I love my politics with a nice dash of sex. True to my generation, I am a dirty detail vulture of the highest order. From Bill Clinton to Eliot Spitzer, I can name them all. I devoured the Starr Report in a couple of days, staked Jessica Cutler's blog before her Washingtonienne book deal, ran out and bought The National Enquirer in the middle of the night and performed endless Google searches for more, more, more.

So it should come as no surprise that when I hear that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford had resurfaced, not from a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail as previously speculated, but from his mistress's arms in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I'm sitting up in bed, laptop on my knees, eyes devouring every available piece of information.

That is, until I find their correspondence on The State.

Now I'm pacing back and forth in my apartment, barefoot, a mug of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I can't read it all—not in one sitting. Something about this is different. Instead of lurid details, I am faced with the mundane details of daily life—Sanford at his farm, his mistress reading on the coast of a Brazilian island—all told in the powerful language of love, that rare blessing that turns the most inane into poetry.

“Don’t know why you think you bore me with the description of your farm,” Maria Belen Chapur assures Sanford in a message shortly after their relationship became romantic in mid-2008. “I am an urban girl but that doesn’t inhibit me from loving other things, specially if they are the ones you love. I was able to imagine the place with every single detail you wrote and had trassmitted (sic) me the love you have for your farm. It sounds to be a great and peaceful place and loved you had shared it with me.”

“Got back an hour ago to civilization and am now in Columbia after what was for me a glorious break from reality down at the farm,” Sanford responds to her. “No phones ringing and tangible evidence of a day’s labors. Though I have started every day by 6 this morning woke at 4:30, I guess since my body knew it was the last day, and I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up. To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the background, the tranquility that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds—and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt. It is admittedly weird but one of my more favorite ways of escaping the norms, constant phone calls and formalities that go with the office—and it probably fits with my weakness in doing rather than being—though you opened up a new chapter last week wherein I was happy and content just being.”

I imagined Sanford in South America, Buenos Aires of all places, the city of Carlos Gardel and tango, the refuge of José Ortega y Gasset, a philosopher whose rebuttal to Rene Descartes' “cogito ergo sum,” (“I think therefore I am”) could not have summarized Sanford's dilemma more perfectly: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia” (“I am myself and my circumstances”), that tenuous balance between free will and responsibility.

There is a freedom that comes with traveling to a different place. Even in a well-connected world like ours, the illusion of escape persists. That's why we call them get-aways. Imagine a governor able to go out among a people and feel unknown and unreachable in a way he had only felt before at his farm when he was alone.

“I am not in love with him,” Chapur tells Sanford in another e-mail during that summer about the lover she has accompanied to Brazil. “You are my love ... something hard to believe even for myself as it’s also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation. Sometimes you don’t choose things, they just happen ... I can’t redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you.”

“I have been specializing in staying focused on decisions and actions of the head for a long time now—and you have my heart,” Sanford responds. “You have oh so many attributes that pulls it in this direction. Do you really comprehend how beautiful your smile is? Have you been told lately how warm your eyes are and how they softly glow with the special nature of your soul. I remember Jenny [Sanford's wife], or someone close to me, once commenting that while my mom was pleasant and warm it was sad she had never accomplished anything of significance. I replied that they were wrong because she had the ultimate of all gifts—and that was the ability to love unconditionally. The rarest of all commodities in this world is love. It is that thing that we all yearn for at some level—to be simply loved unconditionally for nothing more than who we are—not what we can get, give or become... Since our first meeting there in a wind swept somewhat open air dance spot in Punta del Este, I felt that you had that same rare attribute. Above all else I love that inner beauty about you... while I did not need love fifteen years ago—as the battle scars of life and aging and politics have worn on this has become a real need of mine.”

I imagined them on the coastal town, some eight years before. Is that where they met, in Uruguay? Overlooking a mansa coast, waves lapping at the shore as the wind swept over the rich vegetation lining the beach. Over a drink, possibly, under the dark skies. Talking, as Sanford recalled during his tearful press conference, about whether she should return to her husband or not. That's when he recognized the depth with which this woman felt, a quality he suggests here is not quite understood by his wife, because it carries no significant achievement.

It's the first—and perhaps only—real glimmer into the Sanford marriage. His wife is an accomplished woman and a devoted mother and wife. She assisted Sanford with his campaign and has supported his less than popular battles with the South Carolina General Assembly. If anyone would know achievement, it's Jenny Sanford.

But a perfect wife, no matter how accomplished, is not necessarily one who feeds your heart.

