Customer Reviews

The Monogamy Myth: A Personal Handbook for Recovering from Affairs

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Advice during crisis or trauma can be well intended but infuriating. If you're going to give it or seek it, seems to me there should be a couple of important things present. 1) FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE and 2) Lots and lots of time spent involved with others going through the SAME predicament. In other words, information gathered from a number of sources. Then you've got my interest. I recommend this book if you are recovering from an affair. My heart goes out to you. Or if you are the unfaithful partner trying hard to reconcile and understand your own and your partner's very difficult task; to heal from the repercussions of your actions. This book lead me to BAN (Beyond Affairs Network) on the internet. Great resource for both partners.

Peggy Vaughan is no marriage counselor (or psychotherapist) and it shows--she actually makes sense.

Ms. Vaughan has drawn insightfully from her extensive work with her Beyond Affairs Network. Unlike many self-styled or state-sanctioned (i.e., licensed mental health) experts, Ms. Vaughan actually uses more reality than dogma to inform her advice. For instance, her research shows that the leading variable in managing to stay together well after an affair is the willingness and ability to talk (and talk and talk and talk) about the affair for as long as needed to detoxify and demystify it. (Her research also shows that most people trying to deal with the aftermath of an affair find mental health types considerably les than informed or helpful, despite their beliefs in their great expertise. As a trained and experienced psychotherapist, and a well-respected scholar, I can tell you that the mainstream training and professional literature--not to mention self-help--on infidelity is mostly just dogma that mental health types have concocted out of thin air, not anything anyone has actually discovered through research.)

I do find a one thing a bit troubling. As I see it, she does not give due weight to issues of individual moral responsibility. There are two sides to this. First, she generally denies that adultery reflects personal failings, placing far more emphasis on social factors to explain why adultery takes place. She does not produce an argument, so far as I can see, against the idea of personal failings; rather she poses an alternative to that idea. But to pose an alternative to an idea is not to show the idea wrong.

Second, while she is surely right that our culture has come to glamorize affairs rather than condemn them, and while she is certainly right to place more emphasis on this than conventional "wisdom" allows, it is not all that clear just what causal role social factors play, or which is the chicken and which is the egg.

(1) The same social forces act on ALL of us, but only SOME of us cheat. Thus, the social forces cannot explain why cheaters cheat. Differentiating cheaters from others requires looking at variables on which they differ from others, not on forces common to all.

2) Ms. Vaughan's "evidence" that adultery has increased significantly in the last few decades, when sex has become more public and less closeted, depends to a great extent on generally-unrespected researchers like Shere Hite. Her figures on the rate of adultery are higher than others I've seen (and I've read a lot on this subject). So far as I can tell, we do not really know that there has been a meaningful rise in adultery to accompany the rise in glamorized sexuality (including glamorized icons of adultery).

3) Even if there is a rising rate of adultery, and even if it correlates the social forces Ms. Vaughan mentions and a rising rate of adultery, it does not follow that one causes the other. Alternative hypotheses can explain both. One such alternative would be that both are results of increasing egoism and hedonism, which could result from any of a number of factors--consumerism, the decline of Heaven-oriented religious belief, decline of community life, commodity-centered views of the person growing out of capitalist ideology, etc. Another might be that both reflect the decline of patriarchal social structures. Surely others could be framed. The point is that we just don't know.

I nonetheless think that, on balance, she is the wisest person writing on the subject. Ms. Vaughan possesses good data on the effects of adultery, and she possesses good sense. She also possesses a crusader's heart. If, maybe, she goes a bit overboard, as compared to us academic types--well, there never was a successful crusade led by timid generals.

I want to add that several months after I read this book and wrote the first version of this review, I called upon Ms. Vaughan for help in dealing with my own situation in dealing with my wife's adultery with my "best friend" of thirty years. Quite honestly, I believe she saved my marriage. My gratitude to her is beyond words.

And by bizarre coincidences, it turns out that we grew up in the same place, her dad and mine were fishing buddies, I used to buy gasoline at her dad's service station, my dad preached her dad's funeral, and our lives have run eerily parallel courses.

As a result, as you can imagine, I thought about removing from this review any criticism whatsoever. But I decided not to do so. I hope my heartfelt endorsement of this book means all the more precisely because I don't simply find it ratifying my own beliefs.

I am altogether certain that this book and Ms. Vaughan's counsel did more to save my marriage than all the dozens of other things I read in recovering from the most horrific devastation of my life.

Peggy showed me how to better deal with my feelings and handle the situation in a thoughtful manner. The advice she gives is very timely. This book really illustrates what usually happens during an affair and how each individual can best cope with what is going on during this awful time. It has given me the ability to start moving ahead once again with my life.

It's a quick-read and very helpful for anyone in the acute stage of dealing with an affair....from the spouse or the infidel perspective. But, it's not a 5-star read. Too focused on societal causes rather than personal responsibility, and the potential 'impact on kids' is covered too superficially as a consideration after 'money' and before 'home and garden'. But it's still a solid book!

The Monogamy Myth is one of the best, most balanced, most practical books to inform you and help you to recover, written by someone who has lived through this. If you choose only to read a handful of books to aid you in recovery, or inform you about affair-prevention, I would recommend this be one of them.

