Jenny Sanford takes the stage

By Lyn Riddle  

FEBRUARY 5, 2010 10:08 a.m. (0)

Long before her husband took an Argentine mistress, Jenny Sanford worried about the health of her marriage due to what she calls Gov. Mark Sanford’s self absorption and disconnection from reality.

And, she believes, much of it was due to his life as a politician.

Her 212-page memoir of her life with the South Carolina governor, “Staying True,” went on sale this morning.

Sanford describes the first years of her marriage as blissful, living first in New York City, where she was in mergers and acquisitions with Lazard Freres and Co., and then in downtown Charleston, where she stayed home to care for their growing family.

There were blips, to be sure, as when her husband refused to attend her beloved grandfather’s funeral, the birthdays forgotten so many times she had to ask his scheduler to remind him and the diamond necklace he bought and then returned because it was too expensive.

One year he drew a picture of half a bicycle and gave it to her on her birthday (in September) and then for Christmas gave her the other half. The real thing was a $25 used bike. Purple.

She wrote that life began to sour after her husband was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and he spent weekdays in Washington and weekends largely campaigning in the district that stretches the length of the South Carolina coast.

She was raising the family as a single mother while he was paying attention to the business of government. It caused a steady erosion of their relationship that culminated in a walk on the beach.

“I was growing more vulnerable, and he was forming a hardened shell,” she wrote.

They felt they didn’t understand each other, and she questioned then whether he loved her. But in the end, they decided divorce wasn’t an option.

Nevertheless, she wondered whether his conservative principles had caused him to lose sight of his personal values.

Another pivotal moment came when he rented their Sullivan’s Island beach house to Citadel cadets, two days before she was to fly to Seattle for her brother’s wedding. He was flying directly from Washington. She had to move their three boys to a hotel, then fly alone with the children across the country.

“I was fuming,” she wrote.

A friend he enlisted to talk to her told her to let go of the anger and to not withhold sex as punishment. He said he would work on her husband’s “Congressional Disconnect.” She did as he said and soon became pregnant for the fourth time.

Sanford says once her husband was elected governor their life became more normal. He was home for dinner, spent time with the boys, took charge of their spiritual life and wrote a Sanford Family Constitution.

She describes wheelbarrow races with the boys in the marble hallway of the governor’s mansion and one son stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes.

“I fell in love with him again,” she wrote.

But the coming crisis, she says, was compounded by his 50^th birthday. He had always feared aging and being a public figure distorted how he viewed himself.

Then came the January day when she was looking for something in his desk and found the correspondence with his Argentine lover in a folder marked B.

“I was short of breath. I began to shake. Stunned, I didn’t know what to do next.”

She and her husband talked when he got home from a hunting trip. He promised to end the affair. She describes his trip to New York to call it off, accompanied by a trusted friend, and wonders why she agreed to it.
Nevertheless, the governor continued to ask his wife to see the woman, and to ask her advice as if she were a friend, not his wife of 20 years. He didn’t see how much that hurt her, she said.

The Sanfords decided to not see each other for 30 days and he was not to see his mistress. He left their beach house, went back to Columbia and made plans to go to Argentina.

The unraveling was complete.

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