Whats next for Martha Hancock?
Theres a lot of talk about Matt Hancocks humiliated wife walking about wearing her wedding ring. But Im completely bemused by this. I suppose the idea, insinuated by the coarse and the callous, may be that by having an affair with another woman her husband is signalling that shes not good enough, hes upgrading, hes discarding her. Because in some way she failed. But thats not whats usually going on when people have affairs with their co-workers. Its very little to do with age, looks, or the like, within reason. Its much more today with shared projects, common interests, the in-jokes and remembered experiences that flow from that and create a connection. Then you throw in opportunity and, often, alcohol to remove inhibition and there you are. Caught in a clinch. Were humans  were built to be attracted to those close to us. Its in our pheromones, in our psychology. Its very hard to resist. So for the Hancocks, as for so many of the couples that I speak to at Vardags, there is no humiliation in the equation for the partner that has been betrayed. Mrs Hancock could look like a cross between Grace Kelly and Kendall Jenner and it wouldnt have made any difference. In fact it seems the new amour is the same age as she is, belying the usual stereotypes. It may have pretty much nothing to do with her. What we need, perhaps, is a recognition that long hours of intense work draw people away from the home and into a new circle of intimacy. We either embrace that with a liberal sense of tolerance, let affairs flare up and more often than not burn out to nothing, and just shake it off, or we fight it by trying to keep the connection in the marriage alive and keep building shared stories  easier said than done. One way or another, when the wife is the cheater shes seen as a scarlet woman, when shes cheated on shes seen as a humiliated reject. Somehow the woman always comes out, as Marilyn Monroe put it in Some Like it Hot, with the fuzzy end of the lollipop. Mrs Hancock should hold her head up high  shes in complete control of her decisions and has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. This is her time to think about what she really wants for herself - the power is all with her. It will be a raw, emotional time and she will be feeling very exposed  What Mrs Hancock is dealing with right now is a public humiliation, says Simon Shattock, a family and couples psychotherapist at Clinical Partners. Its not like something shes found out in private and can work out. Its been done in the context of humiliation to herself. I imagine she might be in a state of shock.  She will now need to go about unpicking her husbands alleged betrayal and considering what life is going to look like after this, says Shattock. It needs a process of careful management of her own mind. I imagine shell be feeling very angry, he says. For her it will be a raw, emotional time and she will be feeling very exposed.  He likens the fallout to a period of mourning. You have to mourn whats happened and try to move past the anger. Often people find it very difficult to move on at the beginning so it will be a process of [taking] time and thinking.  Talking things over with people she trusts will be crucial to working through it, Shattock advises. Given the circumstances of the Hancocks split  Mrs Hancock had reportedly considered their relationship happy and stable  she is also likely to start questioning their whole history, he suggests. Thats really difficult to process, [that idea that] the person you married is not who you thought.  An affair is never about the other person  it is about vanity  Karen Krizanovich, multiple divorcee and former agony aunt