Harry was Joe Swanick's best friend for more than a decade. The two men had worked together in a factory in England, a good few years before Joe married Jacinta.

Their friendship ran very deep and they spent a good deal of time in one another's company. When Joe began going out with Jacinta, it was to Harry he turned at times of turbulence in the relationship. When Joe married Jacinta, the couple returned to live in Ireland and Harry followed soon after. He got a job near where the couple lived, became godfather to their daughter, Stephanie, and was a regular visitor to their home.

One day, after 10 years of marriage and two children, Jacinta informed Joe that she wanted a separation. He was stunned because there had been no previous indications of a problem. Their relationship, including their physical relationship, appeared to be going well. Jacinta refused to give any reason for wanting to end their marriage and refused to discuss it.

He began to suspect that she was having an affair. Deeply distraught, embarrassed and afraid of losing his marriage, he turned as before to his best friend and confidant, Harry. In an extremely emotional and vulnerable conversation, Harry assured him that Jacinta would never break her marriage vows. But out of the blackness surrounding him there appeared to Joe an increasingly looming question: could it, could it, could it be that the man having the affair with his wife was in fact his best friend, Harry?

No. No. No.

Yes.

He did some investigating and gradually it fell into place. His best friend of half their lifetimes was sleeping with his wife.

His strongest feeling was shame. Yes, he was devastated, shocked, hurt, angry, self-pitying, but above all he was ashamed.

His wife denied she was having an affair. She wanted him to get out of the family home and leave her there with their two children, Stephanie and Simon. He was terrified, having heard enough horror stories about men who had been forced out of their homes and the lives of their children. His wife told him she would force him out of the home within six weeks.

She then initiated a reign of physical and psychological abuse against Joe. This process ranged from emotional isolation to temper tantrums to physical violence, frequently in front of their two children, as well as the exclusion of Joe's parents, who had previously had a strong, loving relationship with their two grandchildren.

Frightened by his wife's repeated assertion that under Irish family law she was entitled to take everything and had no obligations to negotiate, Joe sought advice from various quarters and was told, as so many men in such situations are told, that the circumstances did not matter; that, because he was a man, he would end up losing his home and children. That was how it always ended up.

When, through his own solicitor, he made the allegation that his wife was having an affair with his best friend, both solicitors expressed astonishment that he would make such a wild and unsubstantiated allegation.

By the time Joe went to court, he was an emotional wreck. His work was suffering and his relationship with his two children becoming increasingly difficult. He was isolated, afraid, stripped of self-esteem, and coming under pressure to sign whatever was put in front of him.

By now his wife's affair with Harry was an open secret, and the couple were threatening to move to the other end of the country, taking Joe's children with them. To stop this happening, Joe agreed to leave his home, so as to, as he puts it, "accommodate my best friend's affair with my wife".

His wife has now confirmed that she is planning to formally cohabit with Harry. Recently she made an application to sell the family home, to move in with the man with whom the agencies of the State all along refused to accept she was having an affair.

At first Joe resisted. He had planned and designed the house and had paid every penny of the mortgage for more than a decade. The notion of selling the house to enable Harry to insinuate himself as the father of Stephanie and Simon was deeply galling. However, under advice that he had no chance of winning, he did a deal for minor but important improvements in his access situation.

He now has his children to stay with him for three weekends out of four, with telephone access on other weekends. He succeeded with a request that, whereas he would collect the children on Fridays, his wife be required to pick them up on Sunday evening. This, at least, allows him to create a sense in his children that their weekend home is more than a creche to which they are taken so as to give their mother a break.

On such details is sanity in this kind of situation frequently founded.