Esther Perel makes many interesting points about relationships and about infidelity. She is more intelligent, knowledgeable, insightful, and perceptive than many of the authors who claim to be "relationship experts".
Some of the criticisms of Perel's articles are unwarranted. On survivinginfidelity.com and on other webistes, Perel is criticized for "justifiying affairs", which is not accurate. This criticism probably arises because Perel is focused on trying to understand why people have affairs. For some people, particularly betrayed spouses who have recently discovered their partners affairs, any attempt to understand the perspective of an unfaithful partner is regarded with suspicion or outright hostility. Understandably, explaining infidelity feels like yet another betrayal. For some people, it won't matter how many times Perel writes that as a marital therapist she has witnessed the devastation caused by infidelity in hundreds of couples. As Perel points out repeatedly, there is a big difference between trying to understand why people have affairs and justifying them.
Some of the criticism of Perel's recent article about why people have affairs (in The Atlantic, October 2017) has a political dimension. Some people regard Perel's attempts to understand infidelity as a sign that she is yet another intellectual, wishy washy liberal. Any attempt to understand the motives of philanderers, serial killers, or scofflaws is in fact coddling evildoers. The only appropriate response to criminal behavior is condemnation. Similarly, the only appropriate response to infidelity is to attribute it to the sins of selfishness, immaturity, and dishonesty.
Perel anticipates many of the criticisms of her refusal to condemn affairs or the unfaithful. She knows that she will be labelled amoral or pro-affair. She knows that some people will assume that she approves of deception or betrayal.
Perel is no fool. She does not subscribe to the theory that an affair is always a symptom of a symptom of a bad marrage. She understands the impact of infidelity all too well. She knows that when it comes to affairs "few events in the life of a couple, except illness and death, carry such devastating force". She knows that "the maelstrom of emotions unleashed in the wake of an affair can be so overwhelming that many psychologists turn to the field of trauma to explain the symptoms: obsessive rumination, hypervigilance, numbness and dissociation, inexplicable rages, uncontrollable panic." She understands that forbidden love is utopian and that relationships that begin as extramarital affairs are very unlikely to endure. She knows what divorce attorneys know: "infidelity has become one of the prime motives for divorce in the West".
I do have some questions for Perel. For example, why is Perel so interested in "meaning"? Why is she so interested in "the meaning of affairs"? Why is it so important to understand "the meaning of the affair" for the unfaithful partner? Why does Perel believe that affairs often reflect a "crisis of meaning", a "crisis of identity", or an "existential crisis" in the life of the unfaithful partner? As the daughter of two holocaust survivors, it seems likely that she has read Viktor Frankl. Does her perspective arise out of existential psychotherapy or humanist psychology? What evidence does she have that infidelity is often the consequence of an "existential crisis"? How do other "relationship experts" view her ideas about relationships and infidelity? Are her ideas supported by academic psychologists? Is there any research that supports her ideas?
