Elizabeth Edwards is talking publicly about her husband John’s affair while promoting her book “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities.” In a recent interview with Larry King the one thing you didn’t hear is whether or not she had been meeting John’s sexual needs. While Larry King, Elizabeth Edwards and many in our society consider this information unimportant I would bet it was relevant to John Edwards and is a significant factor to the majority of married men in this country.

The Larry King Interview

A good portion of the Larry King interview focused on John Edwards affair with his videographer Rielle Hunter, which Elizabeth initially learned from John was a one time event. John would later admit the affair was more than a one time occurrence. Mrs. Edwards confirmed there may be an illegitimate daughter and John may be taking a paternity test in the near future.

For all her public embarrassment at a time when Mrs. Edwards is focused on battling her cancer she still says she loves her husband. To her credit she is facing the infidelity head on and she is willing to forgive her husband. She said “He made this one mistake, so do I throw out all the good stuff and say, that doesn’t matter, only this matters?’ “

What Lead up to the Affair?

While I respect Elizabeth Edwards and have no intention of disparaging her, she is a good woman who has faced a lot of adversity, I am frustrated with her recent interviews with Matt Lauer and Larry King which lack obvious questioning about her sex life. We are getting the end story without any of the details leading to the affair. The press ignores the facts that lead to the affair and pretend they don’t exist because as a society we are unwilling to discuss this uncomfortable topic.

Who are we trying to protect, Mrs. Edwards? She is already out giving public interviews and hawking a book which details the affair. She has come forward to bring this entire matter to our attention why should she be allowed to give only her side of the story without facing questions on her role that likely lead to the affair.

Was Elizabeth Edwards Meeting John’s Sexual Needs?

John Edwards would do our society a service by discussing the factors that lead him to take on a lover outside his marriage. Married men and women should hear the reasons behind why an affair happens to a high profile man and possibly raise their awareness of the pitfalls of denying sex to a married man.

I would expect a woman facing stage 4 cancer would lose significant if not all interest in sex. That is only natural. What is also to be expected is her husband will suffer, but how will he react is the question. John does not have cancer and he apparently has not lost interest in sex. By all accounts Mr. Edwards is still very much interested in having sexual relations. So he chose not to suffer alone and he took on a lover to meet the sexual needs that his wife was likely unwilling or unable to meet.

Are Married Men Expected to Live Without Sex?

Does our society really expect husbands married to women who lose interest in sex to just do without? When a wife loses interest in sex men are expected to be able to turn off their desire or at least not act on it with another woman. Just because a wife is unwilling to have sex does not mean that a husband can just turn off his needs. Men are only human afterall, they are not robots.

There are many men in the public eye that have not been able to turn off their sexual desires in recent years when confronted with wives believed to be unwilling or unable to meet their sexual needs such as Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, John Edwards and recently Mark Sanford. Our society’s expectation for married men to live their lives without a sexual partner is unrealistic. Many well respected married men in high profile positions have been caught having affairs, because living without sex is not natural for a married man regardless of our society’s ignorance and naiveté on this matter.

Should the Wife Share the Blame For a Cheating Husband?

Elizabeth Edwards may have lost interest in sex which lead to John’s affair. The question for our society is whether or not a married man caught cheating should get a partial pass if the wife was unwilling or unable to meet his sexual needs. Does the wife share in the blame of an affair if the she becomes frumpy and loses interest in sex? I assume the majority of married women in this country are not interested in considering for one nano second that wives could be partially to blame for a husbands affair. It is much easier for married women to consider all cheating men as lecherous adulterers who are merely seeking out sport sex for which there is never a reasonable cause for their actions. As with many aspects of our lives things are quite often not so easily defined as black or white. There are many shades of gray. The cold hard truth is that in many cases married women are the root cause of their husbands infidelity because they are unwilling or unable to meet their husbands needs for intimacy and sexual satisfaction.