The Barbara Walters interview with Peter Cook, Christie Brinkley’s ex-husband, has stirred up all sorts of controversy between the couple (she filed an order with the court to make sure he doesn’t let their children see it when they’re in his custody), but it’s also riled the public. The controversy is similar to the one that brewed during Oprah’s “Why Men Cheat” series.
Cook’s Confession
Cook claims Brinkley’s lack of attention drove him into the arms of his 17-year-old lover.
I can understand why he strayed. I believe lack of attention is a factor in why men stray. But I can’t understand who he strayed with. Even I have to question what he, a fortysomething-year-old man, thought he’d find fulfilling in a relationship with a teenager apart from sex. (Which is why he was labeled a pervert, something he balked at and which led him to do the Barbara Walters interview. He wanted a chance to tell his side of the story.)
He did the whole “I’m sorry” thing, admitted he was wrong and that he shouldn’t have done it. But he also defended himself. He said it wasn’t that he was being a pervert. He did it because, as he told Walters, he “felt like [he] was a guest in someone else’s life.”
It’s Not All His Fault
I caught the tail-end of a cable news show (I’m not sure if it was on Fox, MSBNC, or another channel, though) where they were discussing this. The women guest experts took exception to his defense arguments. They claimed it was a classic case of a person in the wrong trying to make the victim take the blame instead of shouldering it themselves.
I disagree.
As M. Gary Neuman, the marriage expert Oprah had on her show said, “We get married because we want one person in the world to really think we’re wonderful for doing all the things that we do.”
Neuman hypothesized that the other woman often makes the man feel better about himself. “[She] makes them feel different. Makes them feel appreciated, admired. Men look strong, look powerful and capable. But on the inside, they’re insecure like everybody else. They’re searching and looking for somebody to build them up to make them feel valued.”
Bingo!
Not that he didn’t do Brinkley wrong. Cheating is bad. However, she probably didn’t do him wholly right either.
Why am I not sympathizing with her, the purported “victim?” Because that was her fourth marriage, his first. If her marriage had meant enough to her, she would have found a way to work through his infidelity. Better yet, she would have known how to keep it from happening in the first place.
Like Looking for a Drink in the Desert
I like to think of men straying from lack of attention as a man and wife walking through the desert. The wife’s carrying the water. The man’s thirsty. He asks his wife for a drink. Because she’s so focused on getting them to their destination and not wanting to stop, she refuses. Or maybe she just gives him the smallest of sips to whet his whistle.
They keep walking. He keeps asking for water. She keeps refusing. Eventually they cross paths with another woman carrying water. Thirsty, the man asks the other woman for water. She obliges. The wife finds out and gets furious.
I don’t know what Cook’s excuse is for picking a teenager though. Maybe he was so thirsty and his judgment so impaired that he leapt at the first water-bearing female to come along.
Which is sad and a testament to his responsibility for his failed marriage too.
Courtney Mroch also writes in Pets and Marriage. For a full listing of her articles click here.