Infidelity

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Ira Glass** (0:31)
It was a while ago, the spring of 2009, that a writer named Jessica Pressler noticed a small cultural shift going on in the waiting pages of the New York Times, the section that the paper calls, the Vow section.
This shift, it happened at a time when for whatever reason, there was a rush of news stories about famous and powerful people cheating on their partners. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford publicly confessed that his soulmate was a woman in Argentina who was not his wife. Nevada Senator John Inson admitted paying $96,000 in cash to his former mistress and her husband. Reality TV stars John and Kate had just split after reports that he'd had an affair. So it was in the middle of all that that Jessica Pressler noticed in the waiting pages of the New York Times that there were couples getting married, who cheerfully told the newspaper as part of their meet cute story, that the way they got together was that one of them cheated on a spouse or a long time partner.

**Jessica Pressler** (1:30)
I believe one of them says the headline on it is something like, it took a while but they finally got together and you're like, because he was having a three-year relationship with another person in the meantime.

**Ira Glass** (1:45)
Jessica Pressler wrote up her discovery on the New York Magazine blog, Daily Intel. She noted that there was a kind of code language in all these waiting articles.

**Jessica Pressler** (1:54)
They always say like their road to finding each other was a bumpy road or they had a difficult time, many ups and downs. They encountered some obstacles along the way and it's like, no, those are people. Those are like other lives.
They're not speed bumps.

**Ira Glass** (2:17)
Take, for instance, the married woman who, according to a romantic write up on the Vowels page of the New York Times, flew to Paris to see another man and stayed with him in a hotel in the Latin Quarter for two weeks where they, quote, reveled in their own the bohem before she flew back to the US and moved out of the home in New Jersey that she shared with her husband.

**Jessica Pressler** (2:37)
I mean, it's just weird because vows is something that you have to try to get into. You have to kind of lobby to get into that column.
So it's like Mark Sanford, he had to speak publicly about his affair. Most people don't have to go around telling everybody about it.

**Ira Glass** (2:56)
See, but that's what's so strange about it is that somehow some part of them doesn't think, I shouldn't talk about this. Like somehow the notion I had an affair is so just nothing to them.

**Jessica Pressler** (3:06)
Right. I think it's probably just people, when they cheat on other people, tell themselves that they're doing it because they have to, because fate is involved and whatever happened, you're better off and probably the person that you broke up with is better off.
This is the way it was meant to be.

**Ira Glass** (3:28)
Yeah.

**Jessica Pressler** (3:29)
This is fate.

**Ira Glass** (3:32)
As with the cheated on ex-partner, when the story appears in the newspaper, on the wedding pages, it's almost as if the newspaper is siding with the cheating couple. The ex-partner is just collateral damage on the weight of their wedding.

**Jessica Pressler** (3:44)
They don't get to say anything for themselves. It's like not their story anymore. It's somebody else's love story.

**Ira Glass** (3:51)
Well, that's the thing. If it were any other section of the newspaper, the reporter would go to them too, for a comment to get their side.

**Jessica Pressler** (3:58)
I think they should do that.

**Ira Glass** (3:59)
But because it's the wedding section, it's just like, well, it's not really their story.

**Jessica Pressler** (4:03)
Right.
Yeah, they have no say for themselves. They're done. This had nothing to do with them. It's very bizarre. It raises all kinds of questions for me. As a reader, I'm very distracted by it.

**Ira Glass** (4:16)
Well, today on our radio program, we go where the newspaper marriage columns fear to tread. We hear from all parties to the affair, the cheated on, as well as the cheaters and their differing takes on what happened. And no surprise, they are very different from one another's. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, infidelity.