Woman's Hour - Fostering, Mary Loudon, Infidelity

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

It's Foster Care Fortnight. It's a yearly campaign designed to raise the profile of fostering and show how it can transform lives. It's also the time when there's a big push for new foster carers. According to the Fostering Network, over 8,000 new foster families are needed to meet demand.Mary Loudon, known for her non-fiction books, has written a first novel called My House is Falling Down. The story centres on a love triangle. Lucy, in her forties, married to Mark with two children falls passionately in love with a man in his sixties. Adamant that she will not deceive her husband, Lucy instead asks his advice. Mark’s reaction is startlingly unorthodox, leaving Lucy to steer an impossible course between duty and desire, adventure and security. The novel explores what infidelity means when no one lies about it.We explore the subject of infidelity from a historical, cultural and psychological perspective. How have our views changed over the centuries? Are women still judged more harshly than men when they have an affair? How to negotiate this tricky terrain?

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 24th of May. Now it was a rather busy morning. Theresa May resigned as Conservative Party leader and of course we interrupted the programme to hear her statement outside Downing Street during our first discussion, which was about fostering. After we'd heard that the Prime Minister will step down on the 7th of June, we carried on with the programme as normal. And we talked about infidelity. Mary Loudon joined us to discuss her first novel, My House is Falling Down, which charts the progress of a wife and

mother as she falls in love with another man. We were then joined by an historian and a sex therapist. What does infidelity mean in the 21st century? How was it seen in the past? And can a family survive if one partner decides to stray? And then, of course, the wonderful Judith Carr, whose death was announced yesterday. We had just a little of a conversation we had in 2002 when she had just laid Mog the cat to rest. So this is the last week of Foster Care Fortnight, an annual campaign run by the Fostering Network to try and improve the recruitment of foster parents. A child goes into care every 20 minutes in the UK. But how easy is it to find foster families to look after them,

and how well are those parents supported if they decide to take on the job? Well, more than 8,000 new foster families are needed in the next 12 months to meet the demand. Jackie Sanders is the Director of External Relations for the network. Zoe Stanyard is a supervising social worker and Dr Eleanor Ott is a research fellow at Oxford University's Department of Education. She's been a foster carer and she's an adoptive parent. How well supported would she say foster carers are? So I think both the research about fostering and my own experience shows that the support is very variable. So the Fostering Network's own State of the Nation report,

a survey of over 4,000 foster carers, showed that only 58% felt like they had good or excellent support from their fostering service. Personally, we found a lot of great support as foster carers. That was often through peer support as well as through the formal support from our supervising social worker. So we were part of an organisation and still are called New Families Social for LGBT adoptive and foster families.

We reached out to foster carers... And there, Ellie, I'm going to pause you because we're going to join our colleagues at Five Live to hear the latest from Downing Street. And to honour the result of the EU referendum. Back in 2016, we gave the British people a choice. Against all predictions, the British people voted to leave the European Union.

I feel as certain today as I did three years ago that in a democracy, if you give people a choice, you have a duty to implement what they decide. I have done my best to do that. I negotiated the terms of our exit and a new relationship with our closest neighbours that protects jobs, our security and our union. I have done everything I can to convince MPs to back that deal. Sadly, I have not been able to do so.

I tried three times. I believe it was right to persevere, even when the odds against success seemed high. But it is now clear to me that it is in the best interests of the country for a new Prime Minister to lead that effort. So I am today announcing that I will resign as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on Friday 7th June, so that a successor can be chosen. I have agreed with the Party Chairman and with the Chairman of the 1922 Committee that the process for electing a new leader should begin in the following week. I have kept Her Majesty the Queen fully informed of my intentions and I will continue to serve as her Prime

Minister until the process has concluded. It is, and will always remain, a matter of deep regret to me that I have not been able to deliver Brexit. It will be for my successor to seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum. To succeed, he or she will have to find consensus in Parliament where I have not. Such a consensus can only be reached if those on all sides of the debate are willing to compromise. For many years, the great humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved the lives of hundreds of children by arranging their evacuation from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia through the Kindertransport, was my constituent in Maidenhead.

