Married couples will no longer have to promise to be faithful if the Italian government gets its way.
Senators have introduced a new bill to remove the word ‘fidelity’ from marriage contracts, saying: “[It’s a] cultural legacy from an outdated and obsolete vision of marriage, family, and the rights and duties of spouses.”
Instead, the bill states fidelity should be understood not only as sexual fidelity, but as respect and trust, which is not up to the government to impose.
A previous court ruling already means that judges can’t list infidelity as the cause of a marriage separation. Rather, people have to prove their spouse’s cheating led to the marriage breakdown.
It sounds bizarre – but maybe not so strange when you find out 55 per cent of Italian men and one in three women said they had cheated on their partners in a 2014 poll.
Who says romance is dead?