Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
If you want to know why single women get involved with married men, look at their parents, Ruth Sunderland reports. THE_affair between Sienna Miller and married actor Balthazar Getty has set off all kinds of debates.
Was Getty really separated from his wife when he was snapped kissing the actress in a boat off the Amalfi coast?
Does Sienna deserve to be nicknamed 'Sluttyenna' or is she the victim of old-fashioned double standards? Will she win her lawsuit against the tabloids she claims have invaded her privacy?
Intriguing as these questions are, there is another which, to me at least, is much more fascinating. It is this: why do beautiful, young, single women who could have their pick of unattached males get involved with married men at all?
Hand on heart, I've never had an adulterous affair, but I've seen some attractive and accomplished friends get entangled in damaging and fraught relationships with married lovers, fully conscious of the potential harm it could cause to the man, his family and themselves.
I can see what first attracted Sienna to Mr Getty - the clue's in the name - but with my friends' boyfriends, the allure was less obvious. The explanation, I believe, often lies in the complexities of the father-daughter relationship.
Without exception, the women I know who have been involved with married men have had a troubled, or nonexistent, relationship with their dad. Coincidence? I think not.
I'm one of the lucky ones. My late father had plenty of faults, but his devotion to my mother was absolute.
He had the word 'fidelity' engraved inside the wedding ring he gave her when they got married and I'm certain he never wavered from it.
That could explain why, unlike some of my friends, when I was still a young, single girl about town, I was never much troubled by predatory married men. I didn't flash up on their radar as a likely prospect because I was armed with the magic shield my father left me: the expectation men could, should and would be faithful.
There was one brief episode when, as a naive 24-year-old, I went on a few dates with an 'older' man in his 30s and was mystified why he disappeared each evening on the dot of 10.30pm.
On the advice of a friend, I conducted a test which went as follows. Me: would you like to come round for Sunday lunch? Him: I can't.
Me: why not; are you married? Him: yes; how did you know? Me: never mind that. Bye then.
It's amusing in retrospect, but the hurt a straying father can cause to a daughter is no laughing matter. It is too simplistic to suggest that a little girl with an unfaithful daddy is likely to become someone's mistress when she grows up; adulterous relationships are as complicated as marriages.
But a strong, loving paternal presence will surely set up positive expectations for a girl's future sexual relationships, just as an unkind, absent or unfaithful father is liable to shatter her confidence in men and in herself.
Back in Celebrityland, another actress accused of being a home wrecker, Angelina Jolie, has repeatedly denied breaking up Brad Pitt's marriage, citing the infidelities of her father, Jon Voight: "To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that."
Be that as it may, Angelina's pre-Brad love life has been chaotic, with two divorces, and some of that might be connected with her fractured relationship with Voight.
Men seem blithely unaware of the impact their behaviour can have on daughters. This struck me when a male friend, furious and heartbroken, confided in me how his daughter's life had been wrecked by her cheating husband. This anguished father also happened to be a prolific and unashamed philanderer, but saw no connection between his conduct and her disastrous choice of a mate - a younger version of Dad.
I'm no psychologist, but intuitively, there has to be a link. If Daddy doesn't love Mummy enough to treat her well, to be faithful to her and to stay with her, daughters are bound to draw conclusions for their own lives.
We are not irrevocably trapped in scenarios set out for us by our parents; we have the power to break the mould. An adulterous father may not blight the life of his female children. But family patterns are powerful and they do have a propensity to repeat themselves.
So guys, I hate to sound moralistic, but if you can't stay faithful for the sake of your wives, could you at least give it a try for the sake of your daughters?
