All men need an ex
LUCKY Ben Affleck to have an ex wife (not quite divorced) like Jennifer Garner. The lantern-jawed Hollywood star of Batman and Argo is in a bad way, losing the battle against alcoholism that he has been waging for years.
On Wednesday, sensing that enough was enough, JG turned up at his LA mansion on Pacific Palisades and bundled him off to rehab in her Range Rover, stopping only to buy him a takeaway burger en route. The picture of him sitting in the back seat, dishevelled and bewildered, is pitiful. She’s shoving the burger bag his way. He’s only 46 but he looked old, puffy and hopeless.
After his split with Garner three years go, he was seeing a TV producer, which seemed a sensible sort of relationship, and he moved to Pacific Palisades so he was near enough to Jennifer Garner to share care of their three young children – Violet, Seraphina and Samuel. But latterly he appeared to have parted company with the TV producer and taken up with a 22-yearold Playboy model. As men will, given the chance.
Ex wives have a bad image as bitter, vengeful, grasping harridans. As Ivana Trump said: “Don’t get mad, get everything.” But the truth is that every man could probably do with an ex wife when he’s down on his luck.
Here’s a woman who knows you through and through and put up with your quirks and foibles (for a while at any rate). As Shelley Winters once quipped: “Whenever you want to marry someone, go have lunch with his ex wife.”
Yes, the ex wife can give you a reality check, the lowdown on his horrible bathroom habits for instance, but she may also turn out to be the ex’s best ally. She can be a sort of surrogate mother figure to her useless ex, or a big sister.
She’s someone who will answer his emails about how you use a coffee percolator, what the name of that TV series was that you both liked 25 years ago and where is he likely to find that Allen key. My ex husband – not gifted in the DIY department – once asked me to come and put up a roomful of bookshelves for him. Which I was more than happy to do. “Should I worry about you having a power drill in your hand?”, he joked. “Not any longer,” I said.
An ex wife will not lie to her former partner. She will not flatter him, indulge him or polish his ego. She is the best sort of friend because she will tell him straight what he needs to do.
And not only will she give tough love but she will act on it as well – as Jennifer Garner obviously did with Ben Affleck.
Yes, every man needs a nice ex wife.