I've seen this happen over and over to wealthy, "perfect" families. I'm sure it happens to less perfect families, too, but not in such a noticeable or attractive way. So here, without peer-reviewed underpinnings of any kind, is my take on the situation.

It's pretty clear that the Sanfords shoveled all the passion out of their marriage over the years in order to float the boat of ambition and deal with the practical concerns of their life. (Think of their statements: "He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her." "I'm trying to fall back in love with my wife." This thing got reduced to a business arrangement, perhaps to the consternation of both partners.)

The sad truth is that creating the illusion of the All-American family is so much work that it tends to suck any real joy away from the project. Over time, the partners close off to each other emotionally in favor of the appearance of love. The result is two people who are barricaded off from each other far more than they are to anyone else. Which is how they get into trouble. There's nothing wrong with Jenny Sanford--she's a beautiful, smart woman with, one presumes, some "magnificent parts" of her own. And even Sanford seems, if not the brightest bulb on the tree, a guy that some woman could love. But these two sure don't seem to love each other now.

The male midlife crisis is one endgame of this dynamic--there's another one in which the last kid leaves for college and the wife files for divorce with little explanation. "Mom moved out and she won't even tell Dad why!"

I guess my point is that it takes years in a failing marriage to get to this stage. Despite a surfeit of programs that are supposed to teach people how to stay happily married, "marriage counseling" is still jokingly referred to as "divorce preparation." Most of us are just not that good at being married, overall, and it's hard to figure out why.

The saddest thing about this whole situation is that I'm pretty sure that the sweeping love affair probably was doomed from the start, if not by circumstance, then by the sheer difficulty of maintaining a loving relationship for any length of time in reality. My take: if Sanford and Chapur thought that their relationship, however passionate, had a chance of surviving the harsh day-to-day challenges of reality, he wouldn't have come back from Argentina at all.