Lily Allen and the lie of Ethical Non-Monogamy

In 2020, I along with the rest of the world, swooned when seeing pictures of Lily Allen with actor David Harbour at In-N-Out burger, celebrating their Vegas wedding in Dior. But now, with the release of West End Girl, we have been gifted Allen’s version of Jolene rather than her watching her live happily ever after.

West End Girl pulls no punches when detailing the coercion, deceit and betrayal that Lily experienced during her marriage to Harbour. Most women I know have been listening to it on repeat since its release. It’s the most graphic and lyrical telling of being on the other side of an open relationship that I’ve ever read or heard.

In Tennis, she asks “is it just sex, or was there emotion?” In Pussy Palace, she finds a bag of sex toys at the spot that she thought was his martial arts dojo rather than a place where he entertained a host of lovers. 

Apparently even in “open” relationships, there can be layers and layers of deceit and like millions of women before her, The track Madeline seems to put a lot more blame on the other woman in the scenario, rather than the protagonist who was Geppeto in this game of Pinocchio.  

Reported to have written the whole album in ten days, Allen gives us the lyrics and language to discuss the ramifications of the manosphere – a place that has resulted in manchildren growing up and wanting to have their cake and eat it at the expense of women. 

In the 1980s, the US magazine Newsweek ran a cover story saying women over 40 were more likely to be in a terrorist attack than find a husband. The whole game changed. It went from women seeking a man to love and cherish to women competing for and settling upon any man willing to marry them.

Men reap the rewards of our society’s internalised misogyny. We excuse bad behaviour as long as it doesn’t officially qualify as abuse or adultery. We downplay our opinions and self to make sure that we don’t end up a spinster.  

Allen sings about making rules to keep her marriage at any cost. “Be discreet and don’t be blatant / There had to be payment / It had to be with strangers.” The lengths women are being forced to go to, to hold on to someone who does not want to hold you at all and blames you for it.  

Women are conditioned to compete with one another to be the chosen one. The one that got him to commit. The one that he put a ring on. The ONE. Women shake their bouquets in the air at the end of vows because they WON, they are the ONE. 

And five years later those same brides that were elated to be chosen are now being worn down and told that they aren’t open-minded enough. That monogamy isn’t a natural state and the key to enlightened relationships are sex parties and ethical non monogamy.

That those same grooms love and respect you too much to cheat, and only loser men that hate women would sneak around on illicit encounters and have affairs. It’s because of how much they respect you that they seek multiple sexual partners that they don’t need to justify their behaviour to.  

I have met a number of women who have travelled down that route to try to hold to their marriage at any cost. They will be able to keep him if they join him at sex parties and pretend to enjoy it. You will let him have multiple partners and might even have some yourself to prove that you are the cool wife, the grown up pixie fairy girl. That is coerced consent. That isn’t ethical. 

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This is not kink-shaming, there are certainly some people that enjoy open relationships and are truly ethical in their pursuit of the lifestyle. But more and more, I am seeing hundreds of men on dating sites citing Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM).

Without speaking to their partner; are you sure he isn’t just sleeping around with a different label? Is it not just gentrified cheating? How many women are being gaslit into uncomfortable experiences that don’t match what they actually want from their partnership?

This may sound prudish, but it isn’t about the sex; it is about what the sex represents. I’m talking about men acting like women are not enlightened enough because they are not more open about group sex and polyamory. The negging and weaponisation of therapy-speak to shame us for not being “open-minded” enough.  

This script is all we know, so although we may self medicate with mummy’s gin; we know that it might have been different if we had taken a less-travelled path that didn’t rely on a partner.

Allen certainly seems to now think so, she told the Sunday Times: “The way we are being intimate with each other is changing as humans… Lots of young women are not finding the idea of marriage or even a long-term relationship that attractive anymore.” It’s about time to rewrite the rules.  

Jamie Klingler is co-founder of Reclaim These Streets and founder of London Book Club