By Caitriona Palmer
Wednesday Jun 25 2008

Are you currently engaged in an extra-marital affair? Do you feel guilty about the illicit meetings with your lover, the late night phone calls, the skulking behind your spouse's back? Is all of this deceit and confusion beginning to get the better of you?

Well, relax. Because an eminent marriage therapist says that an affair can help save your marriage and that most adulterers are good, kind people who are simply seeking real happiness and love.

In her latest book, When Good People Have Affairs, Mira Kirshenbaum -- an American psychotherapist with 30 years experience in marriage counselling -- argues that society today lacks a sympathetic view of infidelity and that adulterers are well intentioned people who have simply made a mistake.

"Cheating on your spouse isn't a moral act, but most men and women who have affairs are good people who made a mistake," writes Kirshenbaum. "They never thought that it would happen to them but, suddenly, they're in this complicated, dangerous situation."

She also insists that adulterers should never own up about their cheating because doing so will only cause more pain and heartache.

Ms Kirshenbaum, who is the clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute, a relationship therapy centre in Boston, Massachusetts, believes that the "right kind" of affair can be positive, acting as an SOS call to encourage an unhappy couple to work on their troubled union.

"If handled right, an affair can be therapeutic, give clarity and jolt people from their inertia," she says.

"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 Kirshenbaum -- whose own husband betrayed her when he had an affair with another woman -- has been criticised by some peers for suggesting that infidelity could be used as a quick-fix solution to an ailing marriage.

"The defibrillator is applied to somebody's heart when the heart has actually stopped and they are at the point of death," said Professor Leila Collins, a counselling psychologist and principal lecturer at Middlesex University. "If a relationship is at the point of death you terminate it.

"Why not be authentic and truthful and say to somebody, 'Look, I don't think this relationship is working. Either we need help or we need to part'," she said.

Even Kirshenbaum's own inner circle are bemused by her philosophy. Why publish a self-help book for "creeps" who betray their spouses, Kirshenbaum's friend asked her?

It's not the creeps she's trying to help, Kirshenbaum insists: "They don't lie awake at night feeling guilty and scared, wondering what to do."

Her book is targeted at the cheating spouse with a conscience, she says. The person who is wracked with guilt and shame by their infidelity but needs some clarity and understanding to navigate a way out of their morass.

"These people are suffering terribly and need to be relieved of their sense of guilt and shame because those emotions are paralysing.

"It's because they're good people that they lie awake at night feeling guilty and scared, agonising about how to avoid hurting the people they care about," she says.

But Collins argues that there is hardly anything "good" about an affair.

She says that infidelity is rarely between the two people involved -- that often spouses, innocent children and the wider family circle become unwitting collateral damage.

She also rejects Kirshenbaum's notion that an affair can be used to good effect as an impetus for change within a troubled marriage.

"Let us not legitimise acts of betrayal and hurting other people's feeling by saying, 'Well, maybe it did me good'," she says.

"Well maybe falling into a manhole does me good in that I look where I'm going. But I really would prefer not to fall into a manhole."

Collins -- an experienced marriage counsellor in her own right -- does not believe that those engaged in affairs are 'bad' people. She simply thinks that there are better ways of dealing with problems and difficulties in relationships other than betrayal.

"I am not saying that these are bad people. I am not saying that they are doing something bad," she says. "Betrayal is a bad thing to do. It is an unkind thing to do. A kinder person does not go and betray their partner.

"I am not judging the person. I am disapproving of the act of betrayal."

Kirshenbaum insists that she's not encouraging people to have affairs, that she -- from painful personal experience -- understands how 'hurtful and destructive' an affair can be.

"I know exactly what it feels like to be the victim of an affair," she writes.

"I felt violated, betrayed, devastated. I felt my whole marriage had been a lie. I hated and despised my husband. He was a horrible person who'd done a horrible thing."

But upon examining her own role in the marriage, Kirshenbaum says that she realised that she wasn't blameless, that she was overworked and had "pushed him away".

"Gradually, I realised he was a good person who'd behaved horribly," she says.

Kirshenbaum's forgiveness of her husband's infidelity is admirable but not everyone who has been betrayed can express such Gandhi-esque serenity.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist whose partner left her for "fresh flesh" in the form of a student 14 years her junior, said Kirshenbaum's book made her "blood boil".

"As one of the millions betrayed then abandoned by an adulterous partner, I cannot stomach the ceaseless compulsion to shed guilt and shame, the editing-out of the hurt and chaos caused within the family, the long-term damage to kids," she wrote in the Evening Standard.

"I should find out where Kirshenbaum lives and climb on to her roof in silly clothes to protest against these insults that add to the injuries of the betrayed, the hurt that stays for ever."

In the book, Kirshenbaum lists some 'hair-raising' statistics that may cause some married couples to pause for thought: overall, she claims, some 47pc of married men are likely to become emotionally or sexually involved with someone else, as are 35pc of women.

The author -- who has written 10 other books about relationships -- insists that those who do cross the fidelity line should think twice before confessing.

"This is the one area in which the truth usually creates far more damage in the long run," she says. "A lot of people confess because they feel they just have to be more honest. Well, honesty is great. But it's a very abstract moral principle."

There are two important exceptions, says Kirshenbaum: if the adulterer has not practised safe sex or if discovery of the affair is imminent.

Even some of Kirshenbaum's detractors agree with her that no matter how guilty you feel, it's better to stay silent.

"If you are coming out to confess and let it all out, remember you are going to hurt somebody badly," said Professor Collins.

"If you can keep it to yourself and draw a line underneath and forget about it and not do it again, then it's best to keep it to yourself."

Throughout the book, Kirshenbaum lists 17 reasons people have affairs including the see-if affair, the distraction affair and the sexual-panic affair.

For those concerned that their infidelity means the imminent demise of their marriage, she lists a few pointers.

She says you should stay with your partner if your affair falls into certain categories, including trysts that are 'accidental', related to a mid-life crisis or some kind of attempt at 'revenge'.

But the marriage may be over if the affair is about meeting un-met needs, making up for missed out experiences or a way of intentionally sabotaging the union.

Leila Collins warns that using an affair as a temperature gauge to decide the fate of a marriage is a reckless approach and not the way to resolve a troubled relationship.

"What I'm saying is, think before you act," she says. "Tread gently because you're treading on people's hearts and trust."

- Caitriona Palmer

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