So Gov. Sanford admits to having an affair. Gov. Sanford, I note, was born in 1960, which would make him 50 next year.
I bring up his age because recently we’ve seen the usual women-and-their-raging hormones drivel from some troglodytes objecting to another woman on the Supreme Court. When are we going to start worrying about the instability of middle-aged men?
I realize that anecdotes are not data. However, I have never personally met a woman of menopausal age — and I’m past that point myself — who who blew off her life because of hot flashes. But I’ve known, and have known of, a number of men aged 45-60 whose lives crashed and burned because of an affair. In some cases they didn’t just throw away their marriages; they also lost jobs and wrecked careers. Relationships with children, friends and other family members were irreparably strained or even severed.
Yes, I’m sure there are examples of older women who behaved just as foolishly, but it seems to be much less common. We women tend to go through our self-destruct phase when we’re much younger.
I remember one of my former college professors who left a wife, two children, and a tenured college faculty position to run off with a student, who then dumped him a few months later. Another academic of my acquaintance burned a plum position at a prestigious university and years of hard-won professional contacts when he left his wife for a student. A man I used to call a good friend lost every one of his friends after he abruptly left his wife (also a good friend) for a younger woman. Yes, the younger women were involved in the affairs, too, but they had nothing to lose.
Think about all the well-known politicians who either wrecked their careers or compromised their offices because they got caught messing around. What’s often remarkable to me is how reckless their behavior can be when so much is at stake in their lives, their ambitions, their work. In some cases they aren’t just taking chances with their own lives; they are taking chances with their countries. Yet they can’t seem to help themselves.
I realize that most men — I don’t think — go down this path. But it happens often enough that I wonder why we don’t make an issue of the potential instability of middle-aged men.