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What Kind of Adulterer Are You?
By Andy McSmith, Independent UK
Posted on June 10, 2008, Printed on June 15, 2008
https://www.alternet.org/story/87528/
There are 17 basic reasons why someone who is not entirely selfish or
immoral might have cheat on their spouse, says a new book by an eminent
American therapist. Mira Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut
Hill Institute, in Boston, Massachusetts, has drawn some flak for
suggesting in her new book that many adulterers are good, kind people,
and that affairs can help a marriage.
She
also advises husbands or wives who have affairs not to go home and own
up, because discovery of the truth can cause more damage than
concealment. She maintains that divorce may not be such a bad thing in
some circumstances.
Having worked in psychotherapy for 30 years,
Kirshenbaum is well known in the USA as an author and broadcaster. The
child of holocaust survivors, she was born in Uzbekistan, and arrived
in the USA at the age of four. She is now a grandmother.
So, what
are those 17 reasons for two-timing your spouse? The list here is taken
from Kirshenbaum's new book, When Good People Have Affairs, with her
own brief explanations of what they mean. Meanwhile, the Independent
has trawled world history to search for appropriate case histories.
Break out into selfhood
Kirshenbaum writes: "For a long time there are forces in your life that have opposed your being yourself, expressing yourself.
The
affair is the best way you knew how to stand up for who you are."
Virginia Woolf's husband, Leonard Woolf, is reckoned to have been more
of a guardian than a lover. She broke out into a torrid affair with
Vita Sackville-West, on whom she based the novel Orlando.
Accidental
Kirshenbaum writes: "You weren't looking for it ... but you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Vivienne
Haigh-Wood married the poet T S Eliot weeks after they met. He later
confessed: "To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it
brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land." But she
does not seem to have intended to betray him quite so soon. It was just
that Bertrand Russell happened to drop by.
Sexual panic
Kirshenbaum
writes: "You feel your sexual powers are waning and in a kind of panic,
you have an affair to prove you're still as sexually able as you were."
The career of John Prescott was, outwardly, a story of success, the
former ship's waiter who rose to be Deputy Prime Minister, but he never
got over his sense of inferiority. In his sixties, he seduced Tracey
Temple, a civil servant 26 years his junior.
Let's kill this relationship (and see if it comes back to life)
Kirshenbaum
writes: "The idea is that once an affair is discovered it will deliver
a blow that will either kill your relationship or make it stronger."
No
sooner had Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine than he was off to war,
when rumours surfaced that she was having an affair. When he returned
to France, she never cheated on him again.
Mid-marriage crisis
Kirshenbaum writes: "Without time and attention marriages get stale or feel full of problems, so ... you have an affair."
David
and Victoria Beckham have done well to stay together. Plenty of women
would not mind a turn with the footballer, and one or two claim to have
had that experience. "No one said marriage was going to be easy,"
Victoria admitted.
Trading up
Kirshenbaum writes:
"You've moved ahead in life but your spouse has stayed behind. Having
an affair is your way of being with someone you think better matches
your circumstances."
Horatio Nelson was an unknown young seaman
when he met and married the widow, Frances Nisbet, who already had a
son. Eleven years later, in 1798, he was a national hero, after winning
the Battle of the Nile, and took up with Lady Emma Hamilton. Their
affair was a national scandal, and the birth of their child had to be
kept secret.
Heating up your marriage
Kirshenbaum
writes: "Unconsciously, you're hoping that the affair itself or your
spouse finding out about it will make things more passionate..." In
1907, President Woodrow Wilson's wife, Ellen, was suffering depression
when Wilson met Mary Hulbert. Whether they had an affair is disputed,
but the friendship caused Ellen pain. He introduced her to Ellen; the
women shopped together, and the marriage revived.
I just needed to indulge myself
Kirshenbaum
writes: "It may not be noble, but the fact is that you've been working
so hard that an affair is the best way you know how to give yourself
some pleasure."
Poor Monica Lewinsky is fated to be remembered
for the rest of her life for the misjudgement she made at 21, as an
intern in the White House, by allowing herself to be the latest in the
line of women to reward Bill Clinton for all his hard work. "He talked
about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was
the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert," she said in her
book on the affair, ghosted by Andrew Morton.
Ejector seat
Kirshenbaum
writes: "You want out of your marriage but you're afraid to just quit,
so you're hoping that an affair will end things for you - either your
spouse will kick you out or your lover will give you the courage to
quit."
