Rethinking Cheating in Sex-Negative Culture

I was recently blown away in not one, but two different posts in a certain community I frequent that involved the issue of cheating.  The first post was trying to mock the idea that sometimes, if someone cheats, revealing the act to their partner can be a selfish, destructive act.  The other post was discussing this incident, which is clearly about a privacy issue, but because infidelity was involved, quickly turned into an unimaginative and predictable series of tirades about how wayward spouses deserve to have their privacy violated, even by large telecommunication companies.


The basic gist of the comments in both posts boiled down to these "truths":

• There is never any scenario where cheating is "ok" or morally neutral or the lesser of two evils.  Ever.
• Any and all lying in a relationship is unhealthy, destructive, and bad.
• People who love their partners would never, ever cheat.

Of course, all these assumptions are tied up with Western culture's view of love, particularly the relatively recent notion of "romantic marriage" and idea of lifelong monogamy as natural and expected.  It's amazing how rarely these notions are unpacked, even amongst people who are generally down with sociology 101 and critical theory.  This isn't the moment where I propose polyamory or open relationships as the solution - I'm not one of those.  I tend to view the "marriage and monogamy" versus "non-monogamy" in the same way I view "capitalism" versus "communism" - both systems are full of flaws and rife with abuses, but the former in both cases is presented as the healthy, inevitable norm, and the latter as a crazy perversion of the natural order.


If two people in a relationship have decided that they are only interested in being monogamous, that is entirely justified.  But the lack of recognition that lifelong monogamy isn't a choice someone makes once, then forgets about - as opposed to a choice that is made on an ongoing, daily basis - is kind of ridiculous.  In one of these posts, a commenter sarcastically faux-whined, "Monogamy is hard!"  But that's the thing. It is hard, for most people!  Particularly in long-term relationships where infatuation has waned, and passions have shifted.  I mean, let's not do a disservice to all these couples who have made a commitment to monogamy and stuck to it, pretending that it's what comes easily and naturally to most people, because that's a load of shit.  In doing so we're negating the sacrifices and hard work that lifelong monogamy entails for most people.



But back on topic, why do people freak out about cheating so much?  "Because cheating is a horrible thing!"  Yeah, I know it is.  One of the first things that happens in a discussion about cheating and ethics is those who are of the "Cheaters are worse than Hitler!" camp start claiming that anyone who disagrees with them obviously has never been cheated on, or are even likely cheaters themselves.

I've been cheated on, in a very serious relationship, over a period of time.  I've been directly lied to even when I confronted the guilty party with hard evidence of their cheating.  I never suspected that this particular ex would ever cheat on me, and since we'd explicitly talked about the possibility of opening up our relationship if one of us ever had the urge to cheat, I trusted completely that he'd have no reason to do this.  I was utterly shattered, disgusted with my own naivete.  I came to loathe what really should be considered a good quality in myself: my trusting nature.


But the funny thing is, having the benefit of hindsight, I realize that being cheated on was far from the worst thing I endured in that relationship.  There are many, many ways people can hurt each other.  Many of them are purposeful, and while it's true that some people do use infidelity to lash out at their partners, generally it's more about the desire (emotional or sexual) of the person doing the cheating than anything else. 

"But it's a breach of trust!" the cheaters-are-evil brigade say.  Yes, it is.  So is, say, buying a car without your partner's permission. Yet the trope about the guy who brings home an expensive financed recreational purchase is not treated as nearly as big a transgression as the dreaded cheater.  Cheating is placed in a special category of extra-horrible-wrongness.  And sex-negative values has everything to do with it.


Part of the problem is the way sex and love are conflated.  Women in particular receive strong messages that for them, love has to be present for sex to be worthwhile or good.  That old cliche about trading sex for love actually is fairly spot-on as far as societal messages go.  And I know that for some people, sex is only satisfying and meaningful when in the context of a loving relationship.  Yet a brief glance at human history does make it pretty clear that this isn't the norm.  I suspect that most people have the capacity to enjoy sex within a variety of different dynamics. 

