Marriage Secrets from a Divorce Lawyer

If you are in my office it's already too late - James Sexton

Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person

Alain de Boton

Imran Khan on his third marriage

Im The Dim in The Friday Times







From hat on head, to dupatta on brow, to naqab on face, I have been through several lives and several wives. I have finally reached the pineapple of nirvana because I have seen the light. I might however see a few more lights, now and then. But for the moment, I am delighted to announce my wedding, which took place on January 1, er sorry I meant February whatever, witnessed by my closest comrades, whose names escape me. And Pinky’s mum and five kids, whose names escape me.

Unlike my previous marriages, this is an everlasting bond, not bondage. Henceforward, kinks will be replaced by Pinks. And good times will be replaced by Godly times. Above all, Pink is the new Black.

Back to politics: the best thing Nawaz Sharif can now do is to leave Pakistan for another decade or so. He should leave governance to me. I have some very creative ideas on how to tackle the budget deficit. I will get hefty sponsorships for everything, especially great state institutions. Hence forward, it will be Sunsilk General Headquarters, Bahria National Assembly, Rose Petal Pakistan Navy, Coca Cola National Accountability Bureau, Masterfoam Supreme Court, Pepsi Election Commission and so on. There will be a huge influx of money from these sponsorships and the deficit will go up in a puff of smoke, unlike me who’s stopped puffing and smoking and am in the Pink of health as a result.

I’ve now gone so thoroughly native that I’ve dropped all my old friends in London. The editor of Tatler, Lady Patricia Pitbull-Terrier called to interview me about my new marriage but I didn’t take her call. Then she got her secretary Eliza Dolittle to ring, no response from me. Then she got her hairdresser Vidal Sassoon to call, no response from me. Then she got her photographer the late Cecil Beaton to call me, still no response. Finally, she got my old friend Mick Jagger to call me and try and make conversation by asking what I thought of Teresa May’s new Abortion Bill, “Oh for God’s sake, Mick, just pay it!”

Imran Khan on Himself

From The Friday Times

Friends, fundos and youthias, I want you to know that I took the Hypocritic oath ages ago while schmoozing my way across London with one eye on my political career back home, and the other on the chicks of Chelsea. I knew that once I’d taken the Hypocritic oath, I’d be free to do Hypocritical things. Like pretending to be a democrat while trying to oust elected governments via conspiracies. Like pretending to be a principled leader while treating my party like a principality. Like defending the disadvantaged while taking advantage of defenseless women. Like funding madrassahs in Pakistan whilst sending my owns sons to England’s best madrassah, at £ 22,000 a year.

The problem is not with me but with this formerly glorious land that was once full of stupas, but is now full of stupids.

Why is my marriage to my spiritual advisor a scandal? Because it shows my utter lack of judgment? Or because it reveals my callousness? Or both?

Well, I don’t care and I’m going to carry on doing whatever or whoever I like. I really thought I had it all under wraps and was enjoying the winter sun with my spiritual advisor out on the lawns of my Bunny Gala estate. Then, suddenly a drone flew past with GEO NEWS written on it. I waved and waved but it didn’t stop for me. It was not until my spiritual advisor gave me a violent nudge in the ribs that I stopped waving. My spiritual advisor dived under the table to hide herself but by then the drone had let down a streamer which said, “touch luck, dumb f—-k”. I was spelling it out to my spiritual advisor when I came to the end and realized that the middle three letters of the last word were missing.

The fact that GEO NEWS’ drones can’t spell so alarmed me that whilst still writing this diary, I began suffering from writer’s block. I turned to my spiritual advisor and said, “please give me a profound thought on which to conclude my diary”. She said what about “the end”?

Im the Dim 

Why are growing numbers marrying themselves?

More and more people around the world are choosing to "marry" themselves in symbolic ceremonies, and businesses are catering to the trend. But what motivates someone to say "yes" to themselves?

Didem Tali in The BBC
In the summer of 2000, New York-based performance artist Gabrielle Penabaz decided to throw a wedding party for herself while nursing a broken heart.

She carefully chose a location, flowers, a quartz ring, a sweetheart-neckline wedding dress and wrote thoughtful vows.

She even wore "something borrowed, something blue" on the day, even though the event was purely symbolic and lacked one crucial component: a groom.

Nonetheless, her friends and family attended and Ms Penabaz says she had the "best wedding ever". Since then she has been "officiating" at other people's self-marriage ceremonies as a form of performance art - a service for which she charges.

Her clients are usually single women, although people from all genders and marital statuses have taken part.

Image copyrightMARRY YOURSELF VANCOUVERImage captionWomen attending a self marriage ceremony in Canada

She claims to have "married" more than 1,500 people, typically in ceremonies like her own, with mock-up chapels, costumes, cakes and most importantly, vows.

"The ceremonies are usually very cathartic and all about self-love," Ms Penabaz says.

"80% of the people whom I married to themselves shed a tear reading their vows. They usually say things like 'I forgive myself' and 'I will no longer call myself ugly'."

Welcome to the world of self-marriage or "sologamy", which has attracted increasing attention over the last few years.

While it is not legal to marry yourself anywhere in the world, reports of people holding mock ceremonies go for several decades and can be found everywhere from Japan to Italy, to Australia and the UK.

The act has also been the theme of episodes of popular US TV shows such as Glee and Sex and the City, and there are now whole businesses - such as Ms Penabaz's - dedicated to helping people plan their solo events. 

Dominique Youkhehpaz officiated at her first solo wedding in 2011 at the US arts festival Burning Man and has since set up the consultancy Self Marriage Ceremonies.

She offers a 10-week online course to prepare brides or grooms for sologamy, costing $200 (£149), as well as private counselling sessions. Ms Youkhehpaz says she's worked with more than 250 clients to date and business is booming.

"A self-marriage ceremony can be anything from a simple ritual in one's bedroom to a more lavish celebration," she explains.

She also thinks it can be incredibly therapeutic for those who take part. "I have witnessed people leave abusive relationships, step more fully into their life's work or meet their beloved after marrying themselves."

Proponents say sologamy is about self-love, acceptance and claiming the social affirmation normally reserved for couples who wed.

While there are no official figures about those choosing to marry themselves, the interest comes at a time when the number of unmarried people is at record highs in many advanced economies, according to the OECD.

Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage captionBriton Sophie Tanner tied the knot with herself after her partner cheated on her

Not surprisingly, businesses have been catering to this new market. In 2014, the Japanese travel agency Cerca Travel reportedly offered a two-day package for solo brides for upwards of £2,500. It included dress fitting, make-up and hair styling and a photo shoot.

Dan Moran, a Los Angeles-based jewellery designer, says he started receiving calls from clients wanting sologamy rings 18 months ago and wedding planners and photographers he knows are getting similar requests.

Most of his new clients are "urban, affluent and educated" women, and interestingly many are already married.

More stories from the BBC's Business Brain series looking at interesting business topics from around the world:
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"In the coming years, people who work in the wedding industry will definitely have to keep sologamists in mind and tailor their service," he says.

Certainly people are willing splash out on sologamy. Italian Laura Mesi wed herself at a "fairytale" event this September, complete with a white dress, three-layer wedding cake, bridesmaids and 70 guests.

The 40-year-old, who made the move after her 12-year relationship ended, spent £8,700 on the day.

Image copyrightSOPHIE TANNERImage caption"It was the best day of my life," says Sophie, here hugging her father - who gave her away
In the UK, Sophie Tanner married herself in 2015. "For me, it was an important ceremony that demonstrates my commitment to self-compassion, " she told the BBC.

"The wedding was the best day of my life, complete with vintage gown, teary dad giving me away, and dancing bridesmaids."

But not everyone welcomes the sologamy trend. Some call it narcissistic and others criticise it as a pointless submission to a patriarchal institution.

Karen Nimmo, a clinical psychologist in New Zealand, says: "Self-dislike is at the root of so many psychological issues, so where marrying yourself is about healing from past trauma or relationship issues it can be helpful.

"But it's important to make sure your other relationships are healthy. If you rely too much on yourself and constantly put your own needs ahead of everyone else you may be slipping into narcissistic territory - and that's an unhealthy and lonely place to be."

Alexandra Gill, co-founder of consultancy Marry Yourself Vancouver, accepts marrying yourself "kind of is" narcissistic, but adds: "Aren't all traditional white weddings also narcissistic?"

She also says that marrying yourself doesn't have to be taken deadly seriously.

