By The Survivors Club Staff
June 29, 2009

It's the biggest scandal to hit South Carolina in decades.  Over Father's day weekend, Governor Mark Sanford sneaks away to Argentina to visit his mistress, leaving his wife and four sons behind. 

"Am I O.K.?” Jenny Sanford, the governor's wife, told reporters as she drove away from their home the day after her husband confessed to his wandering ways.  “You know what? I have great faith and I have great friends and great family. We have a good Lord in this world, and I know I’m going to be fine. Not only will I survive, I’ll thrive.”

[When asked if he plans to resign, Governor Sanford also chose the language of survival, telling reporters "I'm just trying to survive today is what I'm trying to do."]

So, how is the governorn's wife doing?  According to Philip Rucker in The Washington Post, Jenny Sanford "seems to have drawn a new path for the aggrieved spouse of a philandering politician, an episode that has become something of a ritual in American politics."

"She is not a victim," The Post says quoting her friends, "but a survivor."

"Jenny is the hero in this story," said Cyndi Mosteller, a longtime friend and a prominent Republican operative here. "She's the hero to her children, and I think she's the hero to this state. In the midst of this tragedy, she is standing strong to who she is and what she believes in. . . . I think Jenny has not had these types of ambitions, but I think every woman in South Carolina would vote for Jenny Sanford for governor right now."

Who survives and thrives after marital infidelity?  Why do some couples bounce back and others break up?

The answers may surprise you...

"The marriage bond is far stronger in 21st-century America than many may assume," according to Tara Parker Pope's fascinating piece in The New York Times. "Infidelity is one of the most common reasons cited by people who divorce.  But surveys find the majority of people who discover a cheating spouse remain married to that person for years afterward. Many millions more shrug off, or work through, strong suspicions or evidence of infidelity. And recent trends in marriage suggest that the institution itself has become more resilient in recent years, not less so."

“People tend to assume that bad people have affairs, and good people don’t, or that affairs only happen in bad marriages,” said Peggy Vaughan, a San Diego-based researcher who runs the Web site dearpeggy.com, and author of a forthcoming book on infidelity and marriage, “To Have and to Hold.” “These assumptions are just not based in reality.”

In any given year, The Times says, about 10 percent of married people say they have had sex outside their marriage. These numbers say nothing about whether the affairs were discovered; but researchers have surveyed couples in which they were. In one survey, among 1,084 people whose spouses had affairs, Ms. Vaughan found that 76 percent of both men and women were still married and living with that spouse years later. Similar surveys have found rates of about two-thirds and higher.

Vaughan, author of The Monogamy Myth, estimates that 60 percent of husbands and 40 percent of wives will have an affair at some time in their marriage. 

As The Times notes: "Most couples who have been publicly humiliated — the Clintons, the Spitzers, the Edwardses — have so far stayed together.

In a statement last week, Jenny Sanford, Governor Sanford’s wife, said that she had recently asked her husband to leave the house after discovering the affair. She also said that she still believes their relationship can be repaired."

For more resources on overcoming infidelity, visit The Survivors Club Infidelity and Cheating Support Center.

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