The first warning sign came as they were discussing their wedding plans and she handed him his BlackBerry to call his dad. Her eye was caught by an email from a woman. It was “fawning, flirtatious and very familiar”, she writes. He insisted it was “just a fan”. Because he was known for being a straight talker – to a fault – she believed him. But later, she would remember what he said to her right before she saw that email: “I’m broken and I need you to fix me.” Has she ever asked him what he meant?
“Often I’ll raise things with Anthony, and I think there’s a lot he doesn’t remember. But I think, in hindsight, it really was a self-realisation that something didn’t feel right, and my guess is that committing to me, committing to being married, exposed those vulnerabilities: ‘Am I good enough to be in a relationship with somebody?’ That’s what a lot of people who have these insecurities feel,” she says.
Soon after, they got married and their wedding was officiated by none other than … Bill Clinton. “Every wedding is a wonder,” intoned the man who, just over a decade earlier, had been impeached for lying about infidelity. I tell Abedin that often when she describes Weiner in the book – “charming, charismatic and clearly attractive to lots of women” – it sounds like she could be describing Bill. Was that part of his appeal?
“No! Not at all!” she gasps.
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