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How impressive is Carolyn, widow of Michael Todd, the philandering chief constable of Greater Manchester who froze himself to death on Snowdon.
The young widow, with three children, is having to sit through the inquest as evidence unfolds of alleged affairs and drink problems. Imagine the hurt, the humiliation. You would understand if she poured acid on his grave and defaced the gravestone. Yet Carolyn remains steady, says she has forgiven her husband, and wishes he had sought help before he gave up. And for the first time I feel a tremor of respect for such women.
Scorn is often heaped on them, those pathetic, loyal wives who stand by treacherous men or send them off without malice to their new lives with new wives. Remember the betrayed Tory wives of yore? How dutiful they were, putting on smiles after their husbands were exposed cavorting with lovers or tarts. Mrs Parkinson, Mrs Archer, later Mrs Major and Mrs Prescott. The various female consorts of Mick Jagger clearly have extreme tolerance, as do the wives of some of our most flamboyant millionaires.
I have friends who put up with serial infidelity for the sake of the children and their stubborn love. One welcomed back her husband after three years during which time he fathered a child with his girlfriend who then dumped him: We'll make it work, says the wife with endearing optimism. It was a midlife crisis, he felt a failure, he needed a boost. That was just sex, not love. He says he needs me to make him the person he wants to be. ( Proust explained these confused male longings: A woman one loves rarely suffices for all our needs, so we deceive her with another whom we do not love.)
I have never understood such female nobility in the face of infidelity and never wanted to. Victims of faithless partners had the right to be vengeful and vindictive, I believed anything else was unnatural. Two decades after my ex-husband left me and my son I still feel raw rage and sorrow and never refrain from expressing these emotions.
So who is the better, saner person? Not the one who takes her bitterness to the grave but women like Carolyn Todd, who understand human frailty and can somehow forgive. I think I have been wrong on this. Too late to change into a saint, but perhaps I will be (a little) kinder to sinners in future.
Reader views (2)
I have alot of rage in me for past transgresssions ie, parents dying when very young, ex gal to marry someone after 4 mo of separation: and the saving grace (emotionally) for me has been to discover meditation (loving kindness, compassion, forgiveness) and to study and explore the very subject of forgiveness itself...forgiveness I am finding is NOT condoning or accepting the wrong behaviours of others or 'letting one off the hook': instead it is an emotional gift to YOURSELF in working through the anger and releasing yourself from the emotional connection of rage/anger of the PAST to instead look towards the FUTURE....it does NOT mean you let the person off of the hook or have to reconcile with them.
- Joe Collins, vancouver bc, 03/03/2009 01:59
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Don't be too quick to change your mind, Yasmin. People who extend tolerance and forgiveness towards those who betray them are, in my opinion, simply condoning bad behaviour and making it all that much easier for next faithless loser to try and justify his (or her) cruel infidelity as a mid-life crisis etc, in the case of my ex-husband, a reaction to the fact that he had not had enough girlfriends before he married me! Marriage is not just a domestic arrangement, it's about love, respect and fidelity too and if people can't handle that, then no one is holding a gun to their heads and forcing them into it, especially not these days. I always think that if you are not horrified to find out that your partner has been unfaithful, then you never really loved them in the first place.
- Lw, London, 08/10/2008 13:16
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