Can a guy cheat on his wife and be involved in Internet porn and still be a good father? This question is being debated not only in the divorce trial between Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook but in kitchens and cafes and around water coolers across the country.
  
Some of my guy friends have argued that they know plenty of men who are great fathers but have cheated on their wives. And a few have also said that they have watched porn – though not $3,000-worth a month – as though the amount dissolves any sleaziness.

And do you know what I say to them? “How do you define a great father? Sure, a guy can be loving, generous, play baseball or Barbie doll games with their kids and even dote on them and do homework. But they are also the moral template of their children's behavior. If a kid sees that a parent can betray the family, what makes you think that deep down the child will not have trust issues with either men or relationships?”
    
This usually shuts them up.

Children of divorce are forced early on to compartmentalize their emotions. To manage the trauma of divorce, especially when it was a result of an affair, they have to attach themselves to what they like about the parent and accept that there will be qualities they do not. It is a painful juggling act.
 
Although Christie Brinkley is fighting for full custody of Sailor, the 10-year-old daughter she had with Peter Cook, and Jack Paris, her 13-year-old son whom Cook adopted, it is highly unlikely that Cook will not have some access to his children.
 
Many women I have counseled as a stepfamily coach have questioned how their kids could want to see their father after he caused the family so much agony. “Shouldn't he be punished?” they cry. “He shouldn't be allowed to be with our children.”

It really isn't a surprise that architect Peter Cook was seen having a manicure this week. His claws were being sharpened for his divorce trial with model Christie Brinkley. Mr. Cook, who was the architect of his marriage's demise by having an affair with an 18 year old, apparently didn't fully realize how much he would lose, especially custody rights, as a result of his wandering weenie. Life with Brinkley included beautiful children, beautiful homes, a glamorous social life, boats, first-class plane rides and the access his wife's success provided.

And then poof, it was all gone when she threw him out. And naturally, he missed it.

Having been married three times before marrying Peter Cook, Christie Brinkley obviously insisted on a pre-nup. Like many well-heeled people, she thought her lawyers had written a solid agreement.

She married a Frenchman in the 70s and divorced him in 1981. With musician Billy Joel, the divorce was dissolved amicably and both maintained their own incomes and self-respect. Then came developer Rick Taubman, whom she reportedly paid $1 million for freedom and sole custody of their son, Jack Paris, now 13. Having been financially burned by her relationship with Taubman, Brinkley understandably was insistent that the pre-nup with Cook would be ironclad.

“Unfortunately the word ironclad is a bit of a myth,” says divorce lawyer Clifford M. Solomon, partner of Solomon Tanenbaum in Westchester. “Anyone can challenge a pre-nup. And it has worked in some cases. Someone will challenge that the person didn't reveal income or assets in the pre-nup and then the agreement is revisited to their advantage.”

God, how I hate being the single mom on Friday nights. Stuck home with sleeping kids while all the free world plays. I can't leave even for five-minutes to get ice cream from the quickie mart.

Even if I could, 14-hours into being mommy, after making three meals and washing three sets of dishes, after all day wiping butts, and a night of reading stories, my get up and go is gone.

This afternoon my friend Sequoia called. She's spent hours in the back yard watching her Blondie-girl splash around the kiddie pool. It's all you can do in this Portland heat wave.

We have the kind of hot that feels like being stoned. Too hot to think. Too hot to move. Too hot to breath. Way too hot to single parent alone. So you find water and wait it out. If you're solo, you try to find another mother to help get you through.

Sequoia is married, but hour for hour she single-parents more than I do. She does it all week. I'm on 24 hours for half the week, but the other half, I am free, free, free. And for tonight, I’m free.

It's close to dinner time, Sequoia’s husband's out of town, Blondie-girl goes to bed around eight, and then its empty hours ahead. There’s that hollow belly feeling that settles in around sunset.

Roxie and Lila are at the beach with their Gammy and PopPop, so I tell Sequoia, "Yeah, hell yeah, I'll come drink red with you."

Heat blows though my open car windows and Mt. Hood glows pink in the rearview mirror. This is the kind of summer day it was two years ago when I first knew.

Calf-deep in the wading pool at some sun-baked park, Lila in a swimming diaper at my feet and Roxie on the merry-go-round. One eye on each of my babies, and right there I realized the truth of how staying in that marriage would bring more pain than parenting alone.

When Sequoia opens the door her fingers are bare, wedding rings off. I wonder what she's been weighing today.

How does an unmarried woman turn into a housewife? It’s quite simple: She invades another person’s family. Okay, so it wasn’t an invasion. It was more like squatting.

Let me explain. After graduation, if not for the kindness of a friend, I would be homeless. With no job and no real savings, I moved in with my friend Jessica and her 15-year-old son.

Shortly thereafter, my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and tons of nervous and unchanneled energy more or less turned me into June Cleaver on crack. Now I cook, I clean, I look for jobs until I can’t stand it anymore, and then I go back to cleaning – the cycle goes on and on.

It’s just like being married: my friend goes to work (school, in this case), the kid goes to school, I do the domestic thing, they come home, we eat, catch up on each other’s days, and at night. The only difference ... and maybe it’s not even that different ... is that we don’t have sex.

The thing that strikes me as odd is how much of a departure my new life is from life as I came to know it for the last five years, and how quickly I made the shift. I guess this is how those that survive do – by adapting as quickly as possible.

This recession is seriously cramping my style, while simultaneously delivering a crippling blow to my self-esteem.

But at least the house is clean.