At another time of political controversy, a few years before his death, he took me to one side at a local event and gave me a piece of advice. He said, Never forget that compromise is not a dirty word. Life depends on compromise. He was right. As we strive to find the compromises we need in our politics, whether to deliver Brexit or to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland, we must remember what brought us here. Because the referendum was not just a call to leave the EU, but for profound change in our country. A call to make the United

Kingdom a country that truly works for everyone. I'm proud of the progress we have made over the last three years. We have completed the work that David Cameron and George Osborne started. The deficit is almost eliminated. Our national debt is falling and we are bringing an end to austerity. My focus has been on ensuring that the good jobs of the future will be created in communities

across the whole country, not just in London and the South East, through our modern industrial strategy. We have helped more people than ever enjoy the security of a job. We are building more homes and helping first-time buyers onto the housing ladder, so young people can enjoy the opportunities their parents did. And we are protecting the environment, eliminating plastic waste, tackling climate change and improving air quality. This is what a decent, moderate and patriotic Conservative government on the common ground of British politics can achieve, even as we tackle the biggest peacetime challenge any government has faced.

I know that the Conservative Party can renew itself in the years ahead, that we can deliver Brexit and serve the British people with policies inspired by our values. Security, freedom and opportunity, those values have guided me throughout my career. But the unique privilege of this office is to use this platform to give a voice to the voiceless, to fight the burning injustices that still scar our society. That is why I put proper funding for mental health at the heart of our NHS long-term plan. It's why I'm ending the postcode lottery for survivors of domestic abuse. It is why the race disparity audit and gender pay reporting are shining a light on inequality so it has nowhere to hide.

And it is why I set up the Independent Public Inquiry into the tragedy at Grenfell Tower, to search for the truth so nothing like it can ever happen again, and so the people who lost their lives that night are never forgotten. Because this country is a union, not just a family of four nations, but a union of people, all of us, whatever our background, the colour of our skin or who we love, we stand together. And together we have a great future. Our politics may be under strain, but there is so much that is good about this country.

So much to be proud of. So much to be optimistic about. I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honour of my life to hold. The second female Prime Minister, but certainly not the last. I do so with no ill will, but with enormous and enduring gratitude to have had the opportunity to serve the country I love. The Prime Minister and of course Radio 4 will follow her as the day goes on but for now we return to normal. We're talking about foster care fortnight. I'm joined by Jackie Sanders, a Stanyard, and Dr. Eleanor Ott. And I was talking to Ellie Ott, who was telling me about the kind of support that she found when she became a foster

parent. You said, Ellie, peer support was what was so good. How did that work? So I worked through a variety of different ways. One was an organization across England of foster carers that we could ask questions to online and to attend a summer camp and meet others. Another was local support from other foster carers. We met some different foster carers through a 16-week parenting program and initially I will admit as having a PhD in social intervention I wondered how helpful the parenting program would be but it was very helpful particularly to hear from other foster carers about the challenges they were facing, bounce different ideas off so that practical support

as well as the empathy and kind of non-judgmental environment. Now, Jackie, Ellie referred to the research that you had done, finding that the majority of 4,000 foster carers didn't feel adequately supported. What were the reasons so many gave? Well, it varies quite a lot. But the reason that foster carers need support is because the children who are coming into the care system are sadly often damaged by their experiences before they come into care. So domestic violence, abuse, neglect at home. And so their needs are different from the needs that most of us would find with our own children. And therefore, foster carers need support in the middle of the night, perhaps. They might need expert training to deal with the child's particular needs. They might need other foster carers, as Ellie was talking, to give advice and support. And the standards just vary across the country.

So there wasn't one reason, but overall, foster carers were telling us they just didn't feel they got enough support, training and respect. Now Zoe, as a social worker working with an independent agency what kind of support and training are you able to offer we offer 24-hour support so we have an out-of-hours service in case anybody needs us on a bank holiday or weekend or an evening and we offer various ways to get training from one-on-one training in the foster carers homes to group training altogether or even online training as well and that can be from anything from first aid to managing sexualized behavior de-escalation

techniques and about the impact of abuse and neglect on children and their behaviors as well ellie how much information do you get about children you're going to foster who may have suffered domestic violence who may have been born with fetal alcohol syndrome. There are all kinds of problems that might have to be dealt with by a foster parent. Again, the information you get is very variable. So I've done some research on this matching process and process of sharing information in foster care. And that is variable.

