It isn’t often that I suggest a divorce is appropriate for someone else’s marriage. Just because I don’t suggest it, doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it. In the case of Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner I’m definitely thinking it and wondering how she can accept such egregious behavior from someone who vowed not only fidelity but also honor.
My opinion that she should divorce has nothing to do with her though. If Huma wants to live with Anthony Weiner as husband and wife, that is her business. The issue I have is the lesson she is teaching her son. And the example she is setting for other women.
We learn what is and isn’t acceptable in relationships from our parent’s relationship with each other. As their son grows and learns of his father’s actions and his mother’s willingness to accept those behaviors how do you think he will treat women he becomes involved with?
When Anthony Weiner sent his first text and photo he dishonored his wife AND paid no regard to how she would feel should he be found out. Huma accepting such behavior sends Weiner, her son and other women this message…it is OK to dishonor women, disregard their feelings and completely blow the hell out of the commitment to a marriage.
Huma isn’t responsible for how other women choose to live their lives. What they choose to live with in a marriage. She is ultimately responsible for some of the lessons her son will learn in life. And this is one lesson she is teaching him that will not bode well as he grows into a man.
Narcissistic men like Anthony Weiner will continue to blatantly and publicly disrespect women because wives/women/mothers allow them to. Wives who accept and excuse such behavior and women who become involved with men who are married are, in my opinion the crux of the problem. We…women, are the reason there are men like Anthony Weiner in the world.
Women who stay with men who cheat on them, beat them, abuse drugs and any other abhorrent behaviors set their daughters up to believe it is OK to be mistreated by men and their sons up to believe that it is OK to mistreat women.
I believe in the commitment of marriage. I DO NOT believe in using it as an excuse to hold onto someone who puts you in situations that call for you to use skewed rationalizations in the face of abuse so that you can justify saving a marriage. Especially when that marriage plays a role in perpetuating low self-esteem in our male and female children.
Why have we become a society that believes excusing someone else’s bad behavior is more important than honoring our own values, morals and ethical beliefs? Why, as women don’t we understand that holding men like Anthony Weiner accountable means teaching our children lessons that will stop men like him from being able to disrespect anyone but himself?
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