Politics Today

<<<Can ANYONE tell me why our political culture seems to require this of political wives?>>>

I'll take a stab at this. It's supposed to be sort of subliminal. See? He isn't so bad. His spouse is still supporting him. If she can forgive him why can't the voters. I think it is what makes political marriages, many times, business arrangements. I really don't know how the spouses stand up to the pressure.

Actually, I do. When you first find out you have been betrayed, you are enveloped in a numbing confusion. My H confessed to me on the morning of my youngest son's 8th grade promotion/graduation. I had to sit next to the man I loved and hated more than anything else in the world and deal with friends and family and the appearance of a normal happy event. You become numb. You know you are in no state to make any decisions, yet, and you just live minute by minute. It's horrible.

So, it's not just political wives who our culture requires to just keep breathing until the storm passes. You have probably seen people in the grocery store, at the gas station or picking up their children from school and they have just been betrayed. They have just had their world blown apart and you don't even notice them. The world doesn't stop even if you can no longer feel your feet. You do what you have to do until you can get behind closed doors or into the shower, where you collapse to the floor and weep. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

I appreciate your candid post.  A little reminder that these are actually people we're talking about here and none of us know what our reaction would been without walking a mile...

I also heard the suggestion that she may have been encouraged to at least make the appearance of a statement of solidarity with her husband for the sake of perhaps keeping some of the press from hounding her.  If she stands up there with him that basically tells them all they would expect her to say anyway.  If she were absent they would be hunting her down.

The world doesn't stop even if you can no longer feel your feet. You do what you have to do until you can get behind closed doors or into the shower, where you collapse to the floor and weep. It is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

I am deeply sorry that you had to go through this. The pain must have been unbearable for you.

I went through the same numbing shock twice, first, when DW told me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and then when the doctors told us that it was fatal and she had at most 6 months to live (it turned out to be one). You sort of glide through the world in a surealistic fog and marvel at how normal the world seems to be for everyone else when it's crashing apart for you. There is an old Greatful Dead song, Black Peter, about a man who is dying, the lyrics kind of apply to anyone in a situation where their world is crashing down.

See here how everything

Lead up to this day.

And it's just like any other day

that's ever been.

Telling our then 13 and 9 year old DDs that mom's journey with us was coming to an end was the worst, most gut wrenching thing I've ever done in my life.