As one member of Congress said about Hillary Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal: “You know, if that was my wife, she’d be standing over my bleeding body in the kitchen saying, ‘how do you reload this thing’?”
So was Silda Spitzer just too stupid and dependent on her man to risk leaving him?
Hardly. She was a highly educated career woman in her own right when she met Spitzer. A Harvard law graduate, she left her prestigious job when she decided to be a stay-at-home mother and First Lady of New York and she has admitted that she felt very conflicted about having to sacrifice her own career for her husband and family.
(But lucky for her that she did. Because if she’d been out working in the ‘real world’, ‘neglecting’ her husband and children, she would most probably have been blamed for her husband’s infidelity.)
So, she’s not stupid or dependent but she’s loyally standing by her man. Why?
It’s been widely surmised that Silda will file for divorce eventually — but then why
did she bother with the whole humiliating charade if she was going to leave her philandering husband anyway?
Surely she couldn’t possibly love him?
As a well connected, intelligent woman, perhaps Silda knew that her husband was having a bit on the side but decided that there were more important things than infidelity.
Many feminists have criticised wives who stay with husbands who have affairs. But surely feminism is all about choice? Who can honestly say what is going on in another person’s relationship? And research shows that women seem to tolerate sexual infidelity from men far more than is reciprocated. Despite the fact that infidelity among women is on the increase, it is still more likely that a man will stray.
In Shere Hites’ 1981 report on male sexuality, of the 7,239 men anonymously questioned, 72 per cent of them reported having sex outside marriage, with the vast majority of them adding that their wives did not know. They felt little or no guilt and didn’t believe it had any effect on their marriage.
Know what, boys? I would guess that the wives in question were well aware of your extra-curricular activities but decided not to say anything — perhaps because it wasn’t that important to them or perhaps they were waiting until they had to power to do something about it.
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