Revenge of the wives

Did you see this story in the New York Times about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's wife?

This is the wife of the S.C. governor whose extramarital affair with an Argentinian woman became big news this past spring, spawning the expression: "hiking the Appalachian trail" as a euphemism for screwing around.

Now Jenny Sanford, who has taken the kids and moved out of the governor's mansion, is writing a memoir called Staying True, she is appearing on a Barbara Walters special next month, and she has endorsed a woman Republican as a successor to her husband.

Wow.

And this thing about Tiger Woods this weekend. Who knows if any of these rumors are true, but this story, Correction: Tiger Woods' Wife Kicks HIS Ass speculates that Woods' wife, after hearing of her husband's alleged extramarital affair smacked him around a bit, and as he tried to escape she busted out the rear window of his vehicle with his golf clubs as he was driving away.

Who knows what went in either of these relationships,or in so many other relationships. But still, there's something satisfying about seeing the wife express herself rather than let her anger heat to a level where she's braising herself in her own juices. Especially in a case where she's been publicly humiliated the way Jenny Sanford was.

You hear a lot about spurned wives standing by their men. Publicly at least. And there's that new television show on this fall, The Good Wife, which is good, and features a wife living through such a mess. But she hasn't yet bashed in her husband's windows with golf clubs. Nor has she contracted to write a memoir about it. Maybe that will be the season cliff hanger. Or not. I think I'd like to see that episode. I think it would make me enjoy the show a hell of a lot more.

I've never been good at expressing anger either. And yet one of my favorite books to read at a time of heartache has been Nora Ephron's Heartburn. (this was Nora Ephron's first novel, and she was also the screenwriter for Sleepless in Seattle and for You've Got Mail, among others.)

Maybe you saw the movie Heart Burn, based on the book, with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. It is loosely based on Nora Ephron's own marriage and break up with Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein. In the book and film, the wife is a food writer. In the book Ephron includes recipes at the end of chapters. She and her husband meet, marry, and eventually have two children. She discovers that her husband has been screwing around, confronts him, leaves him and after much soul searching they reconcile. But things are strained, and then she discovers that her husband's affair with Thelma Rice has not ended.

It's all a lot of sardonic humor. Very well done. And when the wife finds out her husband has been cheating again they are about to go out to a dinner party. The wife has made a key lime pie (for which Ephron provides the recipe.) And at the dinner party, when dessert is served, she places the pie in her husband's face and then leaves. It's another satisfying moment.

I'm not a moral-high-ground kind of person. I know different people fall in love at different times for different reasons. I'm such a relativist it drives people crazy. But, you know, I love to see these women not taking it.

You go girls.