Why WASPs Stand By Their (Cheatin') Man

I had an interesting correspondence yesterday with a reporter from Barcelona, who was covering the Spitzer scandal and wanted to know why American wives "stand by their man" after such a betrayal.

Let me share some of our conversation with you:

   Dear Ms. Bright,

My name is Juan Cañete. I am the correspondent in Washington DC for the Spanish daily El Periodico, published in Barcelona.

The Eliot Spitzer scandal has provided us with a familiar picture in American politics: a politician who appears in front of the press confessing an extramarital affair, as the wife stands next to him, stoically. 

I am preparing an story about this public ritual. Coming from a Mediterranean country like Spain, it is quite shocking to see the wife "standing by her man."

   Juan Cañeto

 

Dear Juan,

Thanks for writing me. I'm  interested in this subject too, having written before about the "cuckolded wife."

Let me address your questions:

1.Why do you think these spouses accept this kind of public humiliation?

The wives have a huge investment in their marriage... it's their career too. Their "family" is a unit that  used in their electoral campaigns to win. It's practically a requirement of office here.

2. Why is it so important for the husbands to appear with their wives?

It's contrition for sexual misconduct. The wife is understood to be the first victim, and must be the first to forgive him, if he is to have any chance with the public.

3. Why would be wrong for him to appear alone?

It would show that he had utterly failed to keep his marriage together— which again, is used as a symbol of his commitment to everyone else, his constituents.

4. What about her image? What do you think that the public thinks about the wife when she is standing by her man?

Horrified sympathy. Nausea. It's the fascination of a auto accident— someone else's tragedy is riveting. Many have fantasies about how she should cut his dick off, but at the same time think she's noble to stick by him, with a shred of dignity. We wonder if she's been paid off. People think Bill Clinton is "making up" to Hillary even now. Everyone feels a little lucky to not be a politician's wife.

5. Do you think this is a sexist situation? Do you think that if a female politician was in the same situation, her husband would stand by her?

That situation is so rare as to be irrelevant. I can't think of a single parallel example in US history. The sexism is at the root. Very few women even have the chance to test the waters on this subject. Among "ordinary" families, the husband would probably go to great lengths to cover his wife's infidelity up, because it would reflect badly on his virility. Everyone would be worried about "emasculating" him.

Let me ask you...  What would such a political wife do in Barcelona— if her husband was caught cheating on her?

I'm dying to know!

Susie

   
Dear Susie,

It's hard for me to imagine a political wife in Spain standing by her man in a press conference.

First of all, our politicians' private lives are  not as important as in the US. For instance, the presence of the wife in the election campaign is not as common as here.

Recently, the prime minister's wife didn't attend to a royal reception commemorating the king's birthday because she was singing with her choir. She was criticized, but not too much.

Some years ago, an important member of the conservative government left, and eventually divorced, his wife. He married a twenty-something he met in a party convention. He cheated on his wife before leaving her. Later, he left this second wife and married a third woman. It was a gossip story for the gossip press, not a political story for the serious press. He did not resign at all, and nobody asked him to. Both cheated wives gave interviews, to be sure, but to the gossip media.

I think the Spanish would not see it as a good thing for a politician to show up with his wife in a press conference. They would think, "this jerk not only cheats her, but humiliates her in public for his own selfish interest!" Probably she would be criticized for agreeing to play this PR game.

It is not that Spain is not sexist. It is indeed (at the end of the day, we invented the words 'macho' and 'machismo').

But, as you said, in our ancestral Catholic culture, the woman may "belong" to the man, but the man must fulfill his duties with her; she has "some rights." One of his duties is to protect her. It is already enough of a burden for her to have been cheated on. She does not need to appear in front the whole country as the humiliated wife.

And, quite frankly, I cannot imagine a wife doing this (not mine, for sure!). Call it the "passionate Mediterranean woman," if you want.

   Juan

   
Dear Juan,

I remembered a historical reason for why American and Spanish attitudes towards a wife's reaction to her husband's betrayal might be different.

This one is the most intriguing of all...

Lands in the US that were originally colonized by the Spanish have profoundly different property laws, regarding gender, than the areas colonized by the English.

According to traditional Spanish law, a woman comes into a marriage with her own property, and if something should happen to that marriage, her property stays with her. She could have land in her own name—  this was not thought of as "feminist," but merely matrilineal. Women's families counted for something, their historical line.

What this meant in modern American life, is that when the US became independent, the divorce laws followed the tradition set by the original settlers. In California— where I live— because the Spanish tradition is so profound, the divorce laws ALWAYS gave women half of everything earned in the marriage, plus their own property they brought with them into the marriage.  Hence, Spanish-tradition states like California were clearly favored by wives, in breakups.

Nowadays, the 50/50 breakup in divorces is much more common, but California and other Spanish-tradition states are still the minority in their property-respect for women's matrilineal lines.

In the British Protestant tradition, when a woman leaves her father's household, she leaves it all behind, and everything that she brings into the marriage becomes her husband's property. Her lot is cast with him, her identity is subsumed by his. Her maiden name, her family, is no more.

I am describing a very old tradition. I'm sure modern American spouses do not view each other this way, consciously. But there is a sense American WASP culture, unlike the Hispanic Catholic tradition, that once a woman commits herself to a man, his survival is her survival; her family is not a refuge. Silda Wall Spitzer was raised Baptist. Hillary Clinton, Methodist. That surely must affect how they cope with trauma to their relationship!

   Susie

 Dear Susie,

On the issue of property laws and how land rights have a matrilineal path in the Spanish law— this is still the case in Spain. 

In fact, women do not give up their last names when they marry and they keep their family's last names (i.e. in order to be able to trace the family tree).

But like you say, this has nothing to do with giving women their rights but, on the contrary, making sure that family property (i.e. property over which the men have decision-making power) can be traced through the generations.

At any rate, I agree with you that these two approaches, which come from long way back, do affect how women will react.

One last point: as an ancestral machista society, Spain thinks that whatever happens at home stays at home, even if we are talking about a politician.

This means that politicians are seen only in their political roles, and not necessarily as role models for good husbands/lovers/etc.

On the other hand, the fact that whatever "happens at home stays at home" means  that issues like abuse and domestic violence are hidden. It's  taken a lot of time to have laws that consider domestic abuse as a crime. Above all, it was hard (and sometimes it is still) to consider this abuse as something that must be rejected, and dealt with in the public sphere, not only at home.

Thanks again for your info and comments.

Best regards,
Juan

Illustration: Of Susie, by Pascal Steig at Powell's Bookstore event in Portland, Oregon, February 2008.

Photo from El Periodico coverage. The popular image of Silda standing by Eliot as he apologized was NOT used in the Spanish paper at all— it's considered so grotesque! This photo was their "dignified" way of illustrating the story.

Painting: "Vaqueros," by Charles Christian Nahl, 1866. Anchustz Collection.

Book Cover: Codes of Silence— Women and the Spanish Conquest of California