"A 'soul mate' is what happens when a person discovers a part of themselves that's been missing, and it's so exhilarating, so rejuvenating . . . you're not willing to give it up for anyone or anything," said couples' counselor Veronica Thomas.
In middle age, a soul mate often shows up through an affair, "because this person is the escape," she said. "The spouse is the burdensome reality. With new love, you can be young again."
It's the "soul mate" phrase that made wives gag.
When the governor emoted for the TV cameras, he was showing respect for his lover. "He didn't want to devalue it as a cheap affair," Thomas explained.
"But I wish he'd said something more psychological," Thomas told me. "Like 'I found something with her that I long to have with my wife. Now we're going to recapture what's been lost.' "
Instead, like a teenager handed an onerous task, he promised "to try to fall back in love with my wife."
I don't think I could take a husband back after being publicly humiliated like that.
But anyone who's been married long enough has drawn a line and then erased it. You can make all the rules you want, but you don't know what you'll live with until you have to face it.
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Maybe Jenny Sanford doesn't need a soul mate. In every interview she's given and statement she's released, she talks about her Christian faith, her responsibilities as a mother and her husband's need to "toe the line" so that he can come home and be a respectable father.
She has decided to forgive him, she said; to believe that his "determination to save our marriage" can overcome his soul mate lust.
I admit I was pulling for her to leave -- not just because her husband lied or committed adultery, but because he protected his lover and sacrificed his wife's honor. But maybe the man I see as a hypocritical, narcissistic wimp is, in his wife's eyes, a naive man with a tender heart, in the middle of a midlife identity crisis.
Jenny had discovered Mark's affair in January, when she found a letter her husband had written to Maria. She ordered him not to see the other woman again and expected him not to defy her.
"I didn't think he had it in him," she told reporters. "It's hard to find out your husband is not who you thought he is."
It must be even harder, I imagine, to find out what your husband thinks of you.
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sandy.banks@latimes.com
