So who knows if this is true or not, but the most interesting thing about this article, which details the claim that Cain had a 13-year affair, is this third-to-last paragraph:
He refused to go into any detail about Ms. White, and also told Mr. Blitzer that he had already informed his wife, whose response was, “Here we go again.”
Pro tip: If your husband is accused of inappropriate sexual behavior so many times that your reaction to him potentially having an affair is “here we go again,” it is maybe time to reconsider that relationship.
Perhaps Mr. and Mrs. Cain have an arrangement where Mr. Cain is allowed to have a decade-long affair and everyone’s cool with it. I really doubt it, because most of the time the wives in these scenarios are totally blindsided and publicly humiliated, but sometimes people have arrangements and that’s fine. And most of the time, I fall into the camp of “people’s personal lives are personal, and romantic and sex lives are particularly complex and tough to judge from the outside.” There are a few exceptions, though, when we’re talking about people running for or holding political office (or other positions of power). One exception is “demonstrates total lack of judgment” (see, e.g., sending cock-shots via Twitter from your Congressional office). Another is “astounding hypocrisy about policing peoples’ sex lives” (see, e.g., being an anti-gay anti-abortion “family values” conservative who sexually harasses women and has a 13-year-long affair). Another is “bad judgment + astounding hypocrisy” (see, e.g., running for president when you have a history of sexual harassment and a long-term affair in your closet). So this alleged affair seems like pretty fair game for media coverage. But if I were that dude’s wife? I would be out the damn door.