Firstly, if there is no way to guarantee male faithfulness, why are we all scandalized by Woods's behavior? And second, a whole parade of powerful men - Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign, Mark Sanford, John Edwards - are destroying themselves and their families with acts of infidelity. And we can't come with any cause other than powerful men have a sense of entitlement?
What impedes any deep understanding of infidelity is the public's natural assumption that husbands have affairs for sex. In fact, the vast majority of husbands' affairs have no physical component. They are cyber affairs that take place over the internet. They are conducted over the phone and are never consummated. And even when they do get physical it is often very bad and unsatisfying sex, as Monica Lewinsky shared in the Starr Report and as a multitude of JFK's mistresses alleged as well.
They cheat not out of a sense of confidence but out of a state of brokenness. Not out of a sense of how desirable they are but out of a sense of what failures they are. And this is especially true of men like Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton who live in a hyper-competitive environments where they realize that they are only special to the extent that they keep on winning. Men like these are particularly broken, living as they do just one failure away from obscurity.
They know that their value as human beings rests entirely in other people's hands. And they live in permanent and painful insecurity. They constantly question their self-worth and they turn to women both to feel desirable and to comfort them from their pain.
Yes, I know. Men like Tiger Woods appear to the public as cool-as-a-cucumber. But beneath the calm veneer is a man who has been trained to believe that his value as a human being rests entirely on a never-ending game of human one-upmanship. Those who have made their names in sports and politics live with unimaginable insecurity. And rather than deal with these insecurities in a healthy way by having deep emotional conversations with their wives about their fears, it is easier to simply paper them over by turning to strangers who make them feel special.
The attention of other women brings a momentary silencing of the inner demons who constantly taunt them with whispers of their own insignificance. And the more prized the woman is by other men, the greater the validation these men feel. Coupled with this is the intuitive gravitation by men to the healing powers of the feminine. Men who are in pain use the caress and the care of a woman as a salve to sooth their broken egos. Having a woman care for you and make herself available to you - not to mention tell you how wonderful you are - becomes a like a drug that makes you feel instantly better.
Of course, the healing is ephemeral and unfulfilling based as it is on a highly artificial sense of intimacy. The obvious question, now, is this. If a man who feels deeply insecure looks to a woman to make him feel special, why doesn't he turn to his own wife? The infelicitous male sees an unattached stranger as a more worthy judge of his value. His psychological and spiritual weaknesses also has an adverse effect on his wife:.
They take beautiful women, smart, accomplished professional women, loving women and as soon as they marry them with their broken sense of self, they transfer the sense of nothingness onto their wives. Fascinatingly, Boteach explains that this idea applies also to many of the world's most powerful and successful people. Tiger Woods was better than anyone else in the world at what he did yet still felt like he needed some sort of outside confirmation of his value.
The same goes for Kobe Bryant. Heck, Bill Clinton's status as the most powerful man on Earth couldn't assuage his insecurities and temper his infelicitous pursuits. Boteach acknowledges that the rates of female infidelity are skyrocketing as well. Still, he perceives a key difference in the reasons why, by and large, the different sexes stray. Women almost always cheat out of neglect. As Boteach's specialty is the subject of lust vs. He tells how painful it can be to watch a dejected woman receive the information that her husband has been unfaithful, that she's been discarded:.
I love you. I loved you but I lusted after her. Now if you ever put love and lust in a boxing ring together, lust is gonna crush love. There are only two ways that you can keep a cathedral from falling down.
First, you can use large supports in the middle of the building. In many cathedrals, this is the method the architect used. Secondly, you can use a flying buttress. This feature allows for more space in the cathedral. Instead of using supports that take up space, you use buttresses that make the interior more roomy. The buttresses support the structure from the exterior. In the metaphor, some men use supports. Their wives are their supports, providing them with all the value that they need.
When a man who relies on supports needs affirmation, he turns to his wife. She helps him to value himself and be the man that he wants to be. In those types of marriages, cheating is less common. However, men who rely on buttresses have less self-worth. They are empty on the inside. Instead of turning to his wife for support, he needs to go outside. Often, men in this type of relationship feel insignificant. They get someone on the outside to raise them up. Usually, this means having an affair with someone.
To support his theory, Rabbi Boteach cited several high-profile celebrities. For one, he discussed Tiger Woods. He turned to another woman for the support that he desperately mattered. Rabbi Boteach also used Bill Clinton as an example.
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