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A new marriage guidance book is causing quite a stir in America. Authored by Mira Kirshenbaum, an American psychotherapist with 30 years experience in marriage counselling, it says that an extra-marital affair can actually help save your marriage, acting as an SOS call to encourage an unhappy couple to work on their troubled union.

In her latest book, When Good People Have Affairs , Kirshenbaum also argues that society today lacks a sympathetic view of infidelity and that adulterers are well-intentioned people who have simply made a mistake, reports The Belfast Telegraph.
"Cheating on your spouse isn't a moral act, but most men and women who have affairs are good people who made a mistake," writes Kirshenbaum. "They never thought that it would happen to them but, suddenly, they're in this complicated, dangerous situation."

She also insists that adulterers should never own up about their cheating because doing so will only cause more pain and heartache.

Kirshenbaum believes that the 'right kind' of affair can have a positive effect. "You could think of it as a necessary medical procedure. If your marriage is in cardiac arrest, an affair can be a defibrillator."
But Kirshenbaum - whose husband betrayed her when he had an affair - has been criticised by some peers. "The defibrillator is applied to somebody's heart when it has actually stopped and they are at the point of death," said Professor Leila Collins, a counselling psychologist and principal lecturer at Middlesex University. "If a relationship is at the point of death you terminate it."

Collins also points out that infidelity is rarely between the two people involved - that often spouses, innocent children and the wider family circle become unwitting collateral damage.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist whose partner left her a student 14 years her junior, said Kirshenbaum's book made her "blood boil". "As one of the millions betrayed then abandoned by an adulterous partner, I cannot stomach the ceaseless compulsion to shed guilt and shame, the editing-out of the hurt and chaos caused within the family, the long-term damage to kids," she wrote in the Evening Standard.

In the book, Kirshenbaum lists some 'hair-raising' statistics that may cause some married couples to pause for thought: overall, she claims, some 47% of married men are likely to become emotionally or sexually involved with someone else, as are 35% of women.

For those concerned that their infidelity means the imminent demise of their marriage, she lists a few pointers. She says you should stay with your partner if your affair falls into certain categories, including trysts that are 'accidental', related to a mid-life crisis or some kind of attempt at 'revenge'.

source: TOI