Beyond the trauma of betrayal: reconsidering affairs in couples therapy.

When I was presented with the opportunity to write an essay about infidelity, I was very gladFalbeit cautiousFto have a forum to discuss ideas that have been stewing in my mind for more than 25 years. Having been born and raised in Latin America, I have often felt a sense of cultural dissonance with my colleagues in the United States about this topic. Since the 1970s, when I started practicing and then teaching family therapy in Chicago, I have been concerned about the way affairs are typically approached in our field, both conceptually and clinically. Lately, as a new wave of fundamentalism has crept into American culture, I have felt that it is even more critical to reflect upon our premises. I am thinking of the witch hunt that led to President Clinton’s impeachment, and of the recent presidential election won on a platform of ‘‘absolute’’ family values. In this climate, I appreciate the opportunity to put on my bicultural lenses and examine the ways in which the moral imperatives of the dominant, puritanical culture may be penetrating our clinical work. Moreover, I welcome the chance to bring Laura Kipnis and Stephen Mitchell into our discussion. These two authors, because they already think outside our frame, encourage us to question our assumptions and to refocus our professional conversation about affairs from the almost exclusive angle of their impact to a broader framework that starts with the emotional forces that compel individuals to have affairs in the first place. Kipnis and Mitchell, who are not family therapists, deconstruct prevalent ideas about the institution of marriage, and in so doing, they highlight the primacy of desire and romantic love in our lives. As they recognize the contradictions inherent in our experiences of love, they encourage us to delve into love’s irrational dimensions, inviting us to embrace more complexity and more ambiguity. My main objectives in this article are to use Kipnis’s and Mitchell’s ideas to spur us to reconsider our assumptions, and to bring in the possibility of understanding and working with affairs within a multicultural perspective. The premises to be discussed allow us flexibility to address multiple values and meanings, to take into account nuances of specific situations, and