Since 2011, her firm has helped solo brides plan their big days, but is now branching out to offer a "ladies' night" concept which celebrates "self-love and sisterhood".

"Let's face it, all women grow up with the fairytale wedding stories and the princess culture isn't going away anywhere," she says.

"But self-marriage ceremonies allow us to re-write this narrative in which we don't need a groom."

"Weddings have always been a female-centred celebration, anyway," she says.

"Many more women would love to marry to themselves, but they're just self-conscious about it."

Sex in the City's heroic protagonist Carrie Bradshaw, who wed herself in a 2003 episode of the series, would surely agree.

The 100-year-old couple – still married, still going strong

Paul Laity in The Guardian

We don’t know anyone else over 100. We are really oddities: two people married for 78 years, one 103, the other 100. We’ve outlived everybody. And it’s rare, I recognise that. We’re very lucky. The best I can wish you is our luck.”




Morrie Markoff is sitting on the sofa in his downtown Los Angeles apartment next to his wife, Betty. They are delighted that someone from the “Manchester Guardian” has come to talk to them, though these days they are used to a degree of attention. When Morrie was 100, a gallery in the city put on his first art show, exhibiting his scrap-metal sculptures, photographs and paintings. “Ease up on the 100 business,” he remarked at the time. “I’m trying to pass as 90.” Now the Markoffs are to appear in Aging Gracefully, a book of photos of centenarians by Karsten Thormaehlen; they are the only married couple in its pages. 

“We’ve been together for nearly eight decades, and we still haven’t killed each other!” Morrie says.

“Though we’ve tried a few times,” chimes in Betty. “We’ve had plenty of run-ins, oh my God … but he never hit me, and I never hit him. Though I think I pushed him once.”

In turn, Morrie jokes about trading her in for two 50-year-old women. But whatever arguments they had are a thing of the past. “Now it’s peaceful,” Betty says, her hand touching the back of Morrie’s neck. She dismisses any idea of there being a secret to making a marriage work so long. “Just don’t let every complaint turn to anger. Tolerance and respect. And you’ve got to like them. Morrie would never use the word love; I do, but the actions are the same on either part.”

Why not the word “love”? Morrie replies that “to me, love is possessive; it’s controlling and demanding. The word that I would rather use instead is ‘caring’. You care about people. ‘Care’, to me, has a much deeper meaning. Love is an esoteric word, but one that people also use to mean all sorts of off-hand things. ‘I love playing tennis,’ and such. I hug Betty constantly, I kiss her constantly, I care very much about her.” Morrie assures me that the day they got together was the most fortunate of his life.

They met in New York City in 1938, at the wedding of Betty’s cousin, who happened to be the brother of one of Morrie’s friends. Betty was sitting at the table on Morrie’s left. “On my right,” he picks up the story, “was Rose Lebovsky, a very pretty girl, sophisticated, with wealthy parents. Betty has asked: why did you pick me? And I say: it’s because you ate less.”

Betty’s friends were unsure about the charming machinist, who had grown up in a tenement in East Harlem. But she let him drive her back home to College Point, in Queens.

“He was so handsome, with curly black hair. And on one of our first dates, the car broke down and he fixed it quietly and uncomplainingly, just like that. No fuss, unlike other men. I was impressed. And,” she repeats, “he was so handsome.” What else appealed to you, I ask: his sense of humour? She looks doubtful. “Er, yes, well, I guess so!”

  Morrie and Betty with their children, Judith and Steven in the 1940s.

The dating didn’t last long; Morrie left the East Coast and returned to California, where he had lived for some time having taken a road trip there with friends and fallen in love with the sunshine and easy atmosphere. Was it a memorable marriage proposal? “Oh hell no,” Betty replies. “He never proposed. He just asked: would you like to live in California?”

Morrie sent her the fare for the bus, and picked her up in LA after the four-day journey. They “found a rabbi in our price range” and had a simple ceremony, during which the rabbi said: “May the marriage be as pure as the gold in the ring.” Betty and Morrie “looked at each other and almost burst into laughter” – they had a fake gold ring bought at Woolworths.

For Betty, LA is a fabulous city. “You’ve got the beach, the mountains, and the climate is so nice; I think it’s like paradise.” She shows off the one-room condo where they’ve lived for five years, since moving out of their much-loved modernist home a few miles away. The flat is decorated with Morrie’s artwork, most of it from the 1950s and 60s. There’s a view of blue skies and Bunker Hill skyscrapers; Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, with its luminous swoops and curves, is almost next door.

Betty says that old age for her has meant a great loss of energy: “My walking isn’t good, and I get confused.” These days, Morrie uses a mobility scooter. “He can’t forgive them for taking his car away,” says Betty. But they still go out for breakfast, and declining vigour is in part made up for by a sharpened appreciation of the world around them. Betty enjoys sitting outside a local cafe to see the play of sunlight and shadow, and likes to watch young children splashing in a nearby fountain, wondering which ones will brave the water, and which, too cautious, will turn away.

“I’ve lived a long life and a full one,” Morrie reflects. “I’ve never known a minute of boredom. I’ve always been busy, with work, or making things, or photography or travel, or most recently writing [he’s finished a memoir]. And there’s always another book to read. I sometimes say: I have so much to do, I don’t have time to die.”

 Morrie Markoff. Photograph: Karsten Thormaehlen

The day before his 99th birthday, he did die, at least for a few moments. Having had a heart attack – “Betty acted quickly and dialled 911; she saved my life” – Morrie was undergoing an operation to put in a pacemaker when something went wrong and he flatlined. “The surgeons killed me – not a good idea as I have relations who are attorneys.” Apparently, his mouth fell open, his tongue dropped out and the grieving family retreated to the hospital’s meditation room – only to be called back a little later to find Morrie alive and joking.

“If I were a religious man, I’d put my longevity down to divine intervention,” Morrie says. “As I’m not, I simply say it’s luck.” Though the fact that his father, a very heavy smoker, died aged 94 suggests his genes aren’t bad.

Morrie’s early life was far from pampered. He remembers the tenement he grew up in as rat-ridden, with a kitchen filled with cockroaches and mattresses alive with bedbugs. Six people lived in three rooms; he slept on two chairs his mother put together, piled with cushions, in front of the stove. But he was never hungry, he insists, even in the Depression years, and was given complete freedom.

He remembers swimming naked as a boy in an East River that was full of floating rubbish, condoms, faeces and flotsam; he loved to dive off the flour barges tied to the dock. Perhaps he built up a great immune system, he wonders. And diet? He relishes the memory of hot dogs on Coney Island, with mustard and sauerkraut, washed down with Dr Brown’s celery tonic. Until he got tongue cancer, Morrie also smoked cigarettes, cigars and a pipe. When working as a machinist, he’d leave the cigarettes in his mouth because his hands were so oily; the smoke would fill his eyes, and in the morning he couldn’t open them.

Betty, on the other hand, puts her long life down to her “seventh grade nutrition class”. She was always aware of preparing a meal with protein and vegetables. Plus every morning for decades they’d walk the three miles or so around the local lake, before breakfast.

They always had energy, they insist, and boredom is not in the family. One of their early drives was politics. Morrie was a member of the Communist Party USA and would often go on protests; Betty was once put in prison for an hour for handing out its leaflets. But the aim was never an overthrow of government, just a fairer society. They were devotees of Roosevelt and even more enthusiastic about Barack Obama. As for Trump: “In my lifetime, he’s the oddest person to be elected president … he’s an egomaniac, a wildcard, a casino-owner: how much tax does he pay?”

“He’s so prejudiced,” Betty adds.

Betty Markoff. Photograph: Karsten Thormaehlen

Politics spawned friendships, and they had a close circle when bringing up their two kids, Judith and Steven. (One odd thing about getting to a very advanced age, Betty has said, is seeing your children becoming senior citizens.) The LA house they lived in for decades was part of a progressive housing co-operative; it was designed as a community, and its residents were in and out of each other’s houses all the time. “The friends are not there any more … they are long since gone,” Betty says. I ask her how that feels. She’s quiet but brisk in reply: “Oh, I’m very adaptable.”

After the war, during which he was deferred from the army to make detonators and contour rockets, Morrie ended up owning his own appliance shop. He used the scrap metal from air-conditioner repairs to make the small, dynamic sculptures that were exhibited decades later. But then a passion for travel and photography took over, and Morrie and Betty shine a bit more brightly when remembering their camping trips and tourist escapades. The photos they show me of their trips around the world, from Mexico to Macau, are of an astonishing quality. What camera did you use, I ask? Morrie begins to enthuse about his Rolleiflex and Leica, before Betty groans and changes the subject.

