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Adultery: McNair and his wife and children and obtw, the girlfriend
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Steve McNair, from a 2003 season file photo and Sahel Kazemi in an undated booking photo from Davidson County
The death of a sports superstar at the alleged hands of his girlfriend shocked the sports world the other day. This man was so much more than the things that happened at the end of his life. He was a phenomenal sportsman, and a generous soul, aware of the issues in the world. Most suggest that he had been a good husband and father. So what tortured part of his soul and the world of power and privilege in which he lived led him to his death in these circumstances?
While it is certainly true that the powerful don't have a corner on the market of blatant infidelity, their privilege in other areas often seems to confuse them about their rights to do what they want and let their marriages and families hang in the wind. Good husbands are not out gathering DUI and hand-gun possession citations in the company of women not their wives.
Americans, it seems find adultery wrong: according to a recent NYT's article 92 percent of the American public disapprove of adultery in marriage. (This is the same percentage that approves of the death penalty. Far fewer people disapprove of cheating on taxes.) And yet the Kinsey reports told us that by the age of forty, 50 percent of men and 25 percent of women had had extramarital affairs. You may remember a recent study, discussed in this column, that suggested that in well over 20 percent of marriages, one or the other partner strays in the first year.
We don't know the whole story about 20-year-old Sahel Kazemi. Whether she killed him or someone else did, she was certainly a player in this sad story. Questions are swirling about whether or not McNair's wife or children knew about either a divorce or the girlfriend. I haven't yet heard questions about what 36-year-old men are doing dating 20-year-old young women. Or why you don't have to be 21 to buy a gun. (Shouldn't guns be at least as difficult to buy as alcohol?) News stories have reported McNair's wife to be distraught. Of course she is. When the woman your husband and the father of your children is dating kills him or is with him when he is killed, distress is an appropriate response.
This is an extreme case, to be sure. But here's a truth about love and infidelity. People get crazy when their hearts and their lives and livelihoods are endangered. The decisions you make about how you will honor the promises you make - even to the extent of dismantling them with respect - have a lot to do with how much hurt you dole out to the beloved (or formerly beloved) and in how much danger you place yourself or your family.
This was an insane act. That this relationship was volatile and that that volatility was enhanced by alcohol have been documented. Most people don't go there. And it's a sad and horrible thing for everyone involved that lives were ended in this way. But it is clear that moving on without really moving on presents incredible problems.
You want to be crafting promises that you can keep to keep you moving from "I do to happily and healthily ever after. You want to understand that the way you live into those promises and adjust them (together) to suit the way your marriage works or doesn't matters.
Obviously you're smarter than this. And many of you will not have to struggle with the temptations that too much money and too much privilege can provide. But each of you wants to honor your promises in such a way that allows you to move into or, if necessary, out of your marriage with grace. The great relationship you have deserves that respect.
If you have suggestions for topics to explore, write to the Wedding Priestess. You make it all so much more interesting.
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