341 - Cheating in Non-monogamous Relationships
The many definitions
“Cheating” has a broad scope of definitions and is difficult to define. Here are some of the definitions across the board:
“[T]he breaking of a promise to remain faithful to a romantic partner, whether that promise was a part of marriage vows, a privately uttered agreement between lovers, or an unspoken assumption.”
Psychology Today
“[Cheating occurs when] two people have agreed to be sexually exclusive and one or more of them has clandestine sex outside the relationship while pretending to be monogamous and lying to their partner with active manipulation and/or omission of information.”
Dr Elisabeth Sheff
Why people cheat
Findings from “Betrayals in Emerging Adulthood: A Developmental Perspective of Infidelity” by Jerika Norona, et al (Journal of Sex Research, 2018) state that those researched in the study cheated primarily due to unfulfilled interdependent needs, such as intimacy, affiliation, and sexual reciprocity.
Some other possible reasons someone might cheat:
Thrill of secrecy or forbidden nature.
Wanting newness or re-ignition of excitement or pleasure.
Searching for something one is not getting out of current relationship(s).
Cheating in polyamory
“Psychologist and sex and intimacy coach Dr Lori Beth Bisbey says that in non-monogamous relationships, cheating is less about the activity, and more about violating the trust you’ve built up in your relationship. ‘In non-monogamy, you set down how you're going to manage relationships and what the boundaries are,’ she said. ‘So when you break that, you spit in the face of the work that you've done in the relationship. It’s not about sex, it’s not about jealousy—although contrary to popular opinion, that is also something poly people struggle with—it’s about the lie.’”
What Cheating Looks Like in a Polyamorous Relationship (Vice, 2019)
Some of our Patrons in our Facebook group added that cheating could look like:
Breaking agreements.
Sustained deception, or “lying with intent.”
Violation of informed consent.
There was some discussion as well about the concept of cheating being outdated and useless, such as the concept of virginity, and is rooted in insecurity and a desire for control.
Our Patron and former guest Phoebe Phillips discusses on her blog, Polyammering, how cheating is a phenomenon that occurs outside of relationships as well (games, etc).
Martha Kauppi, our guest last week, discusses trust and infidelity in her book as well, Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients).
Actionable takeaways from this episode
Phoebe Phillips lists some questions you can ask yourself if you’re trying to determine if you’re cheating:
Am I within the bounds of our established agreements with this action?
If I’m not sure or if I’m using a loophole to rationalize my actions, am I willing to discuss it with my partner in advance to ensure they are aware of my intentions?
Am I allowing my partner to make a fully informed decision about whether or not to continue dating me?
If you answer ‘yes’ to all of these, you’re probably not cheating.
Additionally, Esther Perel, author of the book The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, argues for a more compassionate approach to the inevitable phenomenon of infidelity. She suggests:
Accept that infidelity will probably happen.
Strip it of its moral power (i.e. don’t think your partner is a bad, morally irredeemable person for doing it).
Get curious around why they did so in the first place. Getting answers to those questions could infuse your relationship with some excitement.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about cheating in relationships, in particular in non-monogamous relationships, as well as monogamous ones. There has been some debate on this topic recently and the question has been posed of whether it's even possible to cheat in non-monogamous relationships. Today, we're doing a deep dive into what it means to cheat, why people do it, how we as a society define cheating in both traditional and non-traditional relationships, and some actionable takeaways to think about if you've cheated or been cheated on.
Emily: This topic is indeed a doozy and it's something that we have spent time on but it's been a while, I think, since we've devoted a whole episode to cheating in non-monogamy or cheating in general. A lot of people come to non-monogamies by way of cheating but today we're more just going to talk about cheating in non-monogamy and if it's possible. This topic came up just because our research assistant for this episode, Kiana, notified us of this article that was making the rounds and various non-monogamous communities and it's called I Am a Proud Homewrecker, Ask Me Anything.
