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What is a wife supposed to do?
NEW YORK (AP)
iISSUE: 78/24
When Silda Wall Spitzer stood beside her husband in ashen-faced misery the other day as the governor made his brief apology in the prostitution scandal, she uttered not a word. Yet she launched a thousand conversations. “Why is she standing there?” many women wondered. “Should she be?” And for many, the immediate answer was a resounding, “Hell, no.”
Blogger Amy Ephron on huffingtonpost.com. proposed her own fantasy: “I just want one of them—Hillary, Silda—to stand on the steps of the White House, the governor’s mansion and stamp their foot and say, ‘And another thing, I’m keeping the house.’ ”
One therapist who deals with couples in crisis says most wronged women do want to at least try to work things out. “Your lives are intertwined, emotionally, financially and physically,” said Gail Saltz, who practices in New York City. “You share children. Just because someone has hurt and betrayed you deeply doesn’t mean you stop loving them. It’s very complicated for any woman who finds her husband has betrayed her.”
And the fact that the alleged betrayal was with a prostitute is a double-edged sword, says Saltz. On the one hand, “this isn’t a woman that he fell in love with. On the other, many women would find the prostitution part particularly humiliating.”
Joanna Coles, editor in chief of the women’s magazine Marie Claire, feels that at least for the moment, Silda Spitzer had no choice but to stand publicly by her husband, for whom she gave up an active career as a corporate lawyer.
