The John Edwards Affair
The mainstream media has been running various stories about the John Edwards affair. I guess since the swine flu turned out to be a hoax, it is time to move on to some other gossip.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/06/earlyshow/main4995221.shtml?source=mostpop_story
Elizabeth has assumed the role of the long suffering wife. She plans an Oprah appearance to push her book about the subject. (Color me skeptical that she is all that hurt if she is willing to go on national TV and hawk her book about the subject.)
Anyway, the usual experts are puzzled as to why Elizabeth stays with John. It must be her true love for him.
Yeah, I am sure that is it.
Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is that women *care* very much how much other women desire the men they are with. That is a status-raiser for women. We see all the time how many women prefer to hunt married men because married men have been "validated" by a woman choosing to marry them -- they may not be high status, but they are not beta/omega losers, either.
I think for Edwards here -- like other political wives (which means high status mates), they will not leave them because leaving them is a *loss* for them. The lose status that way, and they become an older woman who has fewer options.
If you even look at the Spitzers, Silda Spitzer is a sexy woman for her age, and quite hot. But she is also 51. Probably one of the sexier 51 year olds I have seen. But if she left Elliot, she could do the cougar thing, but would have a harder time pulling younger men at 51 than she would in her early 40s, which is prime cougar time. So she is staying with him, even though he totally humiliated her by sleeping with a 22 year old hooker for an outrageous amount of money -- I think women are even more offended by men using hookers than they are by real affairs, even though this is irrational (men are not leaving you for a hooker, after all). But Spitzer is another example of women getting past male infidelity because they are old enough that their own opportunities, if they left, would be worse.
This is why I think most females leaving marriage happen in the 30s and 40s, when they can still -- if in shape -- put together a Plan B. Later than late 40s, it gets dicey. Some women will leave when a man retires, because they have gotten the benefit of his income but in retirement are just as well off alone. But otherwise I think it's 30s and 40s, and once in the 50s, there's much less incentive to divorce until the husband retires.