Abby Brammell

By Jan Moir

Facing the future: Elin Nordegren has spoken out after her divorce from cheating husband Tiger Woods


Breaking her silence for the first time since her husband was exposed as a serial cheat, Elin Nordegren declares that she still believes in love.

A brave and rather noble thing to say, considering that love has failed her so dismally.

Elin was the young and vulnerable mother of a baby and a toddler when wicked old fate - in the shape of her unfaithful husband Tiger Woods - threw a custard pie in her face last year.

Poor Elin. She had to learn the hard way that her life, as she knew and enjoyed it, was a total lie.

Since they met, she had thought that her husband was devoted to her - and why should she not?

But that was before news of his torrid sexual relations with a string of legs-ahoy strumpets was laid bare, much like the women themselves, for the entire world to see.

This week, the couple's sad but perhaps inevitable divorce was announced.

And Elin has spoken out because it is important to her that the world knows that she didn't know what was going on. She really didn't.

That string of girls, including the club hostess, the waitress, the socialite, the porn star and that chick in the pro-shop with 'ready When You are, Tiger' tattooed on her forehead?


Blindsided: Elin had no idea of her husband's many affairs until she found text messages on his phone


Elin didn't have a clue. No wonder that the 30-year-old felt 'blindsided' and 'embarrassed' when she found out about Woods's wholesale infidelities.

'I never suspected, not one,' she said. She was too busy being pregnant or looking after their two toddlers. Or - irony of ironies - immersed in studies for her degree in psychology.

'I felt stupid as more things were revealed. How could i not have known anything?

The word "betrayal" isn't strong enough,' she said, adding that she was also disappointed in those close to her (and her family) who were also in on the deceit.

That's the thing. It is not just the husband, although that is more than terrible.

In this case, it was also the co- conspirators, the shady little facilitators and enablers who also played their sordid part. Those on the Christmas card list or the payroll who knew exactly what was going on but said nothing.

They are exactly the same kind of 'friends' who shepherd girls into the hotel bedrooms of married premiership football players, or usher backstage groupies into the clutches of rock stars who have wives waiting for them at home.


On her own: Elin with the couple's children, Sam and Charlie


This awful, corrosive lack of respect for the wife that sweeps through both husband and husband's entourage is mighty dispiriting, to say the least.

No wonder Elin is distraught and confused. She must be wondering why Tiger Woods, the richest athlete on the planet and a sporting hero to millions, ever bothered marrying her in the first place. It is a good question.

When she met and fell in love with her Tiger, Elin Nordegren thought she had hit the love jackpot. He was the clean-cut boy, the practising Buddhist with the heartbreaking smile.

She was a part-time model and a nanny to another professional golfer. Her life would never be the same again.

In 2004, they married in a glamorous sunset ceremony in Barbados, taking their vows under a white pagoda, decorated with 500 air-freighted roses.

Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates were among the cooing guests. Is it too cruel to remember that Tiger and Elin spent their first night of married life at sea, sailing away together on a yacht called Privacy?

Even back then, the omens were gathering, although Elin did not see them.

She did not see anything. as far as she was concerned, until she found the sex texts on her husband's telephone less than six years later, the future unfurled before them, like a red carpet of glowing good fortune. What could possibly go wrong?
Only everything. Oh, the pain that men put women through. Yes, I know that women can also be cruel.

And have affairs and behave badly. Yet I would argue that this kind of indulgent, long-term sexual frenzy - the myriad partners, the pleasure-seeking obsession and the lack of moral obligation, alongside the monstrous ego and unchecked self-regard that fuels it - is the exclusive preserve of the male.

source :dailymail