It's this really fascinating read on Medium, where the author essentially says that cheating is a really important political action and that they think helping my friends cheat in their relationships is an important way to support their autonomy. We all took a look at this article, have some thoughts about it, can we maybe give a brief idea, lens idea bubble of what it is that you thought of this article? Go for it, Dedeker.
Dedeker: Well, first of all, if you're out there listening and immediately having your feathers ruffled up, if you just go read this article, probably the outrage question that you have is answered. I wouldn't say that it is necessarily answered satisfactorily, I think that rather than being a very well-thought-out treatise on what motivates this person and their values behind encouraging their friends to cheat. It's a little bit more automatically defensive, which is understandable. I think this is the kind of thing that would stir up a lot of ire at the same time, of course, the place that I go to is, who decided this person was the savior of their friends or the savior of making sure that their friends can access autonomy?
I think that a lot of causes, people can have really intense conviction to the point where it seems disruptive. I can think of a lot of examples, like there's certain extreme animal rights activists where it's like, "I'm going to release animals from the zoo," and some people can be very convinced and feel like that is the right thing and you do something destructive in order to actually get something fixed. That also falls in, I think, a similar line of thinking of, "I need to burn down this abortion clinic, because that's the only way that this is going to get fixed and this is the only way that's going to send the message."
Maybe it's reductive for me to think about that in the same way and I'm sure a lot of people out there will be upset that I'm making that kind of equivalency and I wouldn't call them necessarily an equivalent, but it does seem to share the same seed of I'm so convicted by my beliefs around this and have this sense of I'm the one who needs to do something about it to the extent that I'm okay causing some destruction, essentially. That can open up a whole other can of worms of how effective is it to burn the system down versus not?
Emily: Sure. How about you, Jase?
Jase: Same thing. It's just that I see this come up sometimes with talking about your sexual identity or your gender identity or the way you do relationships as being a political action, I think makes a lot of sense and can be a very validating thing to realize and to understand yes, just by being me and being my true self, that is a political action, and it's something I can be proud of, and also can help people to understand why there might be resistance to it and to find strength in that.
At the same time like, Dedeker, I think was getting at, thinking of it that way, is also a really good way to jump quickly to the ends justifying the means or that the ends justify any means not just the best means or good means, but just literally anything I do in the name of this is okay. To give more examples of what Dedeker is talking about, we have to remember that whatever your political ideology is, can lead to some stuff that's destructive and also doesn't help your cause. I think this person falls into that category here. I don't think they're actually helping their cause and I actually would argue, they're not even helping their friends actually achieve autonomy in this way.
Emily: Yes, and it had some strange things to talk about when it came to discussing ethical non-monogamy, which I think we'll get more into in the bonus episode. I think it was a good jumping off point into this episode to ask the question, if you are in a relationship where two people are hopefully open about seeing other people, sleeping with other people, having sexual relationships with other people, can cheating even exist?
We asked our Patreons, these questions, we did a lot of research on it so we're going to get into all of that but there are a lot of differing opinions out there regarding that specifically, if non-monogamy means, "Yes, cheating," or, "No cheating." We're going to talk about that and continue on. I do encourage people to look up this Medium article, because it's fascinating. It's an interesting read, and is a good jumping off point for your own mind to think about these questions.
Dedeker: Firstly, let's talk about how common is cheating just in general? There's a lot of different statistics out there that discuss how common cheating is. If we take a broad view and try to assimilate and look at the findings of all these different studies and surveys, generally, we can make the assumption that cheating is pretty darn common, more common than uncommon. We specifically looked at an article in Psychology Today from 2010 called, How Often Do People Really Cheat on Each Other? written by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D.
The article profiles a national survey about the extent to which American attitudes on infidelity and cheating have changed, basically, between 1973 and 2008. Quite a large gap. I imagine there's probably even more changes because now at this point, 2010, it's starting to look further and further away. There's been a lot that's happened in the past 11 years or so, so I'm sure that this is probably maybe even a little bit out of date. At least as of 2010, the percent of Americans who say that cheating is always wrong has increased from around 65% in 1973, to now about 81%, at least as of 2008.
