Glamorous? No, affairs just cause misery. . .
The pictures of Rory McGrath’s loyal wife Nicola hugging him and smiling at him outside court this week showed a very public display of affection. McGrath had just been given a suspended sentence for conducting a long campaign of harassment against his ex-mistress and her family after she broke off their five-year affair.
Nicola endured not only the private agony of the affair but also the public humiliation of the court case, which revealed how, during his 14-month stalking campaign, the 60-year- old comedian tormented his former mistress with endless texts and intimate photos and sent menacing messages to her husband.
The court heard how, when he’d been spurned, McGrath described himself as suffering ‘the madness of the addict who can’t get what he wants’.
Yet despite the terrible pain this must have caused Nicola, she is publicly standing by her man — just like so many women have before her.
As McGrath’s lawyer said: ‘his wife’s ability to understand his conduct is nothing short of phenomenal.’
Nicola’s determination to ‘heal their relationship’ is admirable. But doesn’t this tawdry case reveal the horrifying extent of the suffering that can be caused by extramarital affairs?
It is not just the heartache between McGrath and his wife. The affair destroyed the former mistress’s marriage and devastated her children. And it’s difficult to imagine what McGrath’s two children with his first wife have had to go through. Yet our society seems gripped by a fever of adultery, with an estimated one-third of married couples cheating, and the dating website Ashley Madison — which specialises in extra-marital liaisons — having one million users.
Last Sunday, five million viewers tuned in to the BBC’s rampant new series Apple Tree Yard, in which emily Watson plays a 50-year- old mum locked in a humdrum marriage. Ripe for passion, she hooks up with a suave but predatory civil servant with a penchant for sex in public places.
Within minutes of encountering him at a conference, they’re at it in a broom cupboard. ‘Sex may be an animal pleasure,’ she says, ‘but adultery is a human one.’ For her — like McGrath — it becomes an addiction, one she is prepared to risk everything for.
Apple Tree Yard glamorises adultery — although we are given a hint of disaster to come when we flashforward to the future and our ‘heroine’ is seen handcuffed in a police van.
I do hope the series shows the other side of the adultery coin: the bitterness, the broken families, the misery.
Yes, there are times when love dies and leaving is the right thing to do, however painful. But often, having an affair is the opposite of glamorous.
As McGrath found, it’s like strapping an emotional suicide vest to your chest and walking into the midst of those you love. Before detonating it.