Wendy Plump

Part psychology, part memoir, Wendy Plump takes a look at how the laws of attraction can crucify the laws of reason. Nothing can stop a sleeper wave from drowning the promises made in marriage unless one refuses to step on the beach during high tide. A refreshingly candid look at how even intelligent people can struggle with controlling one's impulses and how anything can be rationalized in the quest for passion and fulfillment. And why being cuckold does not eliminate one from becoming the adulterer even when it reasonably makes no sense to hurt another in the same way one has been hurt.

The narrative is complicated by what appears to be the couple's sex and love addiction: Bill through his encounters with gentleman's clubs and his affair with a stripper and Wendy through the allure of falling in love over and over again. If the reader is familiar with the terrain of sex and love addiction, then the tell-tale symptoms of an addict in denial parade around in some of the chapters, particularly the chapters in which the author waxes poetic about the risk and the rewards of adultery.

As for Plump's assertion that there is a dearth of literature to help those ensnared in adultery or a lackluster marriage, she is wrong. Albeit, a lot of the canon is faith-based and may repulse those seeking an agnostic or atheistic view, but the literature exists, from Living with Your Husband's Secret Wars by Marsha Means to Every Man's Battle by Steve Arterburn to When Good People Have Affairs by Mira Kirshenbaum to The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and so much more.

Nonetheless, Plump's story is one that needs to be told. The author's unique perspective as both the perpetrator and the victim allows for a more comprehensive study of why betrayal hurts everyone involved including bystanders. A must-read for those interested in relationships.… (altro)

It has to be said that this memoir displays no brilliant skill at neither writing nor teasing out insights out of life experiences, yet there's something likeable and interesting about it. Perhaps it's just that you so rarely hear real-life stories of infidelity and long marriages – at least, I feel the stories commonly told are celebrity ones, not the ordinary couples' like this author and her husband. The insights certainly are a bit banal but the book has the ring of an honest attempt at understanding what went wrong and that kept me going.… (altro)