’t actually go searching for men. They don’t want to deceive their families. And when would they find the time or the energy to skulk around bars? Or is it simply that their sex drive isn’t as strong as a man’s? Generally they want more than sex, they want commitment of some sort too. I wanted to write about what happens when a woman does follow her heart. What are the consequences?
I have a friend, who has recently taken a lover. She is not married but is in a long-term relationship and has four children and a stressful freelance job. She says her relationship is stale and she is enjoying the attention that the new man gives her. I have another friend who has been married for about fifteen years and has not had sex for two. She is no longer attracted to her husband, although she loves him and feels lucky to be married to him, as they get on very well. He rejected her sexually originally, (I have to add here that she is gorgeous, most men would die and go to heaven to have her in bed with them) and she learnt to live within a sexless marriage and now no longer even wants to have sex with him, even when he approaches, which he does very occasionally. But the other day she confessed that she had asked a single girlfriend to find her a lover.
There is no doubt in my mind that women enjoy the thrill of the chase, the intrigue, and the passion of a new affair, just like men, but have more issues around saving the sanctity of their marriages and keeping it together for the children. It’s unlikely that they are going to seek out extramarital sex, or meet someone on an aeroplane and take off, leaving their children behind. A married girlfriend of mine lost her husband to a woman he met on an aeroplane. He’s a documentary maker and travels all the time. He has left two children and a devastated wife and moved countries to be with his new girlfriend.
Ellie, the character in my book takes a lover, but only for one weekend and she knows its wrong but feels justified. Her husband, an actor, has been made redundant from a day time soap, and he’s now under her feet and suffocating her with his demands. At the time I was writing the book, I didn’t have any female friends who had had affairs, but I could imagine Ellie’s frustration. She has been a stay at home mother for a year or two. The last straw is when she goes into Gap and hears herself saying, “It’s a shame you don’t do those shirts with the teddy logos any more.” But Jack does not support her idea to start a business even though they now need the money. The book is a chastening tale and had a surprising ending that some people are disappointed by and others love.
If long term relationships and marriages could get back on track, after infidelity, perhaps the odd liaison would enliven a stale marriage. I don’t have the answers though, I just don’t know.
