Infidelity isn't just about sex, it's about power

I've felt conflicted about writing about the John Edwards scandal. I supported the Edwarss '08 campaign, I have met them both, and I like Elizabeth a lot. I finally got my initial thoughts off my chest earlier this week. I don't want to get bogged down in the details of their situation, but reading the reaction to the news, I feel compelled to write once again.

One reaction to the news has been that the American people are too uptight about sex and we shouldn't be such Puritanical morality police. It seems to me that only men can afford to think that way. To me it's not just about sex but about power. The women I've talked to have all said "How could he do this to his wife, to risk what they have built together?" I am glad to see more female commentators such as Ruth Marcus at The Washington Post contributing their analyses, because it really does look different from our point of view.

Maybe not all women would agree with me on that, but this week I am revising the Mojo Mom chapter on financial and career planning. I have to get across the tricky message that each mother has to create her own safety net that will support her in the case of life's unexpected crises including unemployment, divorce, illness or death.

Not an easy topic to communicate! And in the context of the book I don't want to deliver it as a hammer blow, but rather a realistic, proactive heads-up that we each have to be ready to support ourselves and our families if necessary.

Marriage is an imperfect institution and yes, many marriages end. I have seen it up close and personal from the kid's point of view, as my parents and many of their cohorts divorced. But marriage is still the foundation that many of us have chosen to count on. When couples split up, men tend to do much better financially than women, who may end up with little support, no financial credit for the caregiving they've done for years, and primary responsiblity for the kids. The research documenting this effect is controversial, but even a corrective study said that women have an average 27 percent decline in their standard of living and that men have an average 10 percent increase in their standard of living after divorce. In my own experience, I saw that divorce was highly expensive and disruptive for both men and women, but often the wives were displaced homemakers who had to scramble to find a new job, while the husbands continued on established career paths. The wives has supported their husband's career paths in so many ways that yielded no reward once the marriage ended.

So if a wife cheats, she knows she may be pulling the rug out from under her own life--and obviously creating devastation for her husband and children--I don't mean to condone it in any way. But there is a power differential in many couples: when a husband cheats, he's throwing away her financial security for her. The Edwards affair illuminates this situation into high relief, as Elizabeth so obviously invested in and sacrificed for his ambitions for the benefit of the whole family. Yet he can throw it all away on a whim. This public explosion of a marriage we were invited to admire is a wake-up call for all married women: if it can happen to them, it could happen to me. It cuts through our blissful denial to remind us that we are potential members of a very angry First Wives Club.

Where does this land us? Back at page one of Feminism 101? Into a maze of policy reform to make sure that safety nets work in a way that makes sense in a modern world? Mothers & More reports that The minutes of the Social Security Council meetings held in the late 1930's reveal that Social Security was designed to discourage women from employment, to encourage men to work by linking benefits to income and years worked, and to send a message to women to stay married since their economic security was tied to being a dependent of a wage-earning husband.

I am still trying to process my feelings and thoughts and channel them productively, but honestly, for now I am just pissed.

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As I write the new edition of Mojo Mom, I have been thinking a lot about negotiation skills. After all, working with a spouse or co-parent is all about negotiation in the long run. (Sorry, Disney Princesses and Bridezillas--it turns out it's not just about romance and having a fantasy wedding after all.)

The negotiating principle that sticks in my mind is that the impatient person loses. That goes a long way toward explaining why women often have less bargaining power than men. We may feel that we have to be impatient if we want to have a baby. We have the biological clock, and as that runs out, our options narrow in a way that a man's does not. In the case of a woman convincing her male partner that they should have children, an urgent desire on her part also weakens her relative bargaining power--she may feel that she has to make more lifestyle accommodations than her husband to secure his agreement to have kids.

One thing I appreciate as I get older is that I feel less impatient. I am more confident in what I want and I am willing to state my position and stick to it. Have you ever found that when you turned down a job offer, you were offered an attractive counter-offer to win you over? When you negotiate a salary, it helps to feel that the employer is fortunate to get you, rather than feeling that you are extremely lucky to get this particular job. I worry that women get emotionally attached to opportunities and therefore have less power in a negotiation. This is especially true in first jobs: when women accept lower starting salaries, the pay gap continues to grow when subsequent raises are based on a percentage of that starting point.

It is liberating to negotiate from a non urgent, take-it-or leave it point of view. Once I was buying a Honda Civic that I knew I wanted, and the salesman was jerking me around, so I started to leave. I wasn't jerking him around in return, I was truly walking out the door intending to go buy a different car. This got under the salesman's collar and he chased me down in the parking lot, a little more willing to give me a good deal.

I reached the place of negotiating peace in an important discussion with my husband. At the risk of over-sharing, I thought this was an interesting situation. We have decided that our family is complete and that we'd rather not risk a surprise pregnancy as I enter my forties, so after many years of being open to more kids, I looked for a new form of birth control. I had good reasons to try it, but my body is not adapting very well so far, so I am thinking of going off it again. I decided that if birth control was going to make me feel constantly crummy, I could accept our unlikely odds of a surprise pregnancy, and asked my husband what he thought. In reply he volunteered that he was willing to explore his birth control options.

After being the primary person in charge of contraception, pregnancy, birth and caregiving all these years, it was such a relief to feel that he was finally the one ready to step up the plate in this situation. It goes to show that even in cooperative negotiating situations, it can be helpful to care less about the specific outcome than your partner. A weird concept for many Moms, including me, but it's essential--especially when you are trying to get your partner and kids to participate in housework. If you care about it a lot more than they do, and can never outwait them, you'll end up doing the lioness' share of the work.

In the new Mojo Mom I am drawing on the ideas in Rhona Mahony's book Kidding Ourselves: Breadwinning, Babies, and Bargaining Power. It's a somewhat obscure book and not entirely accessible, but brilliant and provocative. She delves deeply into the balance of power in different types of couples. A take-home message is to always keep investing in your own personal power and options.

To prepare for salary discussions I highly recommend the book Negotiating Your Salary: How To Make $1000 a Minute.

Now, I am back to work on the revisions.....