The most telling scene in "Betrayal: The Perfect Husband" is when friends of the betrayed spouse reveal that she felt her ex-husband had received "too soft a landing" upon his release from prison.
Too soft a landing? He served three years of a five-year prison sentence and was facing 15 years of strict probation. Plus, lifelong sex-offender status. Barred forever from resuming his teaching or Air National Guard careers. Broke. A social pariah within his community with relationships shattered. His reputation and good name forever lost. Yet that was "too soft of a landing" for his ex.
So, she produced this three-hour long diatribe against him in the guise of a true crime documentary to ensure his disgrace would be known to as large of an audience as possible.
"Betrayal: The Perfect Husband" is an exercise of self-aggrandizing ax-grinding by one narcissist against another. It's a "true crime" story that Dateline/48 Hours wouldn't have touched because cheating spouses unless there are dead bodies involved and lecherous teachers unless they're hot female ones are of little interest outside of the people involved and/or the local news.
Yet that didn't stop TV producer and betrayed spouse Jen Faison from relating this mundane tale in order to exact her pound of flesh from ex-husband, Spencer Herron. Obviously, Faison cannot let it go and wants everyone to know her "pain." Why?
It appears she had deluded herself into believing that she could "have it all" - spend her 20's/30's building her career and then in her early 40's land the "perfect husband." Handsome, charming, and incredibly fit. She could flaunt him in front of all the frumpy middle-aged moms with their balding, dad-bod husbands. She showed them all that she could wait, have a career, and still get the prized spouse. And then Spencer blew it all up. And narcissistic Jen can neither forgive nor forget.
As this diatribe reveals, upon witnessing Spencer being arrested for having sexual relations with one of his teenage students, Jen then learned that he had cheated on her throughout their relationship with scores of women including friends of hers and paid escorts. The combination of sex addiction and a mid-life crisis had the narcissistic Spencer pursuing any and all women (and eventually his own students) that he came across. (Reading between the lines, it appears Jen was not around much which gave Spencer opportunity to indulge his addiction.) Also, it must have been a bitter pill for body/beauty conscious Jen to learn that some of Spencer's trysts were those frumpy, middle-aged moms.
Spencer's actual criminal offense gets little attention until the last hour. The first two hours are about poor, pitiful Jen, various female "trauma experts," and even the "other women" backing her up as to what a rat Spencer was. Although his student victim was over Georgia's age-of-consent, he had clearly started grooming her when she was underage. Plus, he knew very well that a sexual relationship as a teacher with a student was a criminal offense which caused him to exert pressure on her to be silent. That pressure eventually broke her and led her to reveal the relationship causing Spencer's downfall and the end of Jen's fantasy world.
There is no question that Spencer is a lecherous creep, but his crime and peccadillos are neither important nor interesting enough for a three-hour long documentary. Yet here it is. It appears one of Spencer's bigger mistakes was betraying a narcissistic TV producer who had the means, time, and ax-grinding desire to turn his post-prison life into an even bigger nightmare. "Hell, hath no fury......"
Finally, Jenn's career as a TV producer has "enriched" our culture with such mind-numbing trash as Jersey Shore, Judge Judy, and Celebrity Wife Swap. And that's what she put-off having a husband and family for? Did it really make her happy? It certainly doesn't seem so.
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