When Love Turns to Scandal
I always feel sorry for husbands on the morning after these political sex scandals break. How many thousands of dark looks are being exchanged across breakfast tables?
"Where were you just now?"
"Upstairs, shaving."
"And where were you before that?"
"In the shower."
"And before that?"
"For goodness sakes, you saw me yourself! Sleeping..!"
When I was a young, mouthy conservative, I expressed a lot of strong ideas about marriage. Now, twenty-one years (to the day) into my own marriage, I have to concede that if I've learned anything over time, it's that the so-called traditional marriage is anything but traditional. When it works, it's a bloody miracle.
When (yet another) middle-aged, married politician is caught with (yet another) hotter, younger thing -- and we endure (yet again) the sad spectacle of a once-spectacular wife relegated to the best-supporting actress role in Sordid Scandal: Part 9,182,798 -- I have to admit that the first thing I do is look over my shoulder. Still being married at this age makes you feel a bit like a soldier charging the beaches on D-Day. The bullets are whizzing past, your comrades to the left and right are falling, mortally wounded. Will you be next?
I no longer believe that there is any single formula for successful marriage. Contra Tolstoy, I would go so far to assert that unhappy families are all alike; every happy family is happy in its own way.
These public scandals teach us, sadly, that to all the world you might seem to have the perfect "partnership": a full, satisfying life in which you have jointly constructed an enviable family life, home, and exciting careers. You may have made many mutual sacrifices, nursed each other through illnesses. You may appear to admire, respect and enjoy your spouse's company above all others. Yet nonetheless, this great partnership was not great enough to prevent one partner from weighing all the pros and cons -- and succumbing to the cons.
Some analysts of marriage insist that the solid marriage requires "work," as if love, sex, and loyalty might be guaranteed through the implementation of a marital Five Year Plan. Others insist there are certain "types" of marriages, and it's important to understand what "type" you have. Romantics reply (and I must say I'm partial to this explanation myself) that it's either there or it isn't, sparked at that first meeting long ago. Over time, the spark becomes something like the pilot light on a furnace. Whatever hardships, problems, difficulties the couple may endure, the pilot light still burns, ready to relight the main system when needed.
Enduring love is kept tendered by many things: effort, sympathy, understanding, trust, generosity, "date nights," "me time," romance without sex, sex without romance, not going to bed angry, self-sacrifice, and everything else you've ever read on the subject in a women's magazine.
But maybe the one quality that fans the initial spark into a steady pilot light is this: An overwhelming determination never to hurt the other person. In other words, whatever pleasure a certain action might grant you, you could not possibly bear the pain it would cause your wife or husband. You would rather scald your own hand than see the other's scalded. You would throw him or her the last life preserver rather than keep it for yourself. It's that basic. And it's, of course, mutual.
That's why the tears of Sanford, Spitzer, Edwards, etc. are so galling. If they cared so much about their wonderful wives and families, why then would they risk destroying them? And if they were no longer satisfied or happy in their marriages, why then wouldn't they have ended them in a more civilized, respectful way (as Mrs. Sanford even asked to do!) rather than by hurling in a stick of dynamite?
As for me -- and the rest of us still-marrieds -- all I can do is keep charging into the enemy fire, praying my husband has my back, as I have his.
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Danielle, if you think that way, any day you will become your husband's enemy.
Believe me, there are a lot of feelings more rewarding than fearfulness that can make your marriage survive. Married life should not be a battle.
And if it's so... does it have any sense to maintain that relationship?
If you have to fight to make a marriage survive, your marriage is already dead.
It's question of time: the time will be when a new person arrives (your lover or his lover).
Make love not w.ar
Danielle, if you think that way, any day you will become your husband's enemy.
Believe me, there are a lot of feelings more rewarding than fearfulness that can make your marriage survive. Married life should not be a battle.
And if it's so... does it have any sense to maintain that relationship?
If you have to fight to make a marriage survive, your marriage is already dead.
It's question of time: the time will be when a new person arrives (your lover or his lover).
