I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: With every breaking political sex scandal — and the ensuing awkward press conference/photo opp — it becomes more and more tempting to imagine little thought balloons over the heads of the apparently stoic, forbearing wives. (“Well, this explains a lot.” “Game face game face game face.” “Dude. Diapers?”)

And man, is it easy to judge. The wives, not the husbands. (Well, them too.) What are they doing at the press conference at all? What sort of public display of solidarity do they possibly owe these guys? Can they really be such doormats? Why aren’t they home changing the locks?

In situations like these, though, I think we’d do well to remember the wise words of Bridget Jones’s friend Magda. “No one from the outside ever really understands what makes them work.” Really, who knows what has gone on Chez Spitzer? Maybe she is cheating too. Maybe he promised her a quick and clean divorce if she’d do just this one thing. Maybe she is even acting out of savvy self-interest, as Anne Applebaum suggests at Slate: “I can see one clear advantage to this option: It’s all over quickly. And no one asks you for a follow-up interview. You appear once—and then you vanish forever, along with your husband’s career. If you’ve been clever about it, you’ve kept your maiden name and can thus return to your own career. Those who make other, more attention-getting choices will later be forced back into the limelight to explain themselves, which is gruesome.” That, or if you simply don’t appear at all, you can bet they’ll come after you.

I’m not saying she should or shouldn’t show up; I’m just saying that in a scandal such as this, her conduct, of all people’s, is not for us to judge. (I’m talking to YOU, lady I just heard on WNYC saying that this whole thing was Mrs. Spitzer’s fault in the first place because she didn’t kink things up enough.) The real thing to question is not each wife’s motive, or her backbone. The real thing to question, I think, is why these women are expected to show up in the first place. (And what will happen someday when the “stoic wife” is the husband.)

Ashley Dupré, the “other woman” in the Spitzergate scandal (arguably engineered to punish the governor for trying to clean up the banking industry) has extended her brief stay in the public eye by dispensing homespun relationship advice in that classy journal, the NY Post.

We look forward to learning from the 24-year-old’s hard-won wisdom, and suggest that the Post doesn’t stop there. Why not hire Balloon Dad to write a parenting column? South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson can tackle etiquette questions, and Rod Blagojevich would be a natural for a sales technique blog. Or haircare tips.

Looking for some smart writing about sex? Check out Best Sex Writing 2009, edited by Friend Of BG and cupcake aficionado Rachel Kramer Bussel. This is not a collection of erotica (drat!) but a smart — and, okay, sometimes steamy — series of essays on everyone’s favorite subject. From Rachel’s introduction:

Sex is everywhere–in our bedrooms, classrooms, courtrooms, and offices, as well as on our TV and movie screens, streets, and newspapers. This was a big year for sex, from prostitution (Eliot Spitzer, Ashley Dupré, Deborah Jeane Palfrey) to teen pregnancy (Jamie Lynn Spears, Bristol Palin) and beyond.

If you’ve gotten past the cupcake thing (Mmmmm. Cupcakes.) you are asking yourself, exactly how smart is this collection? Well, it’s so smart that they’ve included a piece by LYNN HARRIS, “Searching for Normal: Do Dating Websites for People with STIs Liberate or Quarantine?” Not tittilating enough? Try FoBG James Hannaham’s “Why Bathroom Sex Is Hot.”

Read more about it at Rachel’s Amazon blog!

Adultery lurks everywhere, among celeb couples and political leaders, our neighbors and even, on a bad day, our own relationships. New York Magazine, following up on the Spitzer scandal in its own back yard, recently weighed in on the matter, with a lot to say about American culture and the perhaps untenable emphasis we put on monogamy.

According to writer Susan Squire, marriage wasn’t made to handle all this pressure in the first place. The average life span is far greater now than it was 100 years ago, and back in those days, marriage was a more formal institution for breeding and family purposes only. It’s becoming more and more difficult for partners in a marriage to get the variety and sexual attention that they need. The American burden is the ideal that marriage should provide romantic love forever. “Marriage involves routine, and routine kills passion,” Squire says. Sometimes partners see an affair as the only way out of that rut.

That’s why Mira Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston, suggests that not all cheaters are evil trolls. (more…)

Now that Eliot Spitzer has resigned, we can put this sex business behind us and get back to BUSINESSbusiness.

Oh, wait.

First we find out that a former aide to former New Jersey governor James McGreevey has come forward, classily, to allege that he was the third wheel, as it were, in a series of three-way “sex romps” with Mr. McGreevy and his ex-wife-to-be, Diana Matos McGreevey. (Or, more to the point, that she was the third wheel.) My first reaction to this revelation (which the missus has denied, by the way) was a resounding “TMI!”

Then we hear about the Patersons. We hear a LOT about the Patersons. Boils down to this: things got rocky. He had affairs. So did she. They dealt.

Then I realized: this is more than a matter of TMI. The universe, my friends, is trying to tell us something. That we should focus as much as possible on the prurient details of politicians’ private utterly human failings — failings that are not at odds with their ability to govern or gain public trust — instead of on ending poverty and war? No, the other thing: remember how easy it was to judge Silda Spitzer? With these new revelations (regardless of their veracity) we are reminded: you never, ever know.

Now can we please get back to work ?