Suzanne Harrington: Monogamy, like Marmite, is not for everyone - right, Dominic West?

“I mean, I think women should be more indulgent of affairs. I really do. It’s daft to kick someone out over a fling. Isn’t it? Everyone should turn a blind eye to men’s behaviour between the ages of 40 and 50. Let it blow over.” This is actor Dominic West, 51 last week, in a 2016 interview with the London Evening Standard. Or in that particular edition, the Evening Double Standard.

Well Dominic, I don’t know. Should women “turn a blind eye”? Be more “indulgent”? Maybe make you a sandwich when you arrive back to the family home, before settling down to watch season whatever of The Affair together?

Why then that toe-curling Tory-politician-caught-shagging shot of Mr and Mrs West doing that staged kiss at the garden gate, Mr West with a Fleabag-sized smirk to camera, radiating ‘got away with it’? Why the excruciating handwritten note, insisting their marriage is just fine, after tabloids splashed photos of Mr W smooching someone who was definitely not Mrs W? Why do only women – specifically, wives - march bravely to the garden gate, smiling those dead eyed smiles? I can’t think of a single man who has allowed himself to be humiliated like this. Can you?

It's such a jaded trope. The wronged wife – everyone saying how hot she is, as though her hotness should preclude her from deceit (what if she were not hot? What then?) – being brave in front of the cameras. Speculation about the moral code of the third party, as though third parties are the gatekeepers of the behaviour of men like Mr West. Yawn. Why are we still here?

Monogamy, like Marmite, is not for everyone. We have been conditioned to believe that it’s the only way to conduct ourselves, until Millennials decided that the deceit involved in pretending to be monogamous when you’re not is frankly hideous, and have included the non-exclusive / polyamorous option in their relationship menu.

And while non-exclusivity / polyamory sounds like more effort than ploughing a frozen field with a three-legged-donkey, at least it’s honest. Cards on the table. Everyone knows where they are at, as it were. Did Mrs West know where her husband was at? If so, we should all mind our own business. But that photo op at the garden gate somehow undermines Mr W’s breezy suggestion that flings are no biggie chez West. Or maybe it was wishful thinking. Frankly, who cares. Apart from their kids, maybe? Because that’s what separates men like Dominic West from man-bunned Millennials and their cheery non-monogamy – four kids with the same woman. Your actual family. That’s something of a commitment, right?

What adult people do consensually with other adult people is of no concern to anyone except those involved – providing nobody is lying to anyone. Do what you do, just don’t lie. Deceit is disgusting. Properly, viscerally disgusting; to deceive someone is to dishonour their reality. It is infantilising, just like those happily-ever-after staged photos. Ugh. Just ugh.