Although not a journalist by trade, she began a weekly column in the Independent entitled 'Beloved and Bonk'. In the case of my own marital break-up, my wife managed to carve a whole new career out of the seemingly indisputable truth that my departure made me a bastard.
Yet why is it we're so eager to stigmatise the leaver, and to damn them without a thought? Even though marital break-up is common, and even though 'two sides to every story' is as well-worn as any cliche, we still seem to want to promote the idea that relationships fail because one person is to blame. This should hardly come as a surprise since truly terrible people are few and far between. But what's striking, as they unfold their tales, is that they're not bastards at all.