She is clearly proud of him, however. “He’s very talented in lots of directions,” she says in a moment when he’s not around. “If he had grown up differently, who knows what he might have achieved?”

Morrie still feels his days are not long enough, and insists you don’t need much money to live an active and involved life. Their daughter lives in the next building, so even the death of one of the couple won’t spell utter loneliness. Yet again, he mentions their luck.

As I prepare to leave, he chides me mischievously: “You haven’t asked us about our sex life!” Then he laughs: “that’s just a memory”. With his hand on Betty’s knee, Morrie looks at the woman whom he has never told he loves, and says: “After 78 years, I can say I didn’t make a mistake. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we’re still here.”

The Economics of Sex

Think loneliness is about single people looking for love? Think again

Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian

It’s hard to feel alone inside a long and happy marriage. But it’s easier than it looks, perhaps, to feel lonely. Last week, Italian police officers responding to reports of screaming and crying inside an apartment in Rome found something unexpected behind the door. Jole and Michele were a devoted elderly couple who had ostensibly got themselves worked up over a sad story on the TV news, but some gentle questioning elicited the fact that both were struggling with terrible loneliness. After 70 years of apparently loving marriage they still had each other, and yet that clearly was not enough.

This being Italy, the officers rather charmingly cooked them a meal of spaghetti with butter and parmesan and stayed to chat, before doing the washing up and posting a flowery account on Facebook of how loneliness can suddenly sweep over you “like a summer storm”. The story went viral because it’s so heartwarming, and yet on second reading it’s also rather unsettling. The lonely are not quite the people we think they are.

It will be 20 years ago this summer that the first Bridget Jones novel was published, a timely reminder to ignore the spectacularly awful sequels and remember just how neatly the original skewered some of the myths about lonely singleton life.

Bridget was famously terrified of dying alone and forgotten, but ironically the one thing she wasn’t was lonely: she was riotously surrounded by friends and family, even if they did all keep harping on about her getting a proper boyfriend. It’s smug marrieds who can all too easily collapse in on themselves, severing old friendships they will come to regret in the process. (Anyone who thinks that having a baby means you’ll never feel alone again, meanwhile, has yet to find out how it feels to be home with a howling infant, desperately trying to engage the postman in conversation because he’s the only sentient adult you’ll see for hours.)

It’s all too easy to become consumed by family life and then wake up in middle age, ostensibly at the centre of a rich and busy life, struggling to remember your last meaningful conversation. That feeling may not be loneliness yet, but it’s a first step on the road.

For while the cavernously empty feeling endured by the bereaved or unwillingly single can indeed be a terrible thing, and life-shortening to boot, it’s not the only kind of loneliness. A recent University of California study found that while almost half of its elderly subjects confessed to feeling lonely at times, only 18% of them actually lived alone.

Unhappy marriages, atrophying into long silences and separate lives, might have something to do with that, but the story of Jole and Michele suggests something else: a distinct kind of loneliness stemming not from the absence of significant others but from a feeling of disconnection with the wider world, a sense that you’re no longer part of something shared and human. Is it just a coincidence that the Italian couple’s crisis seems to have been provoked by a run of news stories – violent attacks, abuse at a kindergarten – revealing human nature at its coldest?

Fleeting loneliness comes to all of us occasionally, but it solidifies into something deeper and darker for those who start to perceive the world as a harsh and hostile place, one that wouldn’t welcome efforts to connect even if you try. It’s that nagging feeling of rejection, of not belonging or standing somehow apart from others, that is the true hallmark of feeling lonely in a crowd, and it’s by no means the preserve of the old.

Interestingly, a recent Brunel University study of over-50s found more than half of those identifying themselves as lonely had been that way for over 10 years, suggesting the feeling had become part of the fabric of their lives. (The same study, by the way, found levels of loneliness had barely changed since the second world war; so much for the idea of a modern epidemic, caused by fragmenting and hectic modern family lives.)

The future of loneliness



So perhaps it’s not so surprising that this week’s obituaries of the fabulously wealthy Duke of Westminster, a father of four, should describe him as “lonely”. Immense wealth can of course be isolating – although the money clearly didn’t make the duke unhappy enough to get rid of it, or indeed to eschew the family tradition of minimising inheritance tax liabilities – but in Gerald Grosvenor’s case something else seems to be going on. What emerges is a picture of a man struggling all his life with feelings of inadequacy and anxiety, worried that he had done nothing to live up to the reputation of those ancestors who built his unearned fortune. Bullied at school, he reportedly left Harrow without one proper friend.

And if you can’t bring yourself to feel sorry for a billionaire, the blunt truth is that not all lonely people are lovable old grannies who tug at your heartstrings. An unhappy few have pushed others away with their self-destructive behaviour and are now paying a high price for it; some have struggled bitterly all their lives with the art of making friends, never quite mastering social norms. How much of the late-night bile spewed on social media simply reflects the envy and frustration of those who see other people happily connecting all around them and just don’t quite know how to join in? Loneliness has its dark side, one not so easily solved by more visits from the grandchildren or well-meaning volunteer “befrienders” popping in for chats over coffee.

For Jole and Michele, at least, perhaps there will be a happy ending. Now their story has been made public, perhaps surviving relatives or old friends will rally round, and if nothing else the knowledge that strangers worldwide are now asking how they can send letters or visit must do something to restore their faith in human nature.

Yet while a little kindness goes a very long way, it’s too easy to pretend loneliness can all be solved by a few more companionable plates of spaghetti. It makes for a less heartwarming story but the truth is that, like the poor, the lonely may to some degree always be with us – even, perhaps, when they’re ostensibly with someone else.

It took Barack Obama to crush the Brexit fantasy

Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian

The US president destroyed one of the Vote Leave campaign’s core arguments, ending a week that may define the referendum debate

‘The president spelled out that America has no intention of forming some new, closer relationship with a Brexited Britain … it would be at ‘the back of the queue’ if it sought to agree a new treaty with the US.’ Illustration: Nate Kitch


No wonder they were desperate that he keep his mouth shut. At his podium in Downing Street Barack Obama flattered his hosts, paid lip service to the notion that the referendum on British membership of the European Union on 23 June is a matter for the British people – and then calmly ripped apart the case for Brexit.

It was the Vote Leavers’ worst nightmare. For years – no, decades – the anti-EU camp has suggested that Britain’s natural habitat is not among its continental neighbours but in “the Anglosphere”, that solar system of English-speaking planets which revolves around the United States. Break free from Brussels and we could embrace our kindred spirits in Sydney, Toronto and especially New York, Washington and Los Angeles. The Brexit camp has long been like the man who dreams of leaving his wife for another woman, one who really understands him.

Barack Obama: Brexit would put UK 'back of the queue' for trade talks



Obama is that other woman. And today he told the outers their fantasies were no more than that. First in print and then, more explicitly, in person he spelled out that America has no intention of forming some new, closer relationship with a Brexited Britain. On the contrary, a post-EU Britain would be at “the back of the queue” if it sought to agree its own, new trade treaty with the US.

America, he told his British audience – hence his use of “queue”, not “line” – likes the fact that Britain is already married: it works out really well for all three parties involved. His message was unambiguous. Don’t rush into a hasty divorce because you think we’re waiting for you with open arms. We’re not.

At a stroke, he had crushed not only a core part of the leavers’ economic argument – that it’ll be a breeze for Britain to exit the EU and trade just as prosperously as a solo nation – but something bigger: the notion that a brighter, non-European future beckons. Obama burst that bubble.

He also explained that of course he had the right to speak, despite Brexiteer Liam Fox’s letter signed by 100 MPs urging him to stay out of the EU debate. As Obama put it, since the leavers are offering “an opinion about what the US is going to do, I thought you might want to hear an opinion from the president of the United States on what the US is going to do”. And the opinion he gave was devastating.

That he had every right to speak is obvious, by the leavers’ own logic. He and the country he leads have been invoked as central to the alternative utopia that awaits us on Brexit. If he wants to tell us that utopia is an illusion, we need to hear it.

