The language of infidelity

Most of the words we use to describe infidelity connote moral disapproval, bad character, or sickness.

Verbs such as cheating, betraying, deceiving, swinging.

Nouns such as philanderer, womanizer, slut, whore, affair, adultery, dalliance, indiscretion, one-night-stands, sex-buddy, sexual addict, sexual acting out.

Often therapists refer to infidelity as acting out. It means:

1 – the behaviours are disapproved of in the conventional sense,

2 – express a fantasy,

3 – risk negative consequences,

4 – are created by individual psychopathology,

5 – are motivated by unconscious forces,

6 – are acted out because it can’t be put into words.

It is problematic to summon up visions of millions of separate personal pathologies. Affairs occur so often that they begin to take on something like a “normal” quality. It seems implausible to argue that we are producing in numbers approaching “normal” so many pathologically deficient people. So we look elsewhere – to the institution against which these people are reacting – marriage. Nobody wants to be unfaithful. But nobody wants to be unhappy in marriage either.