The funny thing about this “the wife of an important man” model is that the man in it doesn’t need to be really important. Women play this role just as seriously as Patricia when their husband is a janitor. Or men. This isn’t a gender thing. I knew a couple where the man made himself into “the husband of an important woman.” His wife was a completely normal, regular person but he glamorized her and behaved like she was Isabel Preysler and he her secretary. Obviously, she dumped him, just like Vargas Llosa dumped Patricia.
I’m equidistant from both the Patricia and the Isabel models. I see neither myself nor my husband as accessories. And Isabels are rare. You need a high guaranteed income to be an Isabel. Plus, extraordinarily good health. I’ve never met any Isabels ever.
Patricias are easier to come by. I wouldn’t say they are extremely thick on the ground but they exist. Academia used to be a breeding ground for them but not anymore. I don’t know a single academic wife of the Patricia type under 60. When I was young, though, they were everywhere. There was this professor in my field who’d come to every conference with a long-suffering Patricia of his own. He’d immediately engage in a loud and scandalous affair with a graduate student or a visiting colleague, and as often as not run away with her, leaving the wife to cry quietly at the back of the conference hall. Ritual humiliation seems to be a culminating point of such relationships. And of course, she’d always take him back and they’d come to the next conference, as a sort of a traveling circus.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Ritual humiliation seems to be a culminating point of such relationships”
Different pay offs I assume…. the husband gets to play around a bit and the long-suffering cheated wife gets a big emotional high when the transgressor apologizes….. lots of women stay in really dysfunctional relationships for just that reason.
The reverse scenario is, as you say, rare enough that it’s hard to draw conclusions and I’m not sure what the pay off is for the husband in that case either… it’s hard for me to imagine a man riding an emotional high over a crawling apology…. not saying that never happens but….. I bet it almost never happens….
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The sample pool is small but I don’t think a woman would return in this situation. It seems a particularly male thing to do to keep returning to the abandoned wife.
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You are not helping my deep-seated prejudice viz academics.
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It’s a thing of the past in academia. But the phenomenon itself isn’t gone.
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“a thing of the past in academia”
Remember a few of that type of wife (without the drama or at least none that I knew of) in the US, I’ve never encountered it in Poland though a friend worked at a medical facility headed by a man whose wife (also in medicine) was far, far, far more distinguished than he was…. working for him was apparently a miserable experience .
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