I'm not condoning infidelity. I'm not justifying Sanford's behavior. He made an oath to his wife and he failed to uphold it and that is reprehensible. He made a commitment to the people of South Carolina and he disappeared—that is unprofessional, even delinquent.

But I understand. Six months before my husband and I decided to file for divorce, a man came back into my life.

I'd met David in college. The semester hadn't yet started when I saw him one day, walking down the mall, I ran to him, threw my arms around him and said, "my God, I am so glad I found you."

I don't quite know why I did this. I didn't know who he was, and I certainly wasn't looking for him, but there it was. That's how it started, a drawn-out journey of close calls and near-misses. We spent years in a dance of cat and mouse until finally, hours after I left my boyfriend and began packing to leave Honolulu, David called me. We always enjoyed this kind of perfect timing. I told him I had to have coffee with him. He was uncertain about meeting with me.

“Come have a coffee,” I said.

David is still the only man I know who has ever said no and walked away from me. Actually, he ran away from me. A mutual friend was coming out of her apartment about three blocks up the street from mine, and she later told me that he was still running when she saw him.

I'd asked him to come home with me. He told me he had to read Shakespeare. I told him Shakespeare would be there afterward. Then David took off running.

“Come have a coffee,” I said again during that last phone conversation.

He didn't reply right away and I remarked, “please, say it's anyone other than Shakespeare.”

He laughed, “you know it really had nothing to do with Shakespeare.”

“How disappointing,” I remarked. “I was about to say few men had enough balls to give up love for their art.”

“Love is my art,” he responded seriously.

“Then it's settled.”

That afternoon, we had preprandial cocktails on Honolulu Harbor, right in the sunset's line of fire. We read, we wrote, we talked and talked. We were so inspired, every second was electrified, and filled with consequence.

“You shouldn't be leaving,” he said.

“Stop me,” I replied. “Take me, keep me, own me.”

“You'd fight me to the death.”

“You know it.”

How we got to the edge of the water, I don't remember, but that was us, hanging halfway over the ocean, seeping into each other like ink to parchment. That was us running across the road, that was us dancing across the dark stage, all hands, all lips, all eyes, like an explosion waiting to occur for years.

That was us at the cardinal points in marble, us trespassing, dancing up the flights of stairs until we could see all of Honolulu Harbor out the windows of Aloha Tower. Those were our screams, our moans, our breaths racing our hearts, a mass of sensory receptors and quaking spines until we collapsed in a heap of sweat and tears that echoed inside the tower like a myth.

We spilled the essence of our meaninglessness and our hungry mouths swallowed the flames of our existence and spit them out in iambic pentameter.

He didn't try to stop me. I didn't try to stay.

We e-mailed back and forth over the years. Whether in Italy or Japan, Paris or the Northern Marianas, whether we were separated by many seas or a few mountains, we wrote. And then, shortly before I was married, we met again. We fought—in the way that writers do, with beautiful turns of phrase. We left each other empty. That was the last time we spoke. Until his e-mail tumbled into my inbox.

From: David
To: Anaiis
Subject: There really is more to say.

You're married. But you knew that.

Perhaps something you didn't know is that I've wanted to apologize to you going on 3 years. When I saw you in California I was sad. Sad about a lot of things, maybe even a little hopeless... I had hoped that I could hide all that from you while being with you... What I wanted to give was celebration, laughter, and insight. What I gave instead, I feel, was moroseness.

I'm sorry for that, Anaiis. You've no idea how much. I think of The Tower and sometimes still wish that was the last time we saw each other. Because that was as real as I've been. Crying into hair. Knowing an ending so well in the moment that there can be no regrets.

I don't know what you're going to say to me. I never do, actually, but especially concerning this. Know that I want to know it all. Believe me when I say, I've always wanted that.

David

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I knew I shouldn't. Six days went by with this e-mail sitting in my inbox.

“Are you in disagreement with me that there is more to say?” David asked in another e-mail.

“I don't disagree with you,” I responded finally. “I just can't find words to express myself. I will.”

It took me two weeks.

From: Anaiis
To: David
Subject: Re: There really is more to say.

I'm married. The reason I didn't write was that I was on the brink of divorce when your e-mail tumbled into my inbox. Relationships—I have many talents, but that was never one. Love and relationships are such different animals. One is of itself and for itself, the sacred and profane; the other is macro-scale systems theory. I can wrap my brain around it but my heart, oh, my heart...

