I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
—President Bill Clinton
Everyone wants to know, “What percentage of people cheat?” But that’s a tough question to answer, because first you have to answer, “What is cheating?” The definition of infidelity is anything but fixed, and the digital age offers an ever-expanding range of potentially illicit encounters. Is chatting cheating? What about sexting, watching porn, joining a fetish community, remaining secretly active on dating apps, paying for sex, lap dances, massages with happy endings, girl-on-girl hookups, staying in touch with one’s ex?
Because there is no universally agreed-upon definition of what constitutes infidelity, estimates of its prevalence among American couples vary widely, ranging from 26 to 70 percent for women and from 33 to 75 percent for men.1 Whatever the exact numbers may be, everyone agrees that they are rising. And many fingers point to women as being responsible for the increase, as they rapidly close the “infidelity gap” (research indicates a 40 percent jump since 1990, while men’s rates have held steady.2) In fact, when the definition of infidelity includes not only “sexual intercourse” but also romantic involvement, kissing, and other sexual contact, female college students significantly outcheat their male counterparts.3
Data gathering is hampered by one simple fact: When it comes to sex, people lie—especially about sex they are not supposed to be having. Even under the cloak of anonymity, gender stereotypes persist. Men are socialized to boast, exaggerate, and overrepresent their sexual exploits, while women minimize, deny, and underrepresent theirs (which isn’t surprising, considering that there are still nine countries where women can be put to death for straying). Sexual honesty is inseparable from sexual politics.
Furthermore, we are walking contradictions. While most people say that it would be terribly wrong for their partner to lie about an affair, those same people say that is exactly what they would do if they were having one. And in response to the golden question “Would you have an affair if you knew you’d never get caught?” the numbers skyrocket. Ultimately, no amount of statistics, however accurate, can give us real insight into the complex reality of infidelity today. Therefore, my focus is stories, not numbers. For it is the stories that lead us into the deeper human concerns of longing and disenchantment, commitment and erotic freedom. Their common theme is that one partner feels betrayed by the other. But it’s everything else that makes these dramas compelling. Seduced by the need for labels, we tend to cluster far too many experiences under the single signifier “infidelity.”
“Have you had intercourse with anyone other than your spouse in the past twelve months?” If defining infidelity were as simple as a yes or no answer to that question, my job would be a lot easier. The painful arguments I am privy to remind me every day that while some forms of trespassing are indeed straightforward, the world of transgression is as murky as the world of sexuality itself.
Elias has suggested to his wife, Linda, that they consult an expert. They are in deep disagreement about the interpretation of cheating. A regular at strip clubs, he mounts the defense: “I watch, I talk, I pay, but I don’t touch. Where’s the cheating?” In his mind, he’s perfectly faithful. Linda thinks otherwise and is making him sleep on the couch.
Ashlee just found out that her girlfriend Lisa occasionally has been hooking up with her old boyfriend Tom. “She says it doesn’t count as cheating because he’s a guy! But as far as I’m concerned, that makes it worse. Not only is she going behind my back, but she’s getting something I can’t give her. Am I just her lesbian phase?”
Shannon feels betrayed when she discovers that her boyfriend, Corbin, just bought a box of condoms—something they don’t need, since they’re trying to get pregnant. Corbin protests, “I didn’t do anything! It was just an idea! Do you want to snoop in my mind now as well as in my phone?” “The buying of condoms is not an idea to me!” she retorts. No, but is it an infidelity?
And what about porn? While most people would agree that an old copy of Playboy under the mattress doesn’t amount to betrayal, the boundaries can get blurry when we shift from print to screen. Many men see watching porn as falling into the same category as masturbation—some even proudly claim it prevents them from cheating. Women are less likely to see it that way. Violet, however, always thought she was quite open-minded about porn. When she walked into Jared’s study and caught him watching a panting blonde on his screen, she just rolled her eyes and joked that he needed a new hobby. But when the woman said, “Where’d you go, Jared? Did you finish?” she realized that he was on Skype. “The worst part of it is that he’s trying to convince me it isn’t cheating,” she tells me. “He calls it customized pornography.”
