Oh Yes, I'm Going There... Tiger & Trust

After serious consideration, I have decided to tackle the Tiger Woody, ooops, I mean Woods, "issue". This choice of topic for our blog was not taken lightly, I would like to add. In fact, I debated for quite some time as to whether to broach the subject for fear that my inner Feminista Bitch might overtake my more rational, empathic, and psychologically-informed mind and spew some things that might one day come back to haunt me. This still might happen - we'll have to see. Read on...

I ultimately chose to blog on this subject because, well, it's interesting to people. Who doesn't love a good sex scandal to help melt away the humdrum of "get up, go to work, eat dinner, go to bed"? And more importantly, as a newly married woman, it has personal relevance. Not that I am sleeping with Tiger Woods, of course (Except for that one really hot night in Miami... I mean, who can resist that nine iron? Seriously...), but because at the heart of this topic, beneath the celebrity and a damaged SUV and the pay-offs to random women, is a family, now broken. And who can't relate to that? Or, at least, to the fear of that?

A quick Google auto-complete of "Tiger Woods" reveals endings like "affair", "mistress", "scandal", "jokes", "wife", and "latest". And that's in order of popularity. Hmmm.... wasn't this a golfer we're talking about? Potentially the greatest athlete of the 20th century? And yet words like "Masters" or even "sponsorship" are nowhere to be found. Putting in "Tiger Woods Go--" brings up the word "gossip" before "golf". Pret-ty crazy (and yes, I realize I spend inordinate amounts of time on Google). This tells me two things about our culture at large: 1.) We as humans exemplify ridiculous levels of schadenfreude due to our own dissatisfaction with life (and thus need to get a life) [and/or] 2.) Men cheat. Alot.   

Okay, okay... before I get angry comments on here (though that implies readership...), I will make the very necessary statement: Women cheat too. The National Marriage Project, a great consortium out of the University of Virginia, tells us that, in fact, approximately 15% of women and 25% of men have reported having had extramarital sex at least once. And, yes, those numbers are statistically significantly different, so men are, in fact, more likely to cheat. But the "women are better" argument is not what this blog is really about, so we'll move on. Based on those numbers, one in four men will cheat on their wives at some point. One. In. Four. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a lot to me. That's more than experience premature baldness or get cancer or smoke cigarettes. But not more than watch the Superbowl, of course [sigh....].

This 25% statistic, in fairness, does include men who are now divorced. When considering only men who are currently married, the number drops to 16%. While we won't even venture to guess what might have led to a termination of the marital contract.....suffice it to say that these numbers become a little more hopeful. And further, the number of men who consider an affair "always wrong" has actually increased significantly since the 1970's and continues to rise. But before you start smiling blissfully and packing your sweetheart's lunch, remember that answering that something is "always wrong" on a survey you filled out online and turning down the offer for a bathroom quickie from Tina in accounting are two very different things. And, alas, evolutionary psychology tells us that while there are factors that make men less likely to cheat (e.g. not wanting CaveChick's dad to throw that big rock at his head), it would take thousands of years for our species to become truly monogamous.

So knowing all this, why do we choose (at least the majority of us) to enter in monogamous relationships, the culmination of which being marriage? I suppose I could talk about research on the psychological and physical health advantages, the financial savings, or the social and career benefits derived from matrimony, but instead I'll get more personal. I chose to get married because everything in my heart and mind told me that that was what I was meant to do. Not to get married for the sake of the institution of course, but to get married to Justin. This is not to say that some or all of the above named factors did not, at some unconscious level, operate on me to induce this desire to marry Justin. However, I, hopelessly romantic despite my rigorous scientific training, would prefer to believe that I married Justin because I loved him. And because I didn't want (I won't say couldn't) to live a single day without him. And because he has a cute butt that I didn't want anyone else to touch. Ever.

So I married Justin, and happy we are. I unfortunately cannot say, however, that fears don't occasionally creep in regarding (in)fidelity. A lifetime is a long time, right? And, in honor of full disclosure, I have at times been the cheater in previous relationships, and thus I likely project some of my fears about my own ability to maintain a lifetime of trust and monogamy onto poor Justin. And when the newspapers and internet and the radio and the lunch table is talking about Tiger or John Edwards or Michael Jordan, I think... Justin's a good guy, but those were good guys too. And no one would have expected... Granted, one could talk about the issues of being a man with some kind of power, a sense of entitlement, a childhood wrought with a lack of attention or a cheating father. But still, when iconic figures like these get caught with their "pants down", we wonder what makes the men in our lives any different?

So what is a girl (or guy) to do? Here it is: I've chosen marriage, and thus my only option is to now choose trust. This is an incredibly difficult task for me personally (as you can probably tell from the last several paragraphs...), but it is thing I need to do. It is the only thing I can do. And most importantly, it is what I want to. So I put my trust in Justin that he will put me and our future family first as we go forward, and that he will protect my heart at all costs. And I will do the same for him. I will not be naive and say that there may not be challenges for each of us as our years of marriage multiply, but I trust that the family and life that we are slowly building will help keep our marriage vows (all of them) in the forefront of our minds.


As for Tiger (an ironic name, as tigers are in fact monogamous), he has a lot of work to do to repair his broken family and his sponsorships. In fact, I think that's it's time that he re-branded his image. No more Mr. Nice Golfer family man on the Disney channel. Maybe he'll start calling himself T-Wood and start doing commercials for gold chains and FUBU apparel.... Like marriage, only time will tell.