Old habits die hard, it seems. You'd think, nowadays, when we're all supposed to marry for love, that cheating would be rare to non-existent.

I mean, back in the past, oh, maybe as far back as the middle of the last century, a lot of marriages were made for far different reasons.

Too many, among the working classes at least, were the result of unplanned pregnancies which themselves were the result of unplanned sex. Summer night, a couple of pints, a port and lemon, a kiss and a cuddle in the park on the way home, things get out of hand. Sometimes it was actually rape, sometimes neither of them new exactly what they were doing, but it felt good! But it had a nasty tendency to end in a marriage nobody was prepared for or wanted.

Among the middle and upper classes, of course, it was different. You married who you were told to marry, or at best had to choose from a limited range of 'suitable' partners, curated by 'The Family'. Among the middle classes, it was about social climbing, respectability and money. among the upper classes, it was all about bloodlines.

I'd say that anything up to 50% of marriages contracted before, or shortly after, the Second World War. were loveless ones. Back beyond that, the figure was probably nearer 80% in the Victorian era, and even higher in the 18th and 17th Centuries.

With divorce nigh unobtainable, people had three options: put up and shut up; adultery; use of 'professional' services. People are not very good at putting up and shutting up.

If Pepys Diary is anything to go by, then extra-marital messing about was par for the course at the time, as both he and his wife seemed to indulge without anything more than a minor quarrel or two. She didn't like him snogging the maids, he wasn't too happy about her carrying on with her music teacher. Fooling around with social equals was OK, though!

Victorian morality made for much misery, more hypocrisy and an explosion in the number of 'sex workers' of all genders and inclinations. Including working-class housewives who would 'oblige' the rent man or bill collector in order to save a few shillings.

But, as I say, in todays' climate, where arranged marriages are declining even among the communities who previously insisted on them and we're (mostly) free to follow our hearts, people still cheat. I don't understand it!