Hence the Brexiteers’ fury. They know how badly Obama’s words undermine their case, especially after what has been a week from hell for the out campaign. One that ended in the absurdity of a Ukip MEP, Mike Hookem, lurching into full-bore anti-Americanism, winding the clock back to 1939 to argue that the US had it in for us even then, seeing the second world war as a way of “smashing the UK’s influence in the world”. When a party defined by its loathing of the EU finds itself attacking the US, you know things have gone awry.

The same is true of Boris Johnson’s Sun screed, which dipped into Donald Trump’s Bumper Book of Political Wisdom to suggest that the “half-Kenyan” president cannot be trusted because he is filled with “ancestral” loathing of Britain.

What an interesting choice of word that “ancestral” was. Not “post-colonial”, which would have located this supposed antipathy in the 20th century, but “ancestral” to be run alongside “half-Kenyan”. It was a reminder of the brilliant slapdown Obama once issued to Trump, when the tycoon was demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate. From the podium at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner, Obama said he could go one better and show his birth video. He promptly played a clip from the Lion King, of Simba the newborn cub held aloft – as graceful a way of calling out a racist as one can imagine.

This, incidentally, is where the contortions of Brexit have left Johnson. It may still be true that the London mayor’s decision to back Vote Leave – when his elastic relationship with principle could just as easily have sprung the other way – was politically smart, all but guaranteeing the backing of the Eurosceptic Tory selectorate when they choose a successor to David Cameron. But it’s extracting a price.

Once Johnson promised to be the face of metropolitan inclusivity, a Tory able to reach non-Tories by carrying less of their nasty party baggage. Yet this campaign is stripping away that gloss, reminding us that it was always a fake. Recall that Johnson once spoke of “piccaninnies” and wrote of African men with “watermelon smiles”. In the Spectator in 2002, he declared of Africa: “The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more.”

Every day he spends tag-teaming with Nigel Farage – who repeated the mayor’s “half-Kenyan” line – risks trashing the Boris brand, defining Johnson as less a future prime minister than a figure of the fringes, less a lovable maverick than a rather unpleasant oddball.

But it’s the wider Vote Leave campaign that has found itself in the wrong place. An anti-EU movement can’t also be anti-US, not without looking as if it hates everyone. Nor is it good to pit yourself against an American president who, whatever his domestic standing, remains in high esteem in Britain and Europe. It’s just too irresistibly tweetable to ask: if Obama’s for remain, and Trump and Le Pen are for leave, whose side are you on?

Above all, the core case advanced by the leavers on the US is flawed. Fox and others say Obama is a hypocrite because the US would never accept for itself the limitations on sovereignty demanded of Britain by the EU. But the comparison is silly. Britain is strong and rich, but it is also a relatively small country adjacent to a continent. The US virtually is a continent.

What makes sense for one would not make sense for the other. Besides, as Obama explained in Downing Street, the US does trim its sovereignty when it suits its purposes: it agrees to be bound by the trade rulings of the World Trade Organisation and Nafta, even if that means Congress is forced to back down on its own decisions.

All told, the Obama visit has been one of those episodes that say rather more than was ever intended. It says that this president retains a lustre even now, eight years on – one that only grows as you contemplate the contest to take his place. It says that, for all of the remain campaign’s problems, Leave now has to rebuild – after a dreadful seven days that began with Treasury numbers showing Brexit will make Britons poorer, and ended with a surgical evisceration from the world’s most powerful man.

And it said something about Britain’s relationship with the US. Ever needy to hear that we’re still special to the Americans, to hear that their president loves our queen and loves our talisman, Winston Churchill, we still listen to them – even when they tell us there’s no future for just the two of us together, that we need to stay in the marriage we’re in, even if sometimes it feels a little loveless.

My perfect affair – how I’m getting away with it

Anonymous as told to Joan McFadden in The Guardian


Tell no one, put nothing in writing, pay in cash, don’t drink, and keep off the phone. How to have an affair for nine years and get away with it

 

‘The first time we slept together, we were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.’ Photograph: Jonathan Storey/Getty Images
Love and happiness are certainly important to me in my 20-year marriage to Stephen. They are also important to me in my nine-year affair with Michael. I didn’t have an affair lightly. I know people have affairs for all sorts of reasons and think ultimately that they have a goal in mind – the end of their marriage, a lasting new relationship or a complete change to what they see as a boring life.

I’m none of these things. I want no drama disrupting my family. I want to stay happily married and carry on my affair and I never, ever want anyone else to know, so I have every detail planned and covered. My husband doesn’t suspect, my sisters and my best friends have no idea and I make sure there’s no evidence at all that can trip me up.

I didn’t start an affair because I’m lacking anything with Stephen. He’s a brilliant dad and funny, intelligent, fit and attractive. We’ve always made an effort to keep things fresh – of course you get bogged down in daily life, but we go out for dinner by ourselves or have a day off when we pack the kids off to school and go back to bed for a few hours. We also do a lot as a family, as well as socialising with friends and enjoying a variety of hobbies, so being organised is vital and, like many working mothers, I keep a meticulous diary to make sure everyone is in the right place at the right time.


I also have a diary in my head of my times with Michael, but I never put anything in writing. No love missives – texts are about the families getting together – and any emails are work related because we work in the same field. Stephen was friends with Michael first, having met him at a school event when our youngest child was just starting. He couldn’t believe we hadn’t met professionally and soon introduced us. He’s completely different from Stephen, who is very forthright, enthusiastic and go-getting while Michael is dreamy and creative, but with an incisive sense of humour and very witty, so they get on well.

I was quite shaken when I started to find Michael attractive. I’m not stupid enough to think you can go through life fancying only one person, but I’d kept any previous little crushes firmly in my head. Stephen is quite a flirt himself and the odd little bit of jealousy never did me any harm, and tended to respark my interest in my husband.

This was different. For the first time since we got married, I could imagine myself having an affair and at first it made me uncomfortable. I started plotting how we could do it and never get found out, and almost convinced myself that I was just being academic about it. Then we all got quite drunk at a party and Michael and I really started flirting. I thought life would go back to normal the next day and it did in front of Stephen and Jane, but we had a completely different relationship when we were alone.

We started talking dirty. At first it was just a little edgy – do you still fancy Stephen/Jane? Ever been unfaithful? Ever thought of it? It got more and more explicit and I couldn’t get him out of my mind. But I got a bad shock when he sent me a filthy text one night. I was sure he was drunk as it was short but very graphic. At that point my conscience was almost clear as we’d done nothing but talk, so I said, “Oh my God, Stephen – Michael’s just sent me a text that’s meant for Jane!”

Stephen thought it was hilarious and I texted back and said, “Isn’t this for Jane? Stephen says lucky her!”

Stephen teased him about it for ages but the next time I was alone with him I was furious and told him never to do something so stupid again. He said he thought I fancied him and I said very calmly that I did, but I wouldn’t risk my marriage or kids for anyone. It took another six months of discussion and planning before the affair started. We agreed that it was to be an added extra to an already strong friendship, but organised calmly and dispassionately, so no one would suspect.

By the time we slept together, we were both in a total state and it was a complete disaster. He’d been to the first day of a conference – I arrived that afternoon and checked into the same hotel. We had three hours in the late afternoon till his flight home and despite all our talk about being calm and dispassionate we were both unbelievably nervous. We were like two teenagers, and not in a good way.

For months I’d been totally turned on every time we were anywhere close to each other, but not now. The sex was clumsy and painful and a couple of times I wondered what the hell I was doing. He had his own worries – it was over far too soon and I felt dissatisfied as well as guilty – and he clearly felt the same. We had another go before he had to rush for his plane and it was just as bad. He said he would text me and I snapped at him not to – had he forgotten all we agreed? Stephen phoned later and in the midst of the chat about the kids asked if Michael was at the conference so I said he’d popped in before he left.

Coming home the next night was hellish. I was sure Stephen could tell I’d had sex with someone else but he was the same as ever and I was pathetically pleased that I was able to enjoy sex with him as normal. It was another two days before I saw Michael again and I was desperate to phone him, despite my rules, though I managed not to. He looked so miserable I was instantly irritated, convinced Jane would have guessed something was up. I was tempted to suggest we just forget it but I didn’t want to make him even more upset so I was reassuring and said we’d sort something out.


We went away for a week’s holiday and I did a lot of thinking. I decided that nerves had made the sex awkward, and once we got over the hump – so to speak – we’d be fine, so I deliberately made plans. Stephen took the kids to the cinema that weekend. I phoned their house, telling Jane I had mislaid papers from the conference and asking if Michael could bring me his so I could copy them. I read one of Stephen’s porn mags to get me in the mood, opened the front door and literally dragged him into the toilet, where we had exactly the sort of sex I’d imagined.

