Affair and Marriage With Rosalie Rayner
In October 1920 Johns Hopkins University asked Watson to leave his faculty position because of publicity surrounding the affair he was having with his graduate student-assistant Rosalie Rayner.
Watson's affair had become front-page news, during divorce proceedings, in the Baltimore newspapers. Mary Ickes Watson, his wife, had feigned illness during a dinner party involving the Rayner and Ickes families so that she could have unfettered access to Rayner's bedroom. She discovered love letters Watson had written to Rayner. She had hoped that by Watson knowing of this discovery, he would leave Rayner.
After the divorce was finalized, Watson and Rayner married in 1921. They remained together until her death in 1935.
Read more about this topic: John B. Watson
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