I'm home again—home, what a strange word to a third culture kid. I said that about Arizona recently and the person I was with asked, "is home so transient to you that you can call home wherever you rest your head?" Yes. It always has been. So I'm home again now, in California, in the house my husband and I call home. I'm sitting on my front stoop in a fur coat, enjoying a cigarette and coffee and Bob Dylan. It's chilly, but sunny. I'm not divorced, yet not quite a wife.

… [In regard to the apology] we still hold the pen, David. We did then and we do now. We can break the narrative. We can refuse that ending and every other that has already been written.

New document. The cursor blinks on the screen before our eyes. Where will this chapter take us?

There is so much life squeezed in these years we've been apart. Take my hand. Tell me everything.

Down, down, down you go, down the rabbit hole, one word at a time.

From: David
To: Anaiis
Subject: Re: There really is more to say.

I fell in love. She was older. East Coast upbringing and a writer who wasn't writing. We saw the lava at night on the Big Island, hiked the Na Pali coast in Kauai, and when the 6.7 earthquake hit Kona we were watching the sunrise on top of Haleakala on Maui. The mountain moved under me like water. All 10,000 feet of it. All of these things added to our love myth.

We almost got married. Maybe if one of us asked the other it would've happened. None did, and I moved back [to the mainland United States]. I didn't hook up with women for over a year, which shouldn't have surprised me. It seems I must purge a relationship's spirit in order to have another. The more intense the relationship, the longer it takes.

Which makes you an anomaly. You've been here and haven't left ever since, "Thank God I found you." It's the heat you give. You say, "Take my hand," and I feel butterflies, you say, "We can break the narrative," and I'll have it broken, you call me, "David," and I breathe fast like I've been running.

It's snowing hard here. Temperature is in the teens. I'm drinking black tea. I'm watching my dog watch me.

I have so many ideas linked to you at this moment. Questions. Answers. What do you want from this chapter? I have one. A want. But am unsure if now is a good time to ask. Timing is most critical for us. And, you're married. Tell me I'm inappropriate. Say, "David, stop."

It's still heat to me.

It was almost four in the morning when I read his e-mail. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I pulled out a book from the bookshelf and opened it. There was a note sandwiched between its pages.

“You will be that which is essential to me,” it began.

From: Anaiis
To: David
Subject: Re: There really is more to say.

I still have that letter you wrote me at Blue. I found it recently, right after you wrote me that first e-mail, as I was packing my books (a woman can leave everything when she's leaving her husband, after all, everything except her books). You were sandwiched in a collection of D.H. Lawrence's erotic works. The story? "Sun."

"Take her away, into the sun," the story starts. It always made me think of you. Only you would know why.

So what do I want from this chapter? I want to live.

I'm not going to tell you to stop, David.

I should have.

But I didn't.

Conversations about life, about work, about writing. We are ourselves and our circumstances. Our circumstances are defined by a series of choices and a series of variables. Choices, like who we marry. Variables, like who we fall in love with.

I watch Mark Sanford's press conference again and I don't see a smooth-talking player. I see a desperate man tripping all over himself.

Later I read an op-ed by Michael Graham, a former GOP political consultant in South Carolina who knew the governor.

“Mark Sanford was smooth,” he writes. “He was smart. Above all, Mark Sanford was cool... That's the Mark Sanford I knew. So who was that stumbling, bumbling, embarrassing klutz giving the most cringe-inducing press conference in recent memory? … Was this the Clintonesque cheater finally caught with his pants—or as they say in Buenos Aires, pantalones —down? Is Sanford yet another arrogant pol in the tradition of Gary Hart and John Edwards, who thought he could get away with it? No. His story is more tragic. He's not a preacher who fell from grace. He's a man who fell in love. How else to explain the sheer idiocy of his behavior? Cheaters have workarounds; they know how to get the Hooters girl in and out of the state trooper's car without being seen. John Edwards-types slip into the hotel through the basement. Sanford would have none of it. In counseling with his wife, kicked out of this house, he followed his heart which led him to Argentina. Once caught, he didn't deny or defuse. Instead, he talked until his aides threw themselves on the mics. Through it all, he maintained his earnestness. That's why it was so painful. We were watching a man trying to do the wrong thing the right way.”

Imagine being faced with that decision: betray everything you believe in or betray your heart.

Sanford elaborates in another e-mail:

... at the same time we are in a hopelessly — or as you put it impossible — or how about combine and simply say hopelessly impossible situation of love. How in the world this lightening [sic] strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes (and yes this is true even if you did occasionally tantalize me with sexual details over the years!) — but it was all safe. Where we are is not. I have thought about it and in some ways feel I let you down in letting these complications come into a friendship that I hope will last till death.

