Yes, yes, yes. Like you, I have heard everything I ever care to hear for the rest of my life about President Clinton and his marriage. But you know, there was a brief moment, at the very beginning of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when the public discussion included not only the questions of impeachment and lying and is it about sex, or isn't it about sex-- all that stuff-- but also questions about marriage, about how bad it is, how common it is, for people to be unfaithful to their spouses.
And it wasn't just the Lewinsky scandal that made that happen. Around the time the Lewinsky story broke, Roy Romer, the governor of Colorado, the head of the Democratic party, publicly declared that for 16 years, he'd had a relationship outside his marriage with an aide named B. He told the press that his wife and family knew about the relationship and that they accepted it. And he argued in his press conference that it might be helpful if we would talk about what really happens in marriages, long-term marriages, instead of what we usually pretend.
Bea and I have been married 45 years. Is that right, 45? And it's a very strong relationship, solid. In the course of 45 years, in many marriages in this country, different attitudes develop in a marriage. They can't work it out. But in those who remain married, there still are times in which there are different feelings and different relationships.
All families, I think, have these kinds of problems from time to time. They handle them differently. All of you listen carefully. I'm trying to live out a life based upon what I truly believe and truly value. Now, oftentimes, the societal norms don't fully accommodate the way I see it. I have to work that out. I'm trying to say I have conducted myself to my wife, to my children, and to B.
Here is the window of discussion that's being opened up right now in our country. It came up with Roy Romer. It came up with Bill Clinton before him. And it has to do with monogamy, how to think about it. In a magazine called Critical Inquiry , a Northwestern University professor named Laura Kipnis makes the case that there are a lot of marriages where people are simply unhappy.
