Why Silda Spitzer Will - and Should - Stand by Her Man

At the end of Elliot Spitzer's new conference in which he acknowledged his infidelity and adultery in his marriage and tendered his resignation as Governor of the state of New York, one question lingered after Spitzer had left the podium. That question, posed by a female reporter for a tabloid, was addressed to his wife, Silda: "Will you be leaving him?" Left unanswered, the question hung in the air for several minutes, the stench of its audacity spreading like a poisonous mushroom cloud.

How dare one woman cheapen another of her gender in the name of "journalism"? As outraged as I felt by the question, it was, perhaps, a legitimate one when posed by a reporter who was of a different age, a different time, a different culture, than Silda - in other words, a woman who didn't know better. Only those of us who share the bond of age, of long marriages, of concessions made in dark and lonely nights, could honestly answer that question - not just for Silda, but for ourselves as well.

There will always be women like Silda Wall: highly intelligent, well-educated, passionate about their careers and their families. Look no further than Hillary Rodham Clinton for proof: Ivy League educated, considered by most to be the more intelligent spouse in her marriage, also, like Silda, the victim in a high-profile marriage in which her husband undeniably cheated on her during their marriage. It's widely assumed that the deal that HRC cut with Randy Bill was his support for her as she sought political office for herself, on her own terms. At this particular point in time, we don't know what, or even if, Silda will seek the same concessions from her straying spouse. My guess is that Silda is still understandably so shell-shocked at this time that she hasn't quite regained her grounding yet. But she will, and how she chooses to live out the rest of her life is still a wide-open question.

I am in my (very) late fifties, and have been married more than once. Although I can't claim the socioeconomic or academic background of Silda Wall, there are some things that I, and thousands of women in America, share.

We are, for the most part, invisible as a demographic. We have hit our prime, our stride, perhaps decades ago. In a culture of "What have you done for me lately?", that question is often answered in terms of what we did ten, twenty, thirty or even forty years ago. Many of us live in the shadow of our accomplishments. Perhaps the "best" thing that we did was raise successful children; those children are now out on their own, literally, forging their own careers and identities. Perhaps we have reached the pinnacle of our success in a career, and watched as younger women and men come scratching at our office doors. We may have thought we'd "married well", although God only knows exactly what that phrase meant. Did we marry for love? Did we marry for money or security? And if we did, were we successful in keeping that marriage alive? Just "alive", mind you, not necessarily rich and rewarding, just still going...

We are the most invisible of the American population, women who are deemed "middle aged" or beyond. We're in that never-never land between having our own teeth and having someone put them in for us daily. We stand patiently at department store counters, hoping to attract the attention of salespeople, who never seem to see us. We wait for the jowly young host of a hip and trendy restaurant to seat us, when we're out for lunch or dinner with our friends; we wait as he seats the cute, well-dressed and young couples who arrived after we had to their tables. We are invisible in lines at the bank. The tellers assume, and probably rightly so, that there isn't anything unusual or interesting - hence, of any merit - in our transactions. We're there to deposit our stolid paychecks, to deposit our children's paychecks in their accounts, nothing unusual or interesting - hence, we're boring. The cashiers at the grocery store barely look up from the register as they ring up our purchases. We're the middle aged women of the world, the forgotten ones, the ones who had so much to offer - once upon a time.

For the young, earnest feminists who can't or won't understand why Silda may hesitate to leave her philandering husband in the dust, the question really should be: why should she? Where, at this stage in her life and her career, will it be any better? As I recall, there aren't lines of available and intriguing men snaked around the block, waiting to pounce on post-menopausal women. We're yesterday's news, someone's former wife, someone's mother; do they really want to be burdened with, God forbid, some other man's teenage children at this stage in their life? Why take on the burden?

Silda Wall gave up a very promising career when she married Elliot Spitzer. She was the epitome of grace under the pressure of life in the political spotlight, a role that she herself hadn't chosen. She traded in her dreams for his. Nothing that Spitzer will or can do for the rest of his life can ever truly make up the damage he's done to his wife. Nothing. There is a fury burning in her soul that won't and can't be quenched. It's the fury of a woman past her prime, who's seen her future, the rest of her life, go down in a flaming mass of betrayal - betrayal played out in the public spotlight, at that. At least for most of us, we get to grieve and to scream and to curse our lot in life in relative privacy, in the shadows of our room, in the company of our friends and people that we pray we can trust. Silda wasn't even afforded that small luxury.

For those of you who clamor for Silda Spitzer to make a statement, a stand, for feminism by leaving her husband, think again. Where will she go? What will she do? How can she forge a new identity for herself, especially since she'll forever carry the stigma of the cuckolded wife in the eyes of the public. Is it too late for her to refresh and renew her legal career? I think so. At least she had a more than decent education. Many women in her position, or who want to leave their marriage for whatever reason at this stage in their lives, find themselves woefully ill-equipped to earn a decent, living wage, particularly if they chose to put their careers on hold while they raised a family. During those decades, their skills diminished, the work place changed. We find ourselves older and wiser now, but not necessarily more wanted in the real world. That "wisdom" is pretty much offset by the age factor.

Leave Silda alone to make her own choice, and in her own time. Her entire world, and that of her daughters as well, was turned upside down in the span of little more than 48 hours. Give her the courtesy of taking as long as she chooses to do what she will with the rest of her life. It is, after all, her life - what Elliot left of it.