The possibilities for dalliance are endless in our connected era. Today, 68 percent of Americans own a smartphone, which means, as comedian Aziz Ansari quips, “you’re carrying a 24-7 singles bar in your pocket.”4 And it’s not just singles. The marrieds have their own sites, like the infamous AshleyMadison.com. The Internet is a great democratizer, offering equal access to our forbidden desires.
You no longer even need to leave your home to stray. You can actually have an affair while lying next to your partner in bed. My patient Joachim was spooning his husband, Dean, when he noticed him messaging another guy on Manhunt. Kit was sitting right beside his girlfriend, Jodi, on the couch watching TV when he recognized that familiar swiping motion on her iPhone. “She says she was just curious, that it’s like a game and she never acts on it,” he tells me. “But we both agreed to delete Tinder as part of our commitment ceremony!”
The Internet has made sex “accessible, affordable, and anonymous,”5 as the late researcher Al Cooper pointed out. All of these apply equally to infidelity, and I’d add another a-word: ambiguous. When it’s no longer an exchange of kisses but an exchange of dick pics; when the hour in a motel room has become a late-night Snapchat; when the secretive lunch has been replaced with a secret Facebook account, how are we supposed to know what constitutes an affair? As a result of this burgeoning field of furtive activities, we need to carefully rethink how we conceptualize infidelity in the digital age.
Defining adultery is at once quite simple and quite complicated. Today, in the West, relationship ethics are no longer dictated by religious authority. The definition of infidelity no longer resides with the Pope, but with the people. This means more freedom, as well as more uncertainty. Couples must draw up their own terms.
When someone comes forward and admits, “I had an affair,” nobody argues over the hermeneutics. When you catch your partner in bed with another, or find the email trail of a multiyear parallel life, again, it’s pretty obvious. But when one partner decides that the other person’s behavior is a betrayal, and the reaction is “It’s not what you think,” “It didn’t mean anything,” or “That’s not cheating,” we enter more nebulous territory. Typically, the task of marking the fault lines and interpreting their significance falls to the one who feels betrayed. Does feeling hurt entitle one to claim ownership over the definition?
What is clear is that all characterizations of modern infidelity involve the notion of a breach of contract between two individuals. It is no longer a sin against God, a breaking of a family alliance, a muddying of the bloodline, or a dispersion of resources and inheritances. At the core of betrayal today is a violation of trust: We expect our partner to act according to our shared set of assumptions, and we base our own behavior on that. It’s not necessarily a particular sexual or emotional behavior that comprises the betrayal; rather, it is the fact that the behavior is not within the couple’s agreement. Sounds fair enough. But the problem is that for most of us, these agreements are not something we spend much time explicitly negotiating. In fact, to call them “agreements” at all is perhaps a stretch.
Some couples work out their commitments head-on, but most go by trial and error. Relationships are a patchwork of unspoken rules and roles that we begin stitching on the first date. We set out to draft boundaries—what is in and what is out. The me, the you, and the us. Do we get to go out alone or do we do everything together? Do we combine our finances? Are we expected to attend every family reunion?
We review our friendships and decide how important they should be, now that we have each other. We sort out ex-lovers—do we know about them, talk about them, keep pictures of them on our phones, stay friends with them on Facebook? Particularly when it comes to these outside attachments, we see how much we can get away with before stepping on each other’s toes. “You never told me you were still in touch with that girl from college!” “We’ve slept together ten times, but I see that you still have your profile on Hinge.” “I get that he’s your best friend and you’ve known him since kindergarten, but do you have to tell him everything about us?”
Thus we stake out the turf of separateness and togetherness, outlining the implicit contract of the relationship. More often than not, the version that one person files away in the inner cabinet is different from that of his or her partner.
Gay couples are sometimes an exception to this rule. Having lived for so long outside the standard social norms and fought valiantly for sexual self-determination, they are highly aware of the price of sexual confinement and not so eager to shackle themselves. They are more likely to openly negotiate monogamy than tacitly assume it. Likewise, a growing minority of straight couples are experimenting with forms of consensual nonmonogamy, where the borders are more permeable and also more explicit. This does not mean they are immune to the agony of betrayal, but they are more likely to be on the same page about what constitutes it.
For modern love’s idealists, however, the very act of explicitly addressing monogamy seems to call into question the assumption of specialness that is at the heart of the romantic dream. Once we have found “the one,” we believe there should be no need for, no desire for, and no attraction to any other. Hence, our rental agreements are much more elaborate than our relational agreements. For many couples, the extent of the discussion is about five words: “I catch you, you’re dead.”
