I’m not surprised Una Healy couldn’t hack a throuple – if I saw lover with another woman I would have shocking reaction
I REALLY don’t like the number three. And it turns out The Saturdays singer Una Healy has decided she doesn’t either.
After posing on holiday only a few months ago with her former beau, boxer David Haye, and his on/off girlfriend Sian Osborne, she now claims she was “hoodwinked” into their throuple.
To me, she looked like a willing participant and quite comfortable in the set-up.
At the time, I wrote about how odd I thought the idea of a relationship with three people in it is, despite this trio making it look conventional.
It does not mean I think it’s wrong. Oh no, I respect people’s choices. I just struggle to get my head around it.
For me, relationships have always been between two people — anything else feels strange. But you live your life and do your thing, by all means.
Una says, however, in a recent podcast that she didn’t really know what she was letting herself in for.
She was in a relationship with David and he was open about seeing other people but she reasoned that she really enjoyed his company and liked the romance of it.
She now believes one woman will never be enough for him.
At the time, I felt two contradictory things.
Firstly, I was thrilled Una was off doing what she wanted — finding independence away from her children, enjoying herself as a single woman, perhaps even playing the field.
I feel encouraged when older women — though she’s only 41 — rediscover a version of themselves away from who they were as “just” a wife and mother.
I applaud women who cut the shackles and go on a journey of personal exploration, perhaps pushing against the norm, potentially even shocking others, but in the process proving that their life counts just as much as their role as a parent and spouse.
But I also felt hesitant. I don’t know Una from Adam but her marriage had broken down after her ex, Ben Foden, was unfaithful. That can leave you a bit vulnerable.
She also seemed to me like a conventional gal when it comes to relationships.
It seemed quite the turn-around for someone to go from marriage to a three-person situationship.
But good on her, I thought. As it now turns out, three really is a crowd for Una. After all, no one wants to be the third wheel.
And it wasn’t long after her split from David and his girlfriend that they hooked up with another woman. Clearly, this works for them but it doesn’t work for everyone.
Of course, I love the fact we are much more open-minded about sexuality nowadays.
FIERCELY LOYAL
Throuples have no doubt existed for generations but now there are all sorts of variations on relationships.
A popular one with the younger generation in particular seems to be “ethical non-monogamy”.
It’s made clear from the start that no one is being faithful, so it gives you a licence to play away because there’s no deceit. Is that even a relationship in the first place?
Good for you if that’s your thang. But I don’t understand the point of being with someone if you’re also with lots of other people. Call me old-fashioned . . .
I’m not alone in not quite understanding the throuple thing, am I?
Is it because I’m always fiercely loyal in a relationship and dedicate myself to only that person, that I would find it dishonest, complicated and exhausting to add someone else into the realm?
Or is it, perhaps, because I get jealous?
I’m not talking psychotically, insanely and unreasonably jealous, that horrible, burning feeling you get when you watch the person you love having too good a time with someone else.
The very idea that taking that set-up into the bedroom, where there are three of you sharing each other, would, I suspect, tip me over the edge.
I would hate the idea of the person who I have given my heart to being intimate with someone else.
Over the past two years on the dating scene I have learnt that I am quite capable of NOT falling in love with every person I match with or meet, something that might have happened in my twenties.
I’ve learnt I can share an experience with someone, feel I like them and enjoy my time with them BUT I can readily walk away without descending into a stupor of heartbreak or despair, as again might have happened in my twenties.
And that is hopeful, especially as modern dating is often dishonest, disrespectful and soul destroying.
So, if nothing else, even though Una might feel disappointed, let down or cheated by her experience she will have learnt what it is she does and doesn’t want.
She will now know throupling is not her jam and that there will be someone out there who will want her, and her alone.
And when you do, Una, let me know if he has a best mate who likes an older woman.
I’m glad vile Harris was dead
THERE’S not much love lost between the public and Rolf Harris, whose death was announced this week.
Good riddance, I say, without an ounce of regret.
At the height of his fame he was an accomplished artist with royal honours, a “popular entertainer” and musician.
But in the end the truth caught up with him and he was reduced to nothing more than an old sex offender, sentenced to five years and nine months in jail.
I guess we’ll never quite know how many victims there were. Harris was arrogant and thought he was untouchable.
Like so many abusers, he never saw his actions as wrong. If anything, he felt he had the right to touch and violate women and girls.
The fact he never showed remorse or even apologised to his victims is a certain sign of a man who assumed his fame, authority and masculinity gave him carte blanche around the opposite sex.
Very early on in my career, when I was still presenting the weather on TV-am, Harris was the showbiz guest one day.
The studios were laid out such that it was impossible not to bump into guests during the live show.
I felt quite enamoured to be introduced to him. This was Rolf Harris, for goodness sake.
I reached out my hand and he chose instead to embrace me.
I remember thinking that was either really flattering or a bit forward. Either way, it was confusing.
Then his hand travelled down to my bum, gave it a few squeezes and stayed there for what felt like years but was probably only 30 seconds.
But it was long enough for my 21-year-old self to feel deeply uncomfortable, and speechless.
I know I won’t have been the only one who fell victim to his hands.
Thirty-five years ago we didn’t say anything. We didn’t pipe up or call anyone out. Especially not a celebrity.
We may have come a long way in making that kind of behaviour unacceptable but we still have miles to travel.
Suffice to say, if old pervy Harris had touched my bum today, he’d have got a knuckle sandwich.
Maybe its you Ekin-Su
FORMER Love Island winner Ekin-Su Culculoglu claims that after being thrown into the public eye, she has “lost every friend I had”.
But in an attempt to put on a brave face, she says she’s happier this way.
That can’t be entirely true, surely, because no woman is an island – Love Island or otherwise. We all need mates.
Ekin-Su says people don’t want to be pals with her because of her “status”, and those she had known for ten years are no longer in her life.Which sounds sad.
But then again, she doesn’t look to me like the kind of woman who would care that much – she was on a mission on the reality show and she’s now travelling the world or sitting at home counting her money.
Besides, normally people are desperate to be your friend once you step into the limelight, so maybe it tells you more about Ekin-Su than it does about her friends.
Perhaps she has changed and people don’t recognise the new version.
Maybe she has been unable to keep her feet on the ground with her newly acquired “status”.
Whichever is the truth, this kind of situation is an indication of the state of your friendships in the first place.
There needs to be solid foundations, trust and honesty.
I’ve never surrounded myself with crowds of people but instead have chosen to invest in a small number of credible friends who offer certainty, mutual respect, dependability and commitment.
Because no amount of money or fame can ever buy you that.
Powerhouse Tina a huge loss
SO much to say about the late, great Queen Of Rock ’n’ Roll, Tina Turner.
But, in reality, very little to add about this remarkable person.
She really was an icon. She exploded into my life when my dad introduced the then eight-year-old me to Nutbush City Limits – which blew me away.
The power of her voice, and of her, hit me like a cannonball and it was impossible to sit still when she started singing.
And seeing her dance on stage was indescribable.
Of course, as a kid I had no idea about the abuse she had been forced to endure in her life, the violence, the control.
Yet at some point she’s quoted as saying that her greatest beauty secret was “being happy with myself”.
Bearing in mind she suffered so much in her earlier years yet still went on stage full of power and glowing, makes you realise what an absolute legend she was.