One version of the poster for Doctor Foster reads: "Can you ever really know someone?"
Your partner should be the most intimate person in your life, but one day some unexpected secrets may make you realize that this bedside person who gets along day and night turns out to be a perfect stranger.
When Gemma was 16, her parents died in a car accident. Later, she went to London to study medicine and met her current husband, Simon Foster. Later, she married into the town where he lived, and they had a son.
She is a general practitioner and a partner of the hospital. She has a successful career and a good income. Simon first worked, then quit to start a business. She fully supports him and trusts him. Simon said he was better at managing money, and she gave him her money. Gemma is responsible for the family expenses, and Gemma bought Simon's clothes, mobile phones and cars for him.
The income factor did not affect their relationship at all. After 14 years of marriage, they are still very loving. They kiss goodbye every morning before going out. Every year on the anniversary, Gemma would make the curry they ate on the day they met, and Simon would send her a greeting card with love words. Simon often expresses his love and gratitude for Gemma, both privately and publicly.
Although he lost his parents and was far away from home, Simon had already become Gemma's closest and most trusted person in the world, and Gemma felt very lucky.
Until one day, a long blond hair on Simon's scarf broke it all, and she began to wonder if all the happiness she had been thinking about was an illusion.
Under the secret investigation, she found that he had indeed cheated. She was very broken, and the feeling of being betrayed by the person she was closest to and trusted was very uncomfortable.
But it didn't stop there. She then found out that their neighbors, her colleagues, his assistants, they actually knew about Simon's cheating, but no one told her.
She also later learned that Simon was a flirtatious young man and changed girlfriends every week, something no one had ever told her before. They thought he had met her, grown up, and reformed. But the facts have proved that the country is easy to change, but the nature is hard to change.
She went to ask her colleague, also Simon's classmate and doctor. To be honest with her colleague, she was actually surprised that Simon took so long to cheat.
Gemma also found out that the third child, Kate, was pregnant unexpectedly. Kate was not going to tell Simon at first, and planned to secretly have an abortion. After Simon's mother knew about Simon's derailment, Gemma told her that the third child was pregnant and was planning to have an abortion. She asked Gemma to tell Simon that she said he had the right to know.
The information she got from her colleague at first was that Simon had cheated for three months. The colleague felt that he was definitely not serious, maybe it was just pure sex, and Simon still loved her. But she later learned that it was far more than three months, but two years.
She felt that she had been betrayed by the whole world. In this small town where he grew up, she had always been an outsider.
She had packed Simon's things and planned to kick him out of the house. But thinking about her son later, she relented. She decided to wait a little longer, she wanted to give him a chance, and she hoped he could confess to her.
One night Gemma couldn't sleep, so she got up to check the content of her husband's cheating, and found a lot of people who share the same illness as her. She also saw someone recommend a line from the play "The Mourning Bride", which was matched with the play. The background music is particularly poignant.
Is it my lover? Is it my love? Ask again. Ask again that question. Say it again in a soft voice. Speak again in that soft voice. Eyes look hopeful again. And look again with wishes in thy eyes. No. Oh, no. You can't. Thou can'st not. Can you forgive me? Can'st thou forgive me, then? Are you willing to believe that my mistake was just madness? Wilt thou belive so kindly of my fault, to call it madness? Give this madness a softer name. Oh, give that madness yet a milder name. Just call it passion. And call it passion. Then you can call it more tenderly... love. Then be still more kind and call that passion...love.
It's not that Simon doesn't love her anymore, he just loves two people at the same time.
They said when they got married that they might fall in love with someone else in this life. She can forgive cheating, but she can't stand cheating. She feels that deception is more serious than derailment, and deception is the real betrayal. She wants Simon to confess to her.
But Simon didn't admit it, and found Gemma suspicious.
She was heartbroken and didn't confront him, but reluctantly said: "If you say no, then there is no."
She was preparing for a divorce, and she began to secretly collect evidence, investigate the property situation, and gain greater initiative in the divorce for herself.
But later, Gemma learned from the eyeliner she arranged that Kate forced Simon to divorce, but Simon was unwilling. He told her not to wait for him anymore. It was a breakup, and Kate also decided to abort the child.
When Simon's mother died, the family reunited. Gemma decided to turn the page and stay with Simon.
But it didn't take long for her to discover that Simon and Kate were back together.
She ran away from home for a few days and returned to the small town where she grew up. She thought about it and just walked away, but she felt unwilling. Why should Simon win? The old man advised her to look forward, who cares whether she wins or not, the important thing is to be happy.
She even thought about suicide, but in the end it was too cheap for Simon and Kate, and she decided to take revenge.
She knew Simon and Kate's parents, but Kate's parents didn't know about their daughter and Simon. Kate's parents invited them to dinner, Gemma dressed up carefully, deliberately misremembered the time, and unexpectedly came to Kate's parents' house with a panicked Simon, who happened to be there.
At that dinner, the secret was ruthlessly revealed in front of Kate's whole family without everyone's knowledge. That night, she said she was a wolf.
Eventually, Gemma won custody of the children, house and property, and Simon and Kate left town and moved to London.
But she won't look good, and she's scarred herself, she's not really a winner. As one of her lawyer patients said, even if the woman gets the house, property, children, it doesn't mean the woman wins.
Simon soon returned to a happy life, with a daughter and a happy family of three. And Gemma has never completely forgotten and put it down. She still keeps her wedding ring, and the decoration of her home remains the same as before. She is busy with work and children, and doesn't plan to try new relationships because there is no way to believe anymore.
I am actually very pessimistic about marriage. The examples around me, the examples on the Internet, and the examples in countless novels and film and television works all make me feel that cheating is the normal state of marriage, whether it is purely physical cheating or spiritual cheating.
Some of the seemingly happy families have not experienced cheating, but some have reunited, some have not been discovered, and some have turned a blind eye.
In this play, neighbor Neil said that there are only two types of married men in the world, those who are known to be stealing, and those who hide better.
It is too extreme to say that, I believe there are still couples who are always loyal to each other.
But in a sense, monogamy may indeed be somewhat inhumane. With such a long life, can it really be possible to not fall in love with others after getting married at the age of 20 or 30, and always have sex with only one person?
I wrote about open relationships before and I said:
I think the difference between cheating and an open relationship is that cheating is a form of betrayal. An open relationship is a consensus reached between both parties, that is, you allow each other and yourself to have relationships or develop feelings with other people.
Open relationships are not about encouraging you to have relationships with more people, but about being relatively tolerant of each other and having love or sex with more than one person in your life.
If cheating is really something that most people cannot avoid, then instead of deceiving and betraying each other, it is better to understand and be honest with each other. This is the meaning of open relationship as I understand it.
I think I'm on the same page as Gemma.
I think the most important thing in a relationship is trust and honesty. Loyalty may not be so important if the two sides are candid with each other, like Sartre and Beauvoir. They have been together for a lifetime, love each other deeply, but do not bind each other, and they agree to occasionally experience sex other than each other, provided that everything is confessed to each other without reservation.
But if you are not frank, to conceal and deceive, that is the real betrayal.
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