That was the last risk I took. I’m sure no one suspects we’re having an affair. We meet as lovers about twice a month, which probably does keep the magic and anticipation going, but I’m endlessly careful; I do worry about CCTV now as it’s everywhere. We usually meet at a conference hotel or at the airport and I might say to Stephen that I bumped into Michael and had a coffee with him, though I obviously won’t tell him that was after lunch and before sex. We’ve managed to resist that temptation to tell others by talking to each other instead. There are no romantic letters, emails or texts – and because we have fairly constant contact, there’s none of that terrible panic that illicit lovers seem to have about when the next encounter will be.

This care is also my safety net should Michael ever want more. He says he still loves Jane but if he decides otherwise I would just deny everything and there’s no proof. Not a note, credit card bill or hotel receipt – everything is paid by cash – so I’d just walk away.

I wouldn’t be friends with Jane if I didn’t want the smokescreen that provides – we’re too different and there’s a slightly snobbish side to her that irks me, but a monthly coffee or occasional girls’ night makes it seem that we have a separate friendship and so she’s much less likely to suspect anything. She’s even said that I’m good for Michael as he doesn’t have sisters so it’s nice to see him have a friendship with a woman.

I love both men, I’m harming no one and have no intention of doing so. I know we’re being greedy but it’s not affecting anyone else badly. If anything, it enhances my sex life with Stephen and when you’ve got two men seeing you naked you certainly keep yourself fit. I want everything to continue as it is, whereas many people having affairs want something to change, usually other relationships, so they can be together all the time. Strange as it may seem, my biggest worry is that, years on, Michael may die first and I won’t be able to grieve properly, because although the close friendship is known and taken for granted, obviously the affair isn’t. In a matter of fact way, we also assume that, when we’re much older, if our partners die we’ll end up together almost by default. Like everyone else, I’m aiming to live happily ever after, but with both men as part of my life. The only way to make that feasible is to keep everything as tidy as possible.

Perhaps we don’t want to explore the premise that for most people it’s not fidelity and love that keeps them constant to their partner, but fear of potential messiness should they be discovered. How many people, no matter how satisfied with their sex lives and happy with their partners, would say “no thank you” to an explosive sexual encounter if it was guaranteed that they’d never be found out? Domesticity doesn’t do it for everyone long term, no matter how much we’d like it to and although that’s apparent in male behaviour over the centuries now that women are on a par with men, surely this means such potential restlessness applies equally to both sexes?

It takes a very brave person to give an honest response, but, before judging me, ask yourself just one question – what’s stopping you from doing exactly the same?

The Economist's Concubine

Robert Skidelsky in Project Syndicate


In recent decades, economics has been colonizing the study of human activities hitherto considered exempt from formal calculus. What critics call “economics imperialism” has given rise to an economics of love, of art, of music, of language, of literature, and of much else.

The unifying idea underlying this extension of economics is that whatever people do, whether it is making love or making widgets, they aim to achieve the best results at the least cost. These benefits and costs can be reduced to money. So people are always looking for the best financial return on their transactions.

This is contrary to the popular separation of activities in which it is right (and rational) to count the cost, and those in which people do not (and should not) count the cost. To say that affairs of the heart are subject to cold calculation is, say the critics, to miss the point. But cold-hearted calculation, reply the economists, is exactly the point.

The pioneer of the economic approach to love was the Nobel laureate Gary Becker, who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago (where else?). In his seminal paper, “A Theory of Marriage,” published in 1973, Becker argued that selecting a partner is its own kind of market, and marriages occur only when both partners gain. It’s a very sophisticated theory, relying on the complementary nature of male and female work, but which tends to treat love as a cost-reducing mechanism.

More recently, economists such as Columbia University’s Lena Edlund and University of Marburg’s Evelyn Korn, as well as Marina Della Giusta of Reading University, Maria Laura di Tommaso of the University of Turin, and Steiner Strøm of the University of Oslo, have applied the same approach to prostitution. Here, the economic approach might seem to work better, given that money is, admittedly, the only relevant currency. Edlund and Korn treat wives and prostitutes as substitutes. A third alternative, working in a regular job, is ruled out by assumption.

According to the data, prostitutes make a lot more money than women working in ordinary jobs. So the question is: why is there such a high premium for such low skills?

On the demand side is the randy male, often in transit, who weighs the benefits of going with prostitutes against the costs of getting caught. On the supply side the prostitute will require higher earnings to compensate for her higher risk of disease, violence, and blighted marriage prospects. “If marriage is a source of income for women,” write Edlund and Korn “then the prostitute has to be compensated for foregone marriage market opportunities.” So the premium reflects the opportunity cost to the prostitute of performing sex work.

There is a ready answer to the question of why competition does not drive down sex workers’ rewards. They have a “reservation wage”: If they are offered less, they will choose a less risky line of work.

What warrant does the state have to interfere with the contracts that are struck within this market of willing buyers and sellers? Why not decriminalize the market altogether, as many sex workers want? Like all markets, the sex market needs regulation, particularly to protect the health and safety of its workers. And, as in all markets, criminal activity, including violence, is already illegal.

But on the other side, there is a strong movement to ban buying sex altogether. The so-called Sex Buyer Law, criminalizing the purchase, though not the sale, of sexual services has been implemented in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Northern Ireland. The enforced reduction of demand is expected to reduce supply, without the need to criminalize the supplier. There is some evidence that it has had the intended effect. (Though supporters of the so-called Nordic System ignore the effect of criminalizing the purchase of sex on the earnings of those who supply it, or would have supplied it.)

The movement to ban buying sex has been strengthened by the growth of international trafficking in women (as well as drugs). This may be counted as a cost of globalization, especially when it involves an influx into the West from countries where attitudes toward women are very different.

But the proposed remedy is too extreme. The premise of the Sex Buyer Law is that prostitution is always involuntary for women – that it is an organic form of violence against women and girls. But I see no reason to believe this. The key question concerns the definition of the word “voluntary.”

True, some prostitutes are enslaved, and the men who use their services should be prosecuted. But there are already laws on the books against the use of slave labor. I would guess that most prostitutes have chosen their work reluctantly, under pressure of need, not involuntarily. If men who use their services are criminalized, then so should people who use the services of supermarket checkout employees, call-center workers, and so on.

Then there are some prostitutes (a minority, to be sure) who claim to enjoy their work. And, of course, there are male prostitutes, gay and straight, who are typically ignored by feminist critics of prostitution. In short, the view of human nature of those who seek to ban the purchase of sex is as constricted as that of the economists. As St. Augustine put it, “If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.”

Ultimately, all arguments against prostitution based on notions of inequality and coercion are superficial. There is, of course, a strong ethical argument against prostitution. But unless we are prepared to engage with that – and our liberal civilization is not – the best we can do is to regulate the trade.

The secret of a happy marriage? Low expectations

Daisy Buchanan in The Guardian

Since I got married last October, I’ve been thinking a lot about divorce. Not in a “serving papers” way, but in the sense that nothing is impossible and it’s good to be prepared. Divorce is something that could never have happened to me before the wedding – but now there’s a chance that it’s in my future. Just as some people believe there’s no better way of appreciating life than by contemplating the inevitability of death (“You might get knocked down by a bus tomorrow!” Not if I stick to heavily pedestrianised areas!), I think that the best way of appreciating the best bits of my relationship is to remind myself that we’re both free to leave at any time.

Reader, I married him hoping that it will last for ever, but knowing that it’s going to be hard, because life is hard. The variables are infinite – loved ones might get seriously ill, we might get ill, one of us could do something thoughtless and hurtful and stupid that changes the nature of the relationship, we might end up growing apart instead of growing together. Surely any idiot knows that the romantic bits – wearing your best underwear, snogging your way through plane safety demonstrations on your endless minibreaks and holding in your farts – happen in the six months after you meet. Marriage is all “Can you get a birthday present for my mum? By the way, the toilet’s broken and we’ve just had a council tax bill for 800 quid.”

So I’m not surprised by the results of a recent study which show that the higher a couple’s expectations of marriage, the more likely the union was doomed to failure. When couples had low expectations that were easily reached, they were happier than the couples who had higher expectations, despite having the same needs met.

