Quote:
Originally Posted by sigmadiva
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I was just teasing around with your wording.
Basically, what I'm saying is that it's far easier to say, from our perch as outsiders, that she "had to" (or "should have" or etc.) known about any infidelity. In fact, we're wired that way - it's hard for us to think that we
wouldn't know, and we'd desperately want to believe we're
different than wives that get cheated on. (This is a very quick-n-dirty description of how the psychological principle of cognitive dissonance applies in situations like this; there's obviously much more going on, and I'm not saying this is specifically what you're doing - just that it happens a lot)
For a guy like McNair, we don't really know the situation - he traveled a lot for his speaking career, and apparently took the mistress on trips, an easy way to 'hide' things. His wife likely didn't handle the finances, so he can 'hide' very incidental expenses like a condo or a car. Besides this, there is a tendency to hang onto the sense that this perfect life (ex-football hero, four lovely sons, healthy, happy, etc.) is still intact in spite of other signs - inertia is a powerful force.
This is a long aside, and hides a key point: if you're wealthy, don't mix with people who might fuck you over. This doesn't just apply to the Pac Man Joneses of the world, although the media prefers those stereotype-supporting stories - it applies to the baseball players who lost millions in the Madoff fraud, Mike Tyson's "handlers" taking his money, and jilted lovers taking these guys for their money, their families or their lives. We should never "blame" the victim - after all, McNair didn't pull the trigger - but with the options that money affords, these individuals can help minimize these kinds of risks much more than the average guy out to nail a 20 year old waitress.
This is clearly easier said than done - the wealthy, famous and successful tend to have entitlement or invinceability issues, among others, that play into these situations. It's tragic.