Wow, you are really whitewashing a man who was am extreme narcissistic in a destructive way. Elizabeth and John found each other for a reason. He’s a really sick man, and her problems don’t excuse his. Even Kerry eventually found him to be a disturbing creep.
It was a cast of three unstable charactors.
I do have some pity for John Edwards, and agree with you on his clinically proportioned narcissism. It is not his behavior I excuse, but his condition.
I guess I believe it was a form of madness, gone quite untreated, if it can even be treated—a lost soul, and easy prey for a New Ager like Hunter, with her own father issues.
Edwards may well be the cause of Elizabeth’s tyrannical behaviors during their marriage, but they weren’t good for each other at some point, for some unknown reason, before the diagnosis and the affair.
The chicken or the egg, maybe is the question, as in who drove the other mad first? And the sad loss of the son is a factor. It is not unheard of that the loss of a child can be the seeming catalyst for divorce of the parents.