In every affair consider what precedes and what follows...
-- Epictetus
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford isn't a man's man, nor is he a ladies' man. He's a very strange man, to be sure. But basically he's a selfish man.
Everyone now knows that Sanford betrayed his wife and kids by conducting an affair with an Argentinean woman whose "tan lines" -- according to an email he sent her -- proved irresistible. Leaping over damage control into hero-worship, Sanford's friend Cubby Culbertson -- whom Sanford calls a "spiritual giant" -- positioned his pal as "a man's man" for having the courage to fess up to his sins: "Any man can fall. But it takes a real man to get up and honestly, from his heart, confess that he was wrong."
Clubby Cubby isn't all wrong -- what he describes might be admirable if only it bore some resemblance to what the Governor actually did. Instead, Sanford followed the time-worn pathway of lying ever more elaborately -- he was hiking the Appalachian Trail! He was motoring down the non-existent coastal roads of Argentina! -- until the edifice of his dishonesty crumbled under its own bizarre weight. In other words, until he got caught.
Sanford's melodramatic, sweeping apology could serve as the video dictionary definition of "How to make things worse when you get entangled in a web of lies." Dripping with operatic self-pity --"I spent the past five days of my life crying in Argentina," he said, "so I could come back and cry here" -- he apologized to his wife, kids, assorted friends and colleagues, constituents and, unless I misunderstood, every sentient being in this and all parallel universes. (Note to the Governer: when you say "of my life," it's a narcissistic tell. They were the past five days of our lives too.)
Sanford's apologia even included a meta-mea culpa when he expressed regret to his four sons not only for shattering their lives but also for breaking the news to them in front of millions of TV viewers, as if there were no alternative.
Any doubt that this was an affair of the ego was laid to rest when Sanford used the word "self" three times in one brief, nonsensical sentence: "The biggest self of self is indeed self." Indeed.
In 1990 Mia Farrow, then in a long-term relationship with Woody Allen, who was 55, discovered nude pictures he'd taken of her adopted daughter, the then 21-year-old Soon-Yi Previn, whom Allen had helped raise since she was seven. Woody acknowledged that he and Soon-Yi were having an affair but refused to publicly apologize for his appalling behavior. He simply offered the voracious media this brief tautology: "The heart wants what it wants."
The implication is that because the heart wants something, any behavior in pursuit of that something, no matter what the collateral damage, is excusable. (Notice there's no reference to a living, breathing person who can make choices.)
Thankfully, we have Woody's art to console us when his actions don't. At the end of Hannah and Her Sisters, a wonderful movie about, among other things, an extra-marital affair -- in which Mia Farrow plays the role of the the victim (!) --Woody's lovable character says, "The heart is a very, very resilient little muscle."
In the quotidian world, couples come up with a variety of plans to deal with temptation. One apparently happily married couple I knew during the '80s agreed that, since the husband's sex drive was the stronger of the two, he was allowed to have meaningless sex outside the marriage. I never found out if he acted on it, but I did learn years later that the wife had had a passionate affair that ended the marriage.
My old friends the Brilliants -- and no, I am not making up that name -- had a better idea: they maintained, in writing, a "free fuck" list. The rule was that if either had the opportunity to sleep with someone on the list, they got a one-time-only free pass. No harm, no foul. The unwritten rule was that the listees had to be unattainable icons like Richard Gere and Michelle Pfeiffer, suitable only for fantasies.
And speaking of fantasies, Governor Sanford -- taking a page from Rudy Blagojevich, who compared himself to Ghandi -- upped the narcissistic ante several days after his demented press conference by likening himself to King David, who "fell mightily...but was able to pick up the pieces."
But King David really did repent, deeply and for years, and wrote a bunch of hit songs in the process. I'm afraid the kindest thing that can be said about Sanford's analogy would be to paraphrase Bill Clinton, another philanderer who lied through his teeth until he got caught: It depends on what your definition of "picking up the pieces" is.
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Anything else shows him to be the coward and cheat that he is.
If they care so much about the sanctity of marriage, then walk the walk.
Outlaw divorce, not gay marriage. Walk the walk.
end of story. Cubby can spin it any way he wants
interesting idea.
I stayed in the city where we met and he moved several hundred miles away. There was no affair as in physical. I will not deny that it was an affair of the heart. (I've never liked that phrase, but didn't know how else to say it).
We never saw one another again.
Was it a happy time? No. Would I do it again? No.
Maybe she really didn't know his family values were in his pants.
We'll have to see how much the babe from Argentina wants a washed up, ex-Governor, who lied to and cheated on his wife.
it will be interesting to see if Sanford finds some character and resigns to spare SC an ugly, divisive, destracting impeachment process, and if Jenny Sanford follows the Clinton example of accepting adultery as a fact of her marriage.
Custody court found several aspects of Allen's behavior pretty darned icky and he lost parental/visitation rights.
Allen is still with Soon Yi. I think that says something about the benign nature of the relationship, and the general disapprobation (ickyness) says a lot more about the uptight moral uneasiness of a puritanical/pornographic public than it does about Allen.
Sanford's case is much different. he is a puritanical, moral bigot, and is trying to use public disclosure and hypocritical or phony moralistic values to offset the perfidy of his actions.
This matters because guys like Clinton and Spitzer don't leave their wives, and when all's said and done they've bruised only pride. Sanford's going to break hearts. Men in Sanford's boat often leave their marriages, for better or for worse.
The primary purpose of the conservative emphasis on 'family values', then, is protecting marriages from Sanford's kind of infidelity, because this the kind that does real damage.
So somehow, Clinton is morally superior because he is a serial adulter with his wife's permission? What about the women he has used?
Clinton was getting laid. Sanford was falling in love. These things differ in significant ways.
Sanford said that 'fifteen years ago he didn't need love, but . . . . now he does'.
Fifteen years ago Jenny and Mark were parents of a toddler, with more babies to come.
To me, that is by far the most hurtful thing that he has said.
Mommy's boys don't deal well with parenthood. Takes the focus off of them.
So they go looking for women who will mother them again. The ideal woman for them
is divorced or separated and has an older child or children, thus 'proving' that she is maternal
but is also past the demanding stage of mothering younger kids and can thus focus on Him.