For me, infidelity includes one or more of these three constitutive elements: secrecy, sexual alchemy, and emotional involvement.6 Before I go any further, I want to make clear that these are not three rigid criteria; rather, a three-sided prism through which to view your experience and assumptions. To broaden the definition, however, does not mean descending into moral relativism. Not all infidelities are created equal. In the end, these issues are personal and value-laden. My purpose is to give you a framework to make sense of your own circumstances and to communicate more deeply with those you love.
Secrecy is the number one organizing principle of an infidelity. An affair always lives in the shadow of the primary relationship, hoping never to be discovered. The secrecy is precisely what intensifies the erotic charge. “Sex and subterfuge make a delicious cocktail,”7 writes journalist Julia Keller. We all know from childhood the glee of hiding and keeping secrets. They make us feel powerful, less vulnerable, and more free. But this dark pleasure is frowned on in adulthood. “I’ve always been a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person,” says Angela, a punctilious Irish American paralegal who realized, through her affair with a client, that she enjoys sneaking around. “Discovering that I could act in total breach of my own long-held values was both bewildering and exciting at the same time. Once I was speaking with my sister, who was rattling away about the wrongdoing of cheaters, all the while smiling inwardly at my own secret. Little did she know that she was looking into the face of the ‘villain.’”
Describing this volatile mix of guilt and delight, Max admits, “One moment I felt like I was scum, but the next, I knew I was touching the essence of something I desperately needed to feel again.” A forty-seven-year-old devoted father of three, one of whom has cerebral palsy, he’s adamant about his silence: “I’ll never tell my wife I had found a lifeline with another woman, but I’ll never regret that I did. It had to exist in silence. There was no other way to do it! The affair is over, the secret is alive and well.”
One of the powerful attributes of secrecy is its function as a portal for autonomy and control. It’s a theme that I hear repeatedly, most often from women, but also from men who feel disempowered in one way or another. “As a black man in the white world of academia, you play tightly by the rules. There’s not much leeway for someone like me,” Tyrell explains. I’m not surprised when he tells me that his affairs were the space where he could define the rules. “You don’t get to control me everywhere” was the mantra that accompanied his dalliances.
Affairs are a pathway to risk, danger, and the defiant energy of transgression. Unsure of the next date, we are ensured the excitement of anticipation. Adulterous love resides in a self-contained universe, secluded from the rest of the world. Affairs blossom in the margins of our lives, and as long as they are not exposed to broad daylight, their spell is preserved.
Secrets aren’t all fun and games, however, even for the one who carries them. As the crux of adultery, they fuel the lying, the denying, the deception, and the elaborate strategies. Being wrapped in duplicities can be isolating, and with the accumulation of time, can lead to corrosive shame and self-loathing. When I ask Melanie why she decided to end her six-year affair now, she responds, “As long as I felt guilty, I still saw myself as a good person doing bad things. But the day I stopped feeling guilty, I lost respect for myself. I’m just a bad person.”
For the deceived partner, the uncovered secrets are devastating. For many, particularly in the United States, it is the endless cover-ups that leave the deepest scars. I hear this over and over: “It’s not that he cheated; it’s that he lied about it.” And yet the concealment that is frowned upon in one corner of our planet is reframed as “discretion” in others. In the stories I hear there, it’s a given that affairs come with lying and hiding. It’s the fact that the person didn’t hide it well enough that is humiliating and hurtful.
Any discussion about infidelity requires that we reckon with secrets. But it may also require that we ask ourselves, What about privacy? And where does privacy end and secrecy begin? Is snooping a legitimate preemptive tactic? Does intimacy require absolute transparency?