So for us, for example, we had one young person in foster care, and that is variable. So for us, for example, we had one young person who was a 15-year-old asylum seeker who'd arrived the day before, and there was no information about him other than his age and country of origin. For some of our children, the information hasn't aligned with their behavior, so the information's either been more negative, so one young person, we expected them to have a lot of tantrums and they had one.

And or more positive hasn't, you know, then they arrive with you, they live with you and different behaviors emerge. And so you face all these challenges trying to understand what's behind the behaviors when you haven't lived with this young person their whole life and they're still adapting to your family and lifestyle and how to respond appropriately to improve that young person's life and improve your family overall. So Jackie, should foster care be a profession? I mean it clearly demands a high level of skills

which the average parent may not have. Well foster carers already are professionals. They are trained to do the work that they do, the role that they take on. They are given financial support and practical support, but as we're discussing, that just varies too much at the moment. So what we at the Fostering Network think needs to happen is the governments across the UK need to prioritise foster care, they need to invest more, because part of this is financial and they need to support local authorities and other fostering

services to really have a cultural shift to respect foster carers, to include them in all the meetings around the children, to offer them the support. I do need to say some fostering services do this really well. I also feel I need to say this is Foster Care Fortnight, we're trying to get more people to come forward. Many, many foster carers will tell you fostering is really challenging but it's really rewarding too and luckily for us there's lots of people out there who do really value a challenge and will come forward and do a great job. Zoe, working in the independent sector, how do you match carers and children so that you get a suitable match? Well we're always trying to aim for the perfect match but that is sometimes unrealistic you know we're not always given the most up-to-date

information and we might have a child that's presented to us you know it's having severe behavioural problems but that was from six months ago and they've changed since then. Often children have sometimes placed emergencies as well and they might have not been in care previously so we might not local authority might not have much information on them. So sometimes we have to go on the bare minimum and try and find that child a placement. But if we can't find the perfect match, due to having a lack of foster carers or not in the right area,

we use professional judgment and putting clear support plans to be able to boost a good enough option for that child. But it is quite difficult sometimes if we've got a child that maybe doesn't speak English and we haven't got foster carers that speak that language we have to find a kind of good enough option and see if we can put in interpreters and things like that to be able to support the placement as best we can. And Eddie just to sum up what actually appealed to you about fostering and now adopting yeah so we became foster carers because we just love children and we thought we could give back and it has been a wonderful wonderful experience

to be able to see a child transform under your care to have all those moments of laughter we you know a lot of these children they get focused on their negative aspects the behaviors the trauma that they've come from but they're children so even if a teenage boy you know, a lot of these children, they get focused on their negative aspects, the behaviors, the trauma that they've come from. But they're children. So even if a teenage boy, you know, you're laughing, you're playing games or our daughter is just wonderful and amazing. So it's that experience, that love, that growing with the children that is is wonderful. Well, Dr. Ellie Ott, Zoeard and jackie sanders thank you all very much indeed and if you're a foster carer or an adoptive parent what type of support do you

receive or did you have when you took on the children who are no longer living with their first family do let us know we'd love to hear from you and thanks to all three of you. Now still to come in today's programme, Mary Loudon's first novel, My House is Falling Down, is a story of adultery. I'll talk to Mary about her characters and then we'll discuss infidelity. How have our views changed over the centuries and are men and women judged equally harshly if they stray. Now, I'm sure you've heard of the death of the author Judith Carr at the age of 95 after a short illness. She's rightly made front-page news as the writer and illustrator of so many favourite children's books.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Mog the Cat, and, of course, the story she wrote based on her own childhood when Hitler stole Pink Rabbit. They've been read by millions of youngsters and their parents and are still incredibly popular. Pink Rabbit is a set text in German schools. Well, she and her Jewish family escaped Germany and came to London in 1936. She was 13. She was often a guest on Woman's Hour and I met her in 2002 when she was only 79.

