Infidelity: A Memoir - Softcover

Pearlman, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1945814543 ISBN 13: 9781945814549

Publisher: Dzanc Books, 2018

Synopsis

"Thirty years. Thirty years of my life have been gifted to this man. How do I prevent making the rest of my life a testament to his infidelity? If I leave him, it's because of this. If I stay, I will always think of it. How do I make my story different from Mother's, from Lala's? How do I make it right for me?"
She thought they were the perfect couple. She authored Keep the Home Fires Burning: How to Have an Affair with Your Spouse and appeared on Oprah, Donahue, and Sally Jessy Raphael as an expert on the joys of sexual monogamy. She was a marriage and family therapist who counseled patients coping with cheating spouses. She believed she had escaped her family legacy of marital infidelity. She was wrong. After thirty years of marriage and three children, Ann Pearlman discovered her husband’s affair with another woman.

In Infidelity, Pearlman tells the true story of the devastating effect of adultery across three generations of American women, beginning with her grandmother, Lala, whose husband fell in love with another woman during the Depression and maintained the relationship until his death. The unfortunate legacy continued with Lala’s daughter, Nora, who wed a womanizing entrepreneur, Pearlman’s father. An award-winning author, columnist, psychotherapist, marriage and family therapist, Pearlman draws on sociological and anthropological works as well as her own experience to write out her rage, pain, depression, doubts, and, eventually, her journey back to confidence and strength.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

ted that an alarming four out of five married couples experience infidelity. Growing up with a mother and grandmother who painfully accepted the existence of their respective husbands’ mistresses, Ann Pearlman set out to beat the odds. She embarked on a career as a therapist who helped hundreds of unhappily married patients build new lives. She also found a husband with whom she felt secure. But after thirty years of rewarding marriage and parenthood, she discovered that her husband was having an affair with one of his art students. Infidelity is the moving account of her shattered trust, and the women in her family who endured similar wounds in the radically different climate of America before 1960.

Written in precisely drawn, vivid scenes, Infidelity traces Pearlman’s first understanding of unfaithfulness through her father. A gifted and intelligent man, he took the time to explain Freud’s theories to her during dinner, a meal often serv

From the Back Cover

"An unusually vivid and striking account of the effects of men’s affairs on their wives and daughters...an immediate, personal story of depth and power, as gripping as a good novel."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Ann Pearlman’s honesty digs into the reader’s memory bank and makes it acceptable to have those memories we thought were too horrible to share. She has handled infidelity with a sense of humor and a delicacy that could break the heart."
--Oakland Press

"She has a sharp eye for detail and is adept at expanding her discussion of infidelity’s pain and relationship-mutating qualities."
--Kirkus Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Dzanc Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1945814543
• ISBN 13: 9781945814549
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274