Sexual alchemy is a term I choose to use rather than “sex” because I prefer a definition of sexuality that goes beyond Bill Clinton’s—one that does not stop at a narrow repertoire of sexual acts but includes a broader understanding of the erotic mind, body, and energy. By talking about sexual alchemy, I want to clarify that affairs sometimes involve sex and sometimes not, but they are always erotic. As Marcel Proust understood, it’s our imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person.8 Eroticism is such that the kiss we only imagine giving can be as powerful and exciting as hours of actual lovemaking. I am thinking of Charmaine, a fifty-one-year-old Jamaican woman with a contagious smile who has been sharing lingering lunches with her younger colleague Roy. She insists that their connection does not tear at her marriage vows. “We didn’t technically have sex. We never even touched; we only talked. Where’s the cheating in that?” But we all know that renunciation can be as erotic as consummation. Desire is rooted in absence and longing. When I press her, she concedes, “I’ve never been so aroused. It was like he was touching me without touching me.” What is she describing if not sexual alchemy? An innocent lunch can indeed be steamy, even if Charmaine is only, as Cheryl Strayed puts it, “dry dating.”9
“Nothing happened!” is the common refrain of the sexual literalists. After a few too many drinks at his coworker Abby’s birthday party, Dustin accepted her invitation to stay over. When quizzed about it the next day by his girlfriend, Leah, he repeated those two words insistently. “All right, since you must know, we slept together in the same bed. But I’m telling you, nothing happened.” At what point does “something happen”? I wonder. Leah, meanwhile, is plagued by her own questions. Did they get naked? Did she sleep in his arms? Did he brush his nose against her sleeping face? Did he get hard? Is that really nothing?
These stories make a critical point—many affairs are less about sex than about desire: the desire to feel desired, to feel special, to be seen and connected, to compel attention. All these carry an erotic frisson that makes us feel alive, renewed, recharged. It is more energy than act, more enchantment than intercourse.
Even when it comes to the act of intercourse, the adulterous defense system is impressively agile at finding loopholes. People go to great lengths to take the sex out of sex. My colleague Francesca Gentille compiled a list of some of the more imaginative completions to the sentence beginning “It wasn’t sex because . . .”
These contortions all relate to the physical world. Cyberspace adds further twists. Is virtual sex real? When you watch a naked ass on your screen, are you just freely roaming in the sanctuary of your imagination, or have you stepped into the dangerous zone of betrayal? For many people, the Rubicon is crossed when there is an interaction involved—when the porn star becomes the live woman on a webcam, or the nude pics are not on an anonymous Tumblr account but arriving on her cellphone from an actual guy. But what about virtual reality? Is it real or imagined? These are significant questions that we as a culture are pondering, without definitive answers. As philosopher Aaron Ben-Ze’ev pertinently states, “The move from passive imaginary reality to the interactive virtual reality in cyberspace is much more radical than the move from photographs to movies.”11 We may debate what is real and what is imagined, but the alchemy of the erotic is unmistakable.
Even if we agree to widen the lens to include a variety of sexual expressions, we may still disagree about what they mean and where they belong. All these discussions inevitably raise the thorny question of the nature of our erotic freedom. Do we expect our partners’ erotic selves to belong entirely to us? I’m talking about thoughts, fantasies, dreams, and memories, and also turn-ons, attractions, and self-pleasure. These aspects of sexuality can be personal, and part of our sovereign selfhood—existing in our own secret garden. But some people view everything sexual as a domain that must be shared. Discovering that their partner masturbates or still has feelings for an ex is tantamount to betrayal. In this view, any independent expression of sexuality—real or imagined—is a breach. From another perspective, however, making space for some degree of erotic individuality can convey a respect for privacy and autonomy, and is a token of intimacy. In my decades of working with couples, I’ve observed that those who are most successful in keeping the erotic spark alive are those who are comfortable with the mystery in their midst. Even if they are monogamous in their actions, they recognize that they do not own each other’s sexuality. It is precisely the elusiveness of the other that keeps them coming back to discover more.
Every couple has to negotiate each other’s erotic independence as part of the larger conversation about our individuality and our connection. In our efforts to protect ourselves from intimate betrayal, we demand access, control, transparency. And we run the risk of unknowingly eradicating the very space between us that keeps desire alive. Fire needs air.
Emotional involvement is the third element that may play a role in infidelity. Most affairs register an emotional component, to one degree or another. At the deep end of the spectrum we have the love affair, where the accompanying bouquet of passionate feelings is integral. “I thought I knew what love was, but I have never felt like this before” is a common refrain. People in this state talk to me about love, transcendence, awakening, destiny, divine intervention—something so pure that they could not pass it by, because “to deny those feelings would have been an act of self-betrayal.” For those involved in such an unparalleled love story, the term “affair” is inadequate, for it doesn’t begin to capture the emotional depth of the experience. “When you call it cheating, you reduce it to something vulgar,” Ludo says. “Because she had gone through something similar, Mandy was the first person with whom I’ve ever been able to open up about my father’s abuse. Yes, we had sex, but it was so much more than that.”
