Adultery has always hurt. But for modern love’s acolytes, it seems to hurt more than ever. In fact, the maelstrom of emotions that are unleashed in the wake of an affair is so overwhelming that many contemporary psychologists borrow from the field of trauma to explain the symptoms: obsessive rumination, hypervigilance, numbness and dissociation, inexplicable rages and uncontrollable panic. Treating infidelity has become a specialty among mental health professionals—myself included—in part because the experience is so cataclysmic that couples can’t manage the emotional fallout alone and need
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