Sexting Is Apparently The Key To A Happy Relationship

I am confident that I have found the most obnoxious headline of the day, and it is this: “I let toyboy swap sex texts with girls so he won’t stray.”

The Sun has the full story: Natalie Davies, 32, caught her 20-year old “toyboy” (aka live-in boyfriend) Adam Phillips sending texts to phone sex lines. She confronted him, and “he said it made him feel like a man, that he needed to flirt with other girls.” Then, she says,

I suddenly realised that men cheat for a reason, they all love to flirt and feel like the masculine one in the relationship. As I’m so much older than Adam he might have felt like less of a man. The sexting allowed him to get that masculinity back. I didn’t want to lose him but knew that if I banned that side of his life I would be pushing him away.

So the two sat down together and made a list of ground rules under which Phillips could continue sexting — things like “Adam must never actually talk to the girls or meet them” and “Natalie can look at his phone whenever she wants.” Despite the slightly prescriptive nature of the rules, this part actually seems pretty mature, and Phillips and Davies appear to have an arrangement that works for them. But do they have to claim that “all men” need to flirt to feel masculine? That being with an older woman is inherently emasculating? And what about Phillips’s theory on cheating footballer Ashley Cole? He says,

I feel like the luckiest bloke alive. I get to have a fantastic woman and I have fun sexting whenever I want. If Cheryl [Cole] had done the same with Ashley, they would still be together.

That’s right, ladies — guys cheat because you don’t let them sext. Just give them that freedom, and all your problems are solved.