Remorse? Or Regret for Getting Caught? Either Way, It's Also an AFOG

"The remorse I feel will always be with me." When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer delivered that line in his resignation announcement today, my eyes rolled.

Remorse? I don't know how much remorse you can have for something you've been doing for a decade if the only reason you stopped was that you got caught.

One thing is for sure: The Spitzer family has been thrust into a transition from one family dynamic to another. What that ends up being is up to them. In one well-known 12-step program, I've heard it called an AFOG -- another fucking opportunity to grow.

Silda Spitzer was inches away from her husband during both his Monday press conference and his resignation announcement today. She had her neutral to grim mask in place -- who wouldn't? People criticize wives for "standing by their men" in public when those men are labeled by many as cads, cheaters and liars (those all usually go together). No one knows why those women do that. They are probably in shock at that time and don't know why they do it either, other than that's what their man wants and everyone wants to look as "less bad" as possible.

I think it's nobody's business whether the woman sticks with her husband after this kind of thing or not. We all spend so much of our lives striving to "be right" and "look good," and there's more than that at stake. Hillary Clinton made her choice and stuck with Bill. People say that's because of her political ambitions and make jokes about her freezing him out from that moment forward. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. Relationships are complicated living things, and how they are depends entirely on the people involved, not on convention, mores, laws or other people's expectations, though we often succumb to those things in the process.

Forgiveness is powerful. So is communication. Love is most powerful of all. I believe those three things can conquer anything. Not necessarily "will" but "can."

I know of a couple -- he cheated on his wife with multiple partners and one of them ratted him out to his wife. They were set to split, but she ended up asking him to go with her to a couples retreat as a last-ditch effort. He went just to humor her and to be able to lie to himself that he'd done everything he could. He had no intention of fully participating in it. Well, surprise! He cried for 3 days and they communicated on a real level for the first time in a long time. He ended up recommitting to his marriage and they are still together. Part of that involved coming clean to her about everything, not easy for him to reveal or her to hear, and then they could, with counseling, deal with everything. They became truly close as a result and their marriage was transformed. I know of another couple in a similar situation where the wife was the one who strayed -- with more than a dozen partners, in fact -- and it had a similar outcome. Rare, but possible.

Right now all of the Spitzers are devastated. They'll find out who their real friends are, that's for sure. I guarantee they'll be shocked both at who turns their backs on them and who supports them. Each member of the family probably feels as though they won't live through this. But they will. They don't have to fall apart and get caught up in the rightness, wrongness and how it all appears. With time and a lot of help both from friends and professionals, they can forge a completely new family dynamic that's real and strong and completely transformed from the one they've had. I wish them the best!

Sex Nails Another Politician

I just happened to be in Manhattan yesterday when the story broke that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the Mr. Clean of New York politics, was linked to a prostitution ring. It takes a lot to shock New Yorkers, but this definitely did the trick (pun intended). Now a lot of people are calling for his resignation. We'll see what happens.

Should he resign? As a former attorney general who went after all kinds of illegal behavior, including prostitution, a lot of people say yes. I say he falls into the same category as Richard Nixon with Watergate and President Clinton with Monica Lewinsky. Some of their predecessors did the same thing -- they were just the first ones to get caught and punished for it. I mean, c'mon, could he possibly be the first big-city-governor-who-used-to-be-an-AG to enjoy the services of a hooker?

I wonder which is perceived to be worse in the eyes of the public: Spitzer visiting hookers or Clinton getting a blow job in the White House. Both show poor judgement, given their political position. But both are just sex, and why should sex between two consenting adults, whether for pay or not, be illegal? I don't think it should be.

In this case, obviously Spitzer showed poor judgement. When men think with their little head vs. their big head, that happens. And that happens all the time.

As a journalist, over the years I've gotten to know well a lot of powerful men. They have several things in common: They live outside the lines. They get special treatment wherever they go. They get sheltered from bad news, especially about themselves. They are high energy people, which often includes a high libido. Many of them have dutiful wives who make great lieutenants but lousy lovers, or at least that's what they'd have you believe. Their power and/or money attract a lot of seductive women. And a lot of their business happens behind closed doors -- in the form of all variety of meetings -- and they're used to their confidentiality being protected.

So, of course Spitzer thought he was playing in the same arena as he has been for years, and he no doubt thought he would be protected by the people who've always protected him. But sex is a great divider. People who will put up with other shenanigans and even participate as buddies in illegal ventures can take a very different view of sexual behavior that's outside the socially acceptable norm, which usually equates to illegal. Their self-righteous little angry devil on their shoulder stabs them and they're liable to do something out of character, like rat on the guy. Who knows what happened in this case. But no secret is truly safe, especially when it involves something as juicy as a sex scandal.

It is beyond me why so much about sex is illegal. In some states, oral sex or anal sex is illegal, even between married people behind their own closed doors. Prostitution is illegal in many places but not illegal in others, especially outside the U.S. (Too bad Spitzer didn't just go to the Chicken Ranch or its equivalent in Las Vegas. Then it would have been poor judgement, but not illegal.) In my opinion, sex of any kind between two consenting adults in the privacy of their own home or a hotel room is none of the government's business. The key words are "consenting adults."

Why are some of our laws regarding sex so arcane? Well, what legislator wants his or her name on a bill that legalizes anal sex? So in many areas, they just don't enforce those statutes.

