Esther Perel

Are you pleased this is over?

Every affair will redefine a relationship.

And every couple will determine what the legacy of the affair will be.

But affairs are here to stay, and they're not going away.

And the dilemmas of love and desire, they don't yield just simple answers of black and white and good and bad and victim and perpetrator.

Betrayal in a relationship comes in many forms.

There are many ways that we betray our partner, with contempt, with neglect, with indifference, with violence.

Sexual betrayal is only one way to hurt a partner.

In other words, the victim of an affair is not always the victim of the marriage.

Now, you've listened to me, and I know what you're thinking.

She has a French accent.

She must be pro-affair.

So you're wrong.

I am not French.

And I'm not pro-affair.

But because I think that good can come out of an affair, I have often been asked this very strange question, would I ever recommend it?

Now, I would no more recommend you to have an affair than I would recommend you to have cancer.

And yet we know that people who have been ill often talk about how their illness has yielded them a new perspective.

The main question that we've been asked since I arrived at this conference when I say I do a talk about infidelity is for or against?

I said, yes.