Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Love and Thanatos
By now, you’ve heard the news: Governor Mark Sanford, he of the Houdini-like disappearances, is absent no longer. Was he working on a book? No! Hiking the Appalachian Trail? No! Weeping for five days nonstop over his star-crossed love for an Argentinian woman? YES!
Mark Sanford (R), Governor, South Carolina, explaining what Maria saw in him.
I could engage in schadenfreude over the hypocrisy of this “pro-family” conservative Christian Republican politician, but hey, that’s been done. I’d rather focus on Sanford’s own explanation for how it all began.
Follow me below the fold.
. . . and we developed a remarkable friendship.
If we take his words at face value, an email correspondence blossomed into a friendship lasting these last eight years. Nothing remarkable there; I have lots of close female friends whom I’ve known only through email correspondence. But you know what? I don’t jump on an airplane to deepen that friendship.
At another point, and forgive my paraphrasing, Governor Sanford says, “It began innocently enough, as these things do.” Once again, lots of things begin innocently, and they stay innocent. They don’t turn into torrid affairs.
And they don’t turn into love. For that’s what’s really going on here: Sanford’s in love with Maria Redacted. Sanford’s in luuuuuurve (or is it lurrrrrrve?) with Maria Redacted. His emails say it all.
In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.
This is no 49-year-old Governor with Presidential aspirations; this is a high school sophomore smitten for the very first time. As Karen observed, it’s like he’s never been in love before. Which makes us feel very sorry for his wife and four sons.
That’s what gets me. It’s not how the affair started which piques my interest, it’s the moment when Sanford decided to give the finger to his wife and sons, when he took the plunge and allowed a friendship to become something more. I’m willing to bet that he fell in love first, had sex with Maria later, but (Tom Hanks’ movies excepted) you don’t fall in love with an email correspondent, not without making a conscious decision to open your heart.
It’s like the old Hollywood lore about vampires: you have to invite the vampire into your home first. Sanford had to invite Maria into his heart, and when he did, he had to be conscious that this was a decision which could profoundly affect his family and his career.
As for the thanatos aspect: what else can you say about a State’s Chief Executive who disappears for a week (over Father’s Day, no less!) to hang out with the love of his life, who happens to live in Argentina? This is a man who was tired of hiding. He wanted everything to be out in the open. As he says during his presser, IIRC, it was the lack of resolution that was so difficult. And so he set out on a course which would lead to resolution. He did something which could only lead to his exposure and the end of his career.
Would have been nice if he had discussed things with his family first. He supposedly separated from his wife recently, and it was her decision to keep their problems quiet — a relatively minor request, but Sanford couldn’t respect her wishes even that much.
Such is young love: obsessively self-centered, not caring what or who gets crushed in its path.
D.
Gov.Sanford is smart enough to know the s— would hit the fan,when he did this. I feel he wants out of his marriage and his position, and be free to marry her and perhaps move to another country. Stop and think about it!
Well, yes, this is ONE way to accomplish that.
The other would have been to resign his office giving unstated personal reasons, divorce his wife, and move to Argentina. It would have saved his family a good deal of humiliation.
i knew like last friday that he’d snuck off somewhere for some strange. the three of us had a bet about it, actually.
obvs i cleaned up.
Yes, but did you guess that he had fallen in luuuuurve?