Kai Cole

There were times in our relationship that I was uncomfortable with the attention Joss [ex-husband Joss Whedon] paid other women. He always had a lot of female friends, but he told me it was because his mother raised him as a feminist, so he just liked women better. He said he admired and respected females, he didn't lust after them. I believed him and trusted him. On the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), Joss decided to have his first secret affair. Fifteen years later, when he was done with our marriage and finally ready to tell the truth, he wrote me, "When I was running 'Buffy,' I was surrounded by beautiful, needy, aggressive young women. It felt like I had a disease, like something from a Greek myth. Suddenly I am a powerful producer and the world is laid out at my feet and I can't touch it." But he did touch it. He said he understood, "I would have to lie - or conceal some part of the truth - for the rest of my life," but he did it anyway, hoping that first affair, "would be ENOUGH, that THEN we could move on and outlast it." Joss admitted that for the next decade and a half, he hid multiple affairs and a number of inappropriate emotional ones that he had with his actresses, co-workers, fans and friends, while he stayed married to me. (...) Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women's rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist. [The Wrap, Aug. 20, 2017]