Modern life presents us with numerous ways to cheat: texts, direct messages, or plain old-fashioned affairs. But is infidelity really betrayal? Radical couples therapist Esther Perel reveals why it might be exactly what your relationship needs
Is anyone monogamous any more? Truly monogamous? We may not be having serial affairs in the John Terry/Tiger Woods mode. We may not find ourselves transgressing as dramatically as Iris Robinson. Or as publicly – and ineptly – as Ashley Cole. But we are probably less monogamous than we used to be, aren’t we? We’re perhaps having extended flirtations; serious and not-so-serious dalliances; special, ostensibly platonic lunch dates with people we see more regularly than we’d like our partners to know. We are, at the very least, testing the borders of fidelity via the medium of text message, or Facebook connections, or Twitter exchanges; the Vernon Kays of the non-celebrity sphere. And some of us are having fully fledged, old-fashioned, impassioned affairs.
Ask around and you’ll see. I asked: friends, friends of friends of friends, online contacts and distant colleagues. I asked some youngsters, some older people, some women, some men. I asked them about the grey areas of their connections with people who were not their partners; I asked what qualified as flirtation and what crossed the line. I asked them how often their extended flirtations became affairs. I asked those who were having affairs how they had them. (I changed their names; sometimes I switched genders. Many of the stories are secondhand – one of them could be one of yours. Or one of mine.)
