I agree, it is impossible to tell what happened. He could have drawn a line many times, we just don’t know.
Way back, I saw this exact scenario play out, with a muscular woman who had Broadwell’s exact eyes, and a much older friend who loved his wife, but couldn’t hold alcohol. She was a climber, and it was pretty clear that acquiring this married guy was good for her, and so she decided she wanted it. Just like a business decision.
Her tool of choice was alcohol, and she applied it like a pro, getting what she wanted by getting the guy drunk and alone. Looking back, finding out about all of it was my first indication that some women can be almost sociopathic in pursuit of objectives. At the time I assumed they were all emotional and illogical, carried about on waves of whimsy, and occaisionally psychosis (I was in my late teens/early twenties at the time).
As guys we think of this as arising from subconscious urges/emotions/desires. I think with “striving” women, it is more of a conscious decision that this is what she wants, and an intellectual problem she solves in a stepwise pattern, probably viewing men as stupid tools, to be manipulated with ease. Later it is back-reasoned as love/emotion/destiny, etc, at least with these climbers.
I’m sure from Petraeus’ side, fitness played a role, wanting to be younger, dopamine desensitization upregulating sex drive, maybe even his leftist wife all played roles. But I think it’s a mistake to not factor in how mechanistic female strivers can be in pursuit of what they decide they want, and how helpless a guy with alcohol sensitivity is.
My guess is she smuggled in a bottle of something special, and said, “Let’s celebrate with a drink!” after some impressive accomplishment/milestone of his. Tough in a dry warzone to turn down a top shelf Scotch with a friend after a big win. And once one super-smooth single malt is down, it’s easy to go to two, two to three, and three to four or more, marveling at the flavor. If you’re a small guy who can’t handle alcohol and maintain control, anything can happen, and if anything is the striver’s plan, you are screwed.
As my buddy found out, it’s like the mob. Once you’re in, there is no easy way out. Especially once psycho-girl decides you are the only ticket she wants, and she isn’t going to give up on all her hard work and careful planning easily. That is the strange part of it though.
The fact she was hate-E-mailing women other than the wife makes me wonder why she didn’t view the wife as the primary threat, and work harder to split them up first. Either she and Petraeus had a long term arangement, of which the wife was an unwitting part, or she felt the marriage was doomed, and it was just a matter of time.
That all sounds chillingly plausible. I saw variations on it back when I handled divorce cases (dark days). The wife wasn’t the primary target because she didn’t see her as a threat, and couldn’t overplay her hand yet. She had already pealed him away from the wife in any sense that was meaningful to her. She had to hold off the other vultures. Paula Broadwell reminds me of the woman who gets murdered in Presumed Innocent.