In all my life I have lived by a code of honor and at a variety of levels know I have crossed lines I would have never imagined. I wish I could wish it away, but this soul-mate feel I alluded too is real and in that regard I sure don’t want to be the person complicating your life. I looked to where I often look for advice and counsel, and in I Corinthians 13 it simply says that, “ Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude, Love does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice in the wrong, but rejoices in the right, Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things”.

In this regard it is action that goes well beyond the emotion of today or tomorrow and in this light I want to look for ways to show love in helping you to live a better — not more complicated life.. I better stop now least this really sound like the Thornbirds — wherein I was always upset with Richard Chamberlain for not dropping his ambitions and running into Maggie’s arms.

The bottom line is two fold, my heart wants me to get on a plane tonight and to be in your loving arms — my head is saying how do we put the Genie back in the bottle because I sure don’t want to be encumbering you, or your options or your life... I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before — so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know ... In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul. I love you...

David and I stayed in our inboxes. But even that's too far.

We're our own masters, but we're not always masters of ourselves. No one is infallible and love, to quote Plato, is a divine madness.

More often than not, following your heart and doing what's right are not the same thing.

“The punditocracy agrees that Sanford's performance was a disaster,” Michael Graham writes. “What they're missing is that it was supposed to be. I believe it was an act of political suicide, destroying one life so he can begin another. Which is why it was also oddly compelling. Instead of political posturing, Sanford gave a messy display of naked humanity. As his ex-spokesman Will Folks said, 'It wasn't pretty, advisable, or particularly eloquent—but it was also probably one of the most authentic things you'll ever see in American politics.'”

I agree. It's this raw honesty in the e-mails between Sanford and Chapur that makes them so painful to read. There is a desperate beauty in them that is impossible to forget. But is Graham right? Is Sanford destroying his life so he can begin another or is he merely prostrating himself before the world to come back and rebuild the family that he destroyed when he chose to follow his heart?

Responsibility versus love.

Toward the end of my marriage, I watched the movie Fall over and over, about a married woman and a poet with whom she falls in love. There is a scene where Amanda de Cadenet, who plays the woman, talks about her situation: “There wasn’t a harder time in my life. I felt destined to leave the man I knew I loved, the man I knew I wanted to have a family with, but with equal certainty I knew I would never leave him—kind of like the way I felt about game six of the ‘86 World Series. There was no way in hell the Mets could win that game, but they did and I knew they would.”

I used to think about this every time my husband and I spoke of getting a divorce. In the end, I did leave my husband. In the film, the woman had an affair and went back to hers. At his press conference, Sanford said he didn't know what the next step would be.

Love is patient...

“I don’t know how we figure all this out and I am not interested in knowing,” Maria Belen Chapur writes in one of her e-mails to him. “I prefer to think we’ll see each other again somewhere sometime in this life and in next.”

Time will tell.

As for David, he texted me the other day after months of silence.

“Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “Not sure why.”

BLOGGIE TREATS

Fellow contributing editor Susan Mernit explores the marriage of the governor in-depth in her somewhat controversial The Governor's Mistress: A Bermuda Love Triangle: “Certainly, the media reported that Sanford’s trip to Buenos Aires was the second in a year, with the earlier trip made with Jenny Sanford’s approval since the intent of that visit was to break the adulterous couple up (that clearly didn’t work.) Is it possible that Jenny Sanford kicked her husband out of the house in June 2009 not because he’d fall in love with—and gotten physical with—someone else back in 2008, but because the world had found out?”

In Don't Cry For Mark, Argentina, American Princess discusses the implications of Mark Sanford's affair on the future of the GOP.

In Mrs. Mark Sanford Is No Silda Spitzer, by Julia Reed, Julia Reed: "Man, these guys never fail to disappoint – ridiculous cover stories (hiking alone on the Appalachian trail? Really?) are always blown, and we are left with hilarious images and bits of info: Monica’s blue dress; Spitzer’s black socks; and now, Sanford’s e-mail, leaked to The State newspaper, in which he praises the curves of his lover’s hips along with her 'erotic beauty' and 'magnificent gentle kisses,' and describes himself as a man bound up in 'a hopelessly impossible situation of love.'"

And my favorite, a poem by Laura Young, A Poem Dedicated to the Secret Lives of Our Mothers: “And suddenly, there it is./Just like that./Mixed in with old magazines and brownie recipes,/dental records and department store receipts/all destined to be burned./folded neatly/a letter/a letter from him. We always suspected.”