Stand by your cheating man – you just cannot be serious

It takes a special sort of woman to stand beside her man when he has publicly shamed and humiliated her writes Emma Suddaby.

It takes guts, pride and a certain quality that I know I don't possess, to walk out beside him and hold his hand while he apologises to the press, the public and the world in general for whatever murky shenanigans he's been caught out at this time.

Looking at photos of shamed Oswestry sex-case GP, Simon Robinson and his wife, as they attended the General Medical Council hearing into his alleged 16-month affair with troubled patient Jill Tudor, all I can see is the pain and angst of the ordeal, written all over her face.

And Dr Robinson's wife is far from the first woman to go through such a nightmare – tabloid pages back through history, are littered with the brave, strained faces of wronged wives.

It fascinates me because I am far from capable of that sort of blind support; I'm approaching middle age and I've never managed to sustain a relationship yet past four years!

In fact, my longest relationship to date is now approaching 12 years but that's with my dog and luckily, his doggy indiscretions don't come back to bite me on the bum…

So, as you can see, I have no experience at all of standing by my man. I'm all for loyalty but the minute a guy does the dirty on me, he's history so the pained support shown by wronged wives baffle me completely.

But who can say who's right?

Looking back through history, I often wonder if I should have stayed with one boyfriend or another. Would he have changed had I supported him through whatever crisis finished us? Or would the problems have continued and escalated in a warm climate of wifely acceptance, as I suspected?

I'll never know, but what I do know is that I'll never understand how a wife who's been publicly shamed, dragged through the rumour mill and back, all on behalf of her husband, can find it in herself to stand beside him with a small, sad smile and hold his hand while his reputation is – rightly or wrongly – ripped to tatters all around them.

At the end of the day, I may be single but I am also strong, capable and in control of my own destiny. I don't always get it right but when I get it wrong, at least I land in a mess of my own making and not in the murky quagmire of my husband's disloyalty.

So, weep for the wife, if you must weep for anyone. And never mind getting up a petition calling for the General Medical Council to reverse its decision to strike off Dr Robinson, how's about a petition asking him to show the same loyalty to his wife as she's shown him – now that's a piece of paper I'd be willing to sign.

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