​The relationship is starting to feel like one long fight. Every conversation turns into a row. Every word is taken the wrong way. Sulks, insults and tears replace the laughter and love talk of the early stages of your romance, and before you know it, you and your soulmate are tearing into each other like a pair of pit bulls.

​You have no control over any other person’s behaviour in any way. We are all born with the instinct and ability to have an affair. Marriage is a man-made institution; monogamy goes against natural instincts. But if you are in a committed, sexually exclusive relationship, you make the choice not to jump at any opportunity to hook up with another person. So stop worrying about the other person and focus on affair-proofing yourself. How do you do that? By being involved, awake and open to life.

​For those of you who have not been glued to The Oprah Winfrey Show for the last few years, let me tell you about one of its most controversial moments. The guest on this show was a gutsy gal called Ayelet Waldman. Ayelet is gutsy because she made a shocking confession, first in the New York Times and then on mainstream television. It really got America talking. And just what was Ayelet’s shocking confession?

Our teenage daughter was destroying our marriage. We had always had our ups and downs, but when Kylie turned fourteen, it felt as if our world had ended. The house was like a powder keg, and we couldn’t escape her dark and destructive impact. She was expelled from two schools and went from bad to worse. She developed bulimia, told her psychologist we abused her and smoked weed in the garden.
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I was in a total state, and my first instinct was to fix things. I quit my job and put every ounce of energy into trying to heal Kylie and get things right again. I had to hold myself together in front of her and take her torrent of hate and rage, and when Alan got home I would collapse every night. This went on for three years. It came to a head just before her seventeenth birthday. She turned up at a local police station and filed a case of child abuse against me. I was arrested and charged. That night, after posting bail, Alan sat me down and said the words I had dreaded for so long: ‘It’s her or me.’