Ep. 79 Kate Legge on infidelity, extramarital affairs and how we become who we are.

“Affairs are a little like childbirth. Someone is always having one somewhere, usually right under the nose of a spouse because nobody knows everything that happens inside a marriage, not even the people in it.” 

Award-winning author and journalist Kate Legge has chronicled social and political affairs and other people’s stories since the 1980s. But Kate’s latest book - an unflinchingly honest and raw memoir called 'Infidelity and Other Affairs' - explores her own story and the tumult that took hold when her husband’s serial cheating upended her life, decades-long marriage and entire sense of self.

Kate’s story and that of her complex family of origin are compelling, and in this episode of Human Cogs she details her hurt, fury, agony and the eventual forgiveness and understanding she developed for her husband in the face of his betrayal and deceit. To this day, they remain firm friends.

As Kate writes: “Affairs create their own weather systems. They leap fences like wildfires and give reason the flick, and in the aftermath there is a bill of claims and damages to be logged. We are drawn to broken glass, like ghouls guiltily feasting on the drama. The hurt, the highs, the hubris, the audacity, the anguish jolts us out of complacency.”

Listen to this if you want to go deep into the complexities of marital infidelity, understand how our families of origin shape and scar us, and discover how the getting of wisdom is mostly got along the rutted roads and blind turns of our very messy human lives.

Guest: Kate Legge
Book: Infidelity and Other Affairs by Kate Legge 

Host: Mads Grummet
Producer: Daryl Missen

Human Cogs is available on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via our website where you can also catch great conversations with previous guests :)

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