Spitzer’s net worth is around 75 million and his family’s wealth is the hundreds of millions. If you live a high profile life you can’t be going to high end call girls all the time and yet he, a very bright man, made that decision over and over until he got caught.
I mean imagine… you are literally a big swinging dick in almost every sense a man can be. Power, money, reputation, connections, family. People talk about you seriously as a possible POTUS and still… still… you have GOT to get some strange. And you’ve got to get it in hotel rooms from hookers. A discreet mistress tucked away in a secret apartment just won’t do.
What’s the compulsion driving him to keep going with these women even when it’s cost him everything reputation-wise? Sex drive? He likes the interaction? What keeps a man like him circling the light?
It is stupid to do it if you are even a semi-famous man because it will cost you almost everything eventually. However, it is an excellent strategy overall if you aren’t married and have money. Rent, don’t buy because it is always cheaper, better quality and there is fresh stock all the time if that is what you are interested in. His biggest mistake, like all others, is not getting a divorce beforehand. What do you need a wife for after you already have kids? Public presentation? That argument doesn’t work because you automatically fail at that when you try to do both.
You have to pick a picture perfect family life or a swinging bachelor lifestyle but not both. Either is fine in my view and you won’t get into real trouble unless you try to combine both of them under false pretenses. Sadly, most men in that situation think they are JFK and can pull it off and are genuinely surprised when they get caught due to their own stupidity.
I think you’re off the mark here. Spitzer’s carrying on with prostitutes happened eight years ago and his wife was apparently willing to forgive him for that. What appears to have broken up his marriage was keeping a mistress on the side.
I realized that I didn’t answer your question directly. I know and have known many men that cheat quite well. I have even helped protect them from potential consequences because they are my friends and I barely even know their wives and I don’t usually like them that much myself when I do.
The reason for most of them is simply because they can and they don’t think that they will be caught. I don’t think most of them would be that upset even if they did get caught. Their wives aren’t as attractive to them as much as they once were and most of them try to dominate the household and relationship in a way that isn’t very conductive to sexual attraction. There is a very good reason why all major cities have pages upon pages of ads for escorts in the Yellow Pages and escorts are so successful in Las Vegas that they can afford intensive street marketing.
Don’t get me wrong, most married men don’t cheat I never did myself but I can certainly understand it and sometimes wonder why it isn’t even more common. From what I hear, high end escorts are a really good deal overall compared to a girlfriend let alone a wife once you do the full cost/benefit analysis. Both options can work for an individual person but mixing the two is a volatile combination.
Subconsciously they DO want to be caught. They want to feel wanted and loved by their spouse, and break the boredom of spouse sex (or lack of sex). Secondly, there is a control desire. By paying a woman you control her for the length of the session instead of negotiating and being intimate with your wife. Thirdly, it could be a compulsion like gambling or even when a woman is addicted to love.
Are you quoting 1960s Batman or do you have some sort of cite for that? That’s a comical trope used to explain why the serial killer or Villain of the Week gives the police so many clues.
Without getting into squishy armchair analysis, I’d say the the pithy “I don’t pay them for sex, I pay them to go away afterwards” (soft cite) is a broad answer. Rich and powerful still has a lot of social constraints that limit dalliances. Hiring someone would cut through all the effort to ‘get some’ and leave the vanilla world behind.
I think it’s a psychological side affect of having everyone in your immediate orbit constantly telling you how great you are and catering to your every whim. You start to believe the hype. You’re bullet proof. You’re not going to get caught. And even if you do, it will blow over.
This is the same reason celebs often have meltdowns when they are not let into a popular club or restaurant. “WHAT? YOU WON’T LET ME IN? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!”
I doubt that… I think it’s simple hubris. These guys essentially rule their spheres, and everyone tells them yes, or these guys will punish them in some ways. The amount of ass-kissing that even a piss-ant politician gets is astounding; a friend’s mother used to date a county judge who also happened to be the county Democratic party head. I’m firmly convinced that guy never paid for ANYTHING, as it was all gifted to him. My buddy was a big Rockets fan, and the judge found out… next day, he gives my buddy Charles Barkley’s still sweaty jersey from that night’s game. Hell, I don’t think I paid to have my car washed for about a year; he got so many free car-wash coupons that he gave the ones he didn’t use to my buddy, who gave the excess to me. Restaurant meals? The same; he’d take my buddy’s mom out to the best places in Houston with no reservations, and often without having to pay.
Anyway, these guys get to believing their own myths and press, and start feeling invulnerable. Then they start feeling like they deserve this stuff, and having beautiful young women is part of that feeling of entitlement.
Then, it eventually craters if they’re dumb enough about it, and they look like total idiots.
His biggest mistake, if the story is true, was trying to farce the woman to … what exactly? Not get on the plane? Not stop seeing him? His biggest mistake was trying to be a tough guy when he really had no cards to play (to mix metaphors). Like a lot of men, he imagines he can just order women to do what he wants and use force to back it up. Luckily for her, she had an airline ticket and a big bank account and no fear of making a big stink about his behavior.
I think the normal sex drive which can drive men to do all sorts of ordinary stupid stuff can get entwined in other emotional/mental issues and drive men to do extraordinarily stupid stuff.
To be fair, the fact that you’re using JFK as an analogy means he didn’t quite pull it off. Of course, it didn’t come out until after he died, and even then it hasn’t tarnished his reputation too much, but still - the really impressive guys are the ones who we’d never even think to use as an example. (Hmm . . . Jimmy Carter?!). Call me cynical, but I think a minority of high-profile men who cheat on their wives end up getting caught. We’re just reading about the clumsy ones.