Love

Can Cheating Ever Be Justified?

Man caught cheating

Much has been written in the media this week about men cheating on their wives. We have the tale of two Jo(h)ns: John Edwards, whose scorned wife, Elizabeth Edwards, appeared on Oprah yesterday to promote her new book, Resilence, in which she addresses her husband's much publicized affair, and Jon Gosselin, costar of the hit TLC reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8, whose rumored affair has become tabloid fodder. The former is a tale as old as journalism itself: a man in power cheats on a wife who, from the outside, seemed a supporting and loving spouse undeserving of her husband's unfaithfulness. The latter is another familiar tale: a man under an enormous amount of pressure is regularly and publicly emasculated and treated like dirt by his wife and seemingly seeks solace with another woman. In both cases, the men are vilified—but is it possible that maybe, just maybe, at least one of the women had it coming? Read: Why Powerful Men Cheat

Over at Slate's lady blog, XX Factor, our own Susannah Breslin wrote a provocative piece about what she calls "bad wives," explaining that Jon Gosselin's wife Kate fits the bill to a T.

"Anyone who has spent any time watching [their] show knows its subplot is their marriage," she writes, "and the majority of that relationship seems to consist of Kate treating her husband like something that got stuck on the bottom of her shoe, the property of which she cannot quite identify, eliciting a nonstop look of thinly-veiled disgust and disappointment. In fact, it's hard to think of moments in which this housewife is not humiliating, degrading, and emasculating her husband. On camera, no less. In one episode, she actually chastised him for breathing too loudly. There she is in the supermarket ripping him a new one for being a lousy spouse. There she is at the pumpkin patch shouting at him for being a substandard father. There she is telling him to stop mumbling like a fool. There she is explaining to the camera that she doesn't care what anyone else thinks." Read: Why I Cheated

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More from The Frisky:

Should You Out A Cheater?
Once A Cheater, Always A Cheater?

Why Men Cheat