I think most of us would agree with these ground rules:  “It’s okay if you don’t agree with someone.  But it’s not okay if you tell a lie about that person.  And it’s despicable if you spread lies about that person.”  You agree with that, don’t you?  And yet a lot of people have been knowingly spreading terrible lies about Mira Kirshenbaum and our new book When Good People Have Affairs.  So it’s time to lay out what the truth is here. 

What is all the more shocking is that people have been telling these lies supposedly in the service of morality, which is odd since the Ten Commandments tell us not to bear false witness.  So now I am going to tell you the truth.  I hope you will join me in helping to spread the truth.  (It’s still okay if you don’t agree with Mira or me!)

How do I know what the truth is?  I’ve worked with Mira for over thirty years.  We’ve been married to each other for even longer than that.  We’ve written all of our books together.  As research director of The Chestnut Hill Institute, I’ve done most of the research on our books (although I should point out that no one has more experience than Mira in working with people affected by an affair).  

Here are the three biggest lies people have been telling, followed by the truth:

1.  The lie: “Mira Kirshenbaum thinks that it’s okay to have affairs.” 

The truth:  This lie comes from a lot of people who have not read our book; they’ve only read the title.  Here’s what Mira actually believes: DON’T HAVE AN AFFAIR.  Affairs are usually destructive, painful, and time wasting.  Mira has NEVER told anyone to have an affair.  Whenever anyone has come to her and said, “I’m thinking of starting an affair.  Should I?” Mira has answered, “No.  Don’t have that affair.  Work on your marriage first.  If you can’t heal your marriage, then get a divorce before you have a relationship with someone else.” 

So what about when the affair has already happened?  Should the cheater be stoned to death?  Should everyone just kill themselves?  Of course not.  While it’s better not to have an affair in the first place, marriages can and do heal after an affair.  In many cases the marriage is stronger than before.  Look: I had a heart attack twenty years ago.  If I’d had a choice, it would have been better not to have a heart attack.  On the other hand, a lot of good came out of it. 

Now do you think my cardiologist should have spent his time telling me how I shouldn’t have had a heart attack?  Of course not.  He spent his time telling me what to do to heal, so I could become better than before.  And that is what happened.  And it’s what can happen with people who have affairs. 

A clinician’s job is to heal.  Not to judge.  Just ask yourself: do you want your doctor to judge you or to heal you?

The only wrinkle here is that sometime an affair reveals the truth that a marriage is dead.  The people weren’t compatible to begin with.  They’d grown too far apart.  Marriages do die.  And so sometimes the best way to help everyone heal is to help them move out of a dead marriage.  But Mira always tries to help heal the marriage first. 

2.  The lie:  “Mira Kirshenbaum thinks that having an affair makes you a good person.”

            The truth:  Here’s what Mira actually thinks:  Sometimes good people do bad things.  Doing a bad thing doesn’t make you a bad person.  If doing a bad thing made you a bad person, we’d all be bad people because we all do bad things from time to time. 

The fact is that we’re all sinners.  We’re all imperfect.  But we’re not all bad people.  Charles Manson is a bad person.  You’re not. 

Why?  Because Manson wants to do bad things.  He thinks the bad things he’s done are really good things.  The bad things he’s done cause an enormous amount of pain.  And he doesn’t care about the pain of the people he’s hurt. 

You’re the opposite.  You may have done bad things, just the way all of us have, but you don’t want to do bad things.  And you know that the bad things you’ve done really are bad things.  And the bad things you’ve done have probably not cause terrible devastation.  And, finally, if you have hurt people you feel badly about it and want to make things better. 

So how can Mira talk about good people having affairs?  Because the people she’s talking about feel terrible at the thought that they have hurt or might hurt the people they care about.  Because they want to heal things as much as they can as fast as they can. 

So why did they have an affair to begin with?  Well, there are seventeen reasons why people have affairs.  (And they’re all in the book.) 

The sad fact is that real people’s real lives are tragically messy.  Let’s take the all-too-common case of a man in a terrible, painful, soul-eroding marriage.  But he’s got two kids, one of whom is special needs.  Duty says, Suck it up.  But this is a guy longing to be with someone who loves him, who cares about him, someone with whom he can be happy.  And let’s say he’s not been looking for such a person, but he does find her.  And he gets involved with her.  Then what should he do?  The whole thing is complicated, messy, and tragic.  It’s only by working thoughtfully, carefully, and responsibly with everyone involved that it can get clear what the best thing to do is. 

But you won’t be able to heal things by calling people bad. 

3.  The lie:  “Mira Kirshenbaum thinks it’s okay to lie.”

            The truth:  I’ve know Mira for forty-four years.  She never lies.  She hates lying.  She is almost incapable of lying.  Even the tiniest white lie is painful for her.  And in her clinical work she always works to create more truth.  She understands how hungry most people in relationships are for more truth, and she works tirelessly to promote that truth. 

            And Mira wants people to tell the truth. 

            But as moral philosophers from Aristotle on down have said, there are occasions when not telling the truth serves a higher moral principle.  After all, the goal of morality is to avoid hurting people and to make the world better, not to follow an abstract set of laws. 

            And there is a very special circumstance when not telling the truth is much the better course of action.  In When Good People … Mira never says that it’s okay to lie about having an affair.  What she does say is that if the affair is over and you want to re-commit to your marriage and heal it, then in that particular case you create more harm more than help by telling about the affair. 

            Just think about it.  Suppose there is a fragile marriage and one spouse has decided to commit to making it better.  Which scenario is best?  In the first, he tells his spouse about an affair he has already ended.  In the second scenario, he doesn’t. 

            Well I can tell you how these scenarios will play out.  In the first scenario, you are adding rage and mistrust and humiliation and deep hurt to an already fragile marriage.  How do you think that helps the marriage heal?  It doesn’t.  It’s like taking the victim of a serious accident and dragging him out of bed and beating him up.  How does that help?  In this case what it does is vastly increase the likelihood that the marriage will fail.

            In the second scenario, by not telling he is not adding any of these difficulties.  With a good therapist and a lot of work, the marriage has a good chance of healing. 

            Now some people say, But don’t you need the truth to heal a marriage?  Of course you do.  You need plenty of truth, especially truths that haven’t been spoken before.  But what truths are these?  They are the truth about what people need and feel.  They are the truth about why one person doesn’t feel loved, and what the other needs to feel close to the other.  And if you tell about an affair that is already over and done with, all these necessary, healing truths get crowded out. 

            Mira is in very good company.  For example, you’d have to say that St. Augustine is an exemplar of the highest moral standards, wouldn’t you?  Of course.  Well, here’s what he says in his treatise “On Lying.”  He says there are eight types of lies.  But some types of lies are not immoral, namely those that hurt no one and benefit someone.  Now not telling your spouse that you’ve had an affair in the past…how is that lie of omission going to hurt your spouse?  It won’t, particularly in the context of your working to heal your marriage, which includes telling a number of difficult but healing truths. 

            And by the way, Mira didn’t always hold this position.  For quite a while she believed that you have to tell the truth about affair from the past that is over and done with.  But guess what?  The evidence accumulated and was clear: there was a lot of damage done by these revelations, and not much good to show for it. 

Conclusion:  Let’s everyone tell the truth about Mira.  I’ve laid out what that truth is.  There is no longer any excuse for lies and distortion. 

Warmly, Dr. Charles Foster

Posted: Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Category: Relationships, News & Notes, Emotional Energy, Decision Making, Uncategorized
Author: Mira and Charles
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