Adultery can often help save a failing marriage, and those who do have affairs should never admit to it as it can cause a lot of damage.
LONDON: Adultery can often help save a failing marriage, and those who do have affairs should never admit to it as it can cause a lot of damage.
A new controversial self-help book out this week teaches this message and has come under criticism from psychologists who argue it is ‘immoral’ and telling people to cheat in their marriages.
Mira Kirshenbaum, the author of When Good People Have Affairs insists that most adulterers are good, kind people who are simply seeking real happiness and love in their lives.
“Cheating on your spouse isn’t a moral act, but most men and woman who have affairs are good people who made a mistake”, said Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute, a centre for relationship therapy and research in Boston, Massachusetts.
She admits that infidelity is controversial and difficult to address sympathetically but “these people are suffering terribly and need to be relieved of their sense of guilt and shame because those emotions are paralysing”.
The psychologist who has been treating individuals and couples for 30 years and is the author of 10 books believes that shame and fear has kept adulterers in the closet and prevented them from receiving the understanding that would save all those involved.
Kirshenbaum writes there are 17 reasons why people have affairs, including the see-if affair, the distraction affair and the sexual-panic affair.
To help people decide whether their infidelity should spell the end of their marriage, she lists a few that she believes do indicate the relationship is over — and those that do not.
Kirshenbaum is adamant that an adulterer must never confess — not even if their partner asks directly.
Leila Collins, a psychologist who has given relationship counselling for 15 years disagrees. “Adulterers are neither kind nor good people, so what sort of sympathy are we supposed to give them?” said Collins.
You should stay with your partner if your affair is a heating-up-your-marriage affair, let’s-kill-this-relationship-and-see-if-it-comes-back-to-life affair, do-I-still-have-it affair, accidental affair, revenge affair or midlife crisis affair
—Mira Kirshenbaum, on different kinds of affairs
Sometimes in fact —divorce is worth it. It plays an important function. It gets us out of misery-making marriages and we have a chance of finding happiness somewhere else
— Kirshenbaum, on divorce
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