The date went well. Very well, in fact. He seems to be a nice, honest, sincere, smart, and fun guy. Note that I said, "seems to be," because up until now, I wasn't really sure that such an animal existed. I guess I'm still not too sure.

I will say that if I had met him before the “Levi Fiasco” I would have jumped right into this. I would have gone along with the giddy feeling. I would be gushing to all of my friends.

After Levi, I am much more guarded. Now, I can't really feel around all of the walls that I've put up. It's going to be hard, I think, to trust someone again.

I remember falling in love with Levi, and how much fun it was. How euphoric it all felt. How ready I was for it.

I think about it now, I talk to my friends about it now, and I know I'm not ready to do that again. What is "falling in love," anyway? I guess it’s the "falling" part that scares me. Generally speaking, falls are not good. Generally speaking, one hurts oneself in a fall. I know that I couldn't once again deal with the devastation that comes when you lose someone you love. As a result, I worry that I'll never feel the absolute euphoria of giddy, happy, love again.

So for now, I'm just going to take it easy: remain cautious but also try (and try, and try) to relax and enjoy myself. I'll let you know how it goes.

It's 2 am. He's still not home. Why am I still here? Why am I still so pissed? Why am I even contemplating leaving one more message on his turned-off cell phone? So that I can record my fury, my angst, onto that little microchip in cell phone cyberspace for posterity? Lord knows he'll never listen to it. He'll hit '7' to erase it the second he hears, “OK, now, where are...”

Twelve years of marriage and it's come to this. He's not home because he'd rather be somewhere else. With someone else. He denies it but my 'wife radar' is in good working order. I'm sick of picturing who she might be. That's not even the point anymore. It's ABW: Anyone But the Wife. If I tell my girlfriends, they'll all just tell me to leave him, to throw him out. My therapist will again urge couples counseling. Tried that at Year Eight. Lasted the requisite six sessions, with promises to “renew," “refresh,” “re-purpose.” You know the drill.

Make more traditions. Make more efforts. Make more love. Thanks, Ladies Home Journal. Thanks Kathie Lee and Dr. Ruth and Shania Twain. I see it's worked out so well for you.

I could just lie here in the dark. I could start trawling the Internet for a lawyer. I could call that guy from the econ summit, that guy from that party three months ago: “If you're ever free on Thursday nights...”

Or I could go downstairs. Get a jump start making the kids' lunches for school in five hours. Or get the hockey gear loaded in the Tahoe now. Save me a few steps in the morning school hustle. Instead, I swallow an Ambien and knock myself out, just as I hear the car in the driveway. Tomorrow with the lunches and hockey skates. Tomorrow with the confrontation, or the ignoring – I’ll figure it out then, when I sit on the train in my suit from Loehman's. Maybe I'll start shopping at Saks again, like I did before the two kids.

First thing you learn, at least the first thing I learned, about being a single mom: it’s hard, almost impossible. I signed the lease for my new apartment on my 10th wedding anniversary. Let’s just say I’m a deadline-driven kind of girl, and after years of thinking “I can be broke, and alone all by myself,” it hit me, my deadline was 10 years. I had to get out.

That was two years ago. At the time, my daughters were 4 ½ and 21-months, and PBS had just aired a documentary called “P.O.V – Waging a Living.” The film looked at four people, three of them single moms, all working full-time and none making enough to make ends meet.

How’s that for a timely glance into the crystal ball?

One by one their stories debunked the American Dream, which is work hard and you’ll get ahead. One-quarter of the adult workers in this country have dead-end jobs paying less than the federal poverty level for a family of four. That’s 30 million people.

There was the 41-year-old waitress and mother of three young kids who made $2.13 an hour and sometimes paid more than 90 percent of her nightly tips to the babysitter. Yep, right there with you, sister. My gig was working nights in the sports department of a local newspaper, but I didn’t make much. The one night a week I both had the kids and had to work, I paid their sitter a buck an hour more than my hourly wage. Figure in commute time and those shifts cost me $10.

The apartment I picked was small for the price, one bedroom, but it has plenty of green space for the kids to play, and trees to climb. And the selling point, location, was that it was smack in the middle of my three tightest girlfriends’ houses. Five blocks in either direction to two of them.

When you divorce, everyone and their Aunt Nellie tell you to go where you have the strongest support. In other words, make sure you are living in the right village, because it’s going to help you raise your kids.

I appreciate all of those who seem to be committed in their efforts to finding me a man, but could you help me find a job first?

I am saying this because — well, let’s face it — I feel as if I’ve been pushed to.

More times than not, I have had people ask me in some form or another when I planned to start dating. Now that I am finished with school for the time being, many people see this as a time for me when I should to get back in the saddle, find a man, and ride him off into the sunset. But I would rather prefer to have a steady job rather than a steady beau.

But I am left to wonder, why do so many people place such a premium on being in a relationship – even at the expense of self-fulfillment?

It just seems irrational — and irresponsible — to try to land a boyfriend before landing a job. Would you splurge on a luxury vacation before paying your rent? I think not. So why waste time looking for a mate rather than look for a job?

Human beings are social animals. I know this — I’m a sociologist. I also know that there are basic human needs that we all have that need to be met, should we want to feel complete. Referring back to Abraham Maslow’s pyramid schematic, says that one would see that safety and financial security actually come before relationships and sexual intimacy. What I want to know is; why then do friends and acquaintances worry more about my romantic life than my professional life?  And when did the flip occur? Why is it that so many people seem to place the need of being fulfilled by others over self-fulfillment? Does it seem less embarrassing (or more interesting?) to say “Have you finally met a guy?” than “Did you finally find work?”