The discovery that Bernie Madoff was having a 20-year affair shocked many people. I’m not sure I understand why. Here’s a guy who lied to and cheated everyone for decades. What makes us think he wouldn’t lie to and cheat his wife of fifty years? What fantasy is THAT on our parts?
I guess it gives everyone a chance, now, either to feel sorry for Ruth or to say, “She had it coming.” And others to say, too bad she can’t kick him out. Too bad he’s already toast.
The Madoffs aside, it made me think: I know few people who would say that they would forgive their husbands, or their wives, for being unfaithful. Most say they’d get a gun. Or kick the guy out. Goddess knows enough people out there were outraged that Hillary didn’t leave Bill, that the Spitzers didn’t break up, or the Sanfords. What do we know about Hillary and Bill Clinton, though, and how dare anyone suggest she either stay or leave him because of his affair(s)? What do we know about the Sanfords, or the Spitzers–about their sex lives, their arrangements, their promises to each other ?
All we know is what we like to imagine: That we, sainted souls, would never, ever do such a thing as have an affair. That if we did, it would signal that it was time to leave this bad marriage. Or if he did, we’d change the locks.
Don’t be silly. In the course of a long marriage, can I really advise a woman to leave her home, her life, if her husband has an affair? Would I ever advise a man to leave his wife if she succumbed to a temptation on a business trip? Tell him to kick her out? Not unless I knew, in painstaking detail, from the people involved, a great many things about themselves and their marriages.
Yes, I’ve written books on the subject, and the more I know about the subject, the more I realize that no one knows how he or she will act over the course of a lifetime. (And don’t tell me religious people know how they’ll act: Infidelity statistics are as high among the very religious as among atheists.) Nor do we know anything about another couple’s marriage–the needs they have, the deals they make, the reasons for their being together and staying together. Often the couple itself knows little about its own marriage until the affair occurs, and all the denied emotions, all the feelings that have been shoved under the rug, show their ugly dust-bunny faces. That’s when the quality of the relationship reveals itself, for better or worse. That’s when people’s mistakes show up in their true context–a context we outsider imagine, but know nothing about.
So, yeah, love affairs are scandalous and crazy and incendiary and often agonizing–and give the rest of us a place to project all our beliefs and fantasies. But let’s give our righteous indignation another place to land besides there in other people’s beds. If you haven’t been there yourself, in that very bed, you have no idea what “should” be done by those who share it. 