Before we talk about AH-luld, let’s get one thing out of the way first.

High-powered men are not capable of long-term monogamy.  If you’re a woman and you actually marry one of these men, you have three options.

Option One – Accept it, deal with it, do your best to manage it, and move in the direction you want anyway.  Examples: Hillary Clinton, Jackie Onassis.

Option Two – Embrace Disney and pretend it doesn’t exist and pretend high-powered, high-sex-drive men are angels instead of men.  React with shocked, furious, volcanic anger when you finally see something everyone else was seeing but you.  Examples: Elin Nordegren, Denise Richards

Option Three – Deal with it up to a point.  Put up with it for a few years or decades, but if things get out of control or the public image of it becomes too messy, then get mad and divorce him.  Example: Mel Gibson’s wife Robyn, Maria Shriver.

Women are highly perceptive and are not stupid.  They know what they’re getting into when they marry a guy like Bill Clinton or Tiger Woods, whether they admit it to themselves or not.  They know their husbands are fucking around.  They can deny it and lie to themselves (option two) or admit it as part of the reality of being with a high-powered man and deal with it (options one and three).

For those of you who don’t know, Arnold is an extremely high-sex-drive guy and has been cheating on Maria for decades, since the very beginning.  It first broke in the mid-1990s about how Arnie was having sex, and eating out, all kinds of women on movie sets dating back to the 1980s, often quoting his “eating isn’t cheating” line.  The fact he has a kid outside of his marriage isn’t anything new, or at least it shouldn’t be if you’ve been following Arnold’s career as I have.

Maria Shriver is a very intelligent woman.  She knew damn well he was cheating.  To think she didn’t would be insulting her intelligence.  Just like during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, all those deluded idiots who actually said “Hillary didn’t know Bill was a cheater”.  How naive about the world can you be?  (Or how intellectually dishonest?)  How stupid to you think Hillary Clinton is?  How stupid do you think Maria Shriver is?  They might be shrews, but they’re smart ladies.

She knew Arnold was cheating, and she knew for decades.

Like a good Kennedy wife, she chose option three.  She kept her mouth shut and make it work and enjoyed being married to a good-looking, powerful, famous, multimillionaire.  At least until A) he was no longer governor of the 7th largest economy in the world (the state of California) and B) it got out that he not only fucked a chick, but actually fathered a child with one.  Oops.  Let’s see…he’s no longer governor, most of their kids are grown up, the news makes her look just a little too bad, so she’s out.

That’s just how these things work.  Most people know monogamy is bullshit, even if they don’t want to talk about it or acknowledge it.

Though I disagree with some of his politics, I love Arnold.  He is one of the greatest rags-to-riches stories of the modern age, if not all of American history.  I have followed his career with great interest and consider him one of the greatest role models in the area of success there is (just not marital success).

No, he should not have cheated.  But I don’t think he cheated.  I think Maria knew damn well what he was doing and they discussed it many times.  Of course you and I will probably never know for sure, but I bet the orders from Maria were just like those from Hillary to Bill:  “If you have to do it, go do it, but keep it on the DL, and keep it under control.”  By fathering a child and letting it leak out to the public, he broke her cardinal rule: he made her look bad.

Call it a very reluctant OLTR marriage.  A marriage that starts with promised monogamy, then cheating, then morphs into an OLTR arrangement.  There are millions of those all over the country.

Arnold won’t be the last.

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