Posted on 06/09/2008 9:23:11 AM PDT by BoneHead
Having an affair can help to save a struggling marriage, according to a new, controversial self-help book. Mira Kirshenbaum, who has over 30 years' experience as a marriage therapist, says the 'right kind' of affair can be a positive thing, acting to "jolt people from their inertia".
The author of When Good People Have Affairs, published this week, argues that because society has so far failed to have a sympathetic discussion of infidelity, the positive sides of cheating have been ignored.
However, she insists that most cheating spouses should never own up, because revealing the infidelity is more damaging than keeping quiet.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
A guy having too much to drink while out of town on business and getting carried away with the wrong woman is quite a different thing from a month’s or year’s long “affair.” Doesn’t make it right, but it is very different.
BTW, something has always bothered me about the use of “affair.” I believe it is short for “love affair,” yet was universally applied to the Bill and Monica relationship.
Even by the depraved standards of the media, is there any rational reason to call their relationship a “love affair?” Isn’t that an insult to all real love affairs?
Or a non-struggling marriage.
An affair means that your word has no value and your spouse has no value either. Who would want to stay married to such a person?
Keeping your underwear on may not save your marriage, but dropping it will doom it. Yes you may stay married on paper but the trust, security and emotional intimacy that are a necessary part of being a true pair of souls traveling through life together is gone. You become two people who just happen to live in the same house.
\oO/ (think bill the cat)
Don't know quite what to make of that
I think you're missing the point. These people are feeling guilt and shame not because they've had an affair, but because they've been brainwashed by society to think having an affair is something you should feel guilt and shame about.
Her book will allow you to have all the affairs you want, but never feel guilt or shame.
Don’t know. But their website is full of help.(Chestnut Hill Institute)/sarc
Oh gosh what an awful book. She even goes so far as to suggest the cheater lies about it.
You just don’t cheat in marraige and if you can’t handle that then don’t get married.
Yes.
Large extensive website. With all the psychobable you would expect. I couldn't find a donors list. Looks like they make their money on speaking engagements.
“Trust is the basis of marriage.”
I believe that to be true of any relationship, from coworkers to friendships to dating to marriage. Once someone has betrayed that trust with me, I find it is nearly impossible for them to earn it back. I have not yet been married, but in the relationsips where I have entrusted them with my heart, their abuse of that trust has been devastating. Inevitably they ask for another chance and I find that I can’t stomach that risk again.
It cost me every penny I had. It was the best damn deal I every made in my life!
It worked for Bubba. Didn’t it? lol
Far better for married couples to go to a priest or other clergyman.
At the very least go talk to someone who's marriage is an good example, not the bartender who has been married 6 times.
Well, this advise worked out well for Madame Bovary!
Precisely!
Well I can never advocate an affair, folks are in an open situation and both know fine... I won’t try to interject myself into the personal relationship of 2 people in terms of what works for them. However when you talk about willful and premeditated cheating with the lies that come with it, the breaking of trust is the harder issue than the sex I would think.
If there are issues in a marriage that are pushing a party to consider cheating its time to lay it out on the table.. if the issues continue... then something has to give, one way or another. Now whether that is divorce, or more unconventional routes... that’s between the two parties.
But I just don’t see how you justify or advocate cheating.
That works for me. For 28 wondrful years.
I've seen a whole lot more of the fall out than the improving from an affair.
It will be 25 for us in November. I’m a lucky woman. :)
I agree with your correction
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