The Power of Seduction
by Mira on August 15th, 2008Wrap your mind around this, if you can: women who try to help men get out of supposedly bad marriages by having affairs with them. Shocked? Surprised? Sadly, I’m neither shocked nor surprised. I see it happen all the time.
This may well be what happened to John Edwards, based on a Newsweek piece by Jonathan Darman. Over a series of conversations with Rielle Hunter, the woman Edwards had an affair with, we learn that the aptly named Ms. Hunter may well have been gunning for a man like Edwards.
Her main tool? If you said, “Sex,” guess again. Sex was probably a part of it, but very likely not the biggest part. No, the part of Edwards Ms. Hunter focused on was his ego, the part of the male anatomy most in need of inflating.
Ms. Hunter’s siren song was all about how Edwards could be much greater than he was, that his “true, repressed self” could soon emerge, with her help of course.
“You could be so great, and I can help you become great” is a form of seduction very hard to resist. After all, life has a way of whittling people even with egos as big as Edwards down to size.
Ms. Hunter was evidently so into this concept that, according to Darman, she and author Jay McInerny tried to pitch the idea for a show about “women who help men get out of failing marriages” to Sex and the City’s Darren Star.
This is really a form of the Ejector-Seat Affair we talk about in When Good People Have Affairs. It’s an ejector-seat affair when the purpose of the affair is to help you get out of a bad marriage. It’s often the only way people know how to end their marriage: only an affair will finally convince their partner to end things.
What Ms. Hunter did was part of what may have been the I-Can-Help-You-Push-the-Button-on-Your-Ejector-Seat Affair. You know: “Poor sweet baby, I can help you get out of that marriage that’s holding you back and get into a relationship that can help you become great.” Stronger people than John Edwards have fallen for a pitch like this.
Why would someone like Ms. Hunter do this? Well, why would a big-game hunter put a rhino head on the wall of his den?
But this is important to all of us, and here’s why. Men and women who pry people out of their marriages by seductively telling them how great they could be are addressing a real need. The truth is that marriage too often grinds away at our egos. Soon our strengths are taken for granted. But our weaknesses and flaws irritate, and they are what get talked about. Marital conversations are usually not about, “You’re wonderful and you could be even better.” They’re about, “You suck and here’s why.”
With so many married people walking around with battered egos, no wonder so many of us fall prey to flatterers.
Imagine how few affairs there would be if we did for our spouses what it seems Ms. Hunter tried to do for John Edwards. Marriage should be a place where we make our partners feel, “You’re wonderful and you can be even better and I’d love to help you any way I can.”
Is this what you’re hungry for in your marriage? For many of you, I know the answer is yes. Is this what you’re giving your spouse? For many of you, I know the answer is no. Let me know what you think. Let’s explore ways we can affair-proof our marriages by satisfying our partner’s need for hope and dreams and a sense that he or she is truly, deeply appreciated.
