Don't be mad at Arnold. He isn't the first man to a) cheat on his wife or b) make a "love" child with the other woman.
I think Maria was right to leave. She should. She married a man who promised to be faithful to her and he broke that promise. She shows a great deal of strength and self-respect by leaving him. She shows that she will not tolerate a husband that committed adultery and fathered a baby with another woman, a woman that she knew personally. Maria is doing what is right for HER.
Unfortunately Arnold and Maria aren't the first couple in history to go through this. It's not just a Hollywood thing, or a Politics-as-usual thing. It's a human thing. It happens in small town America. Man meets woman, woman gets pregnant, man marries her, man meets another woman, one that he would rather be with but feels obligated to stay with the first woman because she is his baby-mama, 2nd woman gets pregnant at the same time that the wife is preggers with their 2nd child, man tries everything he can to keep it a secret but the secret always comes out (usually in about 9 months)...happens more then you think. It's when the first woman finds out about the 2nd woman and the "love-child" with her husband yet STAYS MARRIED to him that I lose my sympathy for her. I feel for Maria. She is a public figure, a member of one of the most public families in America, and her action-star-turned-governator hubby fucked the help behind her back & the idiot was too stupid to use birth control and now there is this poor kid that is going to grow up with the stigma of being Arnies illegitimate spawn of his carnal lust. Leave his dumb ass Maria! Show the women of the world that we don't have to "stand by our man". Women who stay with men who show a very clear history of cheating on their wives deserve to be married to a man who cheats on her.
You all know my story. I am deeply, down to the very core of me, in love with a married man. Yeah, being in love with a man who shows a very clear history of cheating on woman is probably not the smartest thing for me to do, and if he cheats on me I won't be surprised at all. The difference between me & let's say Maria Schriver...I knew from the moment I decided to move forward with my relationship with him that he is a cheater. He told me. He never promised to be faithful to me. He never said, I will only love you and have sex with you for the rest of my life. He told me: I love women, I love sex, I love having sex with women whether I am married to them or not, whether they are married to me or not...he told me I'll probably cheat on you. I can't imagine that any of those words were in Arnold's wedding vows to Maria, nor were they in my love's wedding vows to this wife. I am not the first woman he has cheated with, and I am not the first affair that his wife has known about. So no, I have no sympathy for her. Granted, yes, she thought he would be faithful based on HIS promises to her. But after the first time he broke that promise...come on lady, grow a pair and do what Maria did! Leave the dumb ass! When I am with your husband do you think I feel even an ounce of guilt? Uh, NOPE! He cheated on you from the beginning, he continues to cheat on you, I can tell you that I am pretty positive he has cheated on me, you knew about the first girl, & the 2nd, you know about me, you've known about me for years...yet you continue to play the martyr and try to get sympathy from people as the "poor wife". You're weak. You have no idea the strength you have inside you. You are a WOMAN!!!! Fucking be one! Stop being this little crybaby, desperately clinging to him because you are afraid you won't be able to do a sufficient job raising your children without him. Stop letting him use "the children" as a way to keep you from leaving. If you want to be married to a man that will honor his promise of fidelity to you, find one, cuz your current hubby ain't that man!
I don't think all people can be monogamous. Of course some can. But let's look at "relationships" a little differently. A coin has two sides. There is the yin & the yang for everything. When you face North, your ass faces South. So, for every person that can honestly say they can spend their whole life only having sex with that "one special person" and be completely happy, there is another person who cannot. Until we learn to accept that about each other, there will be affairs and illegitimate kids and broken marriages. If you marry someone with the thought that that person feels the same as you and you think they are going to only have sex with you for the rest of their life, and they don't turn out that way, find someone who thinks and feels the same as you. Don't think that the person who showed his/her true colors to you is going to change. We lie to each other all the time. How many people are going to stay with someone who says "I am going to cheat on you"? Besides me, I don't know anyone. So he lied to you. The lie was making you think he felt the same, the lie was not telling you that he likes to have sex with women, lots of women, the lie was not giving you all the information you needed to make an informed decision. He didn't give you all the information because he knew you wouldn't accept it about him, he knew you would try to change him, so to avoid all that he kept that very vital information to himself. Was that fair? No. Should he have told you about it? Yes! He gave me all that information and I processed it, and made an informed decision to stay with a man that I know is admittedly NOT a faithful person. Arnold lied to Maria, Maria found out about that lie and made an informed decision to not put up with that bullshit and she left him. If you don't like the way if feels when you are told again and again that your husband is cheating on you, LEAVE! If you can't accept him for what he is, stop trying to force him into being something he isn't and leave. Show the world that you are strong like Maria. Show your daughter that you have standards and won't put up with anything less. Show your son that the values you hold strong are true and real, not just things you say on Sunday at church. Show yourself that you want a man who WILL be faithful and won't be with someone who can't be faithful.
I love a man who won't be faithful to me, and I accept that about him. I know that while I can picture myself not being with anyone else for the rest of my life, he isn't the same. That doesn't mean he doesn't love me. That just means I love him enough to accept him as he is, and he loves me enough to be completely honest with me, not afraid to tell me that he isn't a monogamous person. Not all of us are, and until society accepts that, Arnie & Maria will continue to happen again and again.
