Someone has told me his wife has been unfaithful, and as a consequence he is thinking of separating. Before taking that last step, he wanted my advice. The very tone of his letter to me was harsh, authoritarian, self-justifying, and definitively condemning his wife, and that reminded me of something that is usually true and could well have been so in this case particularly. When two persons fall apart, both are implied in the separation. The more obvious offence may have been caused by one of them, but the less obvious but not less real offence of lack of care, love, attention, tenderness, interest, effort to please and to make the other person happy, may have been committed by the other person. That’s why before condemning the obvious fault of one of them, the less obvious behaviour of the other has to be examined too. There are also husbands who do not value their wives and do not pay to them the attention they deserve. And they don’t even realise it. That creates a climate that leads to the regrettable incident. This does not justify the wife’s lapse, but it does extend the responsibility to the husband. Something like that could have happened in this case, since the husband’s very letter to me looked more like a justification of the step he was determined to take than a sincere asking for advice. And in any case my hint to him to question his own behaviour could be a good approach to a possible reconciliation. Where have I gone wrong for you to think of going with another man? I wrote along those lines to the husband in my answer with all possible tact.

He got angry, of course. He took it as a personal offence. He answered me an arrogant and insulting letter. Who did I think he was? He had always behaved in an exemplary way with his wife in everything, and she had failed him by spending a night with another man without any provocation from her husband. He was furious with me and never wrote again.