Maintaining your relationship across the miles isn't easy, as the Beckhams may - or may not - have found, writes Róisín Ingle.
Whether or not you believe David Beckham embarked on a brief affair with his personal assistant, this latest twist in the Posh and Becks fairytale has got everyone talking. Well, almost everyone.
Those people who can swear on the Bible that the marital relations of Beckham and his wife Victoria hold absolutely no interest (I said swear on the Bible) would have been approving of this newspaper's stance on the story. The Irish Times has up to now remained bereft of Beckham-related gossip. Such restraint was nowhere else to be found with newspapers printing everything from ultra-grainy photos of the protagonists to the smutty text messages Beckham is alleged to have sent his senorita. Even RTÉ Radio's serious-minded Morning Ireland got into the spirit of things, devoting airtime to the news.
Those of us who couldn't get enough of the story fell into two camps. The first lot - mainly women, it must be said - were incapable of believing that David Beckham (David Beckham!) would do any such thing and said so loudly as they gathered mournfully around water coolers the length and breadth of the country. To put it in context, to these people he is not only The Best Looking MITW (Man In the World) he is also The Most Faithful MITW, The Most Honest MITW and The Most Loving MITW. This was the week we discovered that, as one commentator put it, Beckham has golden boots but it's possible he may have feet of clay. Some of us will never get over it.
The other camp - mainly men, it must be said - kept their heads down while the women wept over the water cooler. Fearing for their lives, the men didn't open their mouths to say what they were thinking which was probably "young Becks is just as weak as the next man and now that he's been caught hopefully he'll stop making the rest of us look so bad". They had smiles on their faces all day. The smiles were wiped off their faces when they caught their partners looking at them suspiciously over dinner.
"Well, if Beckham could do it," has become the marital speculation de jour.
But there were others who had a more valid reason for analysing the news.
Like Posh and Becks, these people are in long-distance relationships and know first-hand how stressful the separation can be. Beckham's alleged infidelity - he described the story as "ludicrous" in a statement but didn't deny it outright - has been blamed on Posh's refusal to move to Madrid, choosing instead to pursue a music career that never materialised in New York.
Like the Beckhams, Kela O'Riordain (33) and her husband John (35) have spent the last two years of their relationship partly based in different countries. At 5 a.m. every Monday, John heads off from Dublin to Brussels where he works with a lobby group while Kela stays at home minding the couple's four-week-old baby Isabel.
"It's certainly more difficult now with the baby, but you get used to it," she says. "The most important thing is communication, we are always on the phone to each other, even if it's just about silly things." Acknowledging the cliché, she says that on the positive side the time they do spend together from Thursday to Sunday is "quality time". She finds it hard to believe the allegations about Beckham but says it would be impossible to maintain a long-distance relationship without trust. "And mobile phones," she laughs.
Relationship counsellor Christine May of Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services in Dublin says it also takes commitment and hard work. "Like anything else, it depends how a couple handles the separation. Some do it well and others are not so successful," she says. There must be "trust and openness" if a long-distance relationship is to flourish.
"Any problems that arise must be talked about, otherwise resentment can build up on both sides," she adds. "If one person feels hard done by and the other person doesn't listen to their difficulty, it can get messy."
Obviously the situation isn't helped when there are children involved but things can be tricky even without that added complication. Nuala Morgan (25) and Philippe Jacque (26) have been in a long-distance relationship for around a year. Philippe is a journalist in Paris and Nuala, originally from Belfast, works in an insurance company in Dublin. They see each other about twice a month but after a costly year of passionate airport greetings - Philippe always brings a rose to the arrivals lounge - and frantic cross-country text messages, the couple are now wondering how long they can tolerate the situation.
Both Philippe, who describes himself as a "stereotypical Frenchman" and Nuala have been involved in long-distance relationships before. They met as students in Strasbourg in 2001 but only became involved a year ago when Nuala's relationship - which for a year was conducted mainly on the phone between France and Australia - fizzled out.
"It's been getting gradually more serious and the long-distance part of our relationship has been the cause of a lot of serious discussions lately," she says. "If it kept going the way it is, I don't think we could handle it. We need to see each other more."
Philippe agrees. "It's difficult sometimes, just the fact that she is not physically around. We speak a mix of French and English to each other and sometimes there can be little misunderstandings which you only realise happened when you put the phone down," he says. They hope to resolve the issue over the next while, the most likely scenario being Nuala moving to France. "We are too serious about each other now not to do something," says Nuala.
Chris Singleton (26), a singer-songwriter from Greystones, Co Wicklow, has been in a relationship with English woman Emma Finnigan for almost two years. "I went over to London in 2002 to do some music work. I was staying with a friend and Emma was her flatmate," he says. He remembers being attracted to Emma "because she used long words like 'fortuitous' and she was the only other person I knew who read the Guardian".
He makes the trip to London whenever he can, usually every two weeks. "I wouldn't say it's necessarily stressful, but in the beginning there was that sense of things being interrupted all the time. That was a bit disconcerting when we were just getting to know each other and then I'd have to leave. But we got used to it and now we tend to make the most of the time we have together and I'd say it makes the relationship a bit soppier too.
However, he admits: "I think sometimes I just get fed up with the uncertainty. It's difficult to make long-term plans, we don't know where we are going to end up."
Clare McKenna and her husband Jack were, like the Beckhams, in their mid-20s and recently married when seven years ago Jack's job took him to France and she stayed in Ireland. The couple were strict about seeing each other every weekend, accepted the "ginormous" phone bills and used the separation as a chance to see Europe together.
"We had friends who thought it was a very unstable way to start out married life. They were concerned about us. Actually it worked brilliantly as all our time together was quality time," says Clare. Jack has been back in Ireland for two years now and Clare believes five years is the most a couple should be apart. "The glamorous side of flying off every week to see your man fades after around 18 months," she says. "But you never have rows about silly things because you don't want to waste the time together."
It takes hard work and a lot of commitment, she says, but ultimately location is irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things.
"If you have a good marriage it doesn't matter where you are or how long you have to spend apart," she says. "Some of the people who stayed together in Ireland when we were flying all over Europe to see each other, the ones who said our set-up was too unstable, are now separated or divorced themselves," she adds.
Beckham bashers take note.