This struck a chord in today's Times..... Just shows never give up work and don't be in a position where you are 24/7 at home and he is working. It never really works well.
"Sex in the city? Forget it. All the action?s in the shires
Sandra Parsons
So, a devout churchgoing couple from Ross-on-Wye have been running an X-rated fetish website. The story made entertaining reading, especially the detail about the wife posing in a see-through mac and wellies.
It?s funny how stories like this often seem to come from the countryside rather than say, downtown Birmingham, a geographical truth that is observed in literature, too: it is not the city but villages and suburbs that provide the backdrop to lascivious goings-on in an Updike novel or an Ayckbourn play.
Which throws up an interesting question: do villages and suburbs attract the sort of people who pose in see-through macs and wellies; or do such places change the way people live?
A city-dweller myself, I incline to the latter argument. Recently a friend who has moved from London to the Home Counties was invited to lunch at a neighbour?s house. There were eight women sitting at the long oak table and over the first course of cantaloupe melon and Iberian ham the conversation was predictable enough: interior decorating (limestone floors are over; hammered-edge natural travertine is the thing now), holidays and children.
My friend discovered fairly quickly that she was almost the only woman there who worked. The others ? a physiotherapist, a GP, two lawyers, two bankers and an optician ? had given up work totally, with the exception of the GP, who worked part time.
This made her wary of being the odd one out. But she soon found herself lost for words when the main course (grilled squid with roasted cherry tomatoes) arrived, for it was then that the conversation turned to sex ? the women?s lack of it with their husbands, and their search for it elsewhere.
In no time at all they had progressed from discussing the merits of the Seychelles versus Majorca (very in) to their boredom with their spouses and the activities their hostess had engaged in with the builder who had just installed the new kitchen.
It became apparent that almost all the women had either had an affair or were contemplating one. Their husbands without exception worked long hours in the City. Their wives meanwhile, once they?d done up the house and brought the children through the toddler years, found themselves bored, out of touch with husbands they rarely saw, and with acres of day to fill until school pickup at 3.30pm.
I might have thought this a one-off pocket of desperate housewives had it not been for another friend reporting back from a wedding in the shires. Unbelievably complicated tales of adultery from one small market town had emerged as she caught up with old neighbours and friends. One husband ? one of the new breed who work from home ? had slept with more than half the mothers in his son?s class. His tactic was to join the gaggle drifting back home after drop-off in the morning; the conversation would inevitably end with one of them asking if he had time ?for a quick coffee?. He was slick but after a while became sloppy, so that after a year not only did his wife find out, but many of his former conquests too. This had resulted in jealousies so acute that one woman had punched another, in the high street.
We should never forget that we relinquish our independence at our peril. It may seem virtuous to give up a job, a city, or both for the sake of your children, and some women do and live happily ever after. But for those who do not think through the sacrifice, the fantasy of a rural idyll can turn into a miserable compromise.
There is something about living or working in a big town or city that encourages you mentally to raise your game ? life is faster, harder and you are forced to keep up. What really happens when you move to the country, citing fresh air and green spaces for the children, with the delicious added bonus of a property straight from the pages of Country Life? How many couples play at being mummies and daddies in their large country homes with rolling lawns, big enough not just for a trampoline but a swimming pool and a terrace, only to find that life then takes a more sinister turn?
Yes, the City banker finds himself with a trophy home and trophy wife. Decorating that home becomes his wife?s main source of nonmaternal fulfilment; honing her mind takes second place to maintaining her image: children, home, figure, wardrobe. And then, after a while ? could be seven years, could be ten ? the banker finds his wife has become a little dull. So he makes a little less effort to get home on time; says yes to a few more corporate dinners than are strictly necessary; and feels disappointed without quite being able to work out why.
And when he does make it home for dinner, the trophy wife has little to talk about with him. Not because she can?t debate China?s emerging strength in the world economy or whether cycling as a sport is over or what the prospects are now for David Cameron, but because, left in an empty house all day, she is not just demotivated but lacking in self-confidence too. She has no boundaries she must adhere to other than those involving the children. And little by little her conversation with her husband dwindles until it has become indistinguishable from her conversation with her hairdresser ? the children, holidays, the merits of travertine versus limestone. Her husband is bored and acts it. She feels unloved and betrayed. Why shouldn?t she have an affair? And so it goes . . . no one meant it to end this way, but suddenly it has.
A see-through plastic mac and an X-rated website are not the obvious (and for many of us, not desirable) solution to a moribund marriage. And yet, as the Vicar of St Mary?s Ross-on-Wye pointed out when explaining why the couple were still welcome in his congregation, churches would be empty if sinners weren?t allowed in. And at least they remain, after 30 years, married."