When you watch a movie or play, knowing every plot twist ruins the experience. If you’re part of the drama, however, you need to know these things–especially when real life has cast you as the Wife of a Cheating Husband.
Holding your cue cards are Elizabeth Landers and Vicky Mainzer with “The Script: The 100 Percent Absolutely Predictable Things Men Do When They Cheat” (Hyperion, $21.95). Their theory, based on interviews with women and men who know, goes that men who cheat say and do the same things, as though they’re following a script.
The book takes you through that script, line by line. If he comments disapprovingly about a friend’s philandering, it might mean nothing–or it might be Act 1, Scene 1. Landers and Mainzer don’t stop at running up the red flags, though; they offer tips along the way to help you protect the marriage and, failing that, yourself.
This book has its troubling aspects; it could undermine trust where it shouldn’t. But if I were handed that Cheated-On Wife role, I would study every line of “The Script.”
On playing nice after he dumps you: “You think that if you do what he tells you to do . . . he will be appreciative and will be nice to you in return. Not so.”
