Can affairs save your marriage?

Maybe it’s time we stopped seeing infidelity as an enemy, and instead embraced it, a new book argues. Suzanne Harrington reports

IF you love and care for your spouse and family, but your sexual needs are not being met, should you (a) put up and shut up (b) get divorced (c) go to therapy or (d) have a no-strings affair?

In her book The New Rules: Internet Dating, Playfairs and Erotic Power, social scientist Catherine Hakim argues that it should be (d). She suggests we should reexamine our insistence on fidelity and get over the ingrained sexual squeamishness of our “puritan culture”. By ‘we’, she means Britain and America, but says this includes Ireland too — because we also regard affairs as cheating. “Puritan Christian culture can turn marriage into a prison,” she says.