WARNING! This article contains SPOILERS for Love & Death!In its first three episodes, HBO's Love & Death walks viewers through the many milestones of Allan and Candy's secret relationship and its eventual consequences but never puts an exact number on how long their affair lasted. From the day when Candy Montgomery confesses her feelings to Allan Gore to the events that finally mark the end of their relationship, Love & Death walks through it all in its first three episodes. While at it, the HBO show primarily unfolds from Candy's first-person perspective but also dedicates some time to Allan and his wife Betty's point of view toward the world around them.
As it progresses, Love & Death focuses more and more on Betty's anxieties and suspicions about her husband. This ultimately leads to the climactic moment where her intuition gets the best of her, and she confronts Candy by asking her if she was having an affair with her husband. Unaware of the consequences, Candy spills the beans and confesses that she did have an affair with Allan, but also defends herself by claiming that they ended it a long time ago. While her confession reflects her guilt, her defensive statement reveals a lot about her relationship timeline with Allan.
Allan & Candy's Relationship Lasted Almost A Year
Although Love & Death's first three episodes do not disclose the precise period of Allan & Candy's relationship, the show's prologue reveals that the events leading up to their affair started roughly two years before Candy murdered Betty. According to reports (via Texas Monthly), once Allan and Candy were done checking off every precaution and making provisions to keep their affair a secret, they officially set December 12, 1978, as the date of its beginning. As depicted in the series, they started off without keeping an end date in mind, but certain events eventually led to the closure of their affair.
Before Allan left for Marriage Encounter with his wife Betty, he assured Candy that it may not necessarily end his relationship with her. However, after returning from the retreat, around October 1979, Allan called off his affair with Candy by telling her that he does not "necessarily feel different about" her but wishes to direct his "emotional involvement and energy" towards his family. Their affair lasted almost a year and ended about seven months before Candy killed Betty with an axe on June 13, 1980.
How Allan & Candy's Timeline Changes Love & Death
Despite Love & Death's best attempts to hint at the exact duration of Allan and Candy's relationship timeline, it is hard not to notice that the events leading up to Betty's death unfold rather quickly. While the show's approach towards compressing Allan Gore and Candy Montgomery's true story is understandable, considering its limited runtime, it gives the impression that the time of Betty's murder was a lot more closely linked to Allan and Candy's relationship timeline than in real life. Understanding the actual timeline makes Allan and Candy's relationship and its consequences all the more terrifying.
For instance, the real timeline paints a better picture of the extent to which the consequences of Allan and Candy's infidelity rippled into their future without them initially realizing it. As depicted in Love & Death, Allan and Candy were both in the pursuit of moving on from their relationship and Candy had even earned her husband's forgiveness after he found out about her infidelity. To their dismay, the seven-month spill-over of their boiling pot of secrets in Love & Death proved that their underlying guilt was only one of the many adversities coming their way.
Sources: Texas Monthly