I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: With every breaking political sex scandal — and the ensuing awkward press conference/photo opp — it becomes more and more tempting to imagine little thought balloons over the heads of the apparently stoic, forbearing wives. (“Well, this explains a lot.” “Game face game face game face.” “Dude. Diapers?”)

And man, is it easy to judge. The wives, not the husbands. (Well, them too.) What are they doing at the press conference at all? What sort of public display of solidarity do they possibly owe these guys? Can they really be such doormats? Why aren’t they home changing the locks?

In situations like these, though, I think we’d do well to remember the wise words of Bridget Jones’s friend Magda. “No one from the outside ever really understands what makes them work.” Really, who knows what has gone on Chez Spitzer? Maybe she is cheating too. Maybe he promised her a quick and clean divorce if she’d do just this one thing. Maybe she is even acting out of savvy self-interest, as Anne Applebaum suggests at Slate: “I can see one clear advantage to this option: It’s all over quickly. And no one asks you for a follow-up interview. You appear once—and then you vanish forever, along with your husband’s career. If you’ve been clever about it, you’ve kept your maiden name and can thus return to your own career. Those who make other, more attention-getting choices will later be forced back into the limelight to explain themselves, which is gruesome.” That, or if you simply don’t appear at all, you can bet they’ll come after you.

I’m not saying she should or shouldn’t show up; I’m just saying that in a scandal such as this, her conduct, of all people’s, is not for us to judge. (I’m talking to YOU, lady I just heard on WNYC saying that this whole thing was Mrs. Spitzer’s fault in the first place because she didn’t kink things up enough.) The real thing to question is not each wife’s motive, or her backbone. The real thing to question, I think, is why these women are expected to show up in the first place. (And what will happen someday when the “stoic wife” is the husband.)