David and Chandra

 
Chandra remembers the day she married David as a "beautiful" winter wedding, complete with the perfect dress, great friends and family. Nine years later, David and Chandra, parents to three young children, continue to surround themselves with trusted friends.

Over the years, Chandra says one friend in particular became a big part of her life. "I felt like her big sister in a way," she says. "[David and I] went camping with her and her husband. ... I trusted her."

When Chandra's best friend moved away with her husband and baby, Chandra was heartbroken.

Not long after the move, the friend and her baby came to visit David and Chandra. Upon their arrival, Chandra says something seemed off. "She almost seemed mad at me, like I was kind of in her way, and I was irritating to her," she says.

Chandra also noticed that David was spending a lot of time alone with her friend. "In the back of my mind I thought, 'Okay, something's not right.' I just had a feeling...a gut feeling."

Then came the bombshell. Chandra read her best friend's diary and discovered that she was having an affair with David.
David and Chandra

 
At first, Chandra's best friend and husband denied that their affair was physical. Then, Chandra learned the truth.

David says he never had feelings for the other woman until she moved away. Then, he started chatting with her online and their relationship progressed from a friendship into something more. "I confided in her instead of my wife," David says. "It happened very quickly because we knew each other. It wasn't like I was meeting somebody off the street. [She and her husband] were our best friends, and I knew what she was like."

The emotional affair became physical just three days after Chandra's best friend and her baby arrived for a visit, David says. David says he slept with Chandra's friend multiple times during her visit—once in a car and once in their home...while his wife was upstairs.

"I could have bet a million dollars [that] this would have never happened to me," Chandra says. "Let alone with a close friend."
David

 
After nine years of marriage, David says he strayed because he felt boxed in and didn't feel like he was heard in his marriage. While Chandra tried controlling him, David says the other woman made him feel good about himself, helped his self-esteem and told him the things that he wanted to hear.

Now, David realizes he's "a very selfish person" and wants more discipline in his life. "I do want to be controlled because I'm not in control of myself," he says. "It's about pride for me. I've got a pride issue that I've got to deal with."

Since the affair, David has also had trouble reconciling his actions with his beliefs. "This has been a real moral bomb in my life. I'm a church-going, Bible-believing person, you know? Morally it hurts me. I said to my wife last night it feels like cancer."
Dr. Robin and David

 
Psychologist Dr. Robin Smith says pride isn't David's problem...it's anger. "Affairs are often full of rage and hostility," Dr. Robin says. "They are a way that people communicate, without saying a word."

Instead of looking back through his marriage for the root of his problems, Dr. Robin tells David to think back even further. "All of us get wounded in childhood. You did not create this kind of self-destruction in your life, in your wife's life, in the lives of your children without a wound starting in childhood," she says. "Who pulled the rug from underneath you? That's what you've done to your family, and we learn that behavior somewhere. ... Someone teaches us how to be mean."

"I love my father, but my father...he doesn't listen to my mom," David says. "He doesn't respect her. He doesn't listen to anybody."

Dr. Robin says David's childhood pain is the real cancer in his life. David's tearful admission is the beginning of his healing, she says. "The fact that you just spoke that truth, now you're on your way to freedom."
David and Chandra

 
David says he has not been in contact with Chandra's friend since their affair was exposed. "I have no desire to ever talk to that woman again," he says. "I do love my wife. I do know it's about me and my problems."

Dr. Robin says David also needs to learn to love himself so that he doesn't fall victim to the "fantasy" of an affair again. "[An affair is] an illusion. It's not real. She's not real. Whatever she told you about yourself is not real," she says. "Your low self-esteem must be healed from the inside out, and your wife can be a partner in helping you heal, but she can't heal you."

Chandra says her marriage is still on shaky ground, but she and David are trying to make it work. "There's a lot of hurt there, and there's a lot of betrayal," she says. "We're working on it. But, you know what? I want to see him be who I know he can be."
Lynne

 
Lynne is a mother of four who lives in a small town. In a letter to The Oprah Winfrey Show, Lynne wrote, "I was the other woman. I had an affair with a co-worker for over three years. ... I would have never believed I could do this. Being the other woman was more painful than I could ever describe.

