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Revenge not Only Sweet, but Natural

Infidelity can bring out cavewoman in us all

-Julie Ryan Evans

Christie Brinkley's recent and very public quest for revenge against her a-hole of a husband, Peter Cook, is not only warranted, it also maybe be the result of evolution.

In a recent U.S. News and World Report article, Deborah Kotz discusses revenge and its origins with Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami and author of Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct.

In cases of revenge, he told Kotz: "Your brain is doing what it's supposed to be doing. When someone is acting out of revenge, she's in a state of desire or craving and engages in a behavior that she thinks will produce a reward for her...There was probably some evolutionary process of natural selection put into our brains," he explains, "to make sure we'd be motivated to defend our interests and punish people who have harmed them."

"Divorce, McCullough adds, is a common time to experience these emotions, as couples go from trying to live together, with all the sacrifices that entailed, to living in a very self-protective, self-focused way."

And evolution or not, shouldn't spouses be made to pay when they destroy a family, crush the innocent childhoods of their children and a make a mess of everything in pursuit of their own selfish pleasure-which in Cook's case included an affair with an 18-year-old and $3K on porn a MONTH! Or is that just my inner cavewoman speaking...

And while in the end Cook got more than I think he should have (a reported $2.1 million), at least Christie got the best revenge--custody of the kids. But really, I'm sure she'd agree, there's nothing sweet about any of it. 

Do you agree that revenge is a natural instinct, especially in cases of infidelity and divorce?

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