Would you stay or would you go?
June 25, 2009emily 3 Comments »So, ah, clearly Governor Sanford has been having fun in his free time. As the story began to unravel yesterday, and as Sanford’s wife released her statement saying that she would “welcome him back, in time,” it made me wonder: in that situation, what would I do? I’ve always taken a pretty hard line on this one. I’d leave. No question. I wouldn’t want to stick around after that for a number of reasons, not the least of which are that I don’t think that I could trust my partner afterwards and I don’t think I would have any self respect if I did stay. And yet. And yet so many women do stay. Why is that? Smart, strong women. Look at Hilary Clinton. I have a great deal of respect for her, though I really question why she stuck around after MonicaGate. One might argue that she herself had political aspirations and thought that her husband would be an asset, in time, but I think the truth is probably much more complicated than that. So, what about you? Would you stay or would you go?
Posted on June 25th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I would go…probably.
Sucks to be the wives of these office-holding jackasses. I’m sure they’d all like to kick them out of the house, but alas, it’s the governor’s mansion, not the first lady’s mansion.
Posted on June 28th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
I don’t think you ever really know unless it happens to you. Marriages are so complex and you don’t know what goes on inside other people’s houses, no matter how much they tell you. I do know that a lot of marriages are unhappy on a lot of levels but people choose to stay together for complex reasons. I am not condoning cheating, but the older I get, the more I understand that it’s never a cut and dried issue.
Posted on July 8th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Bill Clinton had a record. Hillary had probably made her peace with his philandering long, long ago; for all we know she agreed in advance, though she was clearly blindsided by him being caught with an *intern*. Clearly there are things which matter more than sexual fidelity in some relationships — they certainly seem to have stuck together in every other part of their life, very tightly, and he actually seems intensely supportive of her.
George H. W. Bush had a mistress (it’s well known), and Barbara seemed to have no problem with it at all. Approval if anything.
Marriages are organized on individual agreements to be together in ways individually chosen, but since our culture expects them to be "standardized", public figures usually pretend that they’re cookie-cutter stereotypes. Remember Hillary having to bake cookies for the news media? Ick.
Sanford? Don’t know anything much about him or his wife, though she seemed…. angry. And ambitious, so she’ll probably keep him until he becomes a political liability.