By reading only the title of the book, one may get the impression that Peggy Vaughan is suggesting that monogamy itself is a myth. She is not, quite the contrary. In fact, James and Peggy Vaughan have now enjoyed over 30 years of monogamy since their discovery of what it REALLY takes to be monogamous. This book is not only a practical guide for any individual or couple wishing to recover from affairs it is a book for anyone wishing to be informed about affairs, both recovery and prevention.

The Monogamy Myth, Ms. Vaughan refers to is the fact that our society largely professes to be monogamous, when in fact statistically at least one partner will have an affair in 80% of marriages. The myth is that we as a culture profess to embrace monogamy, while we are not practicing it. This book shows you how to make monogamy your truthful experience, and not just a myth in your marriage.

Vaughan writes, "The effect of believing that most marriages or committed relationships are monogamous is that if an affair happens, it's seen strictly as a personal failure of the people involved. This leads to personal blame, personal shame, wounded pride, and almost universal feelings of devastation."

Anyone wishing to truly recover from affairs needs to at some point be able to begin to frame their personal situation in a larger context of how affairs happen, and what the common patterns are.

This book will show the faithful spouse how to get beyond the tendency to blame ourselves for the affair, in fact it shows us how to get beyond the tendency to blame altogether. In the end, blaming is not productive towards healing.

It will help each person involved to take responsibility for the right things, and that leads to positive change. When the right people take responsibility for the right things, you begin to discover the root causes of the affair/s, leading not only to healing, but to monogamy.

For years there has been a vast degree of ignorance around the understanding of affairs. When it comes to affairs, ignorance is not bliss. But how can people know, when for so long, it has been socially unacceptable to discuss affairs (unless discussing a Hollywood movie star). This groundbreaking book is the beginning of the end of the silence. It's about time we all knew the truth! Thank you Peggy for breaking the silence and giving us an invaluable resource to help us actually be monogamous (and fulfilled in love), instead of just professing or hoping to be.

This book is simply first rate. I have read at least a couple of dozen books on the subject, when I came completely undone after I discovered that my spouse had utterly betrayed our commitment to each other. This book is simply the best.

A couple of reviewers say Ms. Vaughan puts too much emphasis on social factors. I don't think that's quite fair. Ms. Vaughan does talk insightfully about personal factors that dispose some people to cheat. She talks about "pushes" and pulls" toward infidelity, and all of them are personal factors.

And maybe the academic types haven't nailed down all the causal factors, but common sense says that our society's romanticizing infidelity has to have SOME causal effect. And it certainly doesn't make ANY kind of sense to assume that the effect is to deter infidelity!

It is a little odd that one reviewer praises Ms. Vaughan's common sense, while also chiding her for not meeting the standards of ivory-tower researchers. (And that reviewer makes a logical mistake, himself, in criticizing Ms. Vaughan's logic. While the social changes in our culture may not be appropriate to explain why one person rather than another cheats, they could certainly explain a rising RATE of adultery in society.)

People who agree that the book is great can disagree on particular points. The important thing is that this book will give you sound advice--and no silliness to frustrate you.

My husband and I have been recovering from his 2 1/2 year infidelity for a year now. This book and "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass were the TWO absolutely most helpful things to get us through this time of crisis. I appreciate the courage of Peggy Vaughn to go public with the infidelity and the road towards recovery. I would have felt absolutely suicidal and alone without knowing that others had recovered from this. It is such an isolating and frightening experience. I agree with her - we need to get the public conversation going. People need to start talking about infidelity in a PRODUCTIVE way - not just a titillating way - if we are going to do anything to help prevent, recover, and heal from it. Also if we are going to do anything to keep families healthy and sane after its devastating effects.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is open to gathering insight on what it takes to have an honest, loving marriage or relationship. This book is not only informative and interesting, but also is a very easy read.

It has been nearly three years since my partner's affair, and it is only after the full process of healing, and all the stages and setbacks that go along with it, that I choose to write an outstanding review. Not only was this book helpful, but all of Peggy Vaughn's online resources are helpful as well. Every situation is different, and every person is different. Some betrayed partners may be incapable of letting go of the anger and bitterness. And some betrayers do not deserve or earn another chance. If you are in a position where this terrible, but sadly common, tragedy has touched your relationship, but you wish to rebuild trust and you and your partner are both ready and willing to work - this book and others with a similar approach and content WILL help you get there! It's not easy, it's not quick, but for us it has worked and been worthwhile. I am not being trite or naive when I say, quite honestly, that our relationship is stronger than ever. Our marriage was only a couple years old when this happened, but now I have high hopes for our future.

In any activity or enterprise there is always that elusive "gold standard" by which all else is judged. In the arena of books about affairs and understanding them, "The Monogamy Myth" stands at the top as the one book with both a solid research basis and the insights of one who has personal experience with the issue.

In a friendly, personal and non judgemental way, Vaughan steers you through the mental and mythical clutter that has been created over the years about affairs. Avoiding clinical claptrap, she provides insights into both sides of the issue offering important understanding about the betrayers and the betrayed. The book offers realistic and effective help for those struggling with recovery from the unimaginable devastation an affair causes.

If you can only buy one book on the subject, this should be it.