She'd just laid Mogg to rest. We talked about her early days in this country. Well, this was extraordinary. I mean, it was difficult. It was made more difficult by the fact that, for instance, I couldn't get a job in the war office or the foreign office, even though I was trilingual and they were crying out for people like me because I wasn't British-born. My brother was interned, but then managed by hook or by crook to get into the Air Force, which was ridiculous as a German. But we had this wonderful definition. We were known as friendly enemy aliens.

This was an official designation of people like us. And the extraordinary thing was how good people were to us. I mean, I lived right through the Blitz with my parents. People were being killed every night. There were German bombs. And even though by then I spoke perfect English, my parents didn't and were quite clearly Germans. All through that time, nobody, nobody ever said anything nasty to us.

I mean, these are good people. How did you discover the talent for drawing and the fact that you were driven to do it? And the fact? That you were driven to do it. Oh, well, I always did it. I always drew as a child. I just did.

I think that's what children do. And then I managed to get to art school after the war because, again, some very... Again, I wasn't entitled to a scholarship and we had no money. I couldn't have gone without one. And some kind person at the LCC, which it was then called, London Council Council, somehow bent the rules and said, oh, well, I'm sure this will do. And you can have a scholarship.

And you can hear more about Judith in Last Word at 4 o'clock on Radio 4. Now, Mary Loudon is known for her non-fiction. She's written about Middle England, the clergy and nuns, and she's now completed her first novel. It's called My House is Falling Down. Lucy is a photographer in her 40s. Her husband Mark is a painter and they have twin daughters. Angus is a concert pianist in his 60s with whom Lucy falls madly in love.

Looking back, I realise that it simply doesn't matter the when and where it all began. At a party, over tea in a cafe in Angus's unfamiliar watery home it's irrelevant I fell in love so inordinately that time and place mean nothing like carbon dating deciphering love's earliest imprint is an imprecise business

when and where provide history and geography but only why conveys anything worthwhile. Only why is significant, and only why matters. Like why, when I knew so little of him still, I would allow a man who is not my husband to declare himself to me. Except that he recognised me for what I am. A woman at odds with herself. I've thought about it often, how easy it was to walk out of the door empty-handed.

Much later, redefined by the trauma of enchantment, I had a more punishing move to make. Mary, why did you choose to write about infidelity? I wanted more than I wanted to write about infidelity. I wanted to write about telling the truth. I wanted to write about something that happens to lots of us, lots of people over a lifetime, which is that one meets attractive people all of one's life. And if one is already in a committed partnership with someone else. That can produce difficulties. And we're in a culture in which it is largely the done thing to cheat rather than to be upfront.

And I wanted to write a book in which you remove the deceit because then if you have a love triangle where nobody's actually lying to anybody, you are dealing with something that is completely different morally, psychologically, emotionally. And that's what I wanted to do. So I have a woman who asks her husband what to do when she meets someone else she falls in love with. But Mark's response is, to me, bizarre. He does at one point say, well, spare him the details, but then of course he does quite frequently ask for details. But he takes it calmly.

How surprising is that? Well, it's surprising until you complete the book and realise why perhaps Mark has done that. And I don't want to produce a great spoiler, but there are very good reasons why Mark reacts the way he does but I would want to say that it was very important to me to write about men who are not behaving in the way that we expect them to men who don't behave aggressively who don't say you know he's not worth it I'm going to change the locks. You know, I didn't want that kind of thing.

I wanted to write about men who wait, men who are patient, men who are hurting, men who don't know what to do, men who in the moment maybe say, fine, go do what you need to do. Because these things happen, but they're not talked about. And until we can broaden our conversation about love affairs and about women and men and the fact that women also transgress and fall in love and the fact that some men, you know, wait in the background

the way women culturally and historically are supposed to have done. Until we talk more openly about that, we're not really going to get as far as we need to. Lucy does seem to be angry to me at his apparent lack of reaction or furious jealousy. Well I think she's very torn isn't she? She sort of wants him to defend defend you know his right to his conjugal rights so she wants him to say no of course you can't go off with this other guy because you're mine and And on the other hand, his allowing her to do so gives her free reign and she can justify to herself the fact that she's able to engage in this love affair without self-censure, if you like.