As we move further along the continuum, there is a whole range of encounters that include varying degrees of emotional intimacy. At the shallow end, we have flings that are recreational, anonymous, virtual, or paid. In many of these cases, people insist that there’s no emotional involvement in their transgressions. Some even go so far as to argue that therefore these don’t constitute a betrayal. “I pay the girl so she will leave!” says Guy. “The whole point of the hooker is not to fall in love, so therefore it doesn’t threaten my marriage.” Here the common refrain is “It meant nothing!” But is sex ever really just sex? There may be no feelings attached to a random fuck, but there is plenty of meaning to the fact that it happened.
It is ironic that some people, like Guy, will minimize the emotional involvement to lessen the offense (“It meant nothing!”), while others, like Charmaine, will highlight the emotional nature of the bond for exactly the same purpose (“Nothing happened!”).
A lot of ink has been spilled trying to determine which is the greater evil—stolen love or forbidden sex. Our individual sensitivities are idiosyncratic. Some people aren’t bothered by emotional attachments to others, so long as they keep their hands to themselves. Others don’t see sex as a big deal and give each other freedom to play—so long as there are no feelings involved. They call it “emotional monogamy.” For most of us, sex and emotions are difficult to untangle. You can have a lot of each, more of one, or more of the other, but they are usually both at play in the adulterous sandbox.
In recent years, a new category has emerged: the “emotional affair.” It’s the “it” term in today’s infidelity lexicon. Generally, it’s used to indicate that the betrayal does not involve actual sex, but rather, an inappropriate emotional closeness that should be reserved for one’s partner and that is depleting the primary relationship.
This is a concept that requires some careful unpacking. So many “emotional affairs” are pulsing with sexual tension, regardless of whether genitals have made contact, and giving them a new label seems to me to promote erotic reductionism. Clearly, affairs can be sexual without involving a penis entering a vagina, and in such cases, it is more helpful to call a spade a spade.
Sometimes, however, the term “emotional affair” is applied to relationships that are genuinely platonic but are perceived to be “too close.” This is a notion that is deeply entwined in our ideals of modern coupledom. Because for many today, marriage is wedded to the concept of emotional intimacy and naked honesty, when we open our inner life to someone else, it can feel like a betrayal. Our model of romantic love is one in which we expect our partner to be our principal emotional companion—the only one with whom we share our deepest dreams, regrets, and anxieties.
We’re on uncharted ground here. Emphasizing the “emotional” as infidelity never even occurred to earlier generations, whose concept of marriage was not organized around emotional exclusiveness. It is still foreign in many parts of the world. Is it a helpful concept for couples today? Marriages have always been strengthened when partners can vent to others or find multiple outlets for emotional connection. When we channel all our intimate needs into one person, we actually stand to make the relationship more vulnerable.
Clearly, the waters get muddy very fast when we try to parse out the subtleties of emotional betrayal. On the one hand, claiming a connection of the heart is often used as a cover-up for an erotic tryst. When a woman complains that her partner is completely absorbed with his new “friend”—Snapchatting at all hours, texting, making her playlists—I sympathize with her frustration but also clarify that what’s bothering her is not just emotional, it’s sexual. On the other hand, deep emotional relationships with others are legitimate outlets for feelings and needs that can’t all be met in the marriage. I walk that fine line in session after session. Given the treacherousness of the territory, it’s no wonder that many people cling to the narrowest take on infidelity—that is, forbidden sex.
With all of that being said, I encourage you to consider what infidelity means to you, and how you feel about it—and to inquire openly about what it means to your partner.
At times, we define infidelity; other times, it defines us. We may be tempted to see the roles in the adulterous triangle as quite set—the betrayed spouse, the cheater, the lover. But in reality, many of us may find ourselves in several positions, and our perspective on the meaning of it all will shift as we do, depending on the situation.
