Infidelity Is About Way More Than Just Sex

Infidelity Is About Way More Than Just Sex

Video: Nearly everyone has had run-ins with infidelity at some point, whether you were the guilt-ridden cheater, the devastated cheat-ee, or the unwitting (hopefully) third party in someone else’s affair. (And if none of these things has ever happened to you, well, must be nice!)

But in a relationship landscape where we place more emotional pressure on each other than ever – and have plenty of easy outs, from browsing porn to simply leaving your Tinder account open, just in case – how do we even define what it means to cheat? As relationship and sex expert Esther Perel puts it, “A kiss that you only imagine giving can be just as hot as hours of actual lovemaking, because it speaks to our imagination.” In other words, our desire for connection and to feel seen has way more to do with cheating than the actual sex.

In the first of a four-part video series, Perel, author of the forthcoming book, The State of Affairs: Re-Thinking Infidelity, explains a more nuanced definition of infidelity to better suit the way we actually live and date in 2017. Stay tuned for more from Perel, diving into the reasons happy people cheat, how to heal after an affair, and modern love vocabulary. Whether you’re happily attached or not, we could all stand to be a little more fluent in the language of love (or lust).

Video credits:

Narrated by: Esther Perel

Illustrated by: Natalia Ramos

Animated by: Daniel García


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