But in fact, she does engage in self-censure. She's very punishing when it comes to herself. She's a very prickly woman. She's in midlife. She's having punishing when it comes to herself. She's a very prickly woman. She's in midlife. She's having a crisis. She's feeling insecure, lost, not quite sure about her work, not quite sure about her parenting. And feeling, I think, rather neglected by her husband.

I think that too, for sure. He's always very busy. He's always very busy and he's always got his head down and he doesn't really look from left to right that too. He's always very busy. He's always very busy. And he's always got his head down. And he's, he doesn't really look from left to right. And he comes in and enjoys the kids when it suits him. But she's there at the coalface as it as it were. And I think this is the story of many people. And so it was important to me to write it in that way. But I wanted to write about real people. So then none, none of the characters, the three main characters are always likable. None of them is always sympathetic. None of them

is always wonderful. And I think that's really important. And certainly the responses so far, you know, readers, they read it very quickly in one sitting. It's a short book. And lots of people say, gosh, I read it in one sitting, which is wonderful for me. But their sympathies vary and their sympathies shift. And that's really what I wanted, because I think that's the same for us in life, isn't it? If we have friends who are going through these things, it's complicated. It's never simple. Lucy does say that the first time she sees Angus the pianist this is a man I could love. To what extent do you actually believe in love at first sight? Well I think the word could is very important there. I think she recognizes that love at first sight is perhaps a something

that isn't real in terms of deep love, but that attraction, that a chemical attraction to someone is, and that here is someone she could love, here is someone who is pressing all the right buttons. I mean, we are biological beings, and we are chemistry sets, and there are all sorts of good reasons why we, neurologically, in all sorts of other ways ways are attracted to people. And I think Lucy's got her eyes open about this. And I think she's aware too of the selfishness of falling in love.

I mean, she says to Angus at one point when he's being very sort of soppy and romantic with her, she says, I think these things are often more about oneself than the other person. She does say that she finds loving them both inconvenient and at times shattering. And I found myself thinking, oh, just have your cake and eat it, love.

Did you ever think that? That she was having her cake and eating it? That why couldn't she just say, yeah, I'm enjoying this, this is fun? Because I think that actually the reality is that while there are bits that are fun when you're lost in them, there are so many more bits where you feel torn, where you cannot be in two places at once, where if you're with your lover whom you deeply love, you can't be with your children. When you're with your children and your family, you can't be with your lover.

And I think she feels that pull and that tear. And I think she wishes she could lead she feels that pull and that tear. And I think she wishes she could lead sort of two lives, two parallel lives. And I think she's also probably motivated by something that certainly motivates me in my life, which is just a real fear of and irritation at death, you know, we're going to die. And she wants to pack in as much as she can. And I think this motivates people, too, in midlife. And I think that's why often these very big things happen. Well, Mary, let's pause for the moment.

It does seem to me still that the most curious thing about Mary's take on adultery is that Lucy makes no effort to hide what she's up to. One would assume that the secrecy of an affair is what would make it rather dangerous and exciting. But why do people have affairs? How has marital infidelity been seen in earlier centuries? How is it viewed now in the 21st century? Is an unfaithful woman more likely to be judged harshly than a man? And is it possible to return to a marriage without it being irreparably damaged? Well, Mary Loudon stays with us and we're joined by the sex and relationships therapist, Louise Mazzanti, and Zoe Strimple, who's a writer and historian of gender and relationships

in modern Britain. Louise, why do people have affairs? I think people have affairs because there's parts of themselves that they are missing. There's something that's not being expressed. There's something that they are not experiencing. There's parts of themselves they haven't got to know in their life yet. So I think it's really a curiosity about finding out what's more to life. Who am I? We tend to, when we get into relationship and we have families and we

create a recipe for our life that works for everyone, but that creates a limitation. And also we somehow create rules about how are we allowed to grow? What are we allowed to think? What are we allowed to do? And that means that the repertoire of human experience gets smaller and smaller. And parts of ourselves are just deeply unexpressed. Zoe, from a historical perspective, how is infidelity judged now compared to, say, 100 years ago? Well, I think what's been really interesting is that we are allowed to do a lot more sexually now than we were 100 years ago. But infidelity has taken on, I think, rather more of a kind of valence of negativity.