Tonight Eliot Spitzer is in serious, deep pain, and he knows that pain will not go away for a loooooong, long time. The searing, numbing pain that Silda Spitzer is no doubt going through is made worse by the fact that it was probably a complete surprise until a few days ago. Her dream world -- past, present and future -- is shattered. Plus, all of this is public. My heart goes out to her.

Tonight a lot of married men who have gone to a hooker or who are having sexual relations outside of their marriage are probably not going to sleep as well as they did last week, between the guilt and the fear and the gratitude that it's not them -- this time.

Living as My Higher Self

Living as Ego is tough. Ego expects me to be successful in corporate America as I was for most of my adult life. Ego wants me to be everything in my bio that I send to groups before I am the featured speaker, but not anything that I fear they will find out about me that could wipe out my "p.r. persona" -- stuff like that I sometimes don't get dressed until noon, and I sometimes eat a pint of ice cream within an hour's time, and I sometimes actually watch daytime TV now that I don't have to go to an office every day (though I haven't sunk to "Maury," "Jerry Springer" or "General Hospital"...so far). Ego cares about what people think of me and will go to great lengths to not let me look bad. Ego keeps telling me how I'm failing, that I'm bad, that things are going downhill, that I've not done my life right and it "shoulds" on me relentlessly. It also has gallows humor and ends up laughing at me and cracks me up. Thank God for comic relief.

I've long wrestled with my ego. My ego wants to prevail over my higher self. My higher self whispers and gently floats in the air. My ego is large and heavy and has more arms and tentacles than an octopus. My ego in the form of my relentless, chattering, whining, battering, screaming, judgemental mind often seems to envelop me and render me unable to move. My ego wants me to think my way into and out of things. My ego barrages me with critical, negative, scary, exhausting thoughts, interspersed with less frequent gifts of gratitude, delight, peace and love. At night I go to sleep with the TV playing softly because my mind starts in on me with all of its wranglings, so the TV helps to lull it into behaving itself so I can sleep. I know I'm not the Lone Ranger because friends -- positive, successful friends -- describe similar scenarios.

Oprah is leading online "classes" discussing Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth. I didn't watch Monday night's first Web class live and didn't intend to watch it at all. But yesterday I got curious. Tolle also wrote The Power of Now, which is heavy reading but awesome. So I watched it on Oprah.com. (You can also download it and watch it on a video iPod.)

The discussion was inspiring. What I loved most was Tolle's reminder that we are not our thoughts or our minds. We are separate from them. We are miraculous spirits no matter what we think or even do. No matter how far down we sink, that spirit, that goodness is still there and available to us in an instant. My arm immediately stopped thumping on me.

So I ordered the book. I may even watch the first class again, especially since my arm started beating on me again within hours of my good thoughts. Maybe minutes. Retraining our minds is about as easy as running a marathon with a broken ankle.

My higher self really would love to triumph over my ego. Tolle says that it starts with allowing ourselves to bathe in silence. Often. I am allergic to silence. I have the TV or radio on in the background while I work or do chores or read or do nearly anything. But yesterday while driving, I turned the radio off and stayed off my cell phone. Driving was an entirely different experience. I was aware of new details, sensations and sounds and was surrounded by a spirit I was unfamiliar with. My own? I even slept with the TV off last night too. This could be the beginning of a whole new relationship with my higher self.... Oops, my ego heard that and is already mounting an argument. Stay tuned.

Charles and Camilla: One of History's Great Love Stories

Many years ago, a miniseries ran on TV dramatizing the relationship between Britain's King Edward VIII and married American socialite Wallis Simpson. Edward abdicated his throne in late 1936 to marry her -- she had divorced her second husband (who supposedly also had been married when she met him) -- and after they wed, they were known as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The miniseries, of course, made it sound like the love story of the century. The truth may be a little less romantic. Who knows?

Even if theirs was a fairy tale of sorts, I think the romance of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles trumps it. She isn't the most popular partner of a British Royal, to say the least, but I think history eventually will recognize it as one of history's great love stories.

I mean, c'mon! The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall (their official titles), well, theirs is an unreal story, highly unlikely to be believed if you were writing a script for such a tale. Would anyone believe that a prince, steeped in tradition and heavy with certain expectations that go along with his position, would marry a stunningly beautiful, sweet, besotted young woman while he was still in love with an older, much more plain former girlfriend whom the Royal Family disapproved of as a marriage partner many years before? They loved each other for over three decades before they could finally overcome scorn from a royal family, rejection from the public and taunting from the media to really, officially, legally be together as the couple they always wanted to be. It really is an amazing scenario.

Jay Leno and other comedians regularly make jokes about Camilla, referring to her rather square, rather long face as horsey. Many comedians over the years have similarly made fun of Charles' big ears. Personally, I think Charles is getting better looking as he gets older. And I think Camilla's looks would be just fine if it weren't for the comparison to Diana.

We only know their public sides, other than the famous overheard phone conversation years ago when Charles supposedly told Camilla he wished he were her tampon. How many commoners abroad, here and worldwide have, with love and lust, said something in a similar vein to their lovers? Fortunately for the rest of us, only our intended recipient hears our most intimate conversations, not the whole world. So these people, these royals, these very public figures are human too. And they did what countless couples have done when their parents didn't approve of their union: they eventually found a way to be together anyway. Good for them!