Wow. Having just watched former US senator John Edwards's wife Elizabeth pour her heart out to Oprah after she discovered her husband had been ensconced in a long-running affair with a blonde bimbo who then had his child (without his knowledge), messed up his chances at the presidential race and ruined his marriage … it got me wondering … why did he do it? What was it all for? An orgasm?
Elizabeth said that all the blonde bimbo had to do to corrupt her bloke was to stop John in the street and say, "Wow, you're hot!"
Yep, that was all it took for him to whip off his pants, fall into bed with her and promise her a future without ever really intending to follow through on any of it. Poor unsuspecting woman. (Or perhaps she got what she deserved considering she knew Edwards was married, and decided to forego any respect to the responsibility of sisterhood.
Two years later the bombshell hit. After he found out that there was a supposed love child, he met his mistress at a secret location (a hotel in Los Angeles where I happened to be staying at the time) where she had the child in tow, and all hell broke lose.
While the media, his wife and the world lampooned Edwards for his wayward ways, there was one person who emerged having got exactly what she wanted: his mistress. There was no chance in hell that she was letting him out of her treacherous web because she had done something that the other women before her (mistresses who, after one night of pleasure had never again seen or heard from the man who promised them the world) hadn't yet done: she'd had his love child.
Can having a child salvage a relationship?
Many women, in the hope of ensnaring a man, decide the best way to go about it is to do something so drastic that their hold on him becomes tighter than Tiger Woods's grip on his golf club: have his child.
Which is at odds with reality. Suddenly, a union goes from a peaceful twosome, to a non-sleeping threesome with bottles to fill, nappies to change and any chance of romantic date nights being thrown out along with sex and Sunday morning sleep-ins. If there isn't a solid relationship base to fall back on, it's mighty difficult to factor a third person (who can't even feed themselves) into an already stressful equation.
Nevertheless, if a baby is exactly what a man wants in his life and his wife isn't having a bar of it (cue in Jennifer Aniston), then another woman just might steal your thunder.
The other day I spoke to a friend who told me that's exactly what happened to her. As she did not want to have a child so she could focus on her career, her husband went out and did the dirty behind her back ... and got his girlfriend pregnant. Or rather, his girlfriend made sure she got herself pregnant in order to keep her new man from going back home. Ever.
Says my friend: "She was so jealous of me and wanted my man so badly that she fell pregnant to his child after two weeks after they started dating. They're still together, three kids later."
Now my friend wonders whether it was all her fault. Whether she should have just swallowed her pride, had a child and kept her relationship alive. But would this have stopped him from cheating? Kept them together? I have no idea. But the question remains: can you really keep a man by having his child?
Many women try it. Many women succeed at it. In fact it's become a dirty game that has made single eligible men very uncomfortable when doing the horizontal hanky panky with someone who is a little too clingy for comfort.
One man even told me that his biggest fear is that the woman he's been sleeping with will pin the condoms. Hence he always checks them beforehand. "You just never know what women will do," he said. No BYO condoms anymore.
What about moving in together?
Struggling couples often wonder what type of metaphorical glue might be the key to keeping them happy together. Some couples decide to get a dog. Others have a baby. And those who aren't yet living under the same roof, decide to give it a go.
"What's the harm of moving in together?" they say. "Surely if we see each other more often, there'd be less tension between us? Surely we'd be happier being on top of each other day in, day out, rather than struggling to find the time to even see each other for a nanosecond without arguing?"
Wishful thinking.
When a woman named Tara told me that she was moving in with her boyfriend a couple of months ago in order to salvage their relationship, I groaned. This struck me as a rather silly idea, not just because moving in with my own boyfriend a few years ago was the very thing that killed our relationship, but because the last boyfriend she'd lived with dumped her after he realised his freedom and single life as he knew it had been compromised forever. And now she was trying it all again?
"It's the only thing I can think of doing right now," she said.
A few months later they broke up. Perhaps they should have got a dog instead ...
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