Monogamy and Infidelity: A Changed Perspective On Modern Relationships

Infidelity, the word seems like a death knell to a relationship isn’t it? Well, yes most of the time it is. But according to a survey by Gleeden, an extramarital dating app made by women for women, reveals, that 44% of users in long-term relationships would forgive a cheating partner if the infidelity was only about sex. However, 81% of people in a relationship younger than one year would not forgive their cheating partner.

Wait, there is more, Gleeden survey further says, one of the main reasons for couples to commit infidelity, first and foremost is due to boredom in the present relationship (63%), then comes due to naturalization of infidelity (20%), thirdly due to partner conflicts (10%) and fourthly due to falling in love with a third person (8%).

So, has intimate relationships changed? Yes, says Gleeden, if there is one thing that saw a massive shift during and after the pandemic, it has to be an individual’s personal space. Couples were confined in a house with restricted private space and time, this fueled the difference between many couples making them re-think the concept of ‘Monogamy’.

A case for monogamy

Humans are now mostly monogamous, but this has been the norm for just the past 1,000 years according to scientists at University College London. They believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them to mate with their mothers.

The study has something to say about monogamy too. According to it, 55% of users say monogamy is a social obligation, while the remaining 45% still believe in it, however, they affirm that monogamy is possible only under certain circumstances.

And so sexual infidelity, one of the many kinds of infidelity, is something a couple in a long term relationship will overlook.

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Monogamy and Infidelity: Long and short of a relationship

Today, adultery isn’t just a violation of trust; it’s a shattering of the grand idea of romantic love. The shock from a cheating partner makes us question our past, our future, and even our very identity.

Yet, as stated above a couple in a long-term relationship, longer than 5 years, are more prone to forgive infidelity than the ones who have been together for a relatively shorter period.

Strange as it may seem, extramarital affairs teach couples a lot about marriage—what they expect, what they think they want, and what they feel entitled to.

Even though attitudes have changed dramatically over the past 100 years, couples still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide like security, respectability, property, and children. What has changed is that along with it we also want our partner to love us, desire us, to be interested in us.

Earlier couples used to get married first and then have sex for the first time. Now couples get married and stop having sex with others. This conscious choice is made to rein in our sexual freedom, by turning our back on other loves, to declare that we have found our ‘significant other’. And our desire for others is supposed to miraculously evaporate.

In such a blissful partnership, why would a couple ever stray?

And yet, they do. We need to remember adultery happens in bad marriages and even in good marriages. It can happen even in open relationships where extramarital sex is carefully negotiated beforehand. So why do people cheat?

Why do couples cheat on each other?

The survey also highlights that most of the infidelities happen between the 5th and the 10th year of marriage, with 18% happening between the 5th and the 7th year, 43% during the 10th and 39% that might occur at any point during the relationship. So, what could be the reason?

We believe diversions happen only when something is missing in the marriage. If you have everything you need at home, you should have no reason to go elsewhere. Hence, it’s thought infidelity must be a symptom of a relationship gone awry.

But, the idea that there is such a thing as a perfect marriage that will shield us against wandering is all wrong. It is precisely the expectation of this domestic bliss that sets couples up for infidelity. Earlier, couples strayed because marriage was not supposed to deliver love and passion. Today, they stray because marriage fails to deliver the love and passion it promised.

However, marital dysfunction is not always the culprit for infidelity but it does provide an exit for insecure attachment, conflict avoidance, prolonged lack of sex, loneliness, or just years of replaying the same old arguments. But, we must remember, that there are repeat offenders, the narcissists, who cheat with impunity simply because they can.

Coming back to reasons for adultery, as stated by Gleeden the number one reason is boredom. Affairs make a person feel alive again. Secondly, when a person is on growth, exploration and transformation and the spouse does not fit in within that growth. Most people stray because they want something more and that something more is not to be found besides them (this does not in any case mean that the spouse is inadequate).

Speaking to a person who’s had an affair, we might find that maybe she/he finds herself/himself in a disempowered position as the partner who earns less or their tendency to repress anger to avoid conflict or the claustrophobia they sometimes feel and especially when gradual two individuals start merging into a “we” things might become too much to cope for either of the couples.

All that can be said is that lucky are couples who do not stray beyond their marriages, while those who do, it’s not because of their partner's inadequacies but because they are looking for something more in a relationship. And couples who recognise that it’s not they that their partners are running away from, forgive their wandering partners.

The views expressed are the author's own.