So they think they have some kind of magic
The other day Bjarte recommended Willful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan. The library found it quickly so I’m reading it. There’s a bit on page 28 in a chapter on willful blindness in love:
“Success confers its own blindness,” says Brown. “Successful people believe they can get away with it. I talked once to a group of men who’d all become millionaires before the age of forty and who’d had affairs. They don’t even see the danger! It isn’t a love of risk. They think the wives will never know, so where’s the harm? Everything else in their lives has worked out, so they think they have some kind of magic, that their success has meant that they can have everything they want and they’re invulnerable. And they were completely blind to the harm that they had done.”
It sounded kind of familiar.
Oooh, I had forgotten about that one! Of course the quote would be an even closer fit if it were about sexual assault rather than extramarital affairs, but the part about thinking (all too correctly as it turns out) he’ll get away with anything is spot on. Besides, there’s no way in hell that you know who has ever been faithful to anyone.
We don’t know from this quote just what kind of ‘affairs’ they were having. ‘Favors’ coerced from subordinates on the job? Or transactions with greedy climbers? Anita Hill, or Marla Maples.