My husband and I have a running joke where he asks me a question, and I jokingly reply, “As a woman…” It stems from the various reality shows we watch where there is always a scene in which the side chick confronts the main chick. The side chick always approaches the other woman with the preface, “As a woman…” then goes on to justify why she is sleeping with her man. The scene eventually ends with security pulling the woman apart, but you get the idea.
After hearing about Julie Chen’s exit from The Talk due to the backlash of her husband Les Moonves’s departure from CBS, it made me think of all the women affected by their husband’s infidelity. In addition to Julie Chen, there is Camille Cosby, Annette Roque (Matt Lauer’s soon-to-be ex-wife), Georgina Chapman (soon-to-be ex-wife of Harvey Weinstein), and countless others. As a woman (tee-hee), how do you handle public infidelity? It’s one thing if your man randomly cheated with a woman in another state or country, and no one knows except you, your man, and the other woman. But what happens when everyone knows your business? Your mom. Your pastor. All of your friends. All of your co-workers (Julie had a whole job that she had to quit). Your neighbors. Strangers on the street. You’ve become famous because of your husband’s transgressions. How do you handle that new burden?
Everyone knows what Cosby, Weinstein, Moonves, and Lauer have done to multiple women, but has any checked on the other women in their lives? How are they coping? Do you leave like Annette and Georgina, or stay and stand by your man (publicly) like Camille and Julie? Also, as a woman (tee-hee), at what point do you notice that something is a little off in your relationship? Do you brush it off as paranoia, or look the other way hoping one day something will change. In one of my favorite movies Unfaithful, the wife has an affair with another man, and the husband immediately knows that she has been unfaithful. We all lead busy lives, but are we too busy to lose the connection we have developed with our spouses? And now that the connection has been severed, in the words of Xscape, “Who I can I run to when I need love?” We’ll never know what is going on in the heads of the woman affected, but hopefully, they have a strong sister circle to get them through this storm.
