Tiger! How Could You… Say No?

Imagine that you live in a world where every woman you ever meet would do anything to get with you. Everywhere you go, women fall over each other for the chance to say even a few words to you. You travel the world over regularly, yet you can’t keep them away from you if you try. Furthermore, you happen to be in situations where there are herds of absolutely gorgeous women all the time, because you happen to roll with highbrow society and you happen to have a lot of money. They are everywhere and they are relentless in their pursuit of you. If all this were true, what would you say to yourself? One thing you might be saying to yourself is:

“I am Tiger Woods.”

Given this life of unrelenting temptation, how is any man expected to say no every single time? What is a man to do? Even the great paragon of fidelity Odysseus eventually gave in and hooked up with the beautiful but ultimately corrupt women Calypso and Circe. Tiger is in the same boat. He travels the world meeting all sorts of phenomenal women who want to get a taste of the Tiger but do not have his best interests in mind. It seems that he resists most of the time. (No reports yet that Tiger can step to Wilt Chamberlain’s infamous claim of having slept with over 20,000 women.) But for Tiger, Rachel Uchitel is his Calypso and Jaimee Grubs is his Circe. Eventually his will was broken, as would the will of just about any man in that situation.

It seems that more and more examples of the infidelity of famous, powerful men come to light all the time. David Letterman. Steve Phillips. President Clinton. New Jersey governor James McGreevy cheated on his wife with a guy. And these are just the ones we find out about. These men achieved fame, wealth, and positions of power through having a supreme talent, but who said supreme talent is automatically packaged with supreme powers of resistance? Shouldn’t these men be on a different program of fidelity than the rest of us, just as almost all of the rules they live by are different from ours? Shouldn’t they only be considering open relationships? What woman reasonably thinks that any man who gets that much attention from gorgeous women is going to be faithful to her every day till death do them part?

I am not condoning their behavior nor am I justifying cheating for the rest of us. If you are not in the top .0001% of the most rich, most famous, or most powerful men in the world, then it really should not be that hard to be faithful. You are not getting approached enough to enter the Exception Zone. Your temptation level should not be getting even close to your threshold for resistance, and if it is then don’t get into committed relationships. But for these elite men who face unabating pressure, such as Tiger, my question is not “how could you cheat?” because this is by far the most likely end I can see them coming to. Rather, the question is, “What made you think that a monogamous marriage was feasible for someone in your position?