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Relationships
The Bridges of Sanford County, Part I
Are cheating men and women judged entirely differently by the public?
Posted July 7, 2009
"This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime."
- Robert Kinkaid, Bridges of Madison County
What if you were forced to choose between being passionately "true to yourself," or quietly resigned to be "good to others?" What if at the only moment of true opportunity - however brief - you chose to betray another so as to not betray yourself?
Then you just might be one of the fans of the novel from the nineties called, The Bridges of Madison County - in its time hailed as a romance of romances, and the best selling hardcover fiction book in history.
It just recently struck me that if the genders and names of the characters in this novel and the film version of it were changed, it would be uncannily similar to the story of the prodigal Governor of South Carolina. Except that he was caught in midlife rather than just after passing on, and he was the one absent from the home (and admittedly, possibly unforgivably, his weighty duties of course), rather than the family he had let down.
I am not a specific fan of the man, his politics, policies, or particular details of his spiritual path, but however against the popular grain, however politically incorrect or annoying to those who want the world to be a certain way that it is not, something just doesn't sit right - not merely regarding the actions of Governor Mark Sanford, but also about our reaction to him.
He bare his soul, his conflicts and his confusion in a way which most who harbor a secret and evil agenda of deception instead continue to conceal, not amend and append the tale with further lurid but honest detail. One might just as easily identify him as the most honest politician anyone has ever heard of, rather than one worthy to be so quickly abandoned by his party as a bad example of what they stand for.
As Sanford returned to the podium again and again, making the world his therapist, digging himself in deeper by airing his fluctuating feelings, conflicts, and details - the lover as his "soulmate," and simultaneous insistence that he will labor at and accomplish falling in love with his wife again - many in the audience, jeered, but it is not a new story, nor necessarily one that must have an unhappy ending. As surgeons say, "It's not what you do, it's what you do next," and for that matter, it's not about the struggle of a lone individual, but a couple - not a "bad" you, or "good" me, but a happy, fulfilled "we."
A couple is not a couple at all if one is betraying the other, but it is also not a couple if either betrays the deepest desires of the self. Otherwise, the relationship is not much more than another job.
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
In this well-loved romance, Meryl Streep's Francesca is a married mother of four, who finds herself helpless under the spell of passion that arises from a chance encounter with photographer Robert Kinkaid, played by Clint Eastwood.
From IMDb: "The path of Francesca Johnson's future seems destined when an unexpected fork in the road causes her to question everything she had come to expect from life. While her husband and children are away at the Illinois state fair in the Summer of 1965, Robert Kincaid happens upon the Johnson farm and asks Francesca for directions to Rosamunde Bridge. He explains that he is on assignment from National Geographic magazine to photograph the bridges of Madison County. She agrees to show him to the bridges and thus begins the bittersweet and all-too-brief romance of her life. Through the pain of separation from her secret love and the stark isolation she feels as the details of her life consume her, she writes down the story of this four-day love affair in a 3-volume diary. The diary is found by her children among her possessions and alongside Robert Kincaid's possessions after Francesca is dead. The message they take from the diaries is one of hope that they will do what is necessary to find happiness in their lives -- whatever is necessary."
They have an affair that is transforming, rich, genuine, touching, and a bond which seems to rise above and redeem what is also a clear moral wrong. We see the human frailty of being torn between the passions, promises made and contracts to keep in marriage.
Switch the genders, and this story might sound very similar to the Sanford remarks so quickly scoffed at:
Francesca: Robert, please. You don't understand, no-one does. When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected move again only you don't remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself. You never in your life think that love like this can happen to you.
Robert Kincaid: But now that you have it...
Francesca: I want to keep it forever. I want to love you the way I do now the rest of my life. Don't you understand... we'll lose it if we leave. I can't make an entire life disappear to start a new one. All I can do is try to hold onto to both. Help me. Help me not lose loving you.
The beauty of the drama in that film is so mesmerizing, one would nearly forget the moral wrong this woman is committing, the effect on the children, the damage to the marriage (and the neighbors, community, and perhaps the reputation of Iowa) if found out. It's easy to forgive a Meryl Streep she goes to her grave with the fond memories of the delicious, secret tryst. It is the experience of two lovers powerless in the face of biological forces.
Maybe there is a great release of tension for some in righteous indignation about yet another case of Gubernatorial infidelity, or on the other hand perhaps you're sick and tired of hearing the same old thing - "Man does moral wrong, is publicly shamed, and apologizes profusely."
Instead of more moralizing, maybe we could turn an analytical eye to these stories and wonder, "What really causes infidelity and what can be done about it?"
Curiosity about the root causes and preventative measures surrounding a tragic outcome does not constitute condoning it. In fact, overly moralizing, demonizing and finger-pointing might just do more to spread the behavior than a straight-on, clinical look with an analytic eye. If we were to ask "why" and "how" about these events - fair to men and women both of whom cheat, and are betrayed - we might find some practical answers in such little-explored places as animal mating sequences, human courtship, the effect of mass media on our opinions, and marked differences in romantic instincts between the genders.
If this couple has a chance, like any who endure an episode of infidelity - or dozens of them - the answers will not come from moral outrage, either theirs or that of the public, nor from seeing men only as perpetrators incapable of being hurt by their own passionate actions, nor seeing men as unscathed by what might be lacking in their relationships, somehow less hurt or suffering from what can be omitted as well as committed.
Instead, both men and women have a role in revisiting the steps of courtship, or the equivalent of a human mating sequence no less biologically necessary for a full and passionate pairing than that of the rest of the world's species.
It will require the illogical, irrationality of fun, flirtation and "feeling like a teenager again." But that can't come before first finding forgiveness, new respect for the boundaries of loyalty, and just as much need for privacy, calm, and a reprieve from the moralizing, politicizing, and overly serious commentary of the righteously indignant.
Wishing it were fixed will not make it so, but learning what the passions are, masculine, feminine, and their intimate workings in the mating dance, will.
Join me shortly, for part II.
