Can Monogamy Be Hot?
A funny thing happened on the way to splitting up for Britta and Lawrence, a divorcing couple in mediation with us long ago. They started an affair. They told no one about it, including Laura and me, their mediators. Their kids didn’t know, or their closest friends. In fact, I learned about it only years later, when they called to schedule couples therapy with me. They were trying to decide whether to get married again. Having an affair in the middle of your divorce is untypical behavior, to say the least. But the story of Britta and Lawrence will have a familiar ring to it for therapists who work with couples, and it raises some difficult questions. Russell Collins “Listen, we loved each other. That wasn’t what the divorce was about,” Lawrence explained to me in their first counseling session. “But we were sexually and romantically just … burned out and done.” Britta filled out the picture with her own description of increasing loneliness, despite caring about Lawrence as her friend a
