The Kind of Asshole Who Looks at a Cheating Scandal and Blames the Wife

There’s a particular kind of asshole who sees that Jensen Huang admitted to cheating on his wife, takes one look at a photograph of her, and says, “Well, who could blame him?”

And just like that, we’ve learned considerably more about this asshole than we have about the marriage.

Imagine spending four decades with someone. You knew him when he was an engineering student, long before the billions, the fame, and the leather jackets. You built a family together. You watched him become one of the richest and most powerful men on Earth. And when he admits to cheating on you, a bunch of strangers on the internet decide the real scandal is that you don’t look like a 25-year-old Instagram model.

Forty-one years of marriage, and apparently your entire value as a human being can be assessed by some dipshit with a profile picture of a sports car.

What a remarkably stupid way to look at another human being.

There’s something especially pathetic about men who rush to defend a billionaire’s infidelity by insulting his wife. They don’t know these people. They don’t know what their marriage looks like behind closed doors. They have absolutely no idea what either person has contributed to the relationship.

But they do know what they think a billionaire deserves: a woman who looks like she was assembled in a laboratory specifically to impress other men.

And here’s the thing. Even if you don’t find someone’s wife attractive, who gives a shit? Since when did your personal erection become the governing principle of someone else’s marriage?

Marriage is not a lifetime beauty pageant in which the husband gets to trade in his wife whenever the judges decide she’s lost a step. People age. Bodies change. Life happens. The woman who helped build a life with you at 25 is not going to look the same at 60. Neither are you, despite whatever flattering delusions you’ve developed about your own appearance.

The really revealing part is how quickly these guys erase the woman from the equation entirely. She stops being a person with a life, feelings, and dignity. She becomes an accessory that no longer meets their standards. And because she doesn’t meet those standards, apparently anything done to her is understandable.

That’s not an argument about infidelity. That’s an admission about how little you value women beyond their appearance.

You can admire Jensen Huang’s accomplishments without treating his wife like defective merchandise. You can recognize that marriages are complicated without inventing excuses for betrayal. And you can acknowledge that powerful men have opportunities most people don’t without pretending those opportunities absolve them of responsibility.

Because the question isn’t whether a billionaire could find someone younger or prettier. Of course he could. The question is whether having that option makes breaking a promise any less shitty.

And if your first instinct when confronted with a man’s admitted infidelity is to inspect his wife’s face for evidence that she deserved it, perhaps the person who deserves a little scrutiny isn’t her.

It’s you.