Overcoming infidelity, doing 'the work' on yourself & our summer book hotlist

What we learnt about ourselves from a therapist specialising in adultery plus 8 unputdownable books (all the links from our 2 podcasts this week)

May 23, 2025

Psychoanalytic psychotherapist and author Juliet Rosenfeld (above top left) was in the hot seat on Postcards From Midlife this Sunday to talk about relationship secrets, passion, sex and infidelity: all of which she covered in her new book ‘Affairs: True Stories of love, lies, hope and desire’ (buy here) Juliet explained the root cause of adultery (it is not what you think) and shone a light on the mysterious dark corners of long term relationships for listeners in a fascinating and thought provoking episode. It’s definitely worth a listen if you’ve been through this in your relationships or supported some one experiencing it.

In her book Juliet reveals how couples can survive affairs, why people have them and how you can spot affairs looming on the horizon. Londoner Juliet, 56, who is a mum of two teenage sons, began her career in advertising and worked as a civil servant before training as a psychotherapist so we also chatted about midlife career change and how to embrace it with confidence.

She has been working in mental health for almost two decades with a special interest in couples. Her previous book ‘The State of Disbelief: a story of love, death & forgetting’ recounts the loss of her 2nd husband Andrew, who died unexpectedly of lung cancer aged 52 when Juliet was 46 and offers comforting guidance on coping with grief. We highly recommend it for anyone coping with loss today.

On the show we quizzed Juliet about midlife relationships,s which are particularly vulnerable when it comes to affairs given that divorce rates peak for couples between the ages 45 to 49, with 62% of divorce petitions initiated by women. So if you want to know if you can ‘affair-proof’ your marriage, how you can talk to your children about adultery, when to stay or go after infidelity has occurred and if you need to tell your partner if you have had an affair then this is the podcast episode for you.

a sign with a book shelf in front of a lake — How To Win At Midlife: The Summer book list!

Here are the books we think you’ll love this summer which we reviewed in our midweek episode. Click this link to hear our chat in full. We also tipped listeners off about book festivals that are a little different.