Emily: That's really interesting.
Dedeker: Yes, between 1991 and 2008, somewhere between about 20% to 25% of men admit to having cheated on their wives. This is also another number, specifically with men where I've seen it really, really range from as little as 15% to as high as 50%.
Jase: Right. Then in that same range from '91 to 2008, rates of admitted infidelity for women are between 10% and 15% compared to that 20% to 25%. Again, this is another one of those things where I've seen other numbers that have a much bigger range on this. Among people 65 and older, women were only half as likely as men to say that they cheated, and among people 18 to 24, younger people, women were 81% as likely as men to admit to infidelity.
Basically, just the younger women are more likely to admit it than older women, seems to be the takeaway of that. Of people who admitted to cheating, 64% say that infidelity is always wrong, even if they have done it and of those who claimed to have always been faithful, 86% of them say cheating is always wrong. I guess believing cheating is always wrong makes you have maybe a little less likely to cheat but apparently not.
Dedeker: Well, that's making an inference that's not necessarily there.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: Sure, yes.
Emily: It's just also interesting that in 1973, 65% of people said that it was always wrong and then in 2008, 81% of people said, and I wonder how the cultural narratives have shifted that sentiment to people being more like, it's always wrong now later on in the world's history than it was back in the day when probably a lot of people were cheating and it was just brushed off, perhaps
Jase: I think that's a great question because I think it goes to not only that question, but also I think we often think of older generations as being more traditional and moralistic than younger generations. That's not always true. I actually think this is an example of that I actually feel I've seen some other studies that show that.
Emily: Similar sentiment.
Jase: Moralism, black and white thinking actually increased from middle of the century to later in the 20th century. I also want to come back to that thing about if thinking that cheating's always wrong makes you less likely to is one possible interpretation. Then the other one is having cheated makes you less likely to think that it's always wrong. it's another way you could look at the same numbers, all of those are guesses and that's relevant because that's going to come up later in this episode.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: How you interpret data.
Emily: There are a lot of different articles out there with these not concrete numbers, because I wanted to find something more concrete and it's just impossible because whatever study you're going to be looking at, people are going to be saying different things. The method by which the study is conducted also makes a difference in terms of who says that they have cheated or not. For example, we looked at this article from The New York Times in 2008, it was titled, Love, Sex and the Changing Landscape of Infidelity by Tara Parker-Pope.
This is from the article. This is a takeaway that shows what I just said, that the method by which researchers collect data, it can determine the results. In the article it said, in the Journal of Family Psychology, for example, researchers from the University of Colorado in Texas A&M surveyed 4,884 married women using to face to face interviews and anonymous computer questionnaires. In the interviews, only 1% of women so that they had been unfaithful to their husbands in the past year and on the computer questionnaire more than 6% did.
Jase: It's a pretty big margin of difference there.
Emily: Yes somehow saying it out loud is like ugh, I don't want to do that.
Dedeker: What can see with these studies is that there have been demographic changes in terms of who is cheating and how often. For example, women are just cheating more often than they used to. Again, it's not clear if this is actually cheating more often or just more likely to lie about it or be honest about it, perhaps, or more likely to admit it.
As our researcher pointed out that is a good argument to make because if we look socially just at the fact that there's for a very long time, been a lot higher consequences for women who cheat then there have been for men who cheat that it's much more likely that either a woman be less likely-- again, talking in a traditional sense, that would be perhaps less likely to choose a cheat or at least choose not to admit it and take that risk.
Jase: Right, that's the thing. Even with that argument, it still could be either thing. Even if you're like, it is because there's a higher social cost if it's found out, does that mean you're less likely to do it or just less likely to admit it or both? It still doesn't quite get us to the answer.
Dedeker: I think there's many reasons why it's probably so difficult to actually pin down a number. I think not the least of which is the fact that if you just ask someone the question, have you ever been unfaithful or have you ever cheated? That does leave it up to the person's interpretation of what that actually is and then that further is left up to their own cognitive biases about how they've decided to square it.
