Men and women

Who can know what makes men and women tick and sometimes color outside the lines?

It happens all the time.

Makes no difference who they are or how much money they have.

Power and status seem irrelevant when a man (or a woman) decides to stray.

Think of a few of the thousands of examples (all of these from the rich or famous):

1. Ex-NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Rebecca Woodard

2. Ex-SC Gov. Mark Sanford and Maria Bellen Chapur

3. U.S. President Warren G. Harding and Carrie Fulton Phillips

4. Ex-U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart and Donna Rice.

5. General David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell

6. U.S. President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski

7. U.S. President John Kennedy and who knows what her name was?

8. Jim Bakker and Jessica Hahn.

9. Anthony Weiner and Sydney Leathers.

10. Beloved TV journalist Charles Kuralt and secret mistress Patricia Shannon (whose photo seems to be hard to find on the Internet):

Below is an old photo--from the late 1970s or early 1980s, I believe--of Charles and Patricia:

And the infamous list goes on. More names than I can list or care to chronicle even in cyber space (where space seems to be infinite).

All of them sultry, steamy, sensuous. All ripe, seductive fodder for the press.

Some have long since ended. Warren Harding, for example, was our country's 19th president; that was so long ago that he could have been on the Titanic. Could have fought in WWI. Could have personally known the Wright brothers.

We never, ever talk about Harding today. But that all changed a few weeks ago when a press-described "treasure trove of love letters" emerged between Harding and his mistress Carrie Fulton Phillips.

In one of them, the president wrote: "I love you more than all the world, and have no hope of reward on earth or hereafter so precious as that in your dear arms, in your thrilling lips, in your matchless breasts, in your incomparable embrace."

Men and women-even those in the most committed relationships--sometimes stray.

That's what they do. They stumble and fall and become bad. As the Bible says (paraphrasing here): The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

Such is life. It makes things interesting. When people have the libidinal itch, they want to be scratched--in the worst (or best) way.

What names would you add to my list?

Speaking of doing it, here's a scene from a J-Lo movie that will get your blood flowing: