Not tonight darling, I've got a headache

I would imagine that most women's reaction to this "news" would be to roll their eyes, unable to find any sympathy for these poor cheating men. All that keeping two women happy, remembering two birthdays, sending two bouquets etc must be absolutely exhausting. Of course, those rather further up the career ladder don't have the same concerns, as they simply ensure their P.A. takes care of all the relevant details. That, after all, is the difference between being a secretary and being a P.A. The former knows the date of their boss's wife's birthday, the latter knows the date of the wife AND the mistress's birthday. (Calm down, I'm being flip here. A bit.)

The only thing I found interesting about this piece of research was that Dr. Pinessi singled out men as suffering in particular from the stress associated with playing away. Does this finding confirm what we women have always known: we can multi-task with ease, men can only concentrate on one thing? In my experience, no matter how high up the corporate ladder, a married woman with children will still take responsibility for arranging their doctors' appointments, hair cuts, dental treatment and what's for supper that night as well as doing her own job of work. A man in the same position does nothing of the sort. He concentrates purely on making sure he remains king of the boardroom and although he can whip out a photo of his kids from his wallet, he has little if anything at all to do with the mundanities of their daily lives.

This is why an affair knocks them sideways. Good grief, what do they concentrate on now? The mistress? The job? And, er, oh yes, the wife? By affair, I mean the full-blown variety, not a drunken snog at the office Christmas party that the recipient will either recall with revulsion or moon over for months and leaves the man looking at himself in the mirror and reassuring himself: "Yup - still got it!"

Eventually, the mistress either becomes Wife No.2/is treated as Wife No.2 because that way, he can go back to doing what he does best, ie thinking about himself and surreptitiously re-arranging his trouser furniture every time the sexy new office junior sashays past.

Why do marriages break up, anyway? Boredom? Lack of sex? Both? On this subject, I think it's the latter. But then, why do men who play away stay married? Cost. The financial, not the emotional variety. If, as luck might have it, he suffers from migraines, I would humbly suggest to his wife that she refrains from divorcing him. Just encourage him to have an affair. And don't mention Lorenzo Pinessi.