Difficult Diagnosis, Denial & Distrust – Elizabeth Edwards Goes on Record

By Emily Geiger

So, I finally got around to watching the Oprah show with Elizabeth Edwards talking about John’s affair.

My gut reaction to it is that she is still in denial.

The part that really got me was when Oprah asked about Rielle Hunter’s baby girl. Elizabeth said she doesn’t know if her husband is the father of the baby, and it really wouldn’t matter to her either way because that would not affect her life. She said it would affect John’s life, but not hers.

I don’t know how a woman in that position can possibly give that answer. And doesn’t that answer presuppose that John won’t be involved in the child’s life, even if he’s the father? His involvement with the child would certainly affect her life by at the very least affecting his time and finances.

Just a few years ago, you had Hillary telling us that it takes a village to raise a child, and now you have Elizabeth Edwards saying that the fact that her husband might have fathered a child with another woman won’t affect her life?

That’s why I think she’s still in denial. Ask any other woman whose husband has fathered a child with a mistress whether that has affected her life, and I think you’d get a much different answer. Whether she stayed or left, she’s been affected.

The other thing that got to me is that she still seems to be blaming Hunter for the affair more than she is John. She refused, as a condition of the interview, to have Rielle Hunter’s name spoken in her presence. She made fun of Hunter’s “pick-up” line (“You are so hot.”) She said she can’t imagine what type of woman hangs out outside of expensive hotels waiting to throw herself at a man. She says she’s mad that women do this to other women.

All that is true.

But what kind of man falls for a pick-up line like that. What kind of man has sex with a woman who hangs out outside of expensive hotels looking for men? Why is she more mad at a woman who has no reason to care about her than she is mad at a man who has every reason to care about her?

I think the real underlying theme of the situation is that Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer pretty much overrules everything else right now. At one point in the interview, she said her kids seemed more concerned about the cancer than the affair. At another point, she said she hadn’t been given any kind of definitive prognosis, but that she’d like to at least be given a range of how much time the doctors think she has left. So, she interested in knowing even the worst news about her cancer, yet she said she doesn’t need to know if that baby is John’s.

I guess since I’ve never had cancer or been cheated on by my husband of 28 years, I don’t know which would be the dominate issue in my life.

But I have to wonder how things would be different if there was no cancer.

I have to tell you, situations like this really tare me in two. One part of me admires a marriage that can get through anything. But another part of me is really angry that a wife has allowed her husband to disrespect her like that and basically get away with it. I worry about the message it sends to other men (that they, too, can probably get away with it) and what unrealistic expectations this might set for women in that position (that they should just get over it). Some women just aren’t the type to subject themselves to being hurt again, and that is arguably what staying with a man like that would be doing.

On a personal level, this is just such a sad situation all the way around.

On a political level, I don’t know how anyone can trust a politician when not even his wife can trust him.