Emily: Yes Well, I wasn't unfaithful--
Dedeker: It was like the first three months of the relationship, maybe I was unclear and I did it. That can all really get lost in the weeds. I think that's why we end up with these numbers that are such a wide range.
Jase: That's a perfect segue into our next section here, which is talking about what is cheating? We're going to start off with this question of what does cheating look in monogamous, like traditional monogamous relationships? It is hard to define and like you brought up, there's all these caveats of well, I don't know if we were totally exclusive yet or we hadn't quite hit this point or the other one is oh, well this wasn't cheating because it was just like an emotional thing or that is emotional in fidelity.
That's a type of cheating or sexual infidelity is fine, but emotional's not. There's like all these little caveats and different opinions people have. It is not always one uniform definition of what cheating means. There's not one definition of what monogamy means even if people think there might just be one definition.
Emily: That's very true. There was an article titled Infidelity from Psychology Today, and it defines a couple different things regarding cheating. They define in infidelity as the breaking of a promise to remain faithful to a romantic partner, whether that promise was part of marriage vows, a privately uttered agreement between lovers or an unspoken assumption.
Dedeker: Privately uttered agreement between lovers, is so romance novel.
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: Very romantic and breathy up against the wall and utter some sweet sweet agreements in your ear.
Emily: Amazing. The article also uses the term "micro cheating" and says that it-- I know--
Jase: I forgot about that. I remember coming across that years ago and I completely blocked it out of my mind.
Emily: I know. It's boy. Okay. It says it refers to acts that fall short of most definitions of infidelity, but may still disturb a partner such as flirting with an attractive neighbor or coworker, but with no intention of stray. Then finally, the article goes on to mention that some people really insist that watching porn, can be a form of cheating and. It basically says that partners should be clear and open about the respective definition of cheating. Yes, absolutely. People should do that, but I don't know, porn? Come on. Everybody does it.
Dedeker: That's up to interpretation for people. I don't want to of crap on people if they feel like this is something that I want to put within the realm of being something that's exclusive with my partner. If two adults are consenting and agreeing to that and that's actually working for them, great. I wouldn't agree to it but I don't want to necessarily throw people in the garbage over that.
Emily: Sure Or throw our cognitive bias is all over this show even though that happens sometimes.
Jase: Yes. However, it is one of those things that it's very different if that's something that both of these people have talked about their values and have agreed upon versus it's something you've just taken for granted as yes, this is just truth, but this hasn't been explicitly talked about or that your partner has been like yes, sure. I'll just be more secret about it.
To go a different direction on defining this, there was a 2016 article called Cheating and Consensual Non-Monogamy by Dr. Elizabeth Sheff. In this part, she's talking about specifically in monogamous relationships that cheating occurs when two people have agreed to be sexually exclusive and one or more of them has clandestine sex outside the relationship while pretending to be monogamous and lying to their partner with active manipulation and/or omission of information.
Emily: I think that's much more clear. Thank you, Dr. Elizabeth Sheff, than the previous things from the Psychology Today article and also that is more of sexual infidelity, but also the lying, I think it adds emotional aspects to that to a degree. It's interesting.
Dedeker: Of course, we have to at least acknowledge the really common, well worn path, very heteronormative explanation around cheating that usually is some version of well, women are more upset by emotional infidelity because it's threatening their only support, their only lifeline, the man. The man is more upset by sexual infidelity because oh, my goodness, the female that was going to carry his child and birth his offspring is now being threatened and maybe carrying somebody else's offspring.
Again, with a lot of Evo psych stuff around sex and around relationships, there's what they refer to in Sex at Dawn as this big great forgetting that the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy was not always the norm. If anything, for most of our human history, it's been a very small fraction of our human history necessarily. We have to acknowledge it because the fact that it's this is still something people trot out today as a very logical thing.
