I am Woman, W-H-O-R-E

Meet Silda Wall Spitzer-- graduate of Harvard Law School and successful corporate attorney whose non-profit work has stretched from the NY Blue Ribbon Commission on Youth Leadership to the Children's Museum of Manhattan and most recently her founding of Children for Children, which is dedicated to the civic engagement and community involvement of youths. While her resume represents a successful individual, her reputation is now of a failed wife. Criticisms from the likes of Dr. Laura blame her lack of sexual attention for her husband's fall while others view her decision to stand by him through this embarrassing scandal as pathetic. Yet, the unspoken fear among successful women rests not in her actions, or lack of action-- but in her husband's infidelity. Is there a reason that men with successful spouses pursue sexual satisfaction with, well, less- qualified options?

We have all been called a whore and we have all played the whore. Women throw loaded terms like slut, whore, skank, etc. around for all types of reasons. Yet, when it comes to putting ourselves out there, women do accentuate our sexual traits rather than our intellectual accomplishments to attract men. We have all exuded sex, embraced our sexuality, and been proud of the results. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem lies in how successful we can be given that we are truly more complicated than that. After the attraction settles, our emotional and intellectual complexities taint our sexual front. It is troubling to see so many public men abandon their loyal, successful, complex wives for simple sex.

The word whore, while it might be used to describe your ex's new girlfriend or someone wearing a tube top in the snow, actually is a person who sells their body for sex. Simple sex. There are no emotional ties or complications in a relationship with a whore as part of the business agreement attached to the action. Now, those of us who are not employed by prostitution rings can also pursue simple sex, but at a point it has to end. Without a business agreement to prevent it, conversation and emotion make the relationship more substantive. We have been raised to believe that this is the ideal-- in fact the ideal is to have a significant connection emotionally and intellectually before the sexual relationship. Yet, when we look at the statistics of married couples who cheat (between 1 in 5 and 1 in 10 depending on who admits it) and those that stay together (as high as 7 in 10 of those when the man cheats) the reality of simple sex haunts those of us who pursue highly sophisticated intellectual relationships.

Of course there are many successful marriages and relationships where both parties are loyal, and it is in no way my intention to taint those relationships. I do, however, see a future for myself where I have to tolerate my husband's simple sex with someone else because it is a role that I can never play. While in theory I would love to profess I could never tolerate such behavior, but in reality I look at admirable, intelligent women who accept their role as wife as separate from providing sexual satisfaction.

Meet the Emperor's Club, a group of women who meet the needs of powerful men married to women like me. While I will never intimately understand the appeal of the whore, I know Hillary Rodham Clinton, Silda Wall Spitzer and others like them have learned that sometimes, we have to choose to either ignore or become them.

Just Not That Into You Lesson: I am not advocating becoming a prostitute, but rather that the role we adopt in the workplace of power and intellect often stifles the role we play in relationships. Making your partner feel satisfied both emotionally and physically by someone who produces some insecurity is a difficult balance. There are ways of finding men who yearn for this relationship-- the deep understanding and love to enhance the physical-- and we should focus on them, even if it means a turtleneck or a little more conversation and a little less action for a while.