The film did a decent job of portraying this, but it still left me with some questions about the nature of Iris' relationships. Is it ever really explained WHY she cheats on John, or for how long she had these affairs while still with John?
shareIt wasn't as clear cut as cheating, it wasn't like she randomly went out and slept with lots of different men. She formed relationships with very powerful people, deep thinkers and philosophers, people she thought could teach her things. Sexual relationships I think were just a small part of the attachments that she formed with people.
To answer your question though I think some of her relationships lasted quite a long time. She had a kind of on-off relationship with one of her students at the London School of Art (I think) which went over a couple of decades, her relationship with a female don at Oxford went on for a couple of years I think until John Bayley asked her to end it. He knew all about most of them as far as I can tell, and he didn't seem to mind; they had that kind of marriage. So it wasn't as if he was some sort of downtrodden husband or anything they agreed on this arrangement before they got married and John Bayley always maintains that they were very happy.
On the contrary, he flatly states, in his first book about her - "Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch" - that she never had any sexual relations with anyone else while they were married. More recently unearthed examples of her correspondence strongly suggests he was either ignorant or naïve about that. Apparently many of their friends and acquaintances knew what she was up to. If A. N. Wilson (a close friend and former student of Bayley's, who later fell out with him) is to be trusted, Honor Tracy found Iris and John to be "ridiculous figures" - She said it was easy to be a perfect couple if you weren't really a couple. IM, she insisted, was basically lesbian, though she had affairs with men when it suited her to inject yet more drama into her life. John did not even know what sex was, Honor would aver, with gales of laughter. "Iris has made a fool of him all her married life". * A. N. Wilson, Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her. Wilson is a deeply unpleasant person, and can be a malicious little imp of man, but I just find it all too easy to believe over the more hagiographical biogs and the 2001 movie.
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