Mel Gib’s Girlfriend: Delusion or Love?

November 10th, 2009 by Nina AtwoodTell a friend

Mel Gibson’s girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, believes he is a “solid and failthful person,” according to an interview in Britain’s Glamour Magazine this month. Perhaps he’s changed, now that he’s fathered yet another child with Oksana. Maybe he’s learned from the mistake of cheating on his wife of 29 years, mother of his first seven children. Let’s hope so, since another child’s welfare is at stake. Probably not, and here’s why.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Maybe Gibson’s first marriage was fatally flawed, and maybe he couldn’t see any other path but to leave and start over. But he could have done it with integrity. He could have told Oksana something along the lines of this: ”I owe it to myself and to my wife to try and make things work. I owe it to you to do that first, then if it doesn’t work, come back and ask you out again, as a single man.” Instead, he started the affair, fathered a child, and left it to his wife to file for divorce after the pain of discovering the affair. Not much integrity or respect for women in that, is there?

Oksana has fallen into two temptations that don’t bode well for the future: 1. dating without integrity (i.e., starting a relationship with a married man), and 2. choosing a high-risk relationship (the statics tell us that most marriages made out of affairs don’t work out, for obvious reasons). The other issue at hand is that she’s chosen a man who will forever be tied to his first wife, Robyn. Imagine how SHE feels toward this woman. Imagine how difficult it will be to integrate the first family with the second with this kind of bitter legacy.

Real love takes into consideration all parties involved. Here’s what we can learn from this. If you meet a married man who is interested in you, gently send him back to his wife while letting him know that you will not begin a relationship of any kind with him until he has moved out and filed for divorce, and even THEN it’s still high risk. But it’s better, as it allows you to date with integrity and feel truly good about your choices and behavior. You’ve done the best you could to minimize the damage to another family.

If you’re a guy who is married and you meet a woman whom you feel is your “soul mate,” go back and earn your way out of your marriage first. That shows your wife and your potential new love the respect they deserve. It’s better for the children involved. And who knows? Maybe you’ll discover that your current marriage is worth saving.

Entry Filed under: Dating, Relationships, Marriage