"There were three of us in this marriage," Diana ,
Princess of Wales, complained. Indeed there were. Prince Charles seems
to have her married out of a sense of duty rather than love. A
telephone conversation with Camilla Parker Bowles, as she then was, was
taped and broadcast, no one knows who by. "The trouble is I need you
several times a week ... Oh. God, I'll just live inside your trousers
or something. It would be much easier!" he proclaimed.
See if
Kirshenbaum
writes: "You're in a see-if affair if your motive is to see if what
you've been missing in your marriage can be gotten with someone else
and, if so, does it make as much of a difference as you'd thought."
When
Ryan Phillippe appeared opposite Abbie Cornish in Stop-Loss, this
year's blockbuster about the Iraq war, their professional association
blossomed into romance, causing the gossip writers to observe that she
looked exactly like a younger version of Reese Witherspoon, Phillippe's
estranged wife. Their marriage has ended. He is certainly not the only
man to find solace in a woman who looks like his first love.
Distraction
Kirshenbaum
writes: "Things are hard, frustrating, confusing in your life, and an
affair is a way to distract yourself from all these difficulties by
creating a kind of oasis of romance."
David Lloyd George was a
great one for creating oases of romance after he left his simpler life
behind in Walesto enter the world of high politics. His greatest love
was Frances Stevenson, "my darling pussy", who became his second wife.
Surrogate therapy
Kirshenbaum writes: "You need help of some sort - maybe boosting your self-esteem - and an affair is your way of getting it."
The
Austrian writer Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch had an unexciting
marriage which did not suit his unusual emotional needs, so he signed a
contract with his mistress Fanny Pistor Bogdanoff, making him her slave
for six months, on conditions that she wore fur as often as possible
particularly when she was of a mind to wield the whip. Hence the term
"masochist".
Do I still have it?
Kirshenbaum writes:
"You are getting older, your marriage is stale, and you wonder if you
still can attract someone, get them to fall in love with you, and carry
on a passionate affair."
Pablo Picasso married Olga Khokhlova in
1918, and was legally still married to her when she died in 1955, but
did not let that cramp his style. He also had two children by Françoise
Gilot, who left him in 1953, when he was 71. His drawings show that he
now feared he had become a hideous old man, yet he managed an affair
with 24-year-old Geneviève Laporte, who, in old age, made a fortune
from the pictures he drew of her.
Having experiences I missed out on
Kirshenbaum
writes: "You weren't in many relationships before you got married and
now you feel there are experiences that are important to you that you
missed out on ..."
In 1984, the newly elected Tory MP Edwina
Currie, began an affair with John Major, then a party whip. It lasted
for four years. They were both married. "Politicians admire the element
of the devious in each other," Currie explained.
Revenge
Kirshenbaum
writes: "You're furious at your spouse for some way he or she hurt you,
and you're having an affair as a way to get back, even if your spouse
never learns about the affair."
Being abandoned by her husband,
King Edward II, during a campaign against Robert the Bruce was bad
enough - Queen Isabella, daughter of the King of France, narrowly
missed being a prisoner of the Scots - but what she really could not
stand was his homosexual lovers. So she took up with Roger Mortimer,
raised an army, and overthrew the king.
Mid-life crisis
Kirshenbaum
writes: "These are rare because true mid-life crises are rare. What
people think of as this can be explained by one of the others, such as
the surrogate therapy or the mid-marriage-crisis affair."
John
Profumo was 25 when he was elected to Parliament, and was the youngest
of the Conservative MPs who brought down Neville Chamberlain. But by
46, he was still only a middle ranking minister when he and his wife
met Christine Keeler, then 20. After a few torrid weeks, he ended their
affair. Unfortunately, for him, she could not keep a secret.
Unmet needs
Kirshenbaum
writes: "Whatever it is you need, you're not getting it from your
partner. An affair is your way of getting those needs met."
Catherine
the Great was an innocent German princess when she was sent to Russia
to marry Grand Duke Peter, heir to the throne. He was a disaster as a
husband, and as a tsar. She loved sex and needed to produce an heir.
Having had Peter murdered, she took uncounted lovers, the most famous of whom was Grigori Potemkin, reputedly endowed with more than just a first-class brain.
De Nile, which is NOT a river in Egypt!