This is a largely fun thread, I don’t want to put a downer. However I think few people can complain about Summer + her mother preening for the paps, when 90% of this thread appear to be her audience.
If you click on a Mail article and/or comment, they get more ad revenue. And we seem to love to comment, love to project our own views onto a seemingly black and white morality tale.
Britain seems to love these kind of stories. We appear wedded to a Victorian spyglass of morality, where there are young harlots who shouldn’t speak, wronged wives who can do no wrong, and hopeless cads who only think with their lower region. This simple lens allows us to champion all wronged women everywhere, viciously attack the rotund middle aged among us who dared to think they could have more, scorn the young woman who knew they were married..
Except it’s never this black and white in reality. PH’s wife seems a very accomplished professional in her field and a beautiful lady. I bear her no ill. Yet she too is not reticent in making sure her story is PR’d. You might say that’s the anger of a woman scorned. I’d say it’s history being written by the victor.
How do we know that their marriage hadn’t gone cold? If it had, should PH have stayed with them forever because as the OP put it, “anyone who trades their family for a bit of legover is beyond contempt?”
Cheating is always wrong, as it robs the cheated of the right to self determination. Yet how many people (men and women) voluntarily separate and leave to their own singledom; and how many have their latent unhappiness forced into the open upon meeting someone new? We know it’s more often the latter.
If PH had enjoyed a quickie with her, then it’s a sex problem; but clearly he dated her more seriously, so this isn’t just “legover”. And from the number of things I read on the Internet about this topic ( “I’d rather have a biccie and a cuppa, thanks... can’t stand the idea of his hands pawing me... would be happier if we never did it again” ) there is quite often a mismatch between couples. Everyone was happy when kids were being made etc, but then some people retreat off to their personal domains, and fail to connect. (This is not my experience but it is valid).
So yeah. He may be a “twit” for our public consumption, but I actually think he’s a very normal, unremarkable twit. And there are more things to examine here than Summer’s undergarments showing through her strapless top.