Memoirs about cheating/adultery/infidelity/affairs

January 20, 2024 10:18 AM

Give me your favorites! I would appreciate hearing little bit about why you like it so much, but it’s not at all necessary. Just a link is fine!
posted by wheatlets to Writing & Language (16 answers total)

Happens Every Day

Memoir by an actress whose poetry professor husband has an affair with a visiting English professor. Loved the larger than life-ness of the folks involved. Feels like this should be a novel rather than non-fiction.
posted by forkisbetter at 10:32 AM on January 20, 2024 [4 favorites]

Unexpurgated diaries of Anais Nin will do you: Henry and June, Fire, etc. You may want to skip the part where she has sex with her own father, but he’s sandwiched in between other extramarital affairs.
posted by Riverine at 10:34 AM on January 20, 2024

I was riveted by Happens Every Day. It's full of details and little is held back.

The Heartbreak Diet is a short illustrated memoir. The author's husband is cheating on her with a "running buddy".

I recently read You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith. It's not so revealing with the details of her husband's affair and subsequent divorce, but the writing is great.
posted by loveandhappiness at 11:51 AM on January 20, 2024

You can get a daily dose of these at Chumplady.com. Plus about 10 years of archives. Eye-opening!
posted by Enid Lareg at 12:25 PM on January 20, 2024 [3 favorites]

This is just article length, but…remarkable:

Was I Married to a Stranger? (Belle Burden, Modern Love, NYT)
posted by blue suede stockings at 12:45 PM on January 20, 2024 [4 favorites]

Going in a slightly different angle, I'm in the middle (literally) of Molly Roden Winter's More: A Memoir Of An Open Marriage, which chronicles the many ups and downs (including the complications of children) in her open marriage.
posted by lhauser at 12:52 PM on January 20, 2024

Nora Ephron’s Heartburn. Semi-autobiographical, and very funny.
posted by hollyholly at 1:02 PM on January 20, 2024 [8 favorites]

I remember liking this tale of a French woman who wandered, but it only got 3.7 stars on Goodreads. Give it a try, though.
posted by Dashy at 1:12 PM on January 20, 2024

Someone already mentioned (and linked to) "Happens Every Day" which is a memoir/Roman à clef, and which I was going to recommend as well.

"Blow Your House Down" by Gina Frangello

"Wild Game" by Adrienne Brodeur (her memoir about her mother's affair with her father's friend)

"Infidelity" by Ann Pearlman (about intergenerational impact of affairs)

"Abandon Me" by Melissa Febos (an affair is not the only theme in this memoir comprised of essays but it's a central one)

"Negative Space" by Cristin Leach (same as above -- a memoir comprised of essays, an affair is one of the themes)

"The Big Hurt" by Erika Schickel (about playing out childhood dynamics in one's adult life and marriage)
posted by virve at 1:25 PM on January 20, 2024 [2 favorites]

Not a memoir, but related -
This is a little dated, but it's recognized as a groundbreaker. Never read it, but I heard an interview once.
posted by j_curiouser at 1:47 PM on January 20, 2024

Tad Friend, "In The Early Times." It's about his dad's affairs and his own. As a bonus, you can read his wife's memoir, "Cooking for Mr. Latte," which is a cheery telling of the beginning of their relationship (when he was also cheating on her). They're still together! God bless.
posted by Charity Garfein at 4:00 PM on January 20, 2024

Came here to recommend Heartburn. I loved it, and I’m someone who has had difficulty paying attention to books since having a kid 4 years ago.
posted by samthemander at 12:07 AM on January 21, 2024

Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion is nominally fiction, but closely based on her two-affair with a married man in the late eighties in Paris. It’s incredibly good.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 3:51 AM on January 21, 2024

I hesitate to say it was a good book but it was definitely different and very raw. Julie Powell, the titular Julie in the "Julie and Julia", blog/book/movie wrote a second book called Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession. The memoir picks up after her new found fame and is ostensibly about trying to find out what she is supposed to do next. She throws herself into training to be a butcher as well as detailing the affairs that she and her husband had.
posted by mmascolino at 11:18 AM on January 21, 2024 [1 favorite]

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me - I found this one very interesting because the mother involved her teenage daughter in her long affair with her husband's friend. The impact is so much more than a "typical" affair a child may discover.
posted by maxg94 at 10:18 AM on January 22, 2024

I just fucking loved Perfection by Julie Metz. Her reaction to her husband's infidelity was really kind of flamboyant and vicariously satisfying to read about.
posted by BibiRose at 9:44 AM on January 23, 2024 [1 favorite]