The study surmised: “Among spouses who either reported less severe problems or were in marriages observed to be characterised by lower levels of destructive behaviour, standards were positively associated with satisfaction over time,” but that bringing impossibly high expectations to marriage was as damaging as undermining each other, or communicating badly.

Dr James McNulty, the psychologist in charge of the research, advises newlyweds to “realise their strengths and weaknesses and calibrate their standards accordingly”, explaining that the problems occur when couples experience “a mismatch between what they demand and what they can actually attain”.

The lesson is obvious. Love the one you’re wedded to, not the tidier, healthier, cleverer, more committed person you hope marriage might make them. If they’re always hitting on your friends and being sick in taxis, they won’t be cured of it just because all of your relatives have bought you flatware from a John Lewis list .

I know I’m incredibly lucky to have met my husband in the UK, in 2015. In other countries and other eras, marriage hasn’t been a choice for women but an inevitability. Many hoped that courtship, and the chance to live away from home, would lead to slightly more independence and fun. In some households, you’re still better off as a matriarch than as an adult female child. But that only reinforces my point.

If you’re marrying in the belief that it will make your life significantly better, then things probably aren’t great to begin with.

Literature is littered with characters who have entered disastrous marriages in the failed pursuit of wealth and adventure. Your Becky Sharps and Emma Bovarys start unions in the hope that they will allow them to realise personal ambitions, and it never ends well.

I’m optimistic for my own marriage because I have no hopes for social betterment, grand balls, or private jets. I married my husband knowing that we have the same idea of what constitutes a good time. We believe there is no greater state of wedded bliss than lying on a sofa with your head on your spouse’s bottom, and six hours of QI repeats scheduled. If I were to dare to dream and get ideas above my station, I might hope that one day we could replace our customary bag of own-brand crisps with a big sack of Kettle Chips.

Ultimately, a marriage can only ever be as good as the people in it. You can’t make coq au vin with a can of Red Stripe and a £1.99 six-piece selection from Chicken Cottage, but you’ll have a nicer dinner if you appreciate the tasty charm of your raw ingredients instead of moaning about their lack of nutritional value. My greatest ambition for my marriage is that we keep treating each other with as much tenderness and respect as we did when we first met, and that we love each other enough to admit it’s time to call it a day if we ever can no longer do this. I hope it will never happen, but at least when it comes to love, a pessimist is never disappointed.

I'd never kissed a Tory - then I married one

A growing number of parents aren't keen on their children finding love across the political divide Credit: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

Lucy Mangan in The Telegraph


There is a scene in the eighties sitcom Bread, about the Catholic, working class Liverpudlian family the Boswells, in which one of Nellie Boswell’s sons plans to bring A Homosexual round for tea. “But Joey,” she whispers urgently, “what do they eat?”

Twenty five years later a similar scene played out in my own house when I told my parents I was bringing a Tory home – a boyfriend, for their inspection - except that they would have been happy to feed him anything, up to and including poison.

My mother was an NHS doctor and my father worked in the theatre. Their naturally left-leaning tendencies had been aggravated by Thatcher’s – um, let’s call them deleterious - effects on those two fields and weren’t much improved by their experiences putting two daughters through state school, as our milk, playing fields, books and local education authorities disappeared.


Lucy's left-wing parents were deeply dicombobulated by her Tory boyfriend Credit: Geoffrey Swaine-REX Shutterstock




I didn’t even meet a Tory until I went to university and now here I was bringing one home. I would go on to get engaged, marry and breed with him. My parents would still like to poison him.

In this, it turns out, they are not alone. A new study just out from YouGov shows that the proportion of parents who would be deeply discombobulated by their son or daughter bringing home a partner of a different political persuasion from them has almost doubled in the last eight years.

Among Labour-supporting parents 28 per cent would be “unhappy” and 10% “very upset” by such an occurrence, and nearly one in five Conservative supporters would be upset if their child married a Labour supporter.

You can understand the impulse. Parents (and I speak as one myself now) want their children to be safe and happy and both those things are felt to be most likely found in what you already know. It’s also an impulse that plays into a wider current mood where everything is becoming more tribal. Politics, obviously, has the increasingly spare, ruthless, Conservatism of Cameron and Osborne on the one hand and the (potentially) Stalinist purgative of Corbyn on the other.


 

Political party rosettes.






This mirrors the increased extremism of the Republican and Democratic parties in the US. The social divide between reds and blues over there is almost complete and there is real shock occasioned and stigma attached to any reaching across it – romantically or simply in terms of friendship.

Everywhere there is an increasing drive towards homogeneity, towards only mixing with your own kind. On Facebook we get in touch with old friends, friends of those friends, other people whose interests provably dovetail with ours before they even appear on our feeds.

On Twitter we self-select and then go to furious war with anyone or anything that appears in our timelines with which we disagree.

Life becomes an echo chamber in which we all squat like smug, fat toads until we have to bestir ourselves to fight another battle against incomers, with their nasty new thoughts and their horrible ways. Once they are banished completely we can fall gently into complacent lethargy and never move again.


Arnold Schwarzenegger and his now ex-wife Maria Shriver - Shriver was a Democrat while Schwarzenegger was a Republican. Credit: John Taylor




This is bad in life and worse in marriage. I am still not sure, a decade on since meeting him, whether my husband’s Toryism makes him mad or bad, but it does make him interesting to know. Yes, there are times when I would prefer a more peaceful, harmonious life.

I would like, for example, to be helped with the recycling without having to listen to a diatribe about environmentalism (or “a blend of anti-human, self-praising crypto-paganism that’s gone too far”) or to watch Newsnight without explosions of rage about bias and the “bloated, Byzantine, bureaucratic nightmare that is the BBC” or have our friends round for dinner without at least half of them being served slaughtered sacred cow as the main course.

I would like to be able to give money to people who beg on the streets without my husband rolling his eyes. That one I would like very much.

But it does banish boredom, which is surely one of marriage’s greatest enemies.


 

Different political persuasions in marriage is better than boredom.


Another thing parents should bear in mind when staring down the barrel of a politically-incompatible potential in-law is that he or she might not be as bad as you think. It may just be your left/right bigotry talking. In no other area of life do we cleave as strongly as we do to party political prejudices.

I was raised to believe that Tories ate boiled babies for lunch and kebabbed kittens for fun. Down on the ground though, they are, like the left, a mixed bunch.

Yes, some are, as I was taught, uncaring people who envisage the world as an immutable entity comprising the powerful and the people they tread underfoot, believing they are among the former, especially if they stick close to their friends from school.

But others are drawn to the idea of freedom – freedom to do things, freedom not to do things, freedom to change things, freedom to keep things the same. My husband genuinely believes in the philosophy of helping people to help themselves.

I think this ignores the people who need extra help, but he sees it simply as another way of phrasing the “give a man a fishing rod” principle. And on we go, slightly less bored, slightly more open-minded perhaps than if we agreed.


 

Both the left and right are far from perfect.


I was raised to believe that the left was perfect. Always protecting the underdog and promoting the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, especially via fair and sufficient taxation. Publicly-funded fishing rods for all!

In real life, of course, things are more complicated. No-one ever told me, for example, that there is nothing more rigid than the liberal orthodoxy and that sometimes supporting Labour would feel more like attending a religious revivalist meeting than anything else, or that the average liberal reacts to any kind of disagreement as if it were a mortal sin.

Nevertheless, despite these growing disappointments, I will forever remain committed to such splendid ideas as an unprivatised health service, taxing companies according to their profits and to the belief that there are some people who can’t haul themselves up by their own bootstraps and shouldn’t be expected to.

Each side, it turns out, takes all sorts. The left talks a lot of rubbish and so does the right. From the bits that aren’t rubbish, we are all free to pick and choose and, except for the few committed and/or craven ideologues amongst us, we will all probably end up with stuff from each side.

Whisper it, we are probably all a lot closer than we think. Now, if you will excuse me I have a baby to boil and some kittens to skewer in preparation for Valentine’s Day. I’m sure he will be taking the anti-human, self-praising, crypto-pagan bins out for me in return. Compromise, people – it’s everything.

Want To Reduce Abortions? Don't Stigmatise Sex

 

The religious conservatives are responsible for high abortion rates; they are responsible for the injury and death of women.

GEORGE MONBIOT 

Here is the fact that everyone debating abortion should know. There is no association between its legality and its incidence. In other words, banning abortion does not stop the practice; it merely makes it more dangerous.

