The Reality Index: The Spitzers, the Patersons, and All Those Swans

You know what's shocking? That we are shocked, again and again, by what with some learned degree of certainty could have been predicted. "Upstanding" citizens in the public eye impacted by sex outside their marriages? Well, of course they are. Because we all are.

We desperately want to believe that love will consistently beat logic to a pulp, much like we want to believe cigarettes won't affect our health, and yet, there it is over and over: the reality of infidelity. In the ex-governor's marriage, the new governor's marriage, and I would bet many of the marriages of the political, custodial, and landscaping staffs of the entire state and federal government. And Hollywood. And academia. And so on.

7,239 men responded to Shere Hite's anonymous questionnaires for her 1981 The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. Seventy-two% of them reported having sex outside their marriages, with the vast majority of them adding it was unknown to their wives. Some were men who loved their wives and had great sex with them; others were men who loved their wives and didn't. Most liked being married, felt little to no guilt, and compartmentalized it enough to believe their extracurricular activity had no effect on their marriages.

I own that book, which is truly fascinating by the way, and when I began to consider writing this post, in the interest of fairness, I called all of the Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan to locate its predecessor, The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, so I could quote her infidelity findings on women. There are about six million Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan (each serving as a beard for all those Starbucks they house) but none of them had the book. What I learned instead was that Barnes and Noble has the consumer demand to keep her book explaining male sexuality in stock, whereas none of them had the same demand for the one explaining female sexuality. Interesting.

In my Women's Realities Study which is still ongoing and not nearly as comprehensive as Hite's, 62% of the women who completed the Affair Questionnaire reported having kept the affairs from their husbands, with another 18% saying they didn't disclose it, but their partners found out.

Monogamy is possible, just not probable. Infidelity has been around as long as commitment. Having no human role models for fidelity to look to for assurance, in the past we've had to turn to the bird community for hope. But according to Natalie Angier who culls a great Nora Ephron quote on swan monogamy from Heartburn, with the advent of DNA testing on eggs and chicks, we've learned that even our feathered friends are mixing it up and getting it on. Yet another fall from grace.

This morning when I went to interview the swan couple that lives on the East Hampton Village Pond, the male told me that at the advice of the swans who nest on Ron Perelman's Georgica Pond property, he'd joined a class action suit to try and seal the records of the DNA results. He told me the fallout from the revelation has been just terrible, noting that no one brings their kids by to feed them bread any more. The female swan, who declined comment, just rolled her eyes and waddled back to the new single unit nest she constructed for herself when the genetic scandal originally broke.

We in this country always need to see things in black and white. Spitzer obviously let down more than his family, but on the grounds of being human, we need to assimilate this event into his history as well as ours. Is this week's New York magazine cover funny? Yes, it is. But were the New York Times and Wall Street Journal cover stories of curtailing the Gambinos, and holding accountable Wall Street CEOs also compelling? Yes, they were.

The better we understand human nature the better we can address it, and the empathy required for this comes through understanding each one of us has a story that helps us make sense of who we've become, for good or ill. We're responsible for our behavior, and not all of it can be condoned, but I think we need more acknowledgement that our realities are shared. We're all in the same soup, and everything we do is driven by its personal meaning to us, and a desire for psychological balance. In last week's blog, "Eliot Spitzer: Why?", Dr. Mona Ackerman draws a great profile for such a balance.

Dealing with the heartache of betrayal is enough to manage. We make it harder on ourselves by lauding unrealistic expectations and shaming each other when we fall short. Each of us has the capacity to flounder and to be cruel, but we also have the capacity for bravery and compassion.

Comments

[jessiefindlay]

One of the great disappointments of adulthood has been realizing how unrealistic my childhood fantasies of love and monogamous relationships were. I always believed that once (not if!) you found the "right man", evils like infidelity and divorce would not touch you - those were things that happened to "other people" who were somehow weaker. Understanding what makes myself tick is hard enough, let alone figuring out the back story of my partner's behavior. My elected officials? Forget it. But I agree that the acknowledgment of what we share is the beginning of that understanding - and perhaps forgiveness...

[simsteel]

I know your right ,but god I just want to believe there are still people out there who put duty above their own desires. Who truly care about the people who they made a pledge to . who will not ,cannot sell out for sex ,money or whatever other vice you have. I want to find one honest person to vote for just once . Sadly I don't see that happening. To me its not so much about what he did , more the way he compromised the job, A Governor visting prostitutes is an easy target for blackmail or worse. People fall in love and have affairs ,I can accept that. But paying for sex bothers me. The fact that half this womans money goes to pimp bothers me. It bothers me that pimps are now heroes in youth culture. Thats another topic though. By the way i think 72% is way high. I think 72% would like to cheat but are either 1- afraid of their wives, 2- way to unattractive, or 3- maybe ,just maybe, faithful and in love . Love your work.