When you stray, you pay

I had to write about Tiger Woods this week because his fall from grace has teaching points for all of us, regardless of who we are or our station in life.

Tiger owned the world due to his ability to play golf. Many people believe he's the greatest golfer that ever lived and was certain to eclipse all of the records held by Jack Nicklaus, the premier golfer of the world, until Tiger came along.

Tiger has always been a very private person, even naming his Yacht "Privacy" and now we know why. Tiger's the same fallible human being we all are with as many faults as strengths.

Everyone knows what celebrity means, not only now but for as long as we can remember. It means being treated like royalty, it means having most of the people in the world cow-tow to you and it means having your pick of the litter when it comes to people of the opposite sex.

Stories are now emerging suggesting that Tiger has always had an eye out for attractive members of the opposite sex. Many of his former playing partners have recently said that Tiger would always spot the attractive woman in his gallery and play up to her.

That's understandable when you're rich, famous, and single. The whole world is a stage and it's YOUR stage. This has happened before in politics, fashion, the movies, television, and sports of all kinds. It has to be the most amazing ego trip anyone could ever have and when they take advantage of it, no one should be surprised.

But Tiger isn't single. He's a married man with two small children and the last count I saw before writing this column was that 16 different women have come forward, saying they had affairs with Tiger after he was married. Some probably did but I also suspect that some didn't and they're just desperately trying to find their own place in the sun.

But the numbers don't matter. One was enough because when you pledge fidelity and loyalty to your spouse forever, it means forever. We talked about this in class the other day and I told my students that sometimes you just marry wrong and when you do, there's a chance you might fall in love with someone else and even though society frowns on that, it's at least understandable.

But with Tiger, this obviously wasn't a case of falling in love. It was a case of using his power, prestige, and reputation to sleep with anyone he wanted to and it seems he wasn't very selective. This is especially curious since he probably could have had lovers of a much higher quality if he had sought them out. Kind of like the difference between John Kennedy having an affair with Marilyn Monroe while Bill Clinton picked Monica Lewinsky.

Some people endure adultery because they have such low self-esteem that, regardless of what their spouses do, they're just glad that they still come home. I'm not sure how either spouse in this situation can have any respect for the other but that's not the case with Tiger and his wife, Elin.

Neither one of them suffer from low self-esteem. Elin is a world-class beauty. She could have had practically anyone she desired, just like Tiger. Now none of us know what their personal life was like and perhaps it wasn't to his liking. But if it wasn't, he should have made that clear to her then and if things didn't improve between them, he should have gotten a divorce before he started catting around. But like so many people, he wanted to have his cake and eat it too.

Most people get a divorce when they find out their spouse is messing around on them, regardless of the reason or the excuse, even when they still love them because trust has been violated and without trust, there's nothing to build a marriage on. But obviously that's not how some people play the game.

You're married until you're not married anymore and as long as you're married you have duties and obligations to fulfill that are contained in your marriage vows. When people try and play both ends against the middle, someone ends up getting burned and that's what happened with Tiger and his wife.

People will only do what they can get away with doing and Tiger got away with a lot for obviously a long time. But now the chickens have come home to roost and it appears that his marriage is over. And if it's not, people will find it difficult to have any respect for him OR his wife.

Screw me once, it's your fault. Screw me twice, it's mine.

It has always amazed me that people don't "find Jesus" until they got caught. Tiger knew what he was doing and he obviously did it often. He knew what would happen if it ever became public. He knew it would devastate his wife, destroy his marriage, ruin his family and tarnish his reputation but he did it anyway because the short-term pleasure he was experiencing was more important to him than anything else.

And now he has to pay.