Just when you thought you had heard it all, author Mira Kirshembaum – who claims to have 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”.
Of course, this wouldn’t have anything to do with the book she released, entitled When Good People Have Affairs, would it? The book talks of how society has so far failed to have a sympathetic discussion of infidelity, the positive sides of cheating have been ignored.
However, Mira insists that most cheating spouses should never own up, because revealing the infidelity is more damaging than keeping quiet.
“Sometimes an affair can be the best way for the person who has been unfaithful to get the information and impetus to change,” she said.
“I’m not encouraging affairs, but underlying the complicated mess is a kind of deep and delicate wisdom. It’s an insight that something isn’t working and needs to change.”
Most philanderers are good, kind people, she argues, who are seeking real happiness and love.
Ms Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute, a psychotherapy and research centre in Boston, Massachusetts, says her book is not aimed at ‘creeps’ who think they can cheat with impunity, but at decent people who know they have made a mistake.
“These people are suffering terribly and need to be relieved of their sense of guilt and shame because those emotions are paralysing,” she said.
“If handled right, an affair can be therapeutic, give clarity and jolt people from their inertia,” she said.
“You could think of it as a radical but necessary medical procedure. If your marriage is in cardiac arrest, an affair can be a defibrillator.”
But she is convinced that an adulterer must never confess, not even if their partner asks directly.
“This is the one area in which the truth usually creates far more damage in the long run,” she said.
“If you care that much about honesty, figure out who you want to be with, commit to that relationship and devote the rest of your life to making it the most honest relationship you can.”
Her sympathetic approach to cheats has been criticised by some of her peers.
Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists said: “We mustn’t underestimate the immediate grief caused by an affair.
“The last thing people want to hear if their partner has had an affair is any sympathy offered to the person who they feel has betrayed them, and acted like a snake in the grass.
“However, when they look back in five or ten years, they might take a different view.
“Maybe this book goes too far, but we do need to take a sociological view of affairs. To think, ‘what are we going to do about them?’ rather than to say ‘it can’t happen’, when it clearly does.”