Boris and Carrie have got married!

How very old fashioned some of your comments are, not to mention both bitchy and wrong. Carrie Symonds was not a
‘Mistress’ but a girlfriend before she became engaged to Johnson. She had a responsible and well paid job and wasn’t ‘kept’ ( which is what a mistress would be.) Neither was he stringing her along just as an affair.Many men have affairs with somebody before they divorce their wives, if they loved their wives or had worthwhile marriages that wouldn't happen.

Symonds was his mistress pure and simple. That is the colloquial and accepted term for a woman having a sexual relationship with a married man.

Johnson was married with 4 legitimate children. He married his wife Marina Wheeler in 1993 when she was pregnant with their first child.

Johnson began his affair with Symonds sometime before 2018 and finally divorced Wheeler in 2020. Symonds lived in No 10 from the time Johnson became PM, so yes she was a kept woman. Largely by the tax payer.

I am afraid its you who is old fashioned lemongrove, that view of women being responsible for their husbands infidelity went out with the ark.

For what it's worth, Lemon - I think the being "kept" part is somewhat archaic and the meaning of the word "mistress" has evolved.

Oxford dictionaries, for example, now just says "a woman (other than the man's wife) having a sexual relationship with a married man."

I think it still sounds odd these days - but it does suggest a longer involvement than a "casual affair" or one-night thing - though all of these can of course be devastating to the wife and wider family.

Hilarious that you think you have your finger on the pulse of the modern world. You should pop over to MN with that theory. I would buy popcorn for that exchange.

lemongrove

How very old fashioned some of your comments are, not to mention both bitchy and wrong. Carrie Symonds was not a
‘Mistress’ but a girlfriend before she became engaged to Johnson. She had a responsible and well paid job and wasn’t ‘kept’ ( which is what a mistress would be.) Neither was he stringing her along just as an affair.Many men have affairs with somebody before they divorce their wives, if they loved their wives or had worthwhile marriages that wouldn't happen.

Wasn’t she sacked from that job for some sort of expenses fiddle? Or was that a previous job?

Perhaps we should stick with just ‘bitchy’ comments then, since all left wing posters are determined to call her a mistress
( as if it has anything to do with the fact that they were officially engaged and have just got married.) Which this whole OP is about after all.How many of you are on your third marriage btw? Many people are after all, it doesn’t make them awful ( for that reason.) Jeremy Corbyn is, and had girlfriends including Dianne Abbott.
Insult Johnson all you like, but make it for the right reasons, as some of the comments on here are laughable.....and yes, like something from a different century.

Callistemon

Happy to oblige!

Callistemon is that really Hugh Jackman? He looks different maybe it’s the hat. ?

And all right wing posters are determined to see nothing wrong in Johnson’s moral turpitude.

There may be a tiny minority on their third marriage, but I suspect that you would be very hard pushed to find a poster on their third marriage, who encouraged and paid for an abortion. Who encouraged but failed to obtain another abortion, who only seems to have a very vague idea on the number of children they have. Who have been sacked at least twice for lying, and who continues to have only a very weak grasp on the concept of truth.

Add to that using tax payers money to fund one of his other mistresses, and the fact that he is constantly bemoaning the fact that he is hard up - how tacky- and you can see that apart from the myriad other character faults Johnson is an all round good egg.

ww you really know nothing about his marriages, or for that matter Corbyn’s three marriages and love life. I believe in castigating politicians for their political wrong doings or lacklustre performance but not for private/ personal matters which none of us should judge.
Posters regularly condemn others for matters which they can know nothing about.

Slightly better ( your last post!) ww ?

lemongrove

Callistemon

Happy to oblige!

Callistemon is that really Hugh Jackman? He looks different maybe it’s the hat. ?

hat lemongrove? hat?

That's an Akruba, mate.

Symonds was his mistress pure and simple. That is the colloquial and accepted term for a woman having a sexual relationship with a married man.

That got me pondering. Written down like that, it seems so sexist.

What is the term for a single man having an affair with a married woman I wonder?
Is there one?
Or is there no demeaning term?

I am not judging actually, I am discussing the impact serial adultery has on children and on women as it tends to be women who pay the price in terms of raising children.

There probably isnt Callistemon, in the same way I don't think there is a male version of bitchy. In my view the responsibility rests with the person who is married rather than the single person having an affair.

