Serious Adultery

Ronnie Wood Divorces After Affair (you guessed it!)

Happier times for the rock legend and his wife

I don’t what you expect if you marry a Rolling Stone. Well, if you marry one now, you can probably look forward to wild weekends of woodland walks, or sharing a packet of Werthers Originals whilst complaining about the volume on the Antiques Roadshow.

You know how old the Stones are? Jokes about them being old are old!

Anyway, Jo Wood married Ronnie at the height of the Stones’ fame. And in those days they cut a rather  different dash. Drugs. Drink. Women. Violence – even murder – followed the Stones wherever they went. They were the high priests of the rock ‘n’ roll myth. At the centre of it in the seventies was the quasi love-affair between Ronnie Wood and Keef. Both louche outsiders with a taste for decadent behaviour on the road. Perhaps surprisingly, Ronnie was happily married for all that time.

So it’s kind of sad to learn that Ronnie and Jo are calling it quits. Of all the Stones, he seemed the most grounded – with none of the nose-tweaking self mythology that surrounded the others. He genuinely was just one of the lads.

Anyway, after all those years of hellraising, it’s awful to see that he’s finally been caught dipping his wick where he shouldn’t and wound up in court. The divorce leaves Jo a cool £6.5 million better off, but really – can you put a price on being married to a Rolling Stone?

Australian Man Stumps up £55,000 Compensation… to his Lover???

Australia has just been turned into viper’s nest for people looking for a quick extramarital shag. Under their Family Act, common-law spouses and long-term lovers are accorded similar rights to those enjoyed by wives and husbands.

In this case, the woman was his secret lover for 22 years – during which time he took her around the world on “business trips” and even attended posh dinner functions alongside him. How the other half live, eh? When it came to finally dumping her, she demanded compensation – a move that must have startled him somewhat. Originally he acceded to her unusual request, but then backed out, at which point she took him to court.

Finding in her favour, the judge ordered the man to pay her 55 grand – in recognition of the support and love she had shown to him over many years.

We think it’s an interesting development in relationship law, and probably not one without merit. This woman had happiness with this guy for decades – and he certainly gave her something of a lifestyle to which she had become accustomed.

And then he thinks he can just chuck her like its a teenage school romance? Affairs like this come with responsibility – not just your own personal emotional responsibility, but a duty towards the person who is who is your confidante, lover. In a way, he got off lightly. We’ve all seen Fatal Attraction, right?

Is Marriage Dead on its Feet?

A happy couple and friends. Until the inevitable death of their marriage and the lingering life of solitude that will follow. Possibly.

Everyone’s getting divorced these days. Well, you might get that impression from screaming headlines about family breakup and celebrity adultery. Tawdry details of breakups and cheating are flung in our face every day.

It’s worth pausing to remember however, that if 40% of marriages end in divorce, then 60% don’t. Not only that, but people are still getting married in huge numbers – despite the cost and strain it can place on a relationship. So clearly, the institution appeals to a lot of us and is worth fighting for in the majority of cases.

Marriage is a long commitment. Going by the book – it’s till death. Of course, our  more relaxed attitude to the reading of the marriage vows means that few people perhaps take that as seriously today. It might still be a big commitment, but for many married couples, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if the marriage were to end sometime before its participants were pushing up the daisies on boot hill.

Against this backdrop of changing attitudes to marriage, it is still clear that adultery – cheating – is still a huge ‘sin’ in most people’s eyes. We might be prepared to contemplate that our marriage isn’t forever, but none of us wants it to founder on the rocks of our partner getting their jollies elsewhere.

There are two schools of thought as to why we look so dimly on adultery. One line of thought is that it is a hangover from an era in which sex itself – let alone infidelity – was something of which we should be ashamed. Against the careful skirting around the issue that characterised the issue of sex in Victorian and Edwardian times, “marriage” was often nothing more than a codeword for “sex”. Consequently, we’ve never address the fact that ‘sex’ can be an entirely separate thing from love – and needn’t carry any great emotional weight.

On the other hand, many people argue that monogamy itself is actually an unnatural state of affairs. Our genetic predisposition is to ensure our DNA gets passed successfully along. Therefore, it is in our interest to spread our seed among as many potential partners as possible. We look around and see that in almost every other species in nature, monogamy is an aberration – not a given.

I’m sure that anyone who’s ever been cheated on will have had that thought up front and centre in their mind when they found out!

Anyway, marriage is – for whatever reason – still a big part of our cultural heritage. From the lowest to the highest, it sets the standard for commitment and regardless of the failings of individuals and partnerships, it looks likely to stay with us for a long time to come.