The abortion debate is presented as a conflict between the rights of embryos and the rights of women. Enhance one, both sides sometimes appear to agree, and you suppress the other. But once you grasp the fact that legalising women's reproductive rights does not raise the incidence of induced abortions, only one issue remains to be debated. Should they be legal and safe or illegal and dangerous? Hmmm, tough question.

There might be no causal relationship between reproductive choice and the incidence of abortion, but there is a strong correlation: an inverse one. As the Lancet's most recent survey of global rates and trends notes, "The abortion rate was lower … where more women live under liberal abortion laws."

Why? Because laws restricting abortion tend to be most prevalent in places where contraception and comprehensive sex education are hard to obtain, and in which sex and childbirth outside marriage are anathematised. Young people have sex, whatever their elders say; they always have and always will. Those with the least information and the least access to birth control are the most likely to suffer unintended pregnancies. And what greater incentive could there be for terminating a pregnancy than a culture in which reproduction out of wedlock is a mortal sin?

How many more centuries of misery, mutilation and mortality are required before we understand that women — young or middle aged, within marriage or without — who do not want a child may go to almost any lengths to terminate an unwanted pregnancy? How much more evidence do we need that, in the absence of legal, safe procedures, such sophisticated surgical instruments as wire coathangers, knitting needles, bleach and turpentine will be deployed instead? How many more poisonings, punctured guts and burst wombs are required before we recognise that prohibition and moral suasion will not trounce women's need to own their lives?

The most recent meta-analysis of global trends, published in 2012, discovered that the abortion rate, after a sharp decline between 1995 and 2003, scarcely changed over the following five years. But the proportion that were unsafe (which, broadly speaking, means illegal), rose from 44% to 49%.

Most of this change was due to a sharp rise in unsafe abortions in West Asia (which includes the Middle East), where Islamic conservatism is resurgent. In the regions in which Christian doctrine exerts the strongest influence over legislation — west and middle Africa and central and south America — there was no rise. But that's only because the proportion of abortions that were illegal and unsafe already stood at 100%.

As for the overall induced abortion rate, the figures tell an interesting story. Western Europe has the world's lowest termination rate: 12 per year for every 1000 women of reproductive age. The more godly North America aborts 19 embryos for every 1000 women. In South America, where (when the figures were collected) the practice was banned everywhere, the rate was 32. In eastern Africa, where ferocious laws and powerful religious injunctions should — according to conservative theory — have stamped out the practice long ago, it was 38.

The weird outlier is eastern Europe, which has the world's highest abortion rate: 43 per 1000. Under communism, abortion was the only available form of medical birth control. The rate has fallen from 90 since 1995, as contraception has become easier to obtain, but there's still a long way to go.

Facts, who needs 'em? Across the red states of the US, legislators have been merrily passing laws that make abortion clinics impossible to run, while denying children effective sex education. In Texas, thanks to restrictive new statutes, over half the clinics have closed since 2013. But women are still obliged to visit three times before receiving treatment: in some cases this means travelling 1000 miles or more. Unsurprisingly, 7% of those seeking medical help have already attempted their own solutions.

The only reason why this has not caused an epidemic of abdominal trauma is the widespread availability, through unlicensed sales, of abortion drugs such as misoprostol and mifepristone. They're unsafe when used without professional advice, but not as unsafe as coathangers and household chemicals.

In June, the US Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the latest Texan assault on legal terminations, the statute known as HB2. If the state of Texas wins, this means, in effect,the end of Roe v Wade, the decision that deemed abortion a fundamental right in the United States.

In Northern Ireland the new first minister, Arlene Foster, who took office on Monday, has vowed to ensure that the 1967 abortion act, which covers the rest of the United Kingdom, will not apply to her country. Women there will continue to buy pills (and run the risk of confiscation as the police rifle their post) or travel to England, at some expense and trauma. Never mind the finding of a High Court judge: "there is no evidence before this court that the law in Northern Ireland has resulted in any reduction in the number of abortions". It just warms the heart to see Protestant and Catholic fundamentalists setting aside their differences to ensure that women's bodies remain the property of the state.

Like them, I see human life as precious. Like them, I want to see a reduction in abortions. So I urge states to do the opposite of what they prescribe. If you want fewer induced abortions, you should support education that encourages children to talk about sex without embarrassment or secrecy; contraception that's freely available to everyone; an end to the stigma surrounding sex and birth before marriage.

The religious conservatives who oppose these measures have blood on their hands. They are responsible for high abortion rates; they are responsible for the injury and death of women. And they have the flaming cheek to talk about the sanctity of life.

Tom Jones' long and messy marriage shows us what true love looks like

Grace Dent in The Independent

One of the binds of having an extraordinarily long marriage, like Tom and Linda Jones’s 58-year partnership, must be questions about how it has survived – and then disgruntlement over the answer. Because the answer we all want about marital longevity is a heart-fluttering, lightly existential comment on the benefits of zen-like tolerance, weekly date nights and unquellable, life-long lust. Not, as Tom Jones gave in an interview published this weekend, a response which instead mentions depression, infidelity and a point back in the 1970s where his wife punched him several times in the face over one of his dalliances.

“She’s lost her spark,” Tom said of Linda – although, importantly, the resounding themes about his “solid” partnership were of love, respect, dependency and gratitude for the life they’ve weathered together. “She is an unbelievable woman,” he said. “She’s the most important thing in my life. All the rest is just fun and games.”

I’m sure Tom will be criticised for being candid about Linda, 75, although mainly by single people who “haven’t time for a relationship” and smug marrieds who’ve been together seven minutes. But I very much enjoyed this wholly unvarnished look at the long slog of staying legally tied for nearly six decades to someone you first met when you were both 12.

The fact is that the vast majority of weddings which we maxed out credit cards to attend this summer will implode within the next five or 10 years, in a nappy-scented fug of mutual disappointment, shagged tennis instructors and costly solicitors letters. This rot sets in even if you did have a sublime Puglian villa-wedding with an Instagram hashtag. It happens despite your joint solemn adherence to visiting Bella Pasta every Tuesday night in order to discuss “non mummy and daddy things” and “keep the magic alive”.

I’ve long suspected that any couple’s love which survives over 30 years relies heavily on selective deafness and multiple televisions. The deafness is handy for avoiding hearing the other one tell a story that you’ve not only heard 66 times already, but which you also know isn’t completely true. Televisions in different rooms are vital when one of you loves Homes Under the Hammer and the other loves Columbo re-runs. Also handy is a dog which needs frequent walking – often via the pub – and the option of a spare bedroom for those nights when your beloved is snoring like an asthmatic warthog inhaling tapioca.

None of these things is remotely romantic, especially the most stringent requirement of a long marriage: mutual pig-headed stubbornness.

Tom and Linda Jones could have easily divorced at any point over the past six decades. By easily, I mean that with excruciating emotional pain and a lot of tedious paperwork they could have gone their separate ways upon earth. Tom could have swallowed an enormous divorce payment and had a lot of other weddings with skinny things with pert knockers who, inevitably, would become as familiar as Linda themselves and need upgrading. Linda could have banked the money and remarried a man who didn’t perform pelvis-grinding pop songs in Las Vegas to a sea of screaming knicker-throwers.

Being married to a showbiz god when you’re happier in the house reading paperbacks must be virtually impossible. Staying married to a civilian who doesn’t gasp when your starry self enters the room must take enormous willpower. But instead, Tom and Linda seem to accept – as many normal everyday couples do, too – that regardless of how imperfect home life is, it holds a damn sight more substance than the new or the unknown.

Many have chosen this path, like Tom and Linda, and are seeing it out to the end. Quibbles about her growing reclusiveness, smoking or the stuff he got up to in 1976 are nothing more than window-dressing. Regardless of it all, wherever Linda is, Tom classes it as home. That, I cannot help but think, is a definition of real love – and it’s one that’s rarely paid tribute to in Hallmark Cards.

There is no “Jesus Christ, We Really Are Stuck With Each Other” Day to rival the hollow sentiment of St Valentine’s. Suggested gifts for this new “special day” would be elasticated-waist lounge-pants, anti-dandruff shampoo and lint rollers to remove pet-hair. A tin of anti-freeze for cold grumpy school-run mornings and a Ped Egg so your loved one can grate those hard bits off their toes.

These are the nuts and bolts of real love. Older people don’t mention this much at weddings because the bride and groom would run a mile.

