The State of Our Union

Watching the President last night, wondering if there is any doubt left whether this man has balls.... I mean, it takes some pretty serious stones for an oilman to keep a straight face while telling us, "America is addicted to oil." Not to mention the petty schoolboy defiance with which he defended his foray into domestic spying; or his playground bully saber rattling at Iran when there's not a soldier left to spare. But for me, the cake-taking moment was his shameless exploitation of the grieving family of a Marine who perished in a folly of his creation.

This blog has never been political, but it was hard to resist taking a shot at such an easy target while pondering the state of my own union. If I had to address a joint session of Congress about "us" (as opposed to the "U.S."), it might go something like this:

"My fellow citizens: Despite some rough patches and upheavals during the past year, the state of our union has never been stronger.

"Like the hurricanes that devastated the Gulf Coast of this great nation, I weathered my own personal category 5 storm this summer. When I learned about my husband's long affair during our engagement, it shook me to the core. Love, trust, commitment -- they were all shattered in that moment. As I surveyed the damage, I wondered if there was enough left to rebuild. The sheer volume of wreckage prompted me to convene a one-woman investigative committee to ask the hard questions.

"How could I believe that he loves me if he could sustain an intimate relationship -- not a drunken one-night stand, but an intense affair that lasted at least eight months -- with someone else at the same time? Did it mean anything when he called me the most important person in his life, if he thought nothing of betraying all my confidences to The Other Woman? How could he promise to be with me for the rest of his life when he couldn't manage to be faithful BEFORE we got married?

"And once I finished dissecting whether anything he'd ever said had been true, I started wondering what this meant for our future. Would I ever be able to trust him? Would I ever relax enough to stop scrutinizing everything he said, everywhere he went, everybody he saw, every dime he spent, looking for the signs that I missed the first time around? Would he get bored with me and need the excitement of another Other Woman? Could I live with a man who might stray from time to time?

"And finally, I started questioning myself. I wondered what had happened to the strong, determined woman who believed she deserved better than a man who had to lie to be with her. Was my need to put a positive spin on own misery at the time so all-consuming that it blinded me to the huge deceit going on right under my nose? Was I an object of pity to everyone who knew? Did I still love him?

"Over the months, as the initial shock mellowed, I've come to understand that my husband loves me and believes in our marriage. Most everything he does these days shows -- not just tells -- me that he's fully committed to our union. I still have a bit of work to convince myself that his affair was the product of some post-divorce, pre-marital anxiety that I'll never understand; that the circumstances were unique and not likely to be replicated in the future. I'm not all the way there yet, nor can I promise that the road ahead will be without bumps. But I can tell you, my fellow Americans, that our future looks bright from here.

"Good night and God bless this great union."


The Wife Who Knows