"You hope he will someday leave her, but you can't believe you want such a horrible thing. I am a strong Christian and knew it was wrong. I slept with her husband while she was at the hospital with their son. I saw their new home before she did. I lied to her when she called me. I lied to my children time and time again just to be with him. I did everything I despise. I felt desperate and dirty. I watched him shower before he went back home to her. I felt like a prostitute."

Lynne says she finally decided to come clean about her actions with the hope of educating other women to keep them from getting themselves into similar situations. "Nothing good can come out of it," Lynne says. "It hurts everybody. Not just two or three people—it hurts everybody."
Lynne and Oprah

 
Lynne, who was not married, says she and the co-worker with whom she had an affair were initially good friends. Lynne's daughter babysat for the family and Lynne even threw a baby shower for his wife.

Lynne says soon, she and her co-worker were in the midst of an "emotional affair." For three months before they first had sex, they shared an emotionally intimate relationship.

With a business trip two months away, Lynne and her co-worker calmly decided that they would take their relationship to the next level.
Lynne

 
One of their regular meeting places, Lynne says, was a parking lot by a softball field. "The majority of our sexual relationship was, sad to say, in the back of a minivan," she says. "That sounds pretty pathetic."

In addition, Lynne had sex in his house. "[His wife] would go home for the weekend. Sometimes the kids were there, they were just sleeping," Lynne says. "I would pull into his garage and shut the garage door, and we'd sleep in the spare bedroom."

Throughout the course of their relationship, Lynne says he would tell her that he was considering leaving his wife but didn't want to leave his children. "He just kept asking me to be patient with him and to be understanding," she says. "And then he'd say, 'Okay, in six months I'll make a decision.' And then another six months [would pass]."

His wife had been suspicious of her husband for some time, but he had always denied having an affair and she had always ended up believing him, Lynne says. "She said the only way she would ever believe [the rumors of an affair] is if somebody sent her pictures," Lynne says. "And we were out of state at a business meeting again, and she received pictures while we were out."
Lynne and Oprah

 
Lynne admits that during the course of her affair, she was delusional about what was actually happening. "You choose to believe what you want to believe," she says. "You choose to believe the one person who is lying to everybody else. But you believe he's telling you the truth. I can look now and it's like, 'Duh.' But you just don't think of that at the time."

Lynne says she told lies, too. His wife called her once asking about some rumors she'd heard about the affair. "I said, 'Oh, no, no. We're just really good friends and sometimes people at work think it's more than that because we're really good friends,'" Lynne says. "I wanted to tell her so bad. I wanted to just say, 'You're right!' I wanted her to find out because then he would have to make a decision."
Lynne

 
Lynne says that all spouses need to be aware of the signs of cheating.

One of these is taking too long to accomplish simple tasks. "He would [tell his wife] he was going to work out or going to the store, and it would be, like, two and a half hours," Lynne says.

Another is showering immediately after getting home.

Cell phone bills also can provide plenty of evidence of an affair. "I had a $300 to $400 cell phone bill every month," Lynne says. "If [his wife] would [have] opened [his] up, she would have seen my number all over it."

Also, Lynne says out-of-town trips can be a sign. "He just would go [on 'hunting trips'] so much more often than he did before," Lynne says.
Lynne and Dr. Robin

 
Dr. Robin says that Lynne clearly hoped that the man she was having an affair with would leave his wife. "Women get into this competitive thing where we want someone to choose us. We want to win," Dr. Robin says. "And we don't understand that often it's a booby prize when you win in that game."

In reality, this affair was not about winning a prize at all but was in fact an insult. "It is insulting to any of us to have someone who is married to pursue us and say things that are sexual or that are sensual or that are affectionate," Dr. Robin says. "And we should take it as an offense, not as something that strokes our empty, wounded egos."