You can’t fire up your laptop these days without encountering news of yet another sordid sex scandal involving a powerful, allegedly smart (and usually elected to office) man.
Even the unshockable among us were, well, shocked to discover that David Petraeus, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and four-star general, had handed in his resignation as a result of an affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer and running partner.
But Petraeus is just the latest inductee into the cheating hall of shame. Let’s enumerate some of the raunchy revelations of the past few years, shall we? Arnold Schwarzenegger (cheated on Maria Shriver with their longtime housekeeper, with whom he secretly fathered a child); Anthony Weiner (tweeted photos of his privates to a college student, among others); John Edwards (fathered a child out of wedlock while his now-deceased wife was battling cancer); South Carolina governor Mark Sanford (misused state funds to visit his mistress in Argentina); Louisiana senator David Vitter (admitted to hiring hookers); New York governor Eliot Spitzer (hookers, again).
What’s most confounding is why. Many of these men seemed to have it all—bright wives, bright futures—until their appalling antics sent their careers and marriages into a nosedive. With the help of psychologists and behavioral experts, we examine what’s behind this epidemic of idiocy.
Click here to discover why such otherwise smart men do such stupid, sleazy things.
More from WH:
Who Cheats More: Women or Men?
Fidelity: It’s Not a Myth
The Average Woman and Cheating
