Award Mrs. P a valor medal
No one hands out medals to women like Holly Petraeus. But someone should.
Instead, like a swift kick in Holly’s teeth, military groupie Jill Kelley received an actual medal last year from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who liked her lavish dinners.
Today, as the Petraeus family gathers ’round the Thanksgiving table for the longest, most tense meal in the history of marriage (hide the knives), retired Gen. David Betrayus has a unique opportunity to realize how badly he mucked up. And I’m not talking about throwing away his career as CIA director in exchange for a few rolls in the hay with his unglued biographer, Paula Broadwell.
He’s lost Holly. Emotionally, at least. She’ll never trust him again.
At 59, Holly Petraeus is the rock star of wives, a prefeminist who made sacrifices today’s narcissistic gals wouldn’t consider for her husband of 38 years. She bore two children while giving up any semblance of a normal family life as her husband was constantly deployed overseas. She blew off a career. She donated her skills, her loyalty and her youth to a man unfit to shine her belt buckle. And she probably won’t leave him. Today, I honor Holly Petraeus, a far better wife than I. For retired Gen. Petraeus did the worst thing imaginable to his spouse.
He turned her into an object not of honor, but of pity.
Petraeus, 60, is not the first and won’t be the last powerful man to cheat on a woman over his head. But other wives who were famously cuckolded seem to have achieved some form of payback.
Silda Spitzer, wife of Love Gov Eliot Spitzer, got piles of money in exchange for forgiving her husband’s pathetic penchant for prostitutes. Elin Nordegren, displaced wife of Tiger Woods, not only got rich, she gave her pathologically horny hub a welldeserved 9iron to the head.
And Hillary Rodham Clinton won the ultimate consolation prize in her horror marriage to Bill, becoming one of the most powerful women in government, secretary of State. As she wrote in her memoir, she also got to slap Bill around. But what has Holly Petraeus got? Little is known of Hollister “Holly’’ Knowlton Petraeus, and she likes it that way. She’s the daughter of the late Gen. William Knowlton who was superintendent of West Point when her husband was a cadet, and she’s a summa cum laude graduate of Dickinson College. She could have achieved anything.
Instead she went on a blind date with Petraeus nearly four decades ago, and that’s all she wrote.
He had the sense (guilt?) to honor Holly in a speech last year. “The best decision I ever made was to reply, ‘Sure, happy to do it’ when asked if I would escort a visiting coed to a weekend football game.’’
Holly helps military couples with, ironically, their marriages as assistant director of service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She had no idea.
Unlike Petraeus’ paramour, the married Broadwell, Holly never sought to gain from her union. Broadwell, who boasted of her access to high places, had classified military documents on her computer as the scandal unfolded. (Petraeus denies giving them her.)
When Broadwell feared she was being displaced by military bimbo Jill Kelley, Broadwell went cuckoo, allegedly sending her rival threatening emails. (Petraeus denies romancing Kelley.)
But an endless parade of media chowderheads have gone on the offensive, suggesting that Petraeus, no oil painting himself, can be forgiven for cheating because he had a grownup wife.
Rubbish! Petraeus could have been wed to a mute supermodel. He would have strayed.
Powerful men “pick brains to marry, like Hillary Clinton,’’ said Manhattan psychotherapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, author of “Adultery: The Forgivable Sin.’’
“The brain does not feed an ego like a bimbo does.’’ Oddly, Dr. Weil thinks this marriage can be saved.
“I’m not excusing it, but I believe adultery is a disease like alcoholism. It’s curable and treatable.’’
I’d advise Holly Petraeus to run as fast as she can. But marriage is her life.
I hope Petraeus knows he’s a lucky man.