Like, oh, yes, it makes sense men don't like cackles because of this and women don't like being cheated on because of that. As though there's never, ever been for a case where a man has been upset by emotional infidelity or a woman's been upset by sexual infidelity.
Jase: Well not only that, but there have actually been studies showing the opposite of that. There have been studies showing that in actual reactions to those situations, not just imagined ones that were in those original studies that made everyone go, oh, look, science says, men are more upset by physical infidelity and women more upset by emotional. Subsequent studies has shown completely opposite results of that even if people thought they would react the other way. It's just the whole thing, it's like one study gets done and before it's been confirmed, people jump all over it and go, yes, okay, this fits with the way our society is set up now, so we're just gonna go with it and say, yes, look science proves it, now we have an excuse.
It still happens all the time. I was just in a workshop a few weeks ago, where a lot of the studies they brought up in the workshop specifically talking about the differences between men and women, I was having to bite my tongue the whole time being like, actually that's one that's been disproven since then or like, oh, that's actually one where their methodology was bad or actually that's turned out to not be the case. It's frustrating but it still happened.
Emily: You should have said something. I would've loved that, but yes.
Jase: I did bring it up a little bit in the comments section when we took a little break, but that wasn't the core focus of it, so I didn't want to completely derail it for that, but yes, I did try to bring it up to be like, Hey, I'm having a problem with some of the ways you're talking about gender here.
Emily: Yes. Well, all right. I think the question is, why do people cheat? Because I think many of us have been in a situation where this comes up or we're around people who have cheated. It is prevalent in our society. A lot of people enter into non-monogamy from an infidelity that happens in their relationship and then they decide, okay, we're going to open it up. We wanted to look at some reasons why people cheat and then also are the reasons why non monogamous people cheat similar to those in traditional relationships?
Just a little side note, we did an episode not too long ago on identity and relationships which was episode 330, and there's an article that provides an interesting tie-in to some of the themes that we discuss on that episode and then additionally, the study and this article that we're about to talk about, there were a bunch of questions and discussions and theories posed regarding attachment styles. We've talked about that a lot, most recently with Jessica Fern, the author of Polysecure on episode 291. You can go back and listen to those if you want to dive deeper into those specific subjects but right now, we're going to talk about something from betrayals in emerging adulthood, a developmental perspective of infidelity.
Jase: Yes. This was published in 2018 in the Journal of Sex Research. This is a team of psychologists at the University of Tennessee. Did a mixed method study, examining both written narrative, as well as survey responses of 104 "emerging adults", which is something about that euphemism like--
Dedeker: Like new and emerging businesses, new and emerging startups.
Emily: We talked about that in identity a little bit, I believe. Yes, they're essentially in range where they are labeled as emerging adults where they're a little bit out of teen-hood but not quite into super adulthood.
Dedeker: Like emerging out of the cocoon with your little wet wrinkly wings that you got to move around and wiggle and get all dry, so then you're in actual adult.
Emily: There you go, exactly.
Jase: Anyway, I just think that's a very funny euphemism for that age range, but anyway, this was 104 emerging adults, both narrative, meaning they're writing out responses as well as survey responses which are more of checking a box and 59.6, very precise number, roughly 60% of the participants were women, the average age of participants was 22.1.
Emily: They were young people.
Jase: Right. Emerging adults.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: The majority of the respondents were White heterosexual and the participants were gathered through Mechanical Turk, which is a service you can use to get responses to surveys and things like that. The advantage of doing that though compared to the usual college study is that you're not just studying undergraduates at year one university, you are getting a little bit of a wider sample although, as we saw here, still White and heterosexual and that in this case they defined infidelity as both sexual and emotional infidelity.
Dedeker: The researchers were curious to understand if there's a relationship between engaging in infidelity and the development of adulthood. As in, how is cheating related to formation of one's identity or what developmental needs are met by engaging in infidelity? Now, it is just wild to me that you thought of that question in the first place. It's a good question. It's a good premise for a study. I would be curious to actually read the study text and read their little preamble to get a sense of what even got you there because that's a really interesting question.
