Ok…every once in a while…when I am pressed for time…I will just bring to you some insane link and urge you to comment. Today is that day. WTF is this? DADCHELOR PARTIES?
Really?
Cause the men suffer so much during a pregnancy, they need some time away with buddies to decompress and prep for baby’s arrival?
And who are the wives that go along with this insanity?
Soliciting men in bathroom stalls , moving hookers over state lines (seriously, why aren’t ours here in DC good enough for Spitzer?), trysts in a TGI Fridays (really, McGreevey, really?), hiking the Appalachian trail – or was it lounging seaside in Argentina ( )- these are tales for an epic Hollywood blockbuster. The serious political leader caught with his pants down in outrageous scenarios is a constant thread in our media commentary. Arnold, we knew you had it in you, we just thought your story would be more exotic than a housekeeper. So let’s be honest with ourselves. We don’t devour every salacious detail of these affairs because of what the husband did, though, do we? We devour them because we are watching the scorned political wife.
And among those political wives, Ms. Edwards was the first to not stand by her man’s side in the mea culpa media interview . We applauded her for it. Then Ms. Sanford set the bar a little higher by dropping off the scene, leaking that she hadn’t spoken to her husband for weeks and demanded his repentance . Was the tide turning? Were we seeing a movement away from steadfast support of the husband because of his career? And why did these earlier political wives stand next to their husbands in those moments of humiliation and disgrace? Were they just in shock and willing to believe what they wanted to believe, or did they also believe in their husband-as-candidate so profoundly that they were willing to forgo their own humiliation?
Julianna Margulies’ ill-titled show The Good Wife handled the perspective of the shamed wife with delicacy and respect through its first season. We watched as she rediscovered her independence, cultivated her career and built a life that wasn’t centered around her husband. But we watched her keep her husband at arm’s length, for the sake of her kids and presumably because you can’t stop loving the father of your children overnight.
So now we have Maria Shriver to watch. Possibly due to her own blue-blooded political savvy, in combination with her experience working for the media, she managed the message from the time it leaked out. It certainly can’t be a mistake that this news leaked months after the Governator left office. His political career was able to reach the apex he desired without his own indiscretions toppling it, like all these other idiots, but Maria managed to avoid the requisite press conference and already announced that she is separated from the dirty rotten scoundrel. She doesn’t look like a victim, she looks like she’s in charge.
So what does it leave us to think? What do we relay to our kids who are old enough to hear the incessant media chatter and ask us questions about it? How do we not shine the spotlight on our husbands and issue a few threats addressing precisely what we’ll do to them if they take up with the housekeeper or nanny or kindergarten teacher or school psychologist? Why do marriages fall apart after 25 years and four children? What does it say to the cheaters (and our kids) if we stick with them and what does it say to our kids if we ditch them?
Any one of these questions is enough to whip up a tornado of doubt and introspection to the point of neurotic. So I choose to focus on the positive. My instinct is that we tell our kids the truth: many adult decisions are leaps of faith but we leap because we genuinely love someone; the inertia of the fear of what ifs is more paralyzing than the leap could be damaging. We stand by a spouse or we walk away based on what is right for us and what is right for our kids. We can’t ever really know what compels some political wives to stick around and others to walk away. But we have to believe that it takes two people to make a marriage work and two people to allow it to break.
And about that fairy tale, as a women’s studies minor and feminist protestor outside strip clubs in college (seriously), I enjoy watching my girls get lost into the world of a Disney fairy tale. Why can’t I let them believe there is a Prince for them? Why shouldn’t they think their daddy is my modern-day Prince? Weren’t 3 billion people worldwide glued to the marriage of Kate to William because we love fairy tales? Maybe Maria tolerated Arnold’s behavior for as long as she felt her children needed her to and then she broke. Maybe the Terminator was Maria’s Prince for as long as she wanted one.
Maybe the real fairy tale is that the story isn’t linear and the Princess gets a few bruises along the way. But she brushes herself off and gets back up. Maybe that’s the real lesson for the kids.
Does this sound familiar, below the scene, act one, plays out around August 1, 2010:
“Honey, did you call your mom and talk to her about Thanksgiving?”
Honey: “I didn’t get around to it. I’ll do it later.”
Fast forward another few weeks:
“Hey, did you talk to your mother yet? An email, a phone call, courier pigeon? Smoke Signals?”
Husband “Oh, right. I forgot. I’ll do it this week.”
Fast forward to Halloween:
“DID YOU CALL YOUR MOTHER YET? THANKSGIVING IS IN THREE WEEKS. IF YOU DON’T CALL I AM GOING TO (insert any threat you can think of)
Husband “It’s still so far off. I’ll get to it, relax.”
Do you think I’m secretly live-streaming your own household conversations on the web? Right? Is this not eerily familiar? Is it me or do husbands FAIL miserably when it comes to communicating with their mothers. Right?
Do I hear an “oh hell yes” echoing from the masses? I’m sure I do.
With all the lists of things to do that come with the holidays (and really any other time of year), let’s never forget to add “call your mother-in-law” to that list because no matter how many times you ask, how many times you plead, how many times your bark, bitch and threaten, they don’t call their mothers.
We can talk about the second shift, gripe about how much we do around the house, all the laundry, but what the professionals never add to that list is calling the in-laws. This is just more work and it inevitably falls on us. Sure, I”m sure there’s some miracle husband out there who calls his mother regularly and when August rolls around starts thinking ahead to the holidays and how family time will be split, and bites the bullet and calls his parents to discuss when the family is coming to town, directly answers any difficult questions and certainly never deflects or says “I’ll talk to Susie about it” (so then when the answer he knows is the right one comes out, Susie looks like the bad guy and not him) but I don’t know him. Do you know him? Are you married to him? Can he start teaching lessons to my husband? I’ll pay. Whatever that amount is, I”ll pay. But only if his teachings deliver tangible results, not empty promises.
We all like to talk about how husbands taking initiative around the house is a turn-on and is better than a little robin’s egg blue box under the tree….but do you think they realize how much more this is true when it comes to clearly communicating with his own parents? For the love of GOD. And ESPECIALLY around the holidays when we have more parties, more gifts, more planning, more errands, more baking, more of EVERYTHING to do, we would really love to not have to handle managing the logistics of both sides of the family and fielding difficult questions being asked by someone else’s mom.
So honey, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, for Hanukkah, guess what – call your MOTHER and make some plans yourself!
As if working parents don’t have enough on their minds, here’s something really outrageous….and for the first time in my life, I am completely speechless
Note – this piece is yet another example of how to blame mothers for the shortcomings of their children. Don’t dads matter in f#cking things up too?
I know I like to blame my husband.
