My Deceptive Friend

Descending wearily down the steps from the tube last night, sober despite the midnight hour - because I’d come from work, I become aware of a woman asking another woman if she’s OK. “I’m fine,” comes the strangulated reply and then…more angrily “apart from the fact my husband’s f*cking another woman”. The others look shocked, nod and walk away. Remembering many a time on a platform in tears (albeit for different reasons), I offer her a lift anywhere she wants to go, but she’s not far from home. “He’s gone on that dating site ‘My Single Friend’” she continues…I flinch…I have a profile on this site, my friend nominated me, it’s not smutty like the other sites…everyone in London is doing it…even the married sort, it would seem. I want to ask her for coffee, anything so she’s not alone but I don’t want to interfere. “You’ll get through this,” I offer pathetically, before slinking away to my car. I watch her pull out her mobile phone before I drive away. I’m never one to judge infidelity, I sit on the fence as to whether humans were meant to stay faithful to one person for long periods of time or not. I agree the ideal is loyalty to one true love but I don’t know whether it’s realistic. I do however, think that fluidly and perhaps guiltily falling into an affair, is a totally different thing to purposefully pimping oneself out on an internet site that is meant for those people who have yet to find their first partner, let alone a second. So this man is deceiving his very pretty, barely past 30yr old wife. But he’s also deceiving me and other singletons in what should be a fun, alternative route to finding a mate. At times like these, I wish they’d bring back corporal punishment…I feel that castration would be an effective cure for his deception.