The triumph of hope over experience

Men who remarry--often several times.

There are two principal types of serial husbands: the ones who marry younger and younger versions of almost exactly the same wife, with the same build and colouring and often the same clothes sense and conversation too; and then there are men who, each time, go for an utterly different species of wife.

The first kind are much more common, and I am continually surprised how many men, having expensively paid off one wife, and gone through emotional purgatory, sign up with her doppelganger within a year.

On the other hand, men habitually choose the same car, and buy new versions of favourite CDs, so perhaps it shouldn't be surprising.

The second type are more ruthless: repudiating the past with an almost Cambodian zeal, and often transforming their lifestyle with each marriage.

We have a friend now on his third wife, and it is hard to recognise him as the same man from marriage to marriage. During his starter-marriage to a Battersea kindergarten teacher, he wore Hackett cords and tweed jackets and was extremely square.

During his second marriage, to a commercial property agent, he went all slick and Armani-ish, and they moved into a flat in Shad Thames with limed beech-wood floors. His present wife is a PR for a record company and he seldom shaves and wears leather bomber jackets.