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Aug 09

Leave Me Alone, I’m a Family Man

By Jay Slupesky
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Infidelity

The Great Escape

Yesterday I wrote about how some men want to minimize and not talk about their affairs (whether emotional or physical). As a real-life example, I give you John Edwards.

Last night Edwards, the ex-senator and former presidential candidate, finally admitted to having had an affair, after denying it for months.  This pretty much shatters his carefully-cultivated image of the loyal husband standing by his wife while she battles incurable cancer.

I noticed several interesting things in the television interview that Edwards gave and in the written statement that he released. All of them seem like attempts to minimize the damage.

  • The timing was no accident. Fewer people pay attention to news on Friday evenings since it’s the beginning of the weekend. Also, a lot of people were tuned into the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Georgia was another distraction.
  • The words affair and cheating were never used. He spoke of having had “a liason” and making “a serious error in judgment.” (You think?)
  • He said that his had been “99 percent honest” while denying the affair for the past year or so. That’s just laughable.
  • But he did say somthing that I find very credible: “in the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” Ah, narcissism, one of my favorite topics. Remember that narcissists believe that they are special and that the rules don’t apply to them. Yeah, that fits here. 

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under Infidelity.

One Response to “Leave Me Alone, I’m a Family Man”

  1. mcbrion Says:
    August 10th, 2008 at 11:25 am

    You might also wish to remember that narcissists vacillate between inferiority complexes and extreme superiority. Frequently they come from upper middle class families, where there is enough time for the child to “grow into” the sense of being entitled, although this is not a given. And finally, they frequently have no core self, which is hard for the average person to comprehend. “How can they not know who they are?” the average person asks. Simple. They are a bit like a Frankenstein monster: this person’s laugh, this one’s sarcasm, this one’s sense of being a “free soul,” this one’s disdain. There is nobody home in this particular body, but there are many pieces of others GRAFTED on to this person’s persona. Quite long-term therapy and multiple weekly sessions may be the course of action. Not an easy one to overcome.

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