Infidelity Fatigue - Tipping Point..... 6/27/09

Sat Jun 27 13:27:10 EDT 2009

- INFIDELITY FATIGUE/TIPPING POINT
- IN CASE YOU ARE INTERVIEWED ABOUT SANFORD AFFAIR

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- INFIDELITY FATIGUE/TIPPING POINT

It's interesting.  This latest Sanford incident seems to be some kind of
tipping point.  Is it the cumulative effect of years of infidelity
reportage? Whatever, it seems to have everyone  reporters, experts, and
husbands & wives  questioning their most deeply held convictions about
marriage, monogamy, forgiveness. Everyone is once again asking if we should
all just wake up and smell the coffee and admit that monogamous marriage is
a myth.  Some are focused on charting the red states/blue states examining
who has the most infidelity, divorce and porn addition, or on creating
Republican vs. Democrat scorecards and showing clips of offenders' earlier
proclamations about family values and the sanctity of marriage alongside
clips of their apologies for violating their own marriages and families.
And, emails.  We do live in a different world.

Some focus on analyzing the reactions of the wives (lots of clips to work
with here, too)  and if how the wives handle things affects recovery  or
failure of the marriage to recover. And, the blogs are alive with if they
should or shouldn't - therein lies the question.

And many articles blame the wives with subtle (and hardly subtle) innuendo
about their steely or driven personalities - Kate was a witch; Mrs Sanford
alienated staffers; Hilary was just married to pursue her own agenda  in
spite of the reporting that allowed they also seemed devoted to their
husbands, raised good kids, stayed in shape, and even made home-made jelly.
Ah...the head-scratching good-wife, good-mother, good-marriage, good-sex 
mysteries. 

Some are quite devoted to trying to resurrect the Scarlet Letter - have
identified that the root of the problem is that women don't respect other
women - they knowingly lure away our husbands and the fathers of our
children. I admit I followed the link to read about the Argentine mistress
(there's video all over the internet - just youtube or google search "maria
belen chapur"). She was a married mother of two.

Some take a *grow-up-America* position and point to the differences in how
other cultures understand male sexuality, marriage and monogamy -
sophisticated European's laugh at the naïvely romantic Americans and
arranged-marriage and multiple-wife cultures see us as absolutely primitive
in our expectations of marriage.

I admit it's hard to get anything done.  The blogs, articles, twitters,
broadcast media.  I also admit that these two (Jon & Kate and the Sanfords)
have reactivated my own PTSD, thrown me back to rehashing the discovery of
my ex-husband's infidelities and how I handled them.  It's decades past, but
I'm amazed at how accurate Shirley Glass was about the PTSD effect (Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder) - meaning you can be slammed right back to the
experience of the full frontal attack (as in battle) - re-experience the
horror and pain.  And, in talking with so many other women who have been
similarly stirred up, that's one of our main curiosities.....why this one,
why now - when there have been so many infidelity reports over the decades?

Actually, after reading dozens of articles and talking to reporters and
other men and women, I find I'm most curious about three things: 1) The
Why-Now question  why this PTSD-reactivation for so many around these last
disclosures?   2) What is the message is to the kids - to the next marrying
 or not  generations? And newlyweds? What is this writing on their
romantic brains and their marriage practices?  Their paranoia?  We need to
make Dave Carder's Close Calls keynote available for free as part of
marriage preparation education - 10 steps for how fidelity behaves. 3) And,
finally, how does it feel to be a married male - as Esther Perel's keynote
puts it, Mating in Captivity? Where do they feel they fit - or don't - with
the stereotypes about men, sex, monogamy?  Are they angry? Or, do they wish
they lived in a different culture? Era?   And how will they handle their
wives' needs for reassurance - verbalized or not?

The New York Times has three articles and two editorials in the front
section  including a photo of the Argentine mistress. The front page
article focuses on Jenny Sanford's reactions (down but not out) - the wife
gets two photos, the mistress only one  http://tinyurl.com/pvyut2.