It's a problem, it's a much bigger, more destructive problem, I think, because what happened was that 100 years ago, it was pretty hard to get out of a marriage. You know, you did get married, but getting out of it until the 1923 Matrimonial Causes Act, when you could say adultery, both women and men could use adultery as an excuse to get out of marriage. It was still it was still very hard until the late 60s. So you kind of, I think, made your peace with whatever was going on. It was a bit of a don't ask, don't tell situation. When divorce law was changed and in the 1970s, divorce tripled, you know, the kind of stress put on marriage and the perfect marriage was really kind of enhanced. And when you have such high expectations for marriage, that it's supposed to be your best friend, it's supposed to be the

apotheosis of your sexuality, something like infidelity becomes a huge blow to the marriage and to the contract with this other person and to yourself and to all these things. So actually, while it's, you know, we're massive sexual liberalization, all kinds of experimental configurations with multiple partners. Infidelity, I think, creates a lot more of a problem now and hurts people. That hasn't decreased at all, which is interesting, given that we have so much more freedom. So that's interesting, Mary,

because Mark seems to me, as I said, a very unusual husband. Why usually does a husband or wife feel deeply threatened by infidelity and do the slamming of the door, get out or whatever? I think because usually, although Mark's clearly not the man for Jenny, that's clear. I think usually because it's accompanied by deceit and that's the difference here in terms of what I've written.

I think it's the deceit that does for people more than the infidelity itself. I think people are more able to understand. I mean, Mark has neglected Lucy, there's no question. She's lonely. You could argue the case for any of the characters in this novel in terms of their behaviour. You could justify or self-justify. Lucy, as the protagonist and the narrator, doesn't want to self-justify. Lucy, as the protagonist and the narrator, doesn't want to self-justify. She wants to examine what's gone wrong. And it's really important to her that she doesn't lie to her husband because she loves him. She respects him too much to lie to him. And she doesn't actually say, I've fallen in love with this man. I'm with him. She said, I could fall in love with him. What should I do? Louise, what actually counts as infidelity? Does it have to be a full-blown sexual encounter?

Or can it be going to a concert together, going for coffee together, sending texts? I think if we were really honest to ourselves, we know what infidelity is. Because we know when we are exchanging emotional and sexual energy with another person. So at one surface level, we could we could say, no, there's nothing going on. But deep inside, we know when something is going on. And I think infidelity is is a matter of honesty and a matter of trust. So if trust is broken, if we can't be honest with each other, then it's infidelity, no matter if we're just having a cup of tea.

I was going to say, I think it's, again, just in light of what you've just said, interesting to go back to the sort of mid-century or early mid-century idea of marriage. And there's a lovely little bit from Woman's Own in 1936, where a piece of advice is given to a wife whose husband is cheating on her. And instead of thinking, instead of the advice being sort of, this is terrible, get rid of him. The advice is, remember, no matter what his present infatuation is, you are married, which means that you have a special bond that exceeds any kind of thing he may have, any passing infatuation. And so there is actually a scale of importance.

And it's not just, you know, that anything, you know, real infidelity is just, it can be anything, a thought or, you know, an affair. It's that infidelity is still small next to marriage. And I think that's actually very interesting, because I don't think now that would be part of the conversation where someone would say, well, you've got the shared memories together. So whether your husband or partner is having a full blown affair or going to the cinema or obsessing about someone, it doesn't matter because you still win. I think that's a lot to do with changing ideas of gender and the sort of move away from the assumption that women ultimately do need to come up with ways of allowing their men to be men.

