We all have been fascinated by high-profile sex scandals that somehow infiltrate the media daily. I’m not sure whether we like to see the high and mighty come tumbling from their pedestals or the fact that we like to see that they are just like us, human. Humans are fallible creatures. We all sin. We all forgive (hopefully). And we all need to get over it and move on.

Those of us on the receiving end of the sin or the infidelity cope in various ways. I’ve lately been fascinated with how the women of their cheating politician spouses have been coping. Take Elizabeth Edwards, for example. In her book “Resilience,” she seemed to have penned a memoir that doubled as a lesson of forgiveness, a lesson to make a marriage work after a betrayal. She was the quintessential “stand by your man” woman. That didn’t last very long. Try as she could to deny the fact that her husband not only had an ugly, painful affair with Rielle Hunter, she could not deny his own admission of paternity to Rielle’s child. She could no longer deny that fact to herself and to the world. That cross was too much to bear even for the martyr wife.  She could no longer stand by John Edwards and has separated from him.

Juxtapose this model of the doting and forgiving wife until pushed to the brink with Jenny Sanford—the scorned wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford who is spreading her own story of resilience on the media circuit (and getting a divorce). Hers is a different story: one of personal healing through exposing the truth of her pain,  peppered with bitterness. But, is her method of healing really a balm for her pain or is it little else than retaliation and revenge?

The book is full of odd tidbits that seem to serve little purpose other than making Sanford look like a fool. For example, Jenny writes that Mark put a tombstone on his dog’s grave but his own father’s grave doesn’t have one.  The big kicker though and perhaps something that demonstrates more about Jenny than it does Mark is that Mark refused to pledge a vow of fidelity at their wedding. Jenny agreed to this. She coughed it up to being “refreshing” and “honest.”

When Jenny found out about the “other woman,” Mark cried like a little baby. He cried not because he was caught red-handed or because he was guilty of being an adulterer. He cried because he wanted to see his mistress. Jenny writes that Mark begged her for permission to see the woman.

As we all know, Mark disappeared for a while to be with his lady love. Whether she gave him the “permission” for this remains unclear. In the meantime though, it’s clear that Jenny was plotting her revenge and escape.

What does Jenny Sanford gain from publishing this book full of excrutiating, damaging and embarrassing details other than: 1) getting revenge; 2) making money; and possibly attaining some personal healing from getting #1 and #2? Why not just pour your heart out to your therapist instead of airing your dirty laundry to the whole world?