I guess it’s not all that surprising that I wouldn’t be a big fan of Tiger Woods.  After all, I am not a golfer and am intolerant of cheating husbands.  I am a woman who grew up with two serially unfaithful parents –initially to each other  - and but then later with just about every other poor soul that they became intimately involved.  I sensed and saw first hand the pain that infidelity inflicted – and the havoc that it continues to inflict on my parents and those around them.  It’s not something that I would wish on anyone.  Which is why from a early age I made a pact with myself that I would not get involved with married men or ever cheat on my partner if I ever settled down.  I promised myself that I would work hard to make good choices, pick someone who shared my values and had the maturity to live up to matrimonial promises.  And I did good on my promise.  The guy I picked is faithful to the core.  And we have been married 10 years.

Nonetheless, because of my background the whole Elin/Tiger Woods drama has struck a cord for me.  When this story first broke back in November of last year, I often found myself wondering what Elin Woods was going through  and how she was experiencing it all - discovering that her husband and father of her children had carried on multiple affairs with women throughout the course of their marriage.   It made me think about what my mother went through – learning about all the extramarital affairs my father had and how painful that would be for anyone.  In my mother’s case, like Elin, she was young (in her twenties) and quite naive.  She dealt with countless humiliations and betrayals, including a parade of my father’s mistresses (many of whom she knew), elaborate lies and a child born out of wedlock.  One of my earliest childhood memories was walking in on my mother in the bathroom as she sobbed by the sink while my father stayed out all night.  It was the first time I ever saw her cry. 

I can’t fully fathom the pain my mother experienced throughout her marriage to my father and the irreparable damage that their sad dynamic had on her psychological well-being.   I know that she has never fully recovered from it – repeating similar patterns (with various incarnations) throughout her life with other married people.  Which is why I can’t really blame Elin Woods, if in fact she did take a golf club to Tiger Woods’ face on Thanksgiving eve.    Even though I don’t  condone domestic violence, I can understand the dark place that those feelings may have come from.  I also know that Tiger Wood’s behavior from start to finish  disgusts me and is completely reprehensible.  And that when I learned that he was finally stepping forth to “apologize” for his transgressions this week, I wished him nothing but ill will.  

After three months of silence and the ongoing reports of dozens of mistresses, lurid text messages and then sex rehab, I, like many, had written him off as a sleazy, sociopathic meglomaniac.  Whatever he was going to say wasn’t going to change that opinion for me and I held firm in my belief that Elin should leave him.  She should end that sham of a marriage and in the process make it as unpleasant for him financially as her expensive lawyers could creatively manage.   He deserved nothing less, in my mind, – and probably a lot more.   And yet, even though I had closed myself off to any other perspective of the golfing legend, I still watched the “Tiger Woods” press conference - all 13 agonizing minutes of it.  It surprised me – both in what it taught me about the man and my own beliefs.

Tiger Woods did what I assumed he would do: He apologized.  He admitted that he had been unfaithful, that he had had affairs and that he cheated.  He acknowledged that he was wrong and had hurt his family.  He called his behavior a “disappointment” and he acknowledged that he had let people down. Nothing about what he said was particularly revelatory or earth shattering.  There were no bombshells and certainly no new confessions.  Still, he was brutally to the point and it felt sincere to the core.  The pain and anguish he has experienced the past three months were written all over his face.  The eyes of this once invincible sports superstar showed deep suffering.  It was clear that this champion’s world had all but collapsed and that he was in completely unchartered territory – having to acknowledge to the world the magnitude of his mistakes and the harm that he caused.  And he took full ownership of it – all of it.  Unflinchingly and with an honesty and directness that one doesn’t often see. 

And as I watched him speak, I saw that what he did took guts – a lot of guts to stand there.  And I, a close-minded married woman who believes fiercely in monogomy, couldn’t help but admire him for that.  And feel some compassion.  I realized for the first time that Tiger Woods had done something today that (albeit belatedly) neither my mother nor my father have ever managed to do.  He apologized from the bottom of his heart and take ownership of his mistakes.  Many times.   By doing that, I could sede that he had taken the first heroic step towards living a more authentic life – either with or without his wife.  

As I watched his stomach-churning admissions of infidelity and betrayal, I reflected that neither of my parents ever said sorry to anyone for their behavior nor made any effort to live a less emotionally reckless life.  To this day, the “love of my mother’s  life” (according to my mother) remains a man that she has had an extra-marital affair with for almost a decade.  A man who she cannot see out in public, whom she cannot talk openly about and who still goes home to his wife and children (although she insists that they have “an understanding.”)  My father, in his 80s, having successfully destroyed 5 marriages with much younger women, is still unabashedly proud of his years of promiscuity and extra-marital affairs.  He continues to see it as a game of sorts – something to brag and boast about.  Neither of these my parents engaged in any introspection nor seized the opportunity that Tiger Woods has seized to transform themselves and mature.  They could have done that – easily and with far less humiliation.  But they chose not to.  Instead, they remain stuck – in a series of childish games – willfully ignorant of the damage they inflict and continue to inflict in the emotional lives of the wives, husbands, children and friends that are unknown but within arms reach.   They simply didn’t care enough or have enough insight to reign in those selfish impulses and think about the world outside of them.  

As Tiger Woods says himself, he still has a long way to go.  But he has taken that first step to becoming a more realized adult man.  That said, I won’t let Woods off the hook for his epic marital failures.  He screwed up big time and by all accounts was an “A” class jerk.  Still, I  admire any person who can stand up before the world and admit his mistakes.  He is a flawed person – like so many of us are – but at least he is one that is trying to grow and mature.   I’ll grant him that – and  sincerely hope his wife and children will too at some point.