And now I think there's a much more equal playing field about those expectations. I disagree in part because I think people actually do say exactly that, that infidelity overall is less important than what a couple might have built together, particularly with family life. I'm not saying, you know, the classic thing, people staying together for children, but family life is an extraordinarily bonding thing. And once you are in a couple, whether it's a married couple or a gay couple or a straight couple, it doesn't really matter. If you have children together, you've built something. You have a shared history that is enormous. And it may well trump or sort of reduce the infidelity, if you like. And the other thing, too, is that people focus on infidelity as being sexual.

And as you were saying, Louise, it's often it's the emotional thing that really matters. But there are also there are so many ways in which people in partnerships can let each other down or betray them you know neglect or selfishness or humorlessness or you know selfishness or boorishness there are so many ways in which people can let each other down not just sexually louise some couples opt for the polyamorous relationships i think they're known as how often is that truly agreed between two people that's a very good word truly yes operative one it's a very very tricky tricky difficult area to manage of course it is but i think i i do think that many people are thrown into it because there's a pressure and this is where the cultural vibe is and let's try something new. And deep inside, we feel differently.

So there's a big difference between what our mind is telling us we should be thinking and experiencing and what actually feels really deeply true. Zoe, how prevalent is that kind of relationship? Polyamory. An open one. Well, there's several variations. So there's open, there's monogamish, and there's full-blown, quote, ethical polyamory.

And these things are extremely common now, if my kind of studies of Tinder kind of hold up. So I think, you know, you can, the book, The Ethical Slut, which was first published in the 1990s in the US, and it was fairly niche, is now kind of a bestseller. So something has, and I think it's very interesting, in light of the book we're discussing, this thing of honesty, the idea that you can sort of fulfill yourself through honesty, honesty, full transparency with your partner is the key. And I think that's been a huge change. I think earlier in the 20th century, in the early century, that the kind of transparency that we now expect and hold our partners to account for would have sort of absolutely been horrendous

to people to contemplate then. So I think when you think of a marriage as a sort of transparency exchange, basically, there's a lot more stuff that can go wrong. Whereas when you sort of don't ask, don't tell, which I think was much more in keeping with the emotional mores of the past, I think, again, you limit the potential explosiveness

of something like an affair. But does it take the fun out of it, if you're honest? You know, I'm not speaking from personal experience here, I have to say. I'm merely asking questions. Yeah. There's secrecy somehow. It's so tiresome. Well, I'm sorry.

No, people seem to enjoy it. I wouldn't enjoy it. I'm saying that the honesty, it can be quite sort of luxury and, you know, people sitting around discussing. And it just breeds more. I'm not talking about marriage here i'm talking about ethical people who define themselves as ethical polyamorists in various sort of forms and there's often a very long description of their ethics and their sexual morality and it it all just starts to feel a lot like work and i agree with you jenny i mean where is the fun

where is the subversiveness in that but i i take that marriage might be a bit different i think it's pretty subversive to to um i i think i if you want subversiveness i think it's much more subversive in our culture openly as a woman with with kids to um maintain family life with your partner and perhaps you know find love elsewhere and not hide that i think that's really subversive but i don't I don't think that in itself is going to give you a thrill or a frisson. I think that's a very, very difficult thing to do. I mean, I do believe it's more acceptable in our culture to cheat than it is to be honest. And I find that really troubling. I don't believe that we tell the truth enough in so many ways.

I mean, it was Virginia Woolf who said, if you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people. And certainly as a writer, I think that's really true. How often, though, Louise, can being honest help save a marriage? I mean, in the case that Mary has been writing about, she loves both these men. Lucy does, not me. Lucy does, the character does. And she does go back to her husband. Is it the honesty that saves it? Always, yes. Why? Absolutely, because when we are honest, we connect

with each other. We come from a place of openness. And the whole thing that we're discussing, there's one basic question, which is, why are we doing it? Why are we connecting with other people? What is that need that is not being expressed? When we can be honest in a relationship about what is happening, why is this happening? What is it in me that I have such a need to explore? Why am I not experiencing that in my marriage? And that level of honesty and also from the partner that's been, quote unquote, cheated on. What are they not providing?