They also examined influence of attachment styles and infidelity, again,, with emerging adults as well as any gender differences and so, basically they found that the primary reason for infidelity was unfulfilled, interdependent needs. As in needs for intimacy, for quality time for shared activities, for something to alleviate my boredom, as well as a need for sexual reciprocity, so 21 participants referenced unmet independence needs and then 14 participants all who referenced unmet autonomy needs. It's a mix of both, I'm not getting what I want relationally as well as I'm not getting what I want as far as my own independence.
Other people cited things like the influence of alcohol or just a desire for excitement or for novelty or attention. Of those 104 participants there were 6, who did say that they desired an open or a polyamorous relationship and that was their motivation for cheating. They did find that there wasn't really a significant difference between genders. They did find that those who reported engaging in infidelity because of unmet interdependence needs and in particular, unmet intimacy needs, were more avoidantly attached than those who didn't reference having some unmet interdependence needs, which is fascinating.
In contrast, those who reported engaging in infidelity because of unmet independence needs were more anxiously attached than those who didn't report that. That's so interesting because the way that my brain works, I would think, oh, anxious attached, you always want more of that connection. You want more of that intimacy. That's what you're pursuing. If you're avoidant attached, you're always wanting more of that independence and more of that autonomy and it's actually swoopy swapped, at least, in this study, which is super interesting.
Emily: Yes. I wonder why that is--
Jase: That would be something interesting to have a study that looks more into that specifically because this is still a pretty small study of a fairly narrow group. That'd be interesting to take that further. You researchers out there, feel free to take that one.
Emily: Just do a wider setting.
Jase: Yes. Just put like a little thanks to me in your abstract or something. Don't even worry about it.
Emily: Just a brief quote from the article was, participating in infidelity may be another way that emerging adults attempt to meet their needs for independence in interdependence. As emerging adulthood can be trying and daunting time for young people, the decision to engage in infidelity is likely a form of relationship exploration and experimentation. With all of that, I'm curious because a lot of these things like trying to get more intimacy or quality time or alleviate boredom or being autonomous, things like that feel like reasons why people enter into polyamorous relationships. That to me makes me, makes me think that the reasons why people who are in traditional relationships cheat versus those in non-monogamous relationships would be separate, would be different, rather.
Jase: That is an interesting hypothesis to do a study about. You presented that just like a hypothesis. It's like, this seems to me that this would be the case, let's test it. Now I want to see that study.
Emily: Yes. Well, there you go.
Dedeker: I also don't think that's necessarily exclusive because I could certainly see a lot of people who are already in an active polyamorous or open relationship still having unmet intimacy needs or autonomy needs. I think I could see that still motivating someone deciding to go against an agreement or to lie to their partner or to do something different from what they said that they would do, because that's also still a thing that would motivate them.
Emily: I think, again, I'm just hypothesizing but potentially in hierarchical relationships, that potentially would be more of a thing that might happen, I don't know. I wrote down some reasons why I thought people in non-monogamous relationships would cheat. They included like thrill of the secrecy or forbidden nature of doing something that you shouldn't, which goes along with monogamy as well, but wanting newness or recognition of excitement or pleasure. Maybe you're not getting that from your primary partner, for example, or searching for something that you're not getting out of your current relationship, things like that. I don't know any others.
Jase: I could see the thrill seeking. I could also see it being a result of wanting to have some an experience that's less complicated, especially if there's difficulties with communication with existing partners, or just feeling like there's so many hoops to jump through. That it's like, "This will just be easier if I just did this quick thing this other way". Let's just brainstorm in here.
Emily: Got it. Sure.
Dedeker: I could see that. I think that I could relate to that both personally and also based on what I see especially with people that I work with. Sometimes people can fall victim to process fatigue in open relationships. If I know, oh, me wanting to date someone or hookup with someone, there's going to be a bunch of emotional labor upfront that I don't even really feel like doing, and so it's just going to be easier for me to just go do the hookup and then we pretend like it never happened. I could see that still being a motivating factor for people. I think something that I've seen frequently is people who agree to things in their relationship that they can't actually maintain, they can't actually agree to.