Heather, a single professional New Yorker at the cusp of her fertility peak, is still hoping for happily ever after. A couple of years ago, she broke up with her fiancé, Fred. She had discovered a folder on his computer filled with messages to escorts with all sorts of kinky requests and scheduled rendezvous. She felt betrayed by this sexual sidebar, but she was even more upset that he had checked out on her. She craved a dynamic hot monogamy, but he took his testosterone elsewhere and brought home a phlegmatic passionless version of himself. Their therapist told her that Fred needed to grow up, and he was going to be a great partner in four to five years. “The cost-benefit analysis wasn’t worth it,” she says. “When I thought about what I wanted to do from thirty-seven to forty, it wasn’t to mother Fred into adulthood.”
Last summer she met a new guy, Ryan, on the train from Boston to New York. Their eyes locked, and they knew what it meant. He was straightforward about his situation: “I’m in a thirteen-year marriage, with two kids, and I’m on my way out.” Ryan and his wife, Blair, had agreed it was over, but they were taking it slow, carefully figuring out whether to break the news to the kids during family weekend at summer camp or in the fall when they returned to school.
It strikes me that, not long ago, Heather herself had felt cheated on. Does she realize that she is now the one having an affair with a married man? “It’s the last thing I wanted,” she says. “But this isn’t really an affair. Ryan’s marriage may not be legally over, but in every other way, it is.”
I poke her a little. “But his wife doesn’t know? It’s not like you said to him, go home and take care of your unfinished business, then come back to me.”
She’s quickly defensive: “Well, when’s a marriage really over? Is it when you’re sleeping in separate bedrooms? Is it when you’ve made the public announcement to family and friends? Is it when you file for divorce? It’s such a long process, and I couldn’t figure out what would be a satisfying landmark in time for me.” I’m glad to see Heather glowing. I am also aware that her notion of infidelity has become conveniently elastic now that she is on the other side.
A few weeks later, the glow has gone. She tells me that after discreetly dating for two months, she and Ryan finally spent an entire weekend together and it was one of the happiest times of her life. But she was jolted out of Eden when Ryan called days later to tell her that Blair knew everything, even Heather’s name, thanks to his iPad, which he had left on the nightstand.
Blair is no longer interested in the slow road to divorce. She has taken the kids away for the week, leaving Ryan to explain the situation to his parents and their friends. In one gesture, what was merely a budding romance between two people turned into a systemic unraveling. Everyone is involved, and everyone’s fate has taken a new turn.
For Blair the timing is irrelevant. “We’ve grown apart” has become “He cheated on me.” For Ryan, “I’m trying to do the right thing and not hurt anyone” has become “How do I explain this to my kids and my parents?” And Heather has become the agent of their fatal blow. Betrayed by Fred, the last thing she ever imagined was that she would become the other woman. She has always had strong opinions about committed partners who cheat, and even stronger ones about their lovers. She is no man snatcher. She felt like a proud member of the sisterhood of women who had one another’s backs. Now she is in the very position of those that she used to dis. The image of Blair reading their idyllic exchanges, message by message, makes her blood freeze.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard such a tale of role reversal and judgment turned into justification. When it comes to infidelity, like most things in life, human beings commit what social psychologists call the actor-observer bias. If you cheat, it’s because you are a selfish, weak, untrustworthy person. But if I do it, it’s because of the situation I found myself in. For ourselves, we focus on the mitigating circumstances; for others, we blame character.
Our definitions of infidelity are inseparable from the stories we tell ourselves, and they evolve over time. Nascent love listens with an eager ear that has a way of edging the boundaries and circumventing the obstacles. When Ryan told Heather that he no longer slept in the same bed as his wife, she easily saw him as more divorced than married, and herself as innocent. Scorned love listens with an unforgiving ear, and attributes ill intent to every move. Blair is now convinced that Ryan never had the intention to spare her feelings and was probably cheating all along.
Heather’s starry-eyed love has taken a battering. One moment she was imagining herself pregnant with Ryan’s child, holding the hands of her adoring new stepkids, all of them on the way to visit his parents. Now she’ll have to meet them all in the humiliating role of the mistress. To the children, she will forever be the woman with whom their father cheated on their mother. Despite her sincere intentions, Heather is tainted.
“This may be a long road, but I’m up for the challenge,” she tells me. And in time her persistence pays off. Today she and Ryan are married, and she has a nice connection with his parents and his kids. Next summer they are expecting their first child. I wonder, how would she define infidelity now?