The Tiger Woods affair
by Mira and Charles on December 1st, 2009Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, while Elin chases your ass into the night.
Well, we don’t know for sure what really went on between Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordegren. We just have rumors. (Although now we have some confirmation from Tiger himself.) But widespread, and widely believed, reports have it that Tiger cheated on Elin and Elin got enraged and in some way physically, perhaps golfically, attacked Tiger.
Of course it’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. This scenario is how countless marriages and lives are terribly, and too often irreparably, damaged.
What are the lessons we draw from this incident?
First, don’t cheat. In spite of what people think we said in our groundbreaking and (according to so many people) invaluable book When Good People Have Affairs, what we actually said there and are saying here is, Don’t cheat. Yes, marriages can and hopefully will heal after an affair, but the damage is usually considerable and the risk is enormous. Sort of like amateur, kitchen-table appendectomies. People just never appreciate how much pain and damage is involved.
Second, if there is an affair, deal with it properly. Get professional help immediately (see: appendectomy, above). You really can’t do this on your own. People almost always make things worse operating on their own.
And if you’re the cheater, there’s a whole bunch of things you shouldn’t do. Don’t keep changing your story. Once your cheating is out, tell the whole story and stick to it. Don’t say, “I said I was sorry. When are you going to let this go?” Don’t say, “You’re making too much of a big deal about this.” Don’t ever say, “Have you ever thought that this might be your fault?”
Here’s what you should do if you want to avoid being chased to hell and back with an angry, golf-club-wielding woman. Say you’re sorry, but more important show you’re sorry by proving your willingness to listen forever if necessary to your wife tell you how hurt she is, how devastated, how angry, how humiliated, how…all the things that come up for women when something like this happens. Look, you have totally rocked her world, and not in a good way. She will only feel safe, she will only start to trust, she will only begin to forgive when she knows down to her toes that you have heard and seen her in all the ways she has been hurt. It’s excruciating, but it only lasts forever if you try to bypass it or shut it up.
Now we know that Tiger had a very controlling father. Today he may have trouble with anyone he thinks is trying to control him. And so he might experience a grievance-filled wife as someone who is trying to do just that. So it’s possible that he just didn’t want to deal with her. But for an aggrieved spouse, that’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. This dynamic could easily have led someone like her to end up chasing him around with a golf club.
No wonder people in that situation need professional help, just the way they would if they’d gotten hurt in a bad car crash.
And don’t get physical. It’s may seem funny to think of a guy being chased around by a woman with a golf club, but in fact it is dangerous and criminal. As Wendy Murphy points out, in many states, including Florida where Tiger and Erin were at the time of the incident, the police are required to arrest the party who seems to have inflicted the most damage, even if the other person begs the cops not to. (Check out a similar analysis by Hanna Rosin.) Imagine the effect on their kids and their marriage if