How are they not showing up? How are we not growing together? That's what relationship is really about at the deepest level. It's about can we grow together? And when we can grow together, it becomes interesting all the time. We are always renegotiating who we are in relationship to each other. And that keeps the relationship alive. But I think an important coda to that is that when you are in that phase, you can get to another point, which is what's realistic? What is realistic to expect? How much should I expect?

And actually, sometimes what you may have hoped for or expect or want, you know, isn't actually going to be all that possible with that person. But there are many other reasons why you're with them. And you may just say, hey, do you know what? That's OK. I'll either go elsewhere for that sort of that aspect of my life, whatever it is. I'm not just talking about sex at all or not. But I mean, no one person is going to meet all your needs they're just not so given the the state of social media at the moment that we all know about what will ask you

to be a hundred years from now oh you'll tell the future question um i you know i i don't know but what i would what i wouldn't be surprised about is if there was something of a backlash, which there often is. And I think possibly we're reaching peak pressure on relationships where, you know, we, we are, it's so interesting to me to hear this, the way my fellow guests are talking about, um, how it's about self exploration and about, you know, what related growth. And, you know, I, this is a new. This is from the 1970s, basically. And so I think, you know, this has been that pressure to explore and be honest has been

mounting since then. And I'm wondering if when you add in social media and you add in Tinder and you add in the sheer volume of sort of relational exchanges that are going on and the sheer kind of chaos of them, I wonder if in 100 years we're going to be looking at something that's a bit more similar to what we saw 100 years ago. A bit more Victorian-y? Yeah, well, maybe it'll just be don't ask, don't tell,

don't ask too much, just, you know, stiff upper lip. I wonder. Just very briefly, Louise, is it ever worth it? It's always worth it if we can be honest with each other and we can grow together yes mary ever worth it uh i would say the same i think it's always worth um i think it's worth getting

to the core of yourself so you can be the best version of yourself and the most honest version of yourself even if that makes you not necessarily wholly likable all the time. Mary Loudon, Louise Mazzanti and Zoe Strimple, thank you all very much indeed. And of course, we would also like to hear from you on this one. Have you had an affair? Why? And how did you handle it? Mary Loudon, Louise Mazzanti and Zoe Strimple, ending the discussion on infidelity. On this topic, Jacqueline emailed,

just listening to your programme on infidelity. On this topic, Jacqueline emailed, just listening to your programme on infidelity. Now, 70 years old, I've seen with friends and myself that the lying of the unfaithful partner is worse than the actual infidelity. Lying is a deep insult. But Richard was curious about the discussion he emailed. So what you're saying is I shouldn't let my partner have male friends and be alone with them or that I can't have female friends and meet for coffee or a walk because infidelity in the act might be present. That's how we've been since time began, isn't it? Now lots of you got in touch about foster caring. Jane emailed her experience. I've been a foster carer in Glasgow

for around 10 years now and the support I've received has been patchy at best. I so enjoy looking after the children and showing them what it's like to live in a loving caring family but working with the foster care system is an absolute nightmare. Anne emailed, I feel that the real issue is upstream. Too many children are being taken into care, sometimes for spurious reasons, based upon hypothetical rather than actual risk. Address this issue and support more children to remain in their own homes and with their own families,

and then finite resources can be better used to support foster carers to bring safety and stability where it is truly needed. Thank you for all your contributions to today's programme. Do try and join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour when you can hear Jason Green talking about dealing with the death of his two-year-old daughter, Greta, and the author, blogger and podcaster, Deborah James, talking about living with bowel cancer and asking us all to be more brave about talking about things that might just embarrass us. That's tomorrow afternoon, four o'clock.

Do join me if you can. Bye-bye. This is Planet Puffin. There's a fair chance you will get bitten at some point. Planet Puffin is a new podcast coming to you from a tiny island off the east coast of Scotland. Across the summer, we're going to be following the breeding season, no matter what it takes.

Now there's an encouraging piece of poo at the entrance. There's some nice white guano. So Becky, I'm going to let you take the first game of Puffin Roulette. Summer 2019's hottest Puffin podcast. Well, only Puffin podcast. For BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.