And the 12th lesson is ..... keep it in your pants when you're tweeting stupid!

By Amy Davidson

Thursday, April 11, 2013

What can one learn from the Times’s profile of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, written by Jonathan Van Meter, other than that, after an exile for overexposing himself on Twitter and in texts, Weiner is seriously considering a run for mayor of New York? Here are a few life lessons:

1. For a working woman, having your husband lose his job while you’re pregnant is wrenching. But it can at least mean a little help with the child-care situation. Weiner, “with all his free time, has become his son’s primary caretaker…. He seems to spend much of his time within a five-block radius of his apartment: going to the park with Jordan; picking up his wife’s dry cleaning and doing the grocery shopping…. His family agrees that the post-scandal Weiner, the diaper-changing Weiner, is far more likable.”

2. Not that everyone will see it that way—and some of the pressure comes from people who are supposed to be on your side. “Abedin told me a story about how her nieces and nephews made a video for her for Mother’s Day last year, portraying her as always half-engaged or absent because of work. Abedin was in tears. ‘Anthony was like, “What’s wrong?” And I said, “All they think I do is work!” The entire movie was: “Aunt Huma, Aunt Huma, Jordan’s walking!” “Oh, I’m on a conference call. I have to go on this trip.””

3. But sometimes they are just plain on your side. “[Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff] had helped arrange to fly in Abedin’s mother and older brother, who live in Jeddah, and they were waiting upstairs. ‘One of the things that I remember about that night is that there was a lot of very, very painful silence. But just being in the room together, just knowing that they trusted I would make the right decisions, the right choice for myself and my baby…. And ultimately they wanted to make sure that I was going to have a husband who was going to be good to me, a man who would be good to my mom’s grandchild. “We’re just here, we love you, how do we make you better?””

4. Sometimes a lie your husband tells to many, many people is mostly meant to deceive you. “Huma was coming back from overseas, and I called her and left her a message…. I lied to her. The lies to everyone else were primarily because I wanted to keep it from her.”

5. If you are facing a crisis similar to one that your boss and mentor faced earlier in her life, the advice you get from her might be a little freighted. Especially when that boss is Hillary Clinton: “Weiner himself pointed out the similarities between their experiences of betrayal.”

6. Some guys sure do talk—“and talk and talk,” as Van Meter put it. Weiner: “And it just started to blur into this desire to engage in it all the time…. Or sometimes it would start out about politics and then, ‘You’re a great guy.’ ‘Oh, thanks, you’re great, too.’ ‘I think you’re handsome.’ ‘Oh, that’s great.’ And there just wasn’t much of me who was smart enough, sensitive enough, in touch with my own things, understanding enough about the disrespect and how dishonorable it was to be doing that. It didn’t seem to occupy a real space in my feelings.” It can be easier to tolerate a man (or mayor) who acts out his lunacies than one who asks you to help him dissect them. Van Meter: “I startled myself that day when, after two hours of listening while he unburdened himself, I heard these words come out of my mouth: ‘Maybe we should stop there for now.’ Never has an interview felt so much like a therapy session.”

7. It’s risky to underestimate the narcissism of such men. “But I would also think, Well, they’re my friends. We got into this conversation with one another because they cared, they were my fans, they would never do anything.” That is Weiner, describing how he, as a member of Congress, assessed the hazards of sex-chatting with strangers.

8. If you are married to that guy, be fully prepared for the eight-thousand-word piece that includes your husband ascribing the momentum behind a scandal for which he’s fully to blame to “how much attention our relationship had gotten, this kind of Camelot feel to it” (he also cited technology and his own idiocy), while it leaves out the part about how Michele Bachmann insinuated that you were part of an Islamist effort to infiltrate the government and that both John McCain and Jon Stewart rushed in and defended you.

9. Every New York politics story is also a real-estate story. After the scandal, and many conversations at friends’ houses in the Hamptons, the couple gave up Weiner’s apartment in his old Queens district for a rental at Twentieth Street and Park.

10. Enough about therapy. A family’s most important decisions are often driven by money. “Last July, The New York Post reported that Weiner was weighing a run in 2013, because after that his public matching funds would expire…. There is the matter of the $4.3 million in the Anthony Weiner for Mayor war chest (plus about $1.5 million in public matching funds if he runs in 2013), which would make him one of the better-financed candidates in the race.”

11. Really, is it so wrong to trust your instincts about a man? Every marriage is a mystery; Abedin, as she made clear, has thought about this and has her reasons. But one does return to Van Meter on Abedin’s account of her early impressions of Weiner: “Here, she imitates him in shtick mode: ‘“I warmed ’em up for you, Hillary. They’re all set, teed up to go!” Hillary would always laugh, and I would think, My God, he’s such a jerk.’”

Above: Anthony Weiner walks with his wife, Huma Abedin. Photograph by Andrew Savulich/NY Daily News/Getty.

Amy Davidson joined the New Yorker Magazine in 1995 and is its Senior Editor.