Jase: Or go contrary to their values like we talked about in the last episode.
Dedeker: Sometimes it's not always obvious upfront. I think when people make agreements with partners that they end up not being able to keep, often it's not a very obvious thing in the front of their brain right away of, "Oh, this isn't something I can do, and so I'm just going to lie and say that I can." I think for some people it is, but for many people, I think they do feel positive, like, "Oh yes, I can agree to that. I'm not going to have sex with my other partner for the next month or so. I can totally agree with that. That makes sense."
Emily: Then it’s like, "Whoa."
Dedeker: Yes. Then they're actually in the situation like, "Oh gosh, well actually I probably shouldn't have agreed to that. That's really hard for me to maintain. Maybe it'll be easier for me to just break that agreement, but not be honest about it." I could see that also being a situation.
Jase: We're going to go on in the second half to talk about what cheating looks like in non-monogamous relationships in a little more depth and look at some input from other people including our Patreons. Before we go to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show. Please, take a moment, check them out, listen to the ways you can support this show, because it really does go a long way to helping us make this show and bring this content to you all out there for free every week.
Dedeker: We are back. Now that we've talked about the traditional relationship viewpoint, let's move on to what it means to cheat in polyamory or other non-traditional relationships. I think the recurring theme that I've noticed in most people talking about this and writing about this is lying and violating trust are two of the biggest ways that people can cheat in non-monogamy.
We're going to read a quote from an article in VICE that was published in 2019, titled What Cheating Looks Like in a Polyamorous Relationship. Psychologist and sex and intimacy coach Dr. Lori Beth Bisbey says that in non-monogamous relationships, cheating is less about the activity, and more about violating the trust you’ve built up in your relationship. "In non-monogamy, you set down how you're going to manage relationships and what the boundaries are," she said. "So when you break that, you spit in the face of the work that you've done in the relationship. It’s not about sex, it’s not about jealousy. It’s about the lie."
Which I think makes sense. I think all three of us thinking about our experiences of what we've heard through the community of people feeling cheated on, usually it's about that. It's about the dishonesty. It's about the cloak and dagger. There's also another quote, "Not using a condom and not telling is probably the worst thing to do in a poly relationship." This is someone that they interviewed for the article called Cathy. "It happened with my ex. I ended up with chlamydia. All of us did. I was absolutely fuming." Yes, you should be fuming, Cathy.
Emily: Yikes, sorry, Cath.. Shout-out real quick to our awesome Patreons for helping us with this episode. Kiana posted in the Facebook group and asked, "Do you think cheating as such is a framework that makes sense/is applicable within non-monogamous relationships?" There were a ton of really fabulous responses in the Patreon Facebook group. Most folks out there replied, "Yes, cheating in non-monogamy is possible." The definition varied slightly, but they all had similar themes, which included things like breaking agreements, sustained deception, or lying with intent as someone phrased it.
Also, there's a difference between breaking an agreement once, discussing and negotiating afterwards, versus maintaining a lie with the intent of secrecy, or having someone believe something that isn't true. There's a little bit of a differentiation there. Also, violation of informed consent. All of those things to our Patreons essentially were classified as cheating to them.
Dedeker: We have this particularly interesting quote from one of our Patreons.
Emily: Shout out to you if you know who you are from this.
Dedeker: We don't drop in names because we're trying to protect people's privacy in the Patreon group, but you know who you are. "Personally, I don't date people who have cheated, unless they demonstrate behavior that shows they won't repeat their cheating. This boundary to me is not a moral one, but rather because to me, a person who cheats is someone too disempowered and alienated from themselves to give meaningful consent. I don't think the term cheating is inherently useful or useless, but I think framing it as a moral issue rather than one of consent and self-empowerment is unconstructive."
