Reacting to the Affair

The psychological process of reacting to the affair opens the book and is one of the three dominant themes considered. In general, the text examines the reactions of only two of the three individuals involved in the affair—that of the hurt partner and that of the unfaithful partner. As the text assumes that the marital relationship will persist beyond the affair, logically the lover's reactions are not fully examined, as the lover is not a component of the rebuilding process.

The first stage of any post-affair recovery process is the initial reaction to the discovery of the affair, and such reactions are the dominant theme of the first major division of the text as well as being a recurrent theme throughout the remainder of the book. Obviously, the reactions of the hurt partner and the unfaithful partner are generally entirely separate and the...