A New Kind of Happy Ending

So it makes sense that a married man or woman would fall in love with someone else. Everything is in the moment. In the movie, Fiona's affair has none of the complexity of her marriage. Her intense longing for her fellow patient Aubrey, played by Michael Murphy, is primitive, more like a child's attachment to a puppy.

There is also the comfort of someone who is sharing the same experience of illness. Even when diseases have a good prognosis, there is a bonding in the trenches of treatment.

"At a point in your illness, you only want to talk to people who are having chemotherapy," says Jessie Gruman, author of "AfterShock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You -- or Someone You Love -- a Devastating Diagnosis." "The person who is sick connects with people who are having the same experience rather than with the rescue caregiver." The supportive spouse is left out. Raw emotions boil up. The caregiver thinks: How come this person doesn't love me anymore? Especially when I'm being so good to him or her? Not fair.

Where is the love when the relationship is not fair?

If the patient gets well again, the marriage recalibrates. Or maybe not, if past hurts and disappointments brought to the surface through the illness start to overwhelm the relationship. Illness intensifies whatever was there in the marriage.

Relationships aren't fair. The well spouse also needs love. To get to that place where you are happy that your spouse has found someone else is a long journey.

To the extent that you are still involved, the initial hurt and betrayal have to be intellectualized, Gruman says. "It's not the first place you go. It's where you arrive after a lot of work."

Getting there is hard, because suddenly there may be a flash of the former person with a familiar glance, a slow smile just like the first day you met.

Meanwhile, there is a summing up of the marriage. In the movie, Grant recalls his bride, calling her the spark of his life. But the marriage was not easy, and the ghosts of his past affairs dance in the background. There's a whiff of payback in Fiona's puppy love for her new companion. Grant, too, becomes involved with someone else. And yet, they care so much about each other.

It's an Alzheimer's love story.

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