It is easy to vilify the one who has been unfaithful, says Annalisa Barbieri, but they are often firing a distress flare on a relationship that’s already in trouble
My parents divorced when I was five. I still remember the night they sat me and my sisters down, and Dad told us that he and Mum didn’t love each other any more. I remember clinging on to his hand as he walked down the stairs on the day he left home, and afterwards crying to my mother late at night about how I missed him.
I am now in my mid-20s. When I was a teenager, Mum told me they divorced because he had been unfaithful. She said he had been under a lot of pressure at work, but that when her father died, she needed to support her mother, and my father felt he wasn’t getting the emotional help he needed.
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