A Great Article on Our 17 Different Kinds of Affairs
by Mira and Charles on June 9th, 2008Here’s a fascinating article about our new book from the great UK newspaper the Independent. We know you’ll enjoy it.
What kind of adulterer are you?
There are 17 reasons people cheat, Mira Kirshenbaum says in her book ‘When Good People Have Affairs’, and they’re not all selfish or immoral
By Andy McSmith
Monday, 9 June 2008
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
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
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
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
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,”
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
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
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
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
