Why even serial love cheats can be forgiven
Such sad news that, after 25 years, Boris Johnson and his wife Marina are divorcing. She has suffered his infidelity throughout their marriage and her patience has finally snapped. But Marina surely knew what she was getting herself into when she married Boris.
After all, she was pregnant with his child when he was still married to his first wife, Allegra. And it couldn’t have taken long for her to realise he was serially unfaithful.
Which is why I find it so inexplicable the couple have decided to give up on marriage now, after a lifetime of being together.
I have always divided men into three categories: Serial- cheaters, Whoops- I- Made-A- Mistake Men and Loyalists.
Serial cheaters are those such as Boris — whose affairs, as one friend of his said, are ‘written into his price’ or his DNA.
Any woman who thinks she’s the one who will change him is woefully deluded. If he betrayed his wife, he’ll do the same to you.
It was billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith who said that when a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy. And Boris proves his point.
The Whoops-I-Made-A-Mistake Men are worn weary by a long stretch with one woman.
They stray, repent . . . then devote
BODYGUARD hunk Richard Madden doesn’t want his sex scenes to overshadow his acting and hates being ‘objectified’. Diddums. Too late. The image of his toned bare buttocks would come to every red-blooded woman’s mind even if he was cast as the Pope.
themselves to making their broken marriage work.
Loyalists are men, like the late hollywood star Paul Newman, whose view on adultery was: ‘Why have a takeaway hamburger when you can have steak at home?’
Like Marina, we all knew Boris falls into the first category. But he’s still popular because he’s highly intelligent, funny, irreverent and — in many people’s minds including my own — a fitting candidate for the highest office in the land.
No one can condone his appallingly selfish behaviour or his adultery.
But over 25 years, Marina and he have gone through so much together — not just the hard times but companionship, humour, children and all the joys of family life — that I feel they could yet deeply regret throwing it all away.
What makes it all the more tragic is that, at the very moment Boris has gone from a ten to zero in Marina’s eyes, he has a genuine prospect of achieving his lifetime goal — and getting into No 10.