Infidelity in marriage is a vastly complex thing. So is the reaction of an offended spouse. I learned once that my wife had spent a long stretch of years dallying, behind my back, with a lot of people, most of whom I knew and some of whom I considered friends. It was clear, too, that certain other friends of ours must have known of her secret life. (Odd to call it "secret," though, when the only person from whom it was secret was me.) Right away I started contacting the people whose presence on her list of lovers upset me the most--chiefly those who had continued to keep up an appearance of friendship with the two of us after becoming lovers of hers--and letting them know how furious I was. I also scolded, more politely, some of the mutual friends who weren't on the list of lovers but who I knew had known about my wife's extramarital love life, and who I thought should have had the courage at least to confront her about it, if not to spill the beans to me. And I happened to have a 25th college reunion coming up, so when the class secretary wrote and asked for an update on my life I blew the whole thing open there, too, for publication in our reunion book. Why all the candor? It may have seemed masochistic to many of the people to whom I wrote and with whom I spoke about my wife's revelations, but really it was a project to make the whole story as public as possible, as quickly as possible, precisely so as to wash away my feelings of shame and humiliation. I had to let the former holders of secrets know that their secrets were no more. The secretness of a hidden truth is a large component of its power to make us feel ashamed. It was much more humiliating to have certain people walking around thinking that I didn't know they'd bedded my wife than to confront them with my indignation about the skullduggery.

Once I'd gotten the truth out in the open, I still had months and years of my own work to do in calming down and coming to a settled feeling about whether I did or didn't still belong with my wife—she had made it clear that she had no wish to leave me—and in forgiving her to whatever extent I could. But at least I didn't have also to carry around, for the rest of my days, the ghastly burden of a shameful "secret." Yes, she had been selfish and cowardly for many years, _in one particular way_; but that didn't erase the various other ways in which she had been, and was still, a brave and beautiful and supportive and wise person. So we had a difficult road ahead of us. Years have passed since the crisis, and time has confirmed the rightness of our decision to struggle and suffer and rebuild together instead of calling it quits. I have never regretted my decision to "go public" with the story when it broke. I think I understand why Silda Wall Spitzer stood up in public with her husband: If they have a chance of concluding that they belong together despite what has happened, the staying-together won't feel right if she has treated their crisis as something unmentionable and unwatchable. She has to put herself out in front with him and let the world see that she knows it all, and we have to see her knowing that we know it. Otherwise there's no way to face the future. Having stood up with him, she can decide somewhere down the road whether the two of them still belong together. If she'd spent the past few days hiding out, the world would just be watching and waiting, with a ghoulish curiosity, for her emergence into the light of day. Of course there's been something ghoulish in the attention that we've paid to her sad, beautiful face this week, but if you're going to move on you have to get the ghoulishness over with. I think she's done the right thing, no matter what she sees in her future.

That Spitzer's kids aren't mentioned..

They have no control over who their father is, or their mother either.

The kids are the ones that get my sympathy, they did not ask to be dragged into this cesspit and bear no possible responsibility.

Any woman that marries a career politician has made a deliberate choice to be with a man that has a vastly inflated ego, she must be willing to pay the price for staying in such a relationship.

I would be quite surprised if Mrs Spitzer was totally unaware of what her husband was up to and it would not surprise me at all to find out that she either condoned it or had some culpability in her husband's behavior.

Marital dynamics can be very strange and there is no way of knowing just what was going on between the Spitzers.

I feel that Mz. Traister does a good job of capturing the general mood and some of the important questions raised. As for Silda Wall Spitzer, I wonder if we (more like the media) really should be discussing her; to do so seems analogous to watching a bad traffic accident, ogling at the suffering, offering platitudinous commentary to each other about the wreck in front of you. The questions revolving around Silda's decisions are ultimately of a personal nature, and is it really our collective business to be discussing it? Does this really further our discussion of important issues, or is it just the typical schadenfreude we (sadly) regularly engage in?

But I'll bet that heterosexual women have extramarital affairs about as often as heterosexual men.

Call it a hunch.

How do you know she was cheated?

Why would she humiliated?

How much do you know,

and How much do you assume about her relationship with her husband?

When a man looks for a prostitute for sex, is it the fault of the man, or is it the fault or the wife? I don't claim to know but I don't dare to assume.

When a woman looks for a prostitute or a lover, who's fault is it? I don't claim to know but I don't dare to assume while it is reportedly rare, I doubt is all that unusual.

Is "fault" even a proper word for this situation?

Who are you or we to put words in her mouth or feeling in her hearth?

What do you know?

How much you assume?

How is it your business?