Should Silda stay or should she go?

Should Silda Spitzer have come out to stand by her creepy husband Eliot as he confessed to hiring hookers? Should she give him the boot now? Several things:

1. I don't think we should judge her for standing by him the other day. We have no idea what happened just prior to that appearance. Dina McGreevey, ex-wife of the sleazoid ex-governor of New Jersey, said on ABC News last evening that her husband told her of his adultery, and his intention to go public with news of it and of his homosexuality, only one hour before the press conference. She said she was in a fog, and operating on autopilot. In today's Times, she says she did it for their children. I find both answers plausible.

2. As to beyond today, again, I find it hard to say, for the same reasons. Would she be justified in kicking him out? Absolutely. But doing so would break the family. Let me be clear: what Eliot Spitzer has done is to break the family, and if Silda sued for divorce, damage to the family would be on Eliot's head, not hers.

3. Yet legalism aside, the fact remains that there is a such thing as the Eliot Spitzer family. My changing thinking on this subject -- not long ago, I would have been with the "throw the bum out" crowd -- comes from raising three kids. To lose one parent in a divorce would be emotionally devastating to our kids. If I learned my wife had been unfaithful to me, no matter how hurt I was, I think I would go to extraordinary means to save the marriage for the sake of the children. At least I hope I would. It would be bad for the kids if one or both parents continued in an emotionally abusive marriage, of course, but if my wife were repentant, by all means I would work with her to repair and restore the marriage. I love her and these kids more than I love myself. At least I hope I do.

4. Of course that might not work, and the marriage might be "irretrievably broken," and its continuation might cause more damage to everyone, especially the kids, than its ending. I find it impossible for anyone standing completely outside a marriage to say when that point has arrived. Marriages and families, like people, are mysterious things. They aren't mere contracts; they are living organisms. They are difficult to understand completely from the inside, from a position of radical subjectivity, but they are even more difficult to understand from the outside.

5. Ever seen the film "The Secret Lives of Dentists"? Good movie. It's told from the point of view of a suburban dentist (Campbell Scott) who learns that his wife (Hope Davis) is having an affair. Throughout the film, as the care for their three young girls falls more on him as she's off trysting with her lover (she doesn't know that her husband knows what she's up to), he battles the temptation to kick her out. He would be perfectly justified in doing so. But there are those girls, who would suffer terribly if he did what he had every right to do. What about them? If he endures the humiliation of her infidelity for the sake of the kids, is he a sap -- or a kind of self-sacrificing hero? I won't tell you how the film ends, but the moral question the cuckolded protagonist wrestles with throughout the movie reveals that there are no simple answers to this question when it involves children, and a family. And therefore the rest of us should take care in passing judgment on the decisions made by wives (and husbands) who find themselves in the position of a Silda Spitzer. (Or, it must be said, a Hillary Clinton).

What says the room?