Book review: Affairs by Juliet Rosenfeld 

I’m on my way to Paris for the weekend, the city of romance, and so it seems appropriate to write about one of the most common dilemmas that couples bring to therapy -  Affairs. 

In five anonymous real life stories, Juliet Rosenfeld’s book illustrates how there is more than meets the eye when it comes to these very personal transgressions. At the end of each account, Rosenfeld offers a ‘formulation’ explaining the powerful gravitational ‘pull of the past’ that draws the people she’s written about to risk everything for the sake of an affair. 

Most people don’t plan to have an affair, it’s something that happens to them, sneaks up on them and quickly escalates, as if they’ve been primed … and perhaps they have. If there could be a recipe for an affair it might look like this: Combine unresolved trauma of the past with an unfulfilled relationship of the present, add a dash of opportunity and you have the classic ingredients for a potential affair. Furthermore, if two people unconsciously recognise aspects of these ingredients, an intoxicating feeling of ‘being seen’ unfolds.

There is a hyper focus on ‘being seen’ in a way that perhaps your partner doesn't, because what the star-crossed lovers see is unencumbered by the monotony of every day domestic life. This allows for projections to flourish and fantasy to override reality. One can understand why statistically most relationships that start off as an affair don’t last. Long term relationships are contingent upon tolerating the disappointments of reality, therefore a relationship founded on fantasy will unlikely survive (though I have successfully worked with couples who met as an affair!).

The couples Rosenfeld wrote about were for the most part unhappily married. Not to say that people in happy marriages don’t cheat, I have seen this in my consulting room on numerous occasions. But whilst a marriage can be perfectly copacetic, the individual in the relationship may be unaware of unmet needs. An affair can act as a living, breathing vehicle to recognising these needs or it could be a seductive distraction from something deeper and darker. For example, unresolved grief or fear of mortality.

The first chapter titled ‘Professor M’ illustrates how an affair, though torturous as it was when it ended, was developmental. After much processing with her therapist, Professor M came to the conclusion that it was a 'gift this man came into her life'. Fortunately for Professor M, her marriage was unscathed and the affair brought an awareness of something in her internal world that had been in arrested development and needed to be worked through. However, many people don’t delve deeper and continue to enact/reenact whilst risking the emotional lives of their loved ones. Furthermore, they can become addicted to the risk which is part and parcel of an illicit affair.

So if one does find themselves on the precipice an affair, whether emotional or physical, ask not ‘should I leave my partner’… rather, ask ‘what does this represent for me’. With the help of a skilled therapist, one can zoom out to see if it’s symptomatic of unacknowledged inter/intrapersonal conflicts, some which may belong to the present or to the past.

Finally, I found Rosenfelds book refreshing in its non-judgmental tone as she attempts to destigmatize affairs whilst illustrating just how destructive the fall out can be for all parties involved. The trials that Rosenfelds subjects go through reminds me of a quote by the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca who said ‘a gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials’.

My train has just arrived at Gare du Nord and coincidentally ’Love S.O.S’ by Justice is playing on my French music playlist. 

Au revoir!