(Detroit) Lions, Tiger (Woods), and (Chicago) Bears…Oh My

I was hes­i­tant about blog­ging about this whole Tiger Woods story because I really wished for his wife’s sake that it would go away. But, since it is around to stay I guess it’s time for me to say my piece. Am I going to say Tiger is a ter­ri­ble per­son? No. I don’t know him as a per­son. Am I going to say he is a ter­ri­ble hus­band? Absolutely. I can’t help but to think about what this has done to his poor wife Elin. Could you imag­ine hav­ing to face this shame in front of the whole world. Here she is a beau­ti­ful and sup­port­ive woman in her own right who was played. And played. And played. And played. Could you imag­ine what this must be doing to her self-​esteem?

For most peo­ple male and female the giv­ing of our­selves phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally to one per­son along with vows of love fidelity before God, fam­ily and in her case the media is the most inti­mate and vul­ner­a­ble com­mit­ment one can make. It takes implicit trust, prenup or not to tell the world in essence that I believe in this man/​woman so much that I am will­ing to join my life to theirs. Then the joy that is expe­ri­enced by all those who cel­e­brate this love with you. When it works out well there could be no greater plea­sure in life. But, when it fails like it has in Tiger Woods’ case there could be no greater shame or agony.

While appar­ently in the sports world it is a given that your hus­band will have affairs with female “fans” and asso­ciates all over the world, this trend has def­i­nitely affected all fam­i­lies. Even those whose husband/​wife is of lit­tle mate­r­ial means, but even­tu­ally is enticed away from their fam­ily while sell­ing a Big Gulp to a female cus­tomer at the ⁷⁄₁₁ that they work at or through roman­tic trysts via the Internets.

Marriage in the mind of many is no longer sacred. It has become only a doc­u­mented agree­ment between two peo­ple that each other is sort of a home base (you catch the sports ref­er­ence?). That while they go out and have pseudo rela­tion­ships with sev­eral peo­ple you are the one that they come home to. That when there is money to be made, chil­dren to be raised or houses to be dec­o­rated you are the one who gets the pro­ceeds and the respon­si­bil­ity. Hence, the atti­tude that regard­less of what the spouse does you are their “Number 1″. This is espe­cially true when it comes to sports fig­ures.

While I could drone into a long list of every pro­fes­sional sportsman/​woman who has ever cheated on their spouses there just isn’t enough blogs or blog posts in the world to cover them all. For years there has been the many sto­ries about foot­ball, base­ball and bas­ket­ball super­stars who had a dif­fer­ent woman every night (see Wilt Chamberlain and his 10,000 women), I think the shock with Tiger Wood’s is that he may be the first golfer to be the most pro­lific in this depart­ment.

With all the sto­ries of Tiger’s many women I see a lot of peo­ple talk­ing about him and rightly so he should have lived up to the vows that he made to his wife, but what about the women who knew he had a wife and fam­ily? They are now painted as mar­tyrs who were some­how duped into this adul­ter­ous rela­tion­ship. There are mil­lions of women (sorry ladies it had to be said) that just live to have affairs with these men. They don’t care if their mar­ried and have forty chil­dren at home. They have a self­ish desire that they go out of their way to meet. They wait inside locker rooms, team buses, hotel rooms, they call, pester, bad­ger, coerce and even scheme their way into these people’s lives just to expe­ri­ence a piece of their life. While at the same time some of these men go out of their way to pur­sue the women.

Believe me, I am in no way sid­ing here. I share the Bible’s opin­ion that mar­riage is a union between a man and a woman that results in them becom­ing “one flesh”. I cer­tainly believe also that it is meant to last a life­time and not to be prenuped in prepa­ra­tion of its inevitable and even­tual fail­ure. We (the gen­eral pub­lic) have got­ten used to hear­ing these sto­ries of betrayal-​Tiger Woods’ being the lat­est crop-​we still know it isn’t lim­ited to celebri­ties. If you have ever had a close friend, fam­ily mem­ber or even just a co-​worker or neigh­bor who has been through this, you know first hand the pain it causes. If you your­self are mar­ried and have been the cheater or the cheatee then, you real­ize the real­ity of this is even greater.

My words to any­one, whether you are a pro­fes­sional sports player or you just play ball with your boys on the week­end, when tempted: Remember your vows and the expec­ta­tions that go along with them. That goes for the women as well, if you have your eyes set on a mar­ried ath­lete, or if you are just a woman who enjoys the com­pany of a mar­ried male coworker (which is the first step) put your­self in the shoes of their wife. How would you feel? If every­one did share God’s view of mar­riage then there would never be a need to be scared of Lions, Tigers, or Bears.

Thanks for read­ing,