Anger and lust: ‘The only emotions men allowed’
They haven’t broken the law, and the only court they’ll appear in is that of public opinion.
They’re the men who have committed a devastating emotional betrayal but whose wives and partners have stayed at their sides.
There’s All Black Aaron Smith, overheard in 2016 taking part in a sexual act in a Christchurch Airport disabled toilet.
The woman wasn’t his partner, Teagan Voykovich, but the incident didn’t cost Smith his relationship — the star halfback announced his engagement to Voykovich, who is pregnant with their son, in March.
And there’s Smith’s former All Blacks teammate, Jerome Kaino, who in 2017 flew home from Australia hours before a Bledisloe Cup test amid overseas media reports of an affair with a former model.
Kaino’s wife, Diana Breslin, with whom he has three children, stuck by him and the family moved to France last year where Kaino is playing for Toulouse.
A string of married politicians, from former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig to Botany MP Jami-Lee Ross to Auckland mayor Len Brown have also been outed committing indiscretions.
In Craig’s case, he kissed his press secretary and touched her breasts.
His wife Helen Craig told the Weekend Herald in an email this week why she stood by her husband.
“There was no infidelity (please refer to dictionary definition) or criminality on Colin’s part.”
The Collins English Dictionary defines infidelity as a lack of faith or constancy, especially sexual faithfulness, a lack of religious faith; disbelief or an act or instance of disloyalty.
She says she never considered
walking away from the marriage.
“When my husband was attacked through the media with numerous false claims it never occurred to me to do anything but stand with him and support him. The feedback I have received from family, friends and others has only ever been supportive of me and I have greatly appreciated that.
“For me marriage is about commitment and standing with your husband when he is attacked. He would do the same for me. The strength of two people standing together is great and you can overcome pretty much anything together.”
In Ross and Brown’s cases, the indiscretions involved an ongoing sexual relationship.
And while their marriages survived the initial storm, one of the women Ross had an affair with, Invercargill MP Sarah Dowie, has separated from her husband.
There are also plenty of overseas examples of marriages overseas staying strong despite allegations of the male half straying — from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Donald and Melania Trump to John F. Kennedy, who a string of women have claimed to have had trysts with while he was married to Jacqueline Kennedy. Acting couple Jude Law and Sienna Miller initially stuck together after Law admitted sleeping with his kids’ nanny, but they later broke up. Law publicly apologised to Miller, as did talk show king David Letterman to his wife. His marriage survived his shock announcement on air, following a blackmail attempt, that: “I have had sex with women who work for me.” Couplework clinical psychologist Nic Beets, who specialises in relationship and sex therapy and has spent 25 years helping couples following infidelity, says cheaters were “pretty equal” across the sexes. It can be incredibly hard for the person cheated on to walk away from a longtime relationship, and all that’s come from it. “You’ve invested many years of your life, you might have property together, you might have children together. If you end that relationship your life as you know it is over, and that’s not something you should do lightly.” There’s no simple answers to why some couples survive the breach of trust, but financial and social reasons could be a factor in influencing women to stay, he says. Women, especially those with children, were also more likely to be in a more perilous financial situation than a man. “You could also argue that there is a very strong difference in socialisation . . . on average women are much more socialised towards making compromise in order to make relationships, communities work. Men are more socialised to autonomy and selfishness.”
Beets has seen religion “unfortunately exploited by men”, in keeping some marriages together.
“You don’t see that with women. It’s a really strong exercise of patriarchy, and it’s really distressing.”
Some literature claims women are more upset by the emotional infidelity, and men with the physical act, Beets says.
But he’s unsure how up to date the research is. He not seen it in his practice, he says.
“The trouble is men are socialised that they’re not allowed vulnerable emotions.
“The only emotions they’re allowed are anger and lust. All of men’s hunger for intimacy, for attachment, gets channelled into sex.
“I think that’s a shallow study, but I don’t think men are as sexually focused as our culture makes them out to be, and it’s very silencing of men who are different.”
When couples come to him his first question to the aggrieved party is, “If you risk further trust with somebody who has breached that trust, can you keep yourself safe and sane if it happens again?”
“They might not be happy, but they will be alive and sane.”
If the answer is yes, that creates an opportunity to “talk about things in a real way” and rebuild the relationship, Beets says.
“The discovery of any affair blows open a whole lot of things that haven’t been talked about, and it gets talked about . . . you can rebuild intimacy and reliability and empathy, over time.
“The tracking device on the car is not the answer.”