Emily Parker spoke with author Claire Musters about finding restoration after an affair, and why we wear masks.

He gently spoke to me about that and helped me piece my life back together. He made me realise that I don't need to wear a mask; I can be honest and open with people and actually, He asked me to stay that vulnerable.

The way my husband responded was absolutely incredible. I say in my book that he showed me Jesus' love in a way that I had never experienced before, in that he was so sacrificial and also so determined to fight for our marriage.

Not long after, we discovered that he's pretty much the only record producer that hadn't got divorced. It is an incredibly difficult lifestyle to keep a marriage, or a family going. He went straight to his boss after everything had happened and said, look, this is what's gone on. My wife is now in the stage where she's wondering whether to come back or not. And his boss, give him his due, was incredible and said, we want to do everything we can to support you. Studios work round the clock, because musicians like to work at night-time. Their voices are warmed up. I know because I'm involved in music at our church. But he just said right, we're going to shut down the studio at 8 o'clock every night, so that you can go home and be with your wife.

Emily: Wow, that's a big thing!

Claire: It was a huge thing, but that also really spoke to me that Steve had the guts to go and speak to his boss about that.

It was step-by-step. Obviously we had to do a lot of asking for forgiveness from each other, because there had been such bad habits put in place early on in our marriage. We hadn't really put any foundations in, and we'd been living apart so much. When he did have any time off, I'd been looking forward to it so much and had put all these expectations on it, and again, idealised notions of what it would be like. Then he'd come home absolutely exhausted, totally spent from working so many hours. As soon as he did something wrong, that was it, my whole world collapsed. We'd lived that kind of pattern, which was not healthy. So we had counselling and bit by bit put things back together and then I eventually moved home.

Emily: What different masks do people wear?

Claire: There are books out there that talk about particular masks and I did identify my own. But I think that everybody's are very personalised.

In my book I look at the reasons behind why we wear masks, rather than just naming them to see if people can categorise their own.

There are an awful lot of influences on us. It goes right from early childhood and our experiences in families and the messages that we're given then, through to our personalities and the way that we respond to situations. But then there are a lot of reasons like the fear of rejection; the fear of what other people think of us; and also culture, the messages that our society gives to us day by day.

Social media is fantastic and I love being able to connect with people; I couldn't really do what I do without it now, and I've connected with friends that I lived with when I was eight years old, and went to school with in America and that's fantastic. But I also think that we brush up and idealise our own lives on the posts that we put on things like Facebook and Twitter. We look for those 'likes' and that kind of approach can be filtered through into our everyday lives as well; our physical lives out and about. We're told through billboards and magazines and messages on social media what we should look like, what we should be thinking, what we should be wearing, and what we should be eating. There's so much that we're bombarded with and it can really eat away at us and make us think that we've got to keep up with this; we've got to project a particular image in order to be accepted. That perpetuates our mask wearing, because we're afraid to reveal who we truly are.

Emily: And there's this desire to be perfect.

Claire: Yes, definitely. I know I have perfectionist tendencies.

Emily: When it comes to taking off those masks, what advice would you give?