To Club or Not to Club - that is the Question

OK, so Tiger Woods was having an alleged affair, and on the Thanksgiving Day his wife supposedly gave him a good beating with his own golf clubs. She also smashed the back window of his SUV as he tried to make his bare foot escape from the house. I am sure it felt good (to her). But what has she achieved?

If your husband is simply promiscuous and has affairs here and there every once in a while, that does not pose a big threat to the woman's status as a wife. Yes, she can send a message that it can hurt if he gets caught, and the husband may treat her with the same kind of love and tenderness we reserve for the law enforcement officers, especially state troopers who are out there to prevent us from speeding. So she gets to keep a prisoner, not a husband.

If your husband is truly in love with another woman, your status as a wife is really over. Nominally, he may still be coming home (and bringing some of his paycheck to you), say, for "the sake of the children," or out of guilt, or charity. My feeling is that clubbing in that case, even though emotionally satisfying for the duration of the fight, would only stimulate him to leave immediately notwithstanding the children, and dissipating his feeling of guilt. You would be seen forever as a sore looser and a sorry bitch. He would only be confirmed in his opinion that you are not worth living with. You can toughen it out and hope that the other woman would dump him (which she won't if he is a high earner - and incidentally, from my personal observation that is who younger women invariably "fall in love" with), or that he somehow would get over his love and come back to you. But the family is largely over. And I don't believe he will ever respect you for not setting him free.

Personally, I would let him go. In other words, Jenny Sanford, not Elin Woods. Oh, naturally, I would keep the money, but I would not want to touch his clubs.