But for some reason, the idea of sex divorced from love is terrifying to many, so we get the idea that people who are  truly "in love" don't have any desire to have sex with other people.  The extreme end of this view are the deluded folks who get upset at the mere idea of their partners masturbating to images or even thoughts of other people.  "Committing adultery within the heart," as a sin, which is basically some crazy idea of thoughtcrime that denies most people's basic experience as sexual beings.  I remain convinced that the conflicts some couples have over porn viewing has a lot less to do with a feminist critique of the porn industry or women's-bodies-as-commodities and more to do with a physical and sexual insecurity so deep that the very thought of our partner getting off to an image other than our own is profoundly threatening.


This isn't to say that I want to blame people - and women in particular - for their insecurities around this issue.  We are bombarded with so many conflicting and fucked up messages about sex, desirability, body image, and relationships that it's amazing any of us can retain any sense of sexual self-esteem whatsoever.  Yet I have a hard time believing that the neurosis would be so deep and painful if we weren't buying into the "sex = love" message.  "If they really loved me, he wouldn't look at porn, because I would be enough," is not an uncommon refrain.  (Some of the folks who say this even admit to looking at porn themselves!)  But there's this fucked-up romantic ideal that we carry around with us that if we are the sexiest, most awesome lovers ever, our partners will fall so irrevocably in love/lust with us that they simply wouldn't have any interest in anyone else.  For the rest of their lives.  Of course, nobody can be the perfect love/lust object, but we hate ourselves for not measuring up, regardless.  And then sometimes we take it out on our partner, or random strangers on the internet who have the gall to confuse the narrative by challenging deeply-held notions about sex and love.

Why even bring up porn and masturbation habits in a discussion about cheating?  Because cheating is relative.   It is not uncommon to find people who describe porn-viewing as cheating.  Others draw the line at "netsex" or phone sex or flirting or kissing or non-physical "emotional affairs" or god knows what.  Cheating, we're told, is a black and white issue: always wrong, never justified, and always a symptom of a "deeper issue" in the relationship, yet we don't even agree on what cheating is!  It occurs to me that "cheating" is whatever event that trips up your own insecurities or jealousy to the point where you feel threatened.  Given that insecurities are personal and vary from person, it makes sense that the definition of what cheating is varies as well.  What doesn't make sense is that once we decide what cheating is, we allow for no gray area with regards to why someone cheats, or whether it's always a horrible, relationship-threatening event.


People cheat for a ton of reasons.  Sometimes the cheat inadvertently because they didn't have a common understanding of how their partner was defining cheating.  Sometimes they cheat because they don't want to be in a relationship, but have not been able to break it off.  Sometimes they cheat because they are horny, or have issues with sexual compulsion or impulsive behavior.  People cheat because they are afraid to ask for what they really want in their relationship, or because they are afraid their partner will leave them if they do.  It may sound crazy to many, but some people cheat because they want to stay in their relationship and are unwilling to go without sex.  Do any of these reasons justify lying to your partner?  No.  It would be far better if we lived in a magical world where relationships are simple, and honest communication is rewarded with empathy and understanding.   That's not the case, and it's frustrating when discussions about infidelity are derailed with reductivist, black and white thinking that don't allow for the full range of human experience and emotion in favor of demonizing cheaters regardless of the situation.

 What I don't get is why people who don't want to cheat and don't want to be cheated on are so insistent on keeping the narrative around cheating so, well, narrow.  Doesn't it make more sense to explore and understand other people's motivations and desires so we can better understand what leads people to cheat - and, if it's important to you - how to avoid situations where you or your partner are more likely to do so?  Just shaming cheaters as irredeemable and malicious doesn't help relationships or prevent cheating.  It just makes people less likely to talk about it, and the culture of silence around sexual desire that isn't socially-sanctioned just leads to a cycle of guilt.  Jimmy Carter may have been mocked for talking about his own non-monogamous desires in the famous 1976 Playboy interview, but he had a point that's worth considering today, dated language, Christian trappings and all.

"Because I'm just human and I'm tempted and Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Christ said, I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it. But that doesn't mean that I condemn someone who not only looks on a woman with lust but who leaves his wife and shacks up with somebody out of wedlock. Christ says, don't consider yourself better than someone else because one guy screws a whole bunch of women while the other guy is loyal to his wife. The guy who's loyal to his wife ought not to be condescending or proud because of the relative degree of sinfulness."