I just finished reading Esther Perel’s The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity.

I didn’t like it. I fear I may owe some of you an apology for recommending it.

It took me a little longer than I expected – perhaps because I didn’t like it – or maybe because it felt a little voyeuristic, like I was was peaking into too many examples of relationships gone wrong. This can be helpful for someone struggling though betrayal – to feel that universality, that connection, that you are not alone in the endeavor. However, as a practitioner, as someone who works in these situations often to try to help couples and individuals though it, I was looking for a little more I think.

Through the multiple examples and brief case studies, Perel posits that affairs happen for a myriad of reasons – each set of reasons as varied as the personalities engaging in the act. But there were still some core causes:

• In the age of gender equality we have come to unrealistically expect too much from the one person we marry.
• That affairs have gone on for centuries, and have been largely accepted in many cultures, they continue to occur but have recently become to be viewed more negatively.
• That in our individualistic and sometimes entitled view of life in modern times leads us to act on the “lure of unlived lives” or “the return of exiled emotions.”
• And finally, that maybe monogamy and fidelity are being redefined, should be redefined, to fit our current culture.

As someone who has worked to rebuild marriages after betrayal using various other techniques – including those from the Gottman Institute – these ideas seemed antithetical, almost heretical, to the work I’ve been doing for years. In some ways, although she states otherwise, it was as though she was encouraging infidelity, or at least affirming it.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, or perhaps it is my Midwest mindset, or it could be that I am not progressive enough in these matters, but my training in Frankl’s psychology of meaning cried out in my reading, “where is the responsibleness in these decisions?!” Where is the struggle to improve a relationship and find new meaning in choosing to step out to satisfy ones varying sexual desires? Where is the stoicism of problem solving and working through dysfunction in the act of choosing to have your “needs met” elsewhere?

It just didn’t work for me. Her suggestions, more so than not, seemed to lead to a lack of integrity, or an impasse of honesty. At the very least, the decisions towards non-monogamy seemed to lead to situations of negative emotions, meaningless, and existential vacuum, despite the positive spin she tried to put on it.

Maybe it’s just me – I would be interested in your opinion, if you have read or choose to read the book. Is she too permissive? Am I to conservative in my view of fidelity? What keeps your relationship intact in this time of changing traditions and values? If you have suffered through betrayal, what helped you through? – Dan