So Jenny Sanford will reconcile with her husband if he'll just turn back to God and all that is good.
Pardon me while I laugh. Well, not exactly laugh. How about, oh, hell, there are no simple words to describe my feelings on the subject of relationships, because a large majority of them are just so far short of what they could be.
A large majority, so far short?
If you love more than one person, popular romantic culture tells us that you are either: an (immoral) religious fanatic, or an (immoral, immature) person incapable of commitment, or are confusing love with sex, or are in some fundamental way a twisted, confused and/or tortured soul.
Indeed, the worst, most heinous mistake you can make when you are in a committed relationship is to actually fall in love with another person. There are no popular exceptions to this thought -- it is seen as the ultimate form of disrespect to your partner. All manners of sexual escapades are vile, but can be treated with the proper amount of contrition and counseling, but if one persists in the notion of loving both your spouse and another, well, that's just delusional, or incredibly self-centered and just plain wrong.
Conversely, if you are a morally virtuous person, you will either stay suspiciously single (i.e., uncommitted) or eventually settle down and commit ALL of your romantic love to ONE special human being, and spend the rest of your life reasonably content with that decision. You will HEROICALLY fend of certain special feelings towards other human beings, because, well, it's wrong and you don't want hurt anyone.
Look at love, but do not touch more than one! Dream of love, but dare not act. If you're lucky enough to get a love, you've got enough to work at to just keep that love alive. And don't be going about depleting love pool for anyone else seeking their one-and-only soul-mate.
But consider that the hunt for an exclusive soul-mate love is one of the biggest self-defeating lies in society. Sorry to those of you who still invest your hope in the 'they (the two of them) lived happily ever-after' myriad of fairy-tales ladled out by the bucketful in mass culture -- Love denied is not heroic, it is suicide to the soul.
Anecdotal tales of all of the happy silver and gold anniversary marriages you know about are all well and good, but when it comes down to it, most people just settle and put large areas of their emotional potential on ice with occasional eruptions clouded in lies and recriminations.
Life with limited passion is a life unfulfilled. Love is not limited by anything (though no small things) but time and fear. Until we, as a society, deal with our greatest fears, we'll never truly be a society -- we'll remain a tribe of warring individuals virally invading every nook and cranny of our external environments with only nervous peeks within.
So good luck Mr. Sanford, as you are admonished by the monogamous moralists and your loving(?) wife to toss aside your self described soul-mate. The balls and chains of fear have claimed your souls. It is befitting, I suppose, that you are members of the Ownership class, enjoy that status in your own private hell.
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p.s., although it might appear so, I'm not really trying to bag on monogamy per se. It is entirely possible to be happily engaged in in a single relationship while devoting one's remaining time to whatever passions you might have in life -- these are forms of love of life. What I challenge is the assertion that monogamy is morally superior to non-monogamy, and that blind obedience to monogamy as an orthodoxy is an insidious form of deception.