Hit me baby one last time!

Adultery is in the air. And we got a whiff of it in the first episode of the new season of Sherlock from an unlikely source — Dr Watson. There has been furious debate on the sexist and shoddy treatment of the coolest female character on the popular show, his wife. Here is another point to consider: The gentle doc finds himself straying at a time when his wife has just delivered a baby.

Counsellors and pop psychologists say most men cheat on their wives when they are pregnant. It is a panic reaction, a male friend once told me. “They know their lives are never going to be the same. Their wives are usually too tired, cranky or busy. It is a last-ditch attempt on their part to channel their inner wild child.” Perhaps.

I am a fan of the web series Broadchurch, where a nondescript middle-aged man married to a beautiful woman and mother to these two children, spends a night with another woman. When asked why, all he could say is: “She was different.” And in case you are wondering, much as he still loved his wife and felt awful about the tragedy that befalls his family, he did not regret that night of dalliance. Closer home, while reading a book of short stories — Long Island Iced Tea — by a former colleague Ram Kamal Mukherjee, I stumbled across a story of beautiful marriage gone wrong. It had something to do with the fact the couple was so busy trying for parenthood, that even in their most intimate moments, they were apart.

The story reminded me of a high profile marriage that inspired a weekly series in a national daily. Years ago, a society columnist in Delhi recreated a world peopled with the rich and the botox-beautiful Dilliwallahs, who basked in the Lodi Garden Sun and hosted decadent parties at their farm houses. The narrator was the thinly disguised alter ego of a prominent fashion consultant-art collector socialite, married to an influential biz man. In reality and in the column, the chatterati could not get enough of how the fairy tale marriage ended when the pregnant diarist discovered her darling husband had been cheating on her. The news made headlines, especially since the affair came to light on the heels of a high profile suicide. But it had all the Delhi women talking about how it may be prudent to delay pregnancy if they wanted to hold on to their husbands.
Unless of course the baby is expected to be a PR exercise.

We all know how a certain A-list star scotched rumours of a troubled marriage with a bonny baby while there are hundreds of lesser mortals who opt for parenthood hoping it would make things better. But ask men to choose between working hard to produce a wailing, burping, proof of a successful marriage and the rare ‘straying’ for something ‘different’. The answer may not surprise you at all.