This is your brain on mid-life crisis Tom Smith

Once more the human animal baffles me.  Gov. Sanford, who I thought was pretty cool for trying to refuse to take stimulus money, turns out to be a love-crazed loon.  I have long accepted that women are mysterious, but increasingly I fear I do not understand men either.  What is it with these middle aged guys who ruin themselves, not to mention their families, by chasing after ridiculous objects of affection or even obsession?  The length of the flight alone would keep me from flying to Argentina to have sex, not to mention prior engagements.  Do I just not get it?  Do I not know what love is?  Hasn't this guy ever heard of cold showers or push ups?

I think in a deeper sense this is all the fault of liberals.  Nobody used to think that just because you were 49 and the mother of your children no longer enthralled you as she once did that you were somehow entitled to fly across the hemisphere to satisfy your man lust.  Real men sucked down a couple of stiff drinks, played a round of golf, fired up a good cigar and accepted the responsibilities of running the free world.  But no more apparently.  Now it's, oh my feelings, and I don't know who I am anymore, and nine other kinds of bullshit.  It makes me embarassed for my sex.  But, this is all the fault of the sexual revolution, and the associated rise of the therapeutic culture, which you may recall were not Republican ideas.

The fault of liberalism but also of technology.  What is it about email that tempts the sender to pour out his sappy heart into a form that can be forwarded and published to the world at zero marginal cost?  I could not bring myself to read the emails between the Governor and his Argentinian love muffin.  I couldn't get past "Sweetest" and "Dearest".  I was going to ask how they became public, but I guess it's just all that information yearning to be free.  A good rule of thumb might be, just never exchange even remotely steamy emails, texts, facebook messages and so on, with anybody.  Just assume she is a 300 pound transvestite sheathed in pink vinyl.  If you are already assuming that, you need more help than I can offer.  I just hope you're not a Republican governor.

Now it's supposed to be the time for healing.  O brother.  If people were more aware that lots of things can't be healed, maybe they'd be more careful in the first place.  Upper class rural America used to be a place where if you did something like this, you'd check your life insurance and then go out with your dog and a shotgun and have an accident getting over a fence.  At least there's some honor in that. There is no honor in tearful confessions to the press.

Comments

[Matt Lister]

Hasn't this guy ever heard of cold showers or push ups?

Apparently digging holes in your back yard with an excavator isn't a good substitute.

I think in a deeper sense this is all the fault of liberals.
I'd be hugely shocked if infidelity was more common now. (It was, for example, extremely common and largely expected in Victorian England, at least for men. That was also the pre-internet hay-day of pornography.) What's different now is that women are less likely to put up with it or just accept it or pretend its now happening. When this is with a politician, he must then have a press conference to preempt this. I'm almost certain that the rate hasn't changed, or at least not much, just the publicity level.

[Mike]

Fault of liberals? LOL and what?

Cheating has been an American affair for decades. Especially in the South.

[Tom Smith]

Blaming liberals is somewhat tongue in cheek.

ML -- I know there is the view that it was common among Victorians. I read The Other Victorians years ago and it took that view I think. But I am skeptical. It would be hard to measure this. I don't know if there are any real studies worth believing.

I just bought some of Himmelfarb's books on the Victorians that I'm looking forward to.

[golddog]

Matt Lister is correct. I bet that infidelity occurred at the same rate in the past (i.e., pre-sexual revolution). The only difference now is that the media is willing to expose it for influential figures and that spouses that have been cheated on are less willing to put up with it.

If anything, perhaps this openness creates an incentive for husbands (or in rare cases, wives) to not cheat because the threat of his (or her) spouse leaving is much more realistic.

"I don't know if there are any real studies worth believing."

I may be off mark, but this quote sounds like you're saying that you won't believe any studies that differ with your pre-conceived ideological biases. Alas, rationality and supporting ideas through empirical evidence seem to no longer be central to "the right."

[M.A.]

Ah, yes, the good old days of honor suicide. Clearly the kids are much better off with insurance money than a disgraced dad. Family values indeed.

[Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk]

Golddog, I think you are off the mark. What Professor Smith almost certainly is suggesting is that there's not likely to be much in the way of reliable empirical data regarding private, illicit conduct (and this may be especially so with respect to the prior periods of history), hence his preceding remark: "It would be hard to measure this."

[M.A.]

And by the way, isn't it great that gay people can't be married? I mean, it would be a real shame if they were to be permitted to ruin the sanctity of marriage for the rest of us.

[Commodore]

M.A., are you suggesting that radically redifining marriage in contravention to millenia of practice does the same degree of harm to the institution as does the infidelity of a single man? If so, I suggest you back up your claims with actual argument.

[Matt]

I hate to disgress, but I agree with M.A. on the gay marriage elephant in the room.

Commodore, Was not allowing divorce radically redifining marriage? I mean, it fundamentally changed the nature of the relationship to know that you could get out of it later and that it is not 'til death do you part. As regards to "millenia" of practice, thats tough to comprehend (based on historical support of polygomy and banning of divorce). Men marrying multiple women seems to have been the norm thousands of years ago. We all just need to accept that it is tough to defend the sanctity of marriage with a straight face no matter what your political or regilious beliefs are.

[Matt]

This is almost as good as when that evangelical leader in Colorado admitted to doing meth with a young male prostitute. But hey, at least Bill Clinton didnt go incommunicado and fly to Argentina to get his blow jobs. Hopefully Sanford's mistress isnt as fat or ugly as Lewinsky was.