Don't mess with true love

I link to Marshall's brilliant and probably correct advice to Mark Sanford: Just go be with her!

Politics, power, family, one's position in society - all of these things are important. But I cannot shake the feeling that Sanford really loved that woman in Argentina. Really loved her.

And I'm having a tough time visualizing success for his return home to "learn how to love" his wife again. Jenny Sanford, former Wall Street executive, has said "I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will, and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal." Uhhh, I don't know...I've been married for eight years, and if I had to choose words to describe my love for my wife, I'm not sure "act of will" would be among them.

(As for commitment, I am in favor of it. My one little caveat there would be that it must not only be reciprocal - it must be bearable by humans.)

So Sanford walks away from something resembling genuine love, and back to a disaffected wife who is running her thoughts on him by a sympathetic press ("I admire her investment-banker steel" says Ruth Marcus). I'm just trying to think if there is any logic system extant under which that plan makes sense.

Prince Humperdink put it best...

You truly love each other and so you might have been truly happy. Not one couple in a century has that chance, no matter what the story books say. And so I think no man in a century will suffer as greatly as you will.

Whichever path Sanford chooses, he will deserve, and get to live with, the consequences.

Jon Stewart is less understanding.