Stand by Your Man
Wives stay with philandering husbands and receive gifts.
June 5, 2007 — -- They may be strolling like a happy couple these days, but baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez and his wife, Cynthia, are caught up in a tabloid media frenzy.
A newspaper splashed front-page photos of A-Rod, as Rodriguez is called, in the company of a busty blonde woman while on a road trip with the Yankees in Toronto. She's reportedly a stripper and nude model. Cameras caught them out on the town in city after city.
When the Yankees played rival Red Sox in Boston, fans there had a field day. Some sported blond girly masks. While Rodriguez just waved it off, many women questioned how his wife could stay with him, let alone be seen in public as a couple.
"Athletes' wives do put all their eggs in one basket," said clinical psychologist Belisa Vranich. "They go from having their own careers to being the wife of so-and-so."
Vranich said these wives often really build their lives around creating a home and creating the identity as "the wife of."
But A-Rod isn't the first to be caught publicly in a sticky situation like this. In 2003 when Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant was fighting rape charges, his wife, Vanessa, stood by his side.
The charges were dropped, and he bought her a $4 million diamond ring by way of apology. The wives' public acts of forgiveness often serve to smooth over the public relations disaster of infidelity. Rodriguez has reportedly bought his wife two necklaces.
"There'd be at least 30 girls just camped out waiting for the bus to arrive. I mean, just skimpily dressed, you know, miniskirts, halter tops, you know, cleavage for days," Tami Anderson, the ex-wife of NBA player Kenny Anderson, said in August 2003.
She said that many athletes' wives lived with blinders on, turning a blind eye to on-the-road philandering. She said many were afraid to even ask their husbands about their behavior.
"It's like, if I ask you, you may tell me the truth, and it's something I'm not ready to hear," Anderson said.
Psychologists say that American culture designates the rich and famous as sex symbols, but that the alpha-male public image can often clash with the reality of their private lives.
"The public wants them to be sexy, to be exciting, to be out in the public eye, while their wives want them to be good husbands at home, good fathers," Vranich said. "Those two things don't go together."
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