A second inside article analyzes Jenny Sanford's *hard line* reaction and
puts it in context of wounded political wives - over the years.  Pretty
funny as top female scholars opine as to whether women would prefer their
husbands have a romantic, love affair or call-girl, roll-in-the-hay
infidelities. Oy.  Oy. Oy.  (I can't find the link to this one - sorry.)

A third reports that the mistress was cheating on the governor and it was
her lover-once-removed (not really clear who was on first) who revealed the
governor's sexy, romantic emails.  Oy.  http://tinyurl.com/r3w6zw

And, tomorrow's NY Times Style section lead article, one that includes
mention of me and Peggy Vaughan - Marriage Stands Up for Itself - offers a
positive, optimistic perspective:

> . . . Yet if recent research is any guide, the marriage itself has a chance to
> outlast all of it, the public leer and the private sting, by many years.
> 
> Despite strong social riptides working against it ‹ the liberalization of
> divorce laws, the vanishing stigma of divorce, the continual online
> temptations of social sites like MySpace or Facebook ‹ the marriage bond is
> far stronger in 21st-century America than many may assume. Infidelity is one
> of the most common reasons cited by people who divorce. But surveys find the
> majority of people who discover a cheating spouse remain married to that
> person for years afterward. Many millions more shrug off, or work through,
> strong suspicions or evidence of infidelity. And recent trends in marriage
> suggest that the institution itself has become more resilient in recent years,
> not less so.
> 
> ³Every marriage has many, many more dimensions to it than faithfulness,²

> . . . ³People tend to assume that bad people have affairs, and good people
> don¹t, or that affairs only happen in bad marriages,² said Peggy Vaughan, a
> San Diego-based researcher who runs the Web site dearpeggy.com, and author of
> a forthcoming book on infidelity and marriage, ³To Have and to Hold.² ³These
> assumptions are just not based in reality.²

> . . . .The culture itself has also become more clear-eyed about the costs of
> divorce, despite and because of its frequency. Most social scientists today,
> no matter their political persuasion, agree that divorce, while sometimes
> necessary, financially drains families and is often tough on children. Many
> therapists now counsel couples coping with infidelity not to act rashly, to
> work on reconciliation for at least six months ‹ divorce, almost always, is
> for good. 

Maybe we are making progress....can make progress.  Just not sure how it
will look.  

The article is already available online: http://tinyurl.com/lxew5e

And, that's just the NY Times.  Readers have sent me at least three dozen
links this morning and you can imagine the South Carolina papers.

I'm hoping that writing this - this outflow - will let me get back to
packing for the conference.  As I've said, we've got great keynotes on this
topic - Mars and Venus in the Bedroom; Mating in Captivity; Couples Sexual
Styles; Infidelity Busting; Close Calls, Shared Goals....and so many
workshops - lots of places where we can hash it out. Maybe we need to add a
hash -it-out session - where that's all we do. :)

In any case I  look forward to seeing so many
of you next week.   -diane

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- IN CASE YOU ARE INTERVIEWED ABOUT SANFORD AFFAIR

Nice to see what to expect and nice to see how Dr Haltzman stood up for
recovery.  Send me any features.   - diane

> Diane,
> I think you'll enjoy this PBS segment where I talk
> about infidelity with a feminist lawyer who advocates for "divorce and
> move on with your new love." You can skip the first 3 minutes.
>  
> http://streams.wgbh.org/online/gb/gb.php?file=gb20090625cad1.mp4&title=South%2
> 0Carolina%20Gov.%20Mark%20Sanford%20is%20the%20latest%20politician%20caught%20
> cheating
> 
> Scott Haltzman, MD
> DrHaltzman at secretsofmarriedmen.com

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Diane Sollee, Director
Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, LLC (CMFCE)
5310 Belt Rd NW,   
Washington, DC 20015
www.smartmarriages.com
202-362-3332  
diane at smartmarriages.com

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