Many men have affairs with somebody before they divorce their wives, if they loved their wives or had worthwhile marriages that wouldn't happen. Nice bit of victim blaming there lemon. I never fail to be astonished at just how far people will go to defend this vile man, how people will throw aside their own moral beliefs in an effort to convince the rest of us that this is a political issue. I have said this before, and will keep on saying it; Johnson is a disgusting individual, a liar, a cheat, adulterer, lazy etc., etc., and my despair at finding this moral degenerate elected as PM is nothing to do with his political beliefs, I would be equally despairing if these moral failings were of a Labour. Libera Democrat, SNP or Green politician. I am saddened that so many people are prepared to throw over their own moral code, the way they would expect their own family to behave, just because he is a Tory Brexit supporter.

Isn't Marina Wheeler quite the formidable woman?

I would never have thought of her as a shrinking violet. Perhaps Boris did meet his match and couldn't cope with it, she is probably far cleverer. I would say she has a formidable intelligence but she must have seen something attractive about him.

I remember her father who was a foreign correspondent and presenter of current affairs programmes.

JaneJudge

Isn't Marina Wheeler quite the formidable woman?

I believe she is, but presumably couldn't take any more of his lies and deceit. I wonder if Johnson would have asked for a divorce if Marina hadn't thrown him out after years of his behaviour? We will never know of course, and only two people know what goes on in a marriage, but I suspect that had he not been thrown out, this romance with Carrie would have just been another in his long string of relationships, however much people want to pretend it is a great romantic happy ever after story.

It has nothing to do with ‘victim blaming* Gill in fact you can also say that wives who have affairs do so for the same reasons.
I often wonder if posters are thinking of situations known to them, and then they equate all divorces/ affairs to that.
I don’t think Johnson is ‘vile’ but neither am I defending him, there is no need to, his private life is exactly that, his and private, and am not interested in it one jot.
All I care about is what he does politically.
I cannot understand what you mean by the sentence that I and anyone else are trying to ‘convince is a political issue?’
Also Gill it doesn’t matter how many times you say he is this, that or the other, it doesn’t make it true or that everyone thinks the same as you ( everyone doesn’t mean some posters on GN btw.)
Moral failings indeed! Sounds very chapel. I wonder if you have studied all past PM’s and their often colourful lives, or leaders in other countries, come to that.
For instance....I like Keir Starmer and he may be the most moral character you can ever come across ( or not) but he may turn out to be a lousy Labour Leader, and (if it happens) a lacklustre vacillating PM. All most people care about is not a PM’s morals but can he get the job done.

I love the way some posters make the point of how awful his previous wives and children must feel - as far as I am aware none of them have made any public statement, for all we know they could be very happy about it (I doubt if any are sobbing in a corner).

As for referring to Carrie as his mistress (such an outdated label) - wasn't he married to his first wife when he was having an affair with his second wife - so doesn't that mean she was a mistress too?

lemon presumably you don't believe then that behaving in a questionable way in one's private life indicates loose morals, which mean you will act in the same way in your political life? If you lie and cheat in private you will lie and cheat in public.

I agree lemon that what I say about his moral failings doesn't mean that everyone else thinks the same, but there is no denying that he has been sacked , twice, for lying; that is not opinion, it is fact and concerns me more than his morals. I don't like your comment about me coming across as a bit 'chapel', but there is nothing I can do about that. As is plain, I despair that so many people are prepared to overlook his behaviour in order to 'get things done', but do recognise, sadly, that Starmer may not have the 'charisma' to knock Johnson, however decent he (Starmer) may be personally. It says much about the shallow, vacuous nature of politics I think.

Callistemon

^Symonds was his mistress pure and simple. That is the colloquial and accepted term for a woman having a sexual relationship with a married man^.

That got me pondering. Written down like that, it seems so sexist.

What is the term for a single man having an affair with a married woman I wonder?
Is there one?
Or is there no demeaning term?

I can't think of a word equivalent to mistress, cad was the nearest I could get but that is a bit outdated. On the other hand I think cuckold is a horrible thing to be called and I can't think of an equivalent word for a woman whose husband is having an affair.

I feel there is a reason somewhere like the mistress is at fault not the man, and with cuckold the man is looked down on where a woman in his place would get sympathy. Not sure as that's not quite it.