I liked the part of Tom Jones’s interview when he said he loved speaking to Linda on the phone, wherever he is in the world, as they still have the same old giggle they always did. The idea of a person lying about on a hotel bed in London, chatting and laughing with their spouse in Los Angeles, still solid after 56 years, is rather special.

“When you’re face-to-face with somebody, you realise that time has gone on, but when you’re on the phone, we’re both young again. We haven’t aged on the phone,” he explained. “You’re not looking at one another, I’m looking at an old picture I carry around with me and leave by the bed. She says, ‘I don’t look like that any more’. I say, ‘I know you don’t, it brings back wonderful memories’.”

Rival women have come and gone. I’m fairly sure many of them thought that, within time, boring old Linda with her fags and her social anxiety would be “let go”. It’s exciting being a mistress, for a couple of weeks, until it’s just boring and painful. Women like Linda always laugh last and laugh longest.

Want to be happy? Be grateful

David Steindl-Rast





The person you really need to marry:

Tracy Mcmillan


How to know the purpose of your life in five minutes

Adam Leipzig

Why happy couples cheat?

Why happy couples cheat? Esther Perel

Why we love, why we cheat? Helen Fisher

What happens when an Ashley Madison-shaped bomb goes off in your marriage?

Helen Croydon in The Telegraph

As Loraine, 43, put her three-year-old daughter to bed in their home in Windsor she received a text from her husband. Instead of his usual “almost home” cheery tone, what she opened ripped her world apart. It was an explicit message clearly intended for someone else – another woman. “It pains me to recall the words but suffice to say it was obvious they had either had sex, or were about to.” She says. “I went into shock. I felt sick. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t think straight. I had so many questions for him.”

She confronted him and he claimed it was harmless flirtation with someone he’d met on an evening out with friends. But weeks later when Loraine logged on to the family computer, she found a page open at an email account under an alias name. The inbox was full of messages from women and notifications from a dating site which, like Ashley Madison, appeared to be aimed at married people seeking affairs.

“What followed was the worst few weeks of my life,” says Lorraine. “It sucked every ounce of self-confidence out of me. I started to blame and question myself. I wondered if I’d been giving too much attention to my daughter and neglected him. He admitted he had a problem, akin to an addiction. I did my best to understand it. I wanted things to be right. I wanted to whitewash it, press reset. I even stepped up efforts in our relationship – that’s how much I wanted it to work. I was super strong and thought ‘we’ll get through this – some good will come from it’. But inside I was devastated.”

Lorraine’s earth shattering discovery happened three years ago and a year later brought about the end of her marriage.

More than a million Britons fear their work and home lives could be wrecked after their details were leaked online by hackers who published the entire database of the Ashley Madison adultery website

How many couples around the world face similar ordeals this week as they deal with the fallout from the Ashley Madison hacking scandal? An anonymous group calling itself The Impact Team went through with its threat to publish personal details of its 37 million worldwide subscribers. It first dumped the data on the dark web, but it didn’t take long for the information to drip-feed on to the mainstream internet. Several sites sprung up allowing worried spouses to check whether their other halves were straying by entering their email address. One internet user who claimed to have created a searchable database reportedly saw their website crash within minutes of going live.

More than 100 UK government email addresses was among those leaked, as well as more than 20 BBC ones, but it was unclear how many were genuine users of the site. Michelle Thomson, one of the SNP’s newly-elected Westminster MPs, was along those who said someone had stolen her email address and used it without her knowledge.

Within days, relationship counseling service Relate was receiving calls from people who had discovered partners’ details among the data and had their infidelity confirmed to them. Family law firms also report they have been contacted by suspicious spouses since the leak.

Many have taken to the internet forum SurvivingInfidelity.com to express their shock and seek advice. It makes for moving reading: “I had been hoping against hope that my husband would not show up on the list but it seems that he is….This nightmare never seems to end,” says one. Others share tips on how to access the data: “I’d be HAPPY to pay someone to mine the data, package it up and send it to me. Surely this service will be offered shortly, right?”

The group behind the attack apparently have a gripe not only with the morals of a website offering an illicit playroom to married people, but with Ashley Madison’s practice of charging its subscribers to delete information. “Too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion. Too bad for ALM (the company behind Ashley Madison), you promised secrecy but didn’t deliver,” the hackers wrote last month.

Founder of the site, Noel Biderman, said: 'The reason we’ve been so successful is because monogamy is counter to our DNA'

But public exposure could prove an irresponsible means of justice. Susan Quilliam, a relationship psychologist and author of The New Joy of Sex, says discovering a partner’s infidelity can cause more devastation to the innocent party than the guilty one. “When you lose a relationship and you weren’t expecting to lose it, there is betrayal, shock, horror, bereavement, denial, depression. It impacts on family, friends, relatives. In a way it’s worse than a bereavement. With a bereavement you lose the future with them. When you discover casual infidelity you lose the past too.”

And what of the danger to those whose details have been leaked in punitive regimes? Data monitoring group CybelAngel says there are 1,200 email addresses with a Saudi Arabian suffix, where adultery is punishable by death. Also included are names on Ashley Madison’s gay encounters site, many from countries where homosexuality is illegal. Blackmailers have reportedly been trawling through the database in an attempt to extort users.

The Canadian company behind Ashley Madison, Avid Life Media, has long defended its business principle, claiming humans have cheated for centuries and they are merely enabling people to meet their sexual needs free from emotional complications. The founder of the site, Noel Biderman, told me in an interview in April this year: “The reason we’ve been so successful is because monogamy is counter to our DNA…What we’ve done is created a platform where likeminded individuals can be more honest and open about their intentions than they could be on [other sites].”

There may well be plenty of anthropological arguments to support the “monogamy is unnatural” thesis, but there are plenty more in favour of a little self-control.

As Quilliam points out, too much of a good thing can lead to problems: “Men and women have always had urges for short-term sexual encounters but in previous years we didn’t have the opportunity. Now it’s available. It’s online. Because it’s so easy there is a danger of getting addicted to the high. There is a dopamine rush with every message and every encounter. We try to curb smoking by making it not readily available, banning it indoors etc. Perhaps we should be thinking about what we can access online.”

When Lorraine discovered her husband’s secret dating life, she created a fake profile to try and understand why her husband would want to betray her. “The only way to forgive was to try to understand it,” she explains. What she discovered angered her: “If you don’t log on for a while you get reminders, or incentives like a month’s free membership. They even give tips on how not to get caught. On bank statements the name of the transaction is disguised – they’ve got it all sorted. It’s actively encouraging deceit. Obviously if someone wants to cheat they will cheat, but these sites accelerate a behaviour pattern. It’s like giving a drugs to drug addicts and then putting them all together to encourage each other.”

'Despite the morally questionable tagline, 'Life is short, have an affair,' Ashley Madison’s popularity is undeniable'

Despite the morally questionable tagline, “Life is short, have an affair,” Ashley Madison’s popularity is undeniable. It claims thirty-seven million members in 50 countries worldwide, including 1.2 million in UK and reports a growth in membership of 20% since March this year (although a growing number of supposed members whose details have been leaked online insist they had never even heard of it). And it is just one of a growing number of so-called cheating dating sites.

Nor is it just men who may be feeling nervous this week. Ashley Madison recently told the Telegraph it has more female members than men, although it refuses to disclose how many are active. A source close to the FBI investigation into the leak has, morever, told this newspaper that many of the female profiles on the site appear to have been created by a relatively small number of individuals. Men pay to send and receive messages. Women do not, and it has been claimed that fake profiles are created to reel in husbands.

There are plenty who support the actions of the hackers. Denise Knowles a counselor at Relate, says: “When something like this comes into the public arena people take time and take stock to look at their relationship. When a secret like this is discovered, it can open up the possibility of talking about things and it can give the opportunity for good to come out of it.”

But for Lorraine, no amount of talking could fix her relationship. Discovery of her husband’s sordid secret spelled the end. “I absolutely did not want to divorce him but it was always the elephant in the room,” she says. “I’m still heartbroken and I can’t explain to my daughter why we separated. If I hadn’t found what I did, we’d have made it.”

What may have been intended by the hackers as a self-righteous pop at philanderers around the world is fast escalating into something with far graver consequences. The data even included extracts from profiles, quoting cringeworthy descriptions of sexual fantasies. It was perhaps an attempt at ridicule, expected to be greeted by nothing more than sniggers. The reality is that the biggest cost is not to the adulterers being exposed, but the families affected.