I am a divorced man.
No, don't get the wrong idea, I am a very happily married man now. I am married to the greatest woman in the world, who I love to pieces.
My first marriage, which didn't last too long, wasn't a good one. The person I thought that I would live with for the rest of my life turned out not to be that person.
The only thing I have to show for it are a few battle scars, finances that are still creaky, and a beautiful daughter.
Nothing else.
But I kind of know what Newt Gingrich is going through as he tries to march toward the Presidency.
No, there were no infidelities involved in my first marriage, and my then wife and I weren't into having an open marriage like Gingrich is purported to have suggested to his then wife.
But I kind of knows how he feels anyway.
He has been married a few times, appears to have a good, solid marriage with his current spouse, yet all this nonsense continues to creep up about how his other marriages failed.
In 2012, we are still chastising people because they were part of a failed marriage.
On my end, my divorce impacted everything from my credit rating to my social relationships with others.
Thank God I met my current and future wife. She set me on the right course in so many ways. We'll be married 19 years this June and have a great son too. I love her dearly. She is the greatest thing to happen to me ever.
Anyway, when my first wife left me, I immediately contacted all my credit cards companies. Many of the cards we had were jointly held, so I wanted to protect myself from my soon to be ex-wife maxing them out.
Everything went pretty well. I managed to remove her name from just about every card, but the Discover card gave me a major headache.
Not only did they cancel my card immediately, they asked for immediate payment of my balance.
They were the only card to do so. I guess that was their policy back then, when they were run by Sears.
And I noticed that the "divorced man" label stuck to me like glue.
Every time I had to fill out an application for something, my marital status was questioned.
Is it anyone's business that I was divorced?
I guess certain entities thought it was, because of the money thing.
I paid child support, not anything directly for my ex-wife's upkeep (no alimony, using an antique term), so why should it have mattered to anyone?
But it did.
So, whatever I feel about Newt Gingrich, I get where he is coming from.
His past marriages really shouldn't have a bearing on whether he would be a good President.
Yes, I know that infidelity is not an attribute we want our Presidents to have, but heck, even JFK--whose inauguration anniversary is today, back in 1961--had his flings, as did Bill Clinton.
But they didn't get divorced.
Ronald Reagan was divorced, but somehow, it rarely came up when he was President.
And that was good, very good.
Sometimes, people just fade away from each other. There's no fooling around, just flailing around.
So why hold it against someone that they are divorced?
In 2012, where we look the other way for so many other "indiscretions," why is this even an issue?
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