Part of The School of Life's Love series,   Affairs   delves into the question of affairs and why they happen so often One in four people will be involved in an affair during their lifetime. Rather than condemning affairs as morally corrupt, this book helps us understand them. Society tells us that affairs are unequivocally bad. Our culture casts those who engage in them as monsters, and their victims as deserving of unending sympathy. But most of us will be involved in an affair during our lifetimes. This book ventures beyond the cultural caricatures and provides psychological context for this entirely common occurrence. This book seeks to help us through affairs, offering couples a better understanding of each other's motivations and moods-and the practical tools needed to save a relationship. PRACTICAL ADVICE ON AFFAIRS:  and on dealing with the aftermath of an affair. - WHY DO AFFAIRS HAPPEN?:  historical and psychological framework to help us understand affairs-both the lead up, and the aftermath. - A FRESH TAKE ON INFIDELITY:  and how it impacts our lives. - PART OF THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S LOVE SERIES:  focusing on the joys and sorrows of relationships. The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Through our range of books, gifts and stationery we aim to prompt more thoughtful natures and help everyone to find fulfillment. The School of Life is a resource for exploring self-knowledge, relationships, work, socializing, finding calm, and enjoying culture through content, community, and conversation. You can find us online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the world offering classes, events, and one-to-one therapy sessions. The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over 6 million YouTube subscribers, 351,000 Facebook followers, 218,000 Instagram followers and 163,000 Twitter followers. The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane. The Pains of Affairs We may think the problems are only too obvious, but they will probably surprise us all the same. It is worth an attempt to look ahead at a few of them – not that they can (or even should) ever constitute a decisive argument against what we are planning: Everyone is in tears We begin with the hope that we can make ourselves happy, delight the lover and leave the long-term partner in pleasant ignorance. But as the story unfolds, the lover grows furious at our inability to commit, the partner is crushed by our betrayal – and we are in anxious, agonised tears at the chaos we have unleashed. There may be some children crying in the background as well – and if we are properly unlucky, moralistic neighbours or newspapers decrying our beastliness as well. We cannot be blamed for our aspirations for contentment; but we can be roundly condemned for imagining that we could turn any of them into a sustainable reality. We are denied a belief in our innocence It had seemed, at first, as if we had managed to escape the gravitational pull of our psychological weaknesses. We were no longer going to have to feel anxious, unconfident or ashamed. But soon enough, we have been reintroduced to our shadow sides – with an added disadvantage: we can no longer furiously blame the partner for preventing us from acceding to our better selves. Blame is general For a time, we had the satisfaction of knowing that the problem lay firmly with the partner: they were the ones holding us back, stifling our sex lives, hampering our ability to express ourselves professionally, dampening our mood and ruining our chances. But the affair has revealed a more awkward truth: that many of the greatest problems that hound us are endemic to us, or even to existence. We can see that we had previously experienced the pains of life in the company of our partner, but not because of our partner. The lover is human We had to believe, in order to justify this adventure, that our lover did not partake of the ordinary mortal condition. We had to trust that they had not been touched by the stubborn errors and follies of regular humankind; that they would be free of the catalogue of sins we had noted over so many years in our partner’s behaviour. But as the unfair unfolded, we have been inducted into a basic and sobering realisation: that the sins were not limited to our unfortunate spouse, that the apparent angel could also at points grow tetchy, unreasonable, censorious, sharp-tongued and uninterested. We feel ready to accept a bitter truth: that love involves a process of exaggerating the difference between one person and another. The dashed dreams of infidelity So long as an affair remained only an abstract possibility, it could also be a source of comfort at moments of particular tension. We could, we t