"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.