My friends and I were discussing this week how we could each
work on being less judgmental. Half-an-hour
later, despite my best intentions, all my judgmental attitude came rearing up
full-force as I heard someone I know being interviewed on a talk show.
Many years ago, the week after my college graduation, this
man gave me my first job interview.
I
traveled down to Washington, D.C., and he took me to a nice restaurant for our
meeting.
It was all very impressive -
the D.C. office with the senators casually dropping in, the fancy restaurant -
but I decided not to take the job.
It
was a wise move; two months later I found out that he had scammed some of my
father's friends out of several thousand dollars.
This seemed to be par for the course for this
"gentleman" and years later he was arrested for masterminding one of
the biggest frauds of the decade. He pleaded guilty and was imprisoned in a
federal facility for many years.
He now has
been released.
Why is any of this relevant on a romance blog? When I heard this man being interviewed on the
talk show, unrepentant of his admitted crimes and discussing life after prison,
he mentioned his wife. He was lucky, he
said, because his wife had stood by him the entire time. While all of his partners who had been
convicted with him were divorced by the time they left prison, his wife was his
biggest supporter.
It made me wonder, how far does love go, when the person we
love lets us down?
It's one thing if your spouse forgets to pick up the dry
cleaning, chronically doesn't pay bills on time or is always late to pick you
up.
What if you found out he had been scamming people out of
their life's savings for decades?
That the Louis Vuitton bag he'd bought you for your birthday
was paid with money stolen from a friend who'd scraped together what he had for
his kid's college education and entrusted him with to invest it on his behalf?
My first judgmental thought was to wonder if this man's wife
is as equally lacking in morals a he is.
Perhaps she really doesn't care or think he did anything wrong. In that
sense, he might have never let her down.
Then I thought she must have done it for the money and her kids.
Still pretty judgmental of me.
Then I wondered if perhaps she stood by him because, in a
world where no one could be trusted - not even her own husband - she wanted to
show that she, at least, would live up to her promise.
For better or worse. There
are lots of "worse" scenarios a bride might have in mind as she
utters those words. For most brides, though,
her husband going jail is probably not one of them. I'm going to guess it's probably lower on the
list of worries than some other common failings.
I felt better, then, finding a noble reason for what seems
to me to be an incomprehensible choice. But I don't know why this woman stuck by her husband, or even if
she still will now that he's out of jail.
It isn't really any of my business.
What's pretty clear is that I didn't succeed at not being
judgmental about this. Instead, I'm glad to know that there are some things I
really wouldn't stand in my partner, much as I adore him. And I'm pretty sure that
he wouldn't stick with me if I was secretly bribing politicians or stealing
from his friends!
Maybe that means we do
not unconditionally love each other, but that's part of the reason we do love
each other. The same things are
important to us.
Don't look for heroes who are criminals in my books. My heroines are idealists looking for real
heroes, not crooks.
Then again, they say one should never judge someone else
until they've been in their shoes. So who am I to say?
What are the limits and wisdom of unconditional love? I have no answers on this, just the thought that love and
its many permutations remain as mysterious and individual as human beings and snowflakes.
Milou
Koenings writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending
bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place.
Her novel, Reclaiming Home, A Green Pines Romance, is available at Amazon.
