In this she echoes the thinking of Esther Perel, the therapist and author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, who challenges us to move beyond our paradigm of personal betrayal in thinking about infidelity. Perel wants us to consider that the affair may not be an indictment of the person being cheated upon. Nor a sign that he or she—the person who has been “betrayed”—has failed. Or that the relationship necessarily has big problems. Maybe, but maybe not. Not infrequently, Perel has found, infidelity has nothing to do with him or her or the relationship at all. Hard as it is to
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