Cuckolds' corner
Sir: In her article on divorce (`Boys will be boys, 29 April) Judi Bevan neglected one major reason why men hang on in unhappy marriages — they have too much to lose by leaving. As matters stand, a father whose marriage breaks down is not only divorced, he is almost always evicted from his home and parted from his children as well. The consequences of this dislocation involve hugely increased likelihood of depression, a lowering of life-expectancy and a significant rise in suicide rates among male divorcees.
A discontented wife is faced with a very different calculus. As long as she is married, she finds herself skivvying, cooking and laun- dering for a man whom she no longer loves, or by whom she is being betrayed. With the end of the marriage, there will undoubtedly be pain and she may suffer a financial loss, but the rest of her physical and emotional domain remains intact. Within a few months, she may well be feeling a new sense of inde- pendence and freedom. Even her life- expectancy improves.
If the man has been unfaithful, there is a certain natural justice to this situation. What seems a touch unfair, however, is that the same consequences apply when the wife is the adulterer. Judi Bevan refers to a man who stood passively by while his wife con- ducted an eight-year affair. But what else was he to do? It is bad enough to be cuck- olded. To expect him willingly to be kicked out of his home, deprived of his children, and suffer serious risk to his physical and mental health is surely going a bit too far.
David Thomas
Daggle Cottage, Church Road, Aldingbourne, West Sussex
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