Tiger vs Elin

If you found out your spouse were having an affair, would you beat his car with a golf club?

I think I'm more of a passive aggressor than the golf club swinging type. One expects stories like these to come out about the less than virtuous celebrities but this one was a shock to me. Call me naive, overly trusting, or just plain stupid but I still want to believe that good man *DO* exist. Tiger puts on a good show, on the course and now apparently, off as well. One of my favorite marriage and family therapy books is about how good people have affairs and "once a cheater, always a cheater" is not necessarily as tried and true as one might think. Sometimes people make mistakes and find themselves in a place they never expected or wanted. I'm not condoning this in any way, shape, or form but I'm reading a lot about how terrible men are in light of this story. I have to say I still have hope, it's depleting, but hope none the less.

In no way am I suggesting this is OK or that I wouldn't be angry enough to destroy a car with a golf club but I think my view on this matter is different than most. I won't take all day to explain it but mistakes are forgivable.

Maybe I should shine a light on my current predicament. I just came home from spending a week camping with my recently wed sister and my newly empty nesting parents. Fifth wheel does not even express a tenth of what that meant to me. I'm certainly not desperate and I believe my recent dating habits would be proof of that, but I am desperately yearning for something more. I sit here thinking, I am way over my head in ten things and just overall life in general. What I wouldn't give to have support and someone to corroborate with and lean on. I don't need help. I'm a big girl and I've been doing it on my own for a while. It would just be nice to have someone there. I'm totally over this "single life is cool" phase. I'm also not in a place where I want to settle just so these needs are met. I want something real.

Four years of classes on marriage make me smart enough to know that no relationship is perfect. I can sit here all day long and piously declare I'll never have an affair but I'm not perfect. I can mostly guarantee that I won't have an affair but I can also mostly guarantee I'll make some other huge mistake over the course of my marriage. That doesn't make any of it ok by any means but I think there is a difference between a man who has a rocky marriage and strays unintentionally and one that repeatedly, without fail, searches for extramarital affairs.

Now, I'm not 'in' on what really happened between Tiger and Elin but what if Tiger Woods is a man that made one mistake and is desperately trying to rectify it for the sake of his family? What if we the public, are denying him his right to privacy and in the process annihilating any chance of redemption? I know there are plenty of arguments to go along with that starting with, they live in the public eye, but really, does that make it ok? I don't think it does. I think he has a right to ask that his privacy be respected and I think it should be. I don't think it will be, but I'm just one person and can't do anything about that.

At the end of the day, I've been watching Tiger for the past few years and haven't seen much questionable behavior. Can't we forgive him just this once? I promise, he does it again and I'll string him up, right along with the rest of you.