
Emptiness and Despair: the Affair as a Solution (Part 2)
This is the ninth installment of the Marital Labyrinth Series, a series published simultaneously at Psychology Today. In this blog, we take a minor detour to follow
Two soulmates leave the security of their well-ordered lives in search of life’s larger truths. Come along for the journey…
Forty-seven years ago, Michael discovered his soulmate Deborah on a dance floor in Keene, New Hampshire. It took her soul a few years and an around-the-world bike trek to fully reciprocate. Riding the Edge is the astonishing tale of the six-month odyssey that profoundly shaped the next 564 months of their lives together.
Taking place in 1980, Michael and Deborah—an American Jew and American Arab, respectively—leave the security of their well-ordered lives as psychologists sleepwalking toward marriage and family to explore and take risks in search of life’s larger truths.
What they find is a story of magnificent vistas and memorable moments that enliven their senses to the beauty of the world even as it also reveals the vilest of human cruelty.
Simple meals become transcendent experiences, chance encounters are serendipitous markers along a road directing them toward personal and spiritual transformation. Each place leaves its mark—Paris and the French countryside, Italy, Greece, war-torn Beirut, Israel—and each person an imprint even as Deborah and Michael struggle to find the truth of their love. Have they found a life partner or merely a steppingstone to another, deeper connection?
It’s a journey that has a mind and heart of its own.
In the end, each story, kindness, and cruelty uncover the humanness that connects all living things and shows that love is a powerful, healing life force.
Michael Tobin has been an author and playwright since he was twelve when he wrote a monumental play about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that had over 20,000 actors on stage at one time. For logistical reasons it was never produced. On his way to becoming a psychologist, he was a former US Army officer, glacier climber, marathon runner, and restauranteur. He also claims to be the first entrepreneur to introduce granola to Connecticut.
Published simultaneously at Psychology Today magazine and here on this site, the Marital Labyrinth is a major series of articles diving deep into the topics of marriage, marital affairs, and how to affair-proof your relationship. A deep and sometimes torturous journey into the heart and soul of a marriage.
This is the ninth installment of the Marital Labyrinth Series, a series published simultaneously at Psychology Today. In this blog, we take a minor detour to follow
In this eighth installment of the Marital Labyrinth series, published simultaneously at Psychology Today, Dr Tobin considers the affair as a solution in the mind of
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