** spoiler alert ** 
 Any way you look at it, cheating is a fast track to ruin a relationship. Trust is a very fragile thing and once broken, it can never regain the same credibility and value as it once held. 
 In the post Clinton/ Lewinsky era, even physical cheating has found different categories. As a reader when I see the excuse that it never got that far, I question how far the physical infidelity got. When the front of the husband's shirt and even his hair reeks of another woman's perfume, I say it got too far. When he decides to go to another woman's apartment with the full intention of cheating on his wife and children ( when there are children involved, in my book, the adultery is not only against the partner but cheating on their children because their lives are going to suffer as much if not more and the psychological trauma is as bad ) he/she has severed the trust line. When he didn't complete the act because he was too drunk to perform, I say the intentions were all there. The way I look at it, in this story he physically and emotionally cheated on his family. 
 When there is a long term emotional cheating as it was in this case, the destruction is beyond imaginable and the author did a fantastic job portraying the effect on the mother in law,the children, and the wife. The excuse that we read is the most popular excuse being used in real life, I was not the top priority anymore, and it made the book more realistic. He enjoyed the company of another woman over his exhausted wife and his sick children. I mean who wants to come home to children suffering from measles and a wife who has had a hard pregnancy and is now taking care of 3 sick children while wearing no make up and the same t shirt she put on first when she got up when he can wine and dine and go dancing or to the theater every night with a top female corporate attorney with not a strand of hair out of place and no other care, someone he enjoys talking to and spending every spare of time with. Which is worse? 
 I love how the person who broke the news of his infidelity was blamed instead of the real guilty party. Isn't that usually the case and the reason many people close their eyes to their acquaintances unfaithfulness? 
 What made me like this book is that he had to watch another man wanting his wife and kissing her. For few months, every time he tried to be intimate with his wife, his infidelity and the other woman's image stopped his wife cold in his arms and he had to live with no real sexual fulfillment. 
 Do I believe the lead female character made the right choice? Personally I don't - I would take the 3 kids and walk away with half of his company after I would utterly destroy his reputation, but she wanted to be a mother and have someone to take care of every other aspect of her life. She had no life, no friends outside her cozy home. She had no intrigue or ambition outside the walls she built around herself and her family. Her 6 years old daughter had more courage then she ever did. She didn't care if he ever allowed her to be part of his life outside their home as long as he came home and played the daddy part and made love to her every now and then and took her to the neighborhood restaurant when she didn't have to get dressed up. She wanted certain easy comforts in her life. She was basically the little girl who plays house. It made it realistic because most women who stay in a marriage after infidelity do it for the very same reasons. It is about security of having a certain life style and not losing the dream they had as a little girl, a cozy house, beautiful kids and a husband. 
 I believe this book was really about how a woman's personality affects her reaction to cheating.