As someone who seriously dated a man for 2 1/2 years--knowing he had cheated on his ex-wife throughout their marriage--I was floored to find out he was cheating on me! Then, I thought how stupid I was to think his behavior of all those years would change because of being with me. Men who like dalliances with other women can be found all over and "serial womanizers" do not change. KH and KA, if true, were or, in the case of KA, could remain a "ladies man." So, I guess what I am saying is that QA, QN and perhaps QR knew the character of the men they married and, perhaps like me, expected it would change--only to find it never does. It takes a terrible toll on you--which is why I am empathetic toward Noor and Alia, both of whom definitely had to live with KH's wandering eye. While her friends say QN ascribed much of his womanizing to malicious rumor, one wonders how much Noor thought about leaving the marriage once she found "rumors" to have some substance--particularly the one about the journalist. Roland Dallas' book is well-sourced:
"Alia had been ideal....but even she, by the account of an uTRFa-loyal aide, suffered because of the King. He had a particular interest in foreign nannies."
"Eventually, the royal eyes stopped roving and settled on a young journalist working in the royal palace, an attractive Palestinian Jordanian. By one account, the King had fallen in love and promised to marry her. He was 57 at the time; she was 25. According to two well-placed informants, the King was attracted and began to visit the young journalist's family at home. Nothing improper occured. But the visits took place at a time when relations between the king and queen were tense.....and she was outside of the country, they didn't speak to one another, and they started to think about separation and divorce."
"At Christmas 1991, the King and Queen decided to go separately to London to decide 'in or out.' They agreed they would stay together. Meanwhile the journalist's mother was indiscreet about the King's visits and the King was very angry. There was a lot of pressure on him to dissuade him from taking a fifth wife as he was not young anymore. It was in the interest of both partners to continue the marriage so they did.....but it left a residue of coolness."
While not stated explicitly that his cheating or persistent rumors of it was playing a factor, QN writes "I felt completely helpless and alone. There were moments during that two- or three-year period when I felt I could not endure the situation much longer." (this was late 1980s). About the journalist, she mentions a stepdaughter called her and was very upset and while "there was no reason to believe these rumors any more than others about my husband and myself, the distance (emotional as well as physical) between us gave me pause.......my husband became deeply depressed after (they had talked about it and he said it was rumor) because he was unable to put an end to the rumors. He seemed almost paralyzed by the situation, which both worried and angered me. I was furious at him on some level for putting the family through great distress by letting the situation go on to the extent it had caused such public damage." If you read between the lines of QN's book, it was a challenging marriage--for many reasons--and it was only after his bouts with cancer, they managed to attain the closeness that existed at the end of his life.