Simon Jones Blames "One-Dimensional" Motherhood For His Crappy Marriages

Poor, poor Simon Jones. After marrying a woman even though he didn’t really want to, and having a child with her, even though he didn’t really want to, he found himself driven to an affair.

In an article titled “Where Did My Sex Kitten Go?” Jones pulls out the world’s tiniest fiddle and tells us the story of his doomed marriage to a woman name Frances, who won him over with her beauty and ambition. After five years, Frances decides she wants to marry Simon, and though he’s never wanted to marry, he agrees. “For the next couple of years nothing changed,” Jones writes, “Apart from work: Frances was really starting to make a name for herself.”

Jones is then “stunned” when Frances turns down a job offer because she wants to have children- something she’s never expressed interest in before. At first, Jones refuses, but after Frances completely flips out on him, he begrudgingly goes along with it: “She completely lost the plot, screaming that I owed her a child. She admitted she’d lied about not wanting children – she said it was because she loved me and didn’t want to lose me. The next two weeks were dreadful, full of late-night talks and tears. Eventually, against my better judgment, I agreed to go for it.”

Of course, Jones notes, he loves his daughter Anna, but he just couldn’t understand why his wife, who had just given birth to a child, didn’t walk out of the delivery room looking like Gisele and taking notes for her next board meeting. Frances took an interest in motherhood (you don’t say!) and spent her time reading parent magazines and swapping stories with other new mothers. “I realise that complex factors kick in after a birth, such as tiredness and self-image issues, and that high levels of the hormone prolactin while breastfeeding reduces a mother’s libido. But shouldn’t women want to overcome this?” How about you give birth next time, Simon? Then we’ll see how easy it is to “overcome” natural hormone levels.

“For all the talk of multitasking, it’s the mothers who become completely one-dimensional,” Jones whines, “It’s ironic, when being sexy and attractive is what got them pregnant in the first place. And it’s not only Frances who’s become a boring frump – it’s depressingly common to see clever, attractive women become parenting bores. You can spot them at parties, in baggy clothes and making no effort to be interesting to men. Surely the ultimate mummy could still be a sex cat, if no longer a sex kitten?”

Well, of course Simon couldn’t be expected to hang around and wait for the woman he didn’t really want to marry or have children with to stop being interested in motherhood and go back to being the “sex kitten” he fell in love with, and so he had an affair, with Maria, who “was a few years younger than me, beautiful, clever and sexy. It took only one illicit coffee for our affair to start. We took appalling risks, having sex in store cupboards and empty conference rooms.” They also apparently took their cues from the GIANT BOOK OF AFFAIR CLICHES.

But here’s where it gets insane: Jones leaves Frances for Maria, and then, wait for it—Maria becomes an exact replica of Frances, demanding that Jones marry her and give her a child. And guess what? HE DOES! So now Jones has two daughters with two women who he doesn’t care for very much. (He also notes that he doesn’t think his daughter Anna likes him very much.) Good grief.

“Frances lied to me about wanting a child. Maria might have done so as well. I can’t believe how naive I’ve been. I don’t know how long Maria and I will last, but I know one thing: from now on, I’m putting myself first. ” What he doesn’t realize, apparently, is that he has been the liar, giving in to commitments he never wanted to make and then blaming all of his problems on his wives. Jones doesn’t seem to have empathy or compassion for either of the women in his life once they stop being “sex kittens” and grow and change with the challenges of motherhood. “I’ll never trust a woman again, no matter what they promise,” Jones writes.

Don’t worry, Simon. I think you’ve just ensured that you won’t have to worry about dealing with women for a very, very long time.