When Your Husband Betrays You, Do You Blame The Other Woman?

Why do the wives of unfaithful husbands remain married to them?

There are many reasons, of course, and first among them are the practical concerns of wanting to remain as a family if there are children involved. But there are also less obvious reasons.

Do the wives of chronically adulterous men think along the lines of Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of historian and writer Thomas Carlyle, who, when she was asked about her husband affections for another woman, responded, "People who are so dreadfully devoted to their wives are so apt, from mere habit, to get devoted to other people's wives as well"?

Or do women think, as I once thought about a man to whom I was not married but with whom I was deeply involved, that sleeping with another woman was his way of trying to get my attention?

Many women justify their mate’s infidelity by turning the problem into their problem, which will at least give the woman a sense of having some control over her life.

Husbands are often allowed to bounce back into the family game after going offside, and then the “Other Woman” appears to be to blame.

After all, Anne Archer fights for Michael Douglas at the end of Fatal Attraction, and in Scott Turow’s bestseller, Presumed Innocent, the wife murders the girlfriend but leaves her husband intact.

Plots such as these position the husband as a naive and unwitting dupe of the sophisticated connivings of a desperate single woman who has realized Too Late that she gave up Love for Success. Of course she has to be shot by the sweet stay-at-home wife.

There’s an old joke that goes something like this: A man is standing on the bank of a river which suddenly begins to flood. His wife and his mistress are both being swept away? Who should he save?

One answer says that he should save his wife, since his mistress will, of course, understand.

That punchline relies on the husband’s assumption that his mistress will always forgive his putting his wife first; the mistress is “stronger” and so can be sacrificed.

Another punchline has it that he should save his mistress, because his wife will never understand.

This punchline, in contrast, depends on the fact that this mistress has a fuller and truer knowledge of the man’s life than his wife. The implication is that the man’s wife will only give him hell even if he saves her, since the wife will begin asking “Who was that other woman calling your name while she was drowning?” It seems easier to let the wife drown than to explain anything to her.

A third punchline was suggested to me over lunch recently by a woman who has herself been a married man’s lover: “The two women should swim to shore together and drown the bastard who can’t make up his mind.”

Ah, the third choice: it always adds an interesting possibility.