Make love not war
I am not a fan of me but will accept Charles Darwin of whom I am an impersonator. I've made a number of comments on this subject and have had interesting responses from women. Men are biologically ancient creatures not well suited for our times. They can barely keep those ancient drives in check. If they're not about killing each other, they are lusting after just about every female they see, well suited for life on the African savannah. Human females have evolved to keep them interested by losing heat periods and being available year 'round. His weird wiring was once essential and is now no longer appropriate. Nature is only interested in reproduction. Our happiness and social constructs matter not at all. He is capable of falling deeply in love with one woman but keep that ancient biology in mind.
Some of our national ideas about marriage, like some of our ideas about drugs, are conflicted and troubled. The more we have felt determined to "get rid of drugs," the more troubled by drugs our national life as become. The more determined we have been to "make our marriages work," the more troubled our family lives have become. In many of the politician scandles, I don't see two people very much in love. I see two people who seem to feel their political lives (or perhaps their church lives) depend on maintaining or resuscitating a dead relationship. Everyone has been talking about "those poor children." As if it were in the best interests of the children to see their parents struggling to maintain the facade of a happy marriage which has no inner life to it.
Sanford was "crying" because his wife is the one with the money - and he got caught.
Why do so many people still confuse self-righteous sanctimony with moral fiber in politicians?
Sanford broadcasted what he was every day to those of us who could hear. Take a good look at history, and start listening a little closer.
"But maybe the one quality that fans the initial spark into a steady pilot light is this: An overwhelming determination never to hurt the other person."
You've nailed it.
Responding to one of the posts...Ms
Not wanting hurting someone...
What I find ridiculous is not that husbands cheat...an
Lying contnually says to me, they hold people in contempt. How can someone who feels so superior not just to strangers they represent politcally, but their loved ones be a leader?
Really nice article! I really do wonder how any marriages in Washington stay together. So much narcism and such huge ego's. In my what I consider "normal world" of middle America, well west coast really, such narcissistic men are not considered as serious marital companions. It makes me very curious about the women who marry such men. Much more a concern though is, why do have these men running our country? These wimpy, self interested, self aggrandizing, egotistical and morally flawed men run our country and look at where they get us. No, we need real men AND women of character who know the difference between right and wrong and know that their jobs are in honest service to the people of our nation. People who hold dear the basic compassionate principles of partnerships, family, community, state and nation.
Man oh man … you almost want to feel sorry! Life must be so very hard when you so want be in love with and make love to your Christian spouse (cue the tears!) but cannot help having those naaasty (!) desires to be with and to copulate with someone whose body and mind is so deliciously unchristia
I think this is one of the best explanations I have heard for staying married. Not causing pain - what a novel concept.
Sanford is a good example of the "I want and can have everything now" mentality Reagan championed, so is Madoff, and all the other selfish greedy pigs who run this country.
Apparently, Mrs Argentina is only 3 years younger than Mrs. Sanford. The picture on the net is almost a decade old so we don't know if she is "hotter" or not. Infidelity is more about what is missing in the infidel rather than what is missing in the marriage. Sanford has exhibited a pathological sense of entitlement, a history of secretiveness and deception, an inability to communicate articulately or openly, a disregard for the pain his behavior has caused others, and an unwillingness to take responsibility for the affair, for the derelection of duty, or for misappropriating state funds. To top it off, he has been a complete failure as a governor. He should resign on his failed record to govern effectively alone.
"Infidelity is more about what is missing in the infidel rather than what is missing in the marriage."
Exactly.
No pity for the guilty party. After 38 years of marriage between two people who can honestly say they were each others first love, not only loves, I can with some degree of credibility say it is all about the foundation, not the structure itself. It is a strong foundation that keeps a couple together through the unavoidable changes that take place in a relationship over time. We are all humans, and humans itch from time to time. It is not the itching that is the problem, it is how we choose to scratch our itches that can cause the harm.
>>An overwhelming determination never to hurt the other person.
Very well put. I absolutely agree.
Me too!
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