I really, really like that perspective on it. I think for most of us, we grew up with a very moralistic understanding of cheating. If you cheat, you’re a bad person. For myself, I really had to confront that once I started working with clients. I had to confront a lot of things once I started working with clients. If someone's coming to me for help and they are cheating or have cheated or they are "the other woman" or something like that in a situation, it doesn't help for me to have a moral sense of like, "Oh gosh, this is a bad person. I can't work with them. They don't deserve to have happiness or kindness or having their emotions heard." No, it doesn't make sense. This is still a human being.
Looking at it through this frame, this may be a person who is just alienated from themselves or too disempowered, makes a lot of sense. It does make me think about some mistakes that I've made in the past. There was someone that I dated who I was their first introduction to non-monogamy and they were very, very, very excited, very pumped for non-monogamy because they disclosed to me, "Wow. I've cheated in every single monogamous relationship I've been in. This is very exciting to me, the idea that I could be in a deep, loving relationship, but still sleep with multiple people. That's great." At the time, I was so in NRE with this person, I was like, "Oh my god, this is fantastic. I love this."
Emily: That turned out well.
Dedeker: Yes, until retrospect, I was like, "That should have been a big red flag." That it was less about the monogamy and more about this person's boundaries, this person's sense of self, this person's sense of what they want, how they can communicate, how they feel about honesty or dishonesty. That was really the issue. Word to the wise, don't make the same mistakes that I did. It doesn't mean they're a bad person, but maybe it should give you some pause to just reconsider.
Jase: In the discussion that followed after this post, there was disagreement about cheating and that was the whole discussion. Something that came up that was really interesting is that some people felt that cheating was not a useful concept at all in any relationship. Similar to a term like virginity that's rooted in this desire for control over other people or maybe insecurity, and that in itself doesn't have value or at least not the value that we assign to it. Whether that's moral value or just how valuable something is.
Cheating maybe is this useless term actually. The person who brought this up also argued that you do not need the concept of cheating in order to call attention to a partner's harmful or untrustworthy behavior. I think this is such a cool point. It's worth taking a moment to think about that.
It reminds me a little bit of our conversation from last week with Martha Kauppi about people calling something a need when really it's a want, because it's like, well, I can't get it if it's just a want. It has to be a need in order for me to even be able to ask for it or to have anyone take me seriously. I almost feel like this question of cheating could be a similar thing, where it's like, well, is it cheating or not, is maybe the less important question than, is this a relationship where I feel good and I feel valued and I feel like I can trust my partner and I'm getting my needs met and that I can be honest with my partner? Maybe those are the questions to be asking, not, does this count as cheating or not?
Emily: I think that it calls back slightly to the original article that we talked about, that essentially it's like a useless concept to talk about. It's akin to virginity or whatever. I don't know what I think about that. It is a word that is so steeped in our cultural zeitgeist of like, you are bad if you cheat. No, no, no. I had to struggle with that a lot growing up because I am a product of a cheating relationship. My dad was married and my mom and he had an affair. I always struggled with that. I'm a bad person because I'm a product of that.
It's only recently when I've started to really break free of the constraints of feeling that way as an individual, I don't know. It's interesting overall just to think about that concept and how it can be-- just the concept itself like any concept can be destructive potentially if not thought about from, I think, a more nuanced perspective.
Jase: I think an interesting exercise because we talk a lot about how language can limit the ways that we think and feel about things. Like the classic example people love to bring up is how we only have the one-word love then some other languages have several and everyone loves to go to the whole Greek thing of like, oh yes, there's seven different words for different types of love and we just have the one word of this limitation of language in that way.
I also think it's an interesting exercise to look at it another way of how might you feel differently about this thing or how might you express it differently if you didn't have the word for it that you do have. Something like cheating, how else might you talk about that or think about that if you didn't have this word that had all this cultural emotional attachment to it? You can't really avoid that especially with these terms. Just a fun exercise. You could do this with all sorts of terms so just like how would I think about or talk about this thing if I couldn't use that word? It’s like, what's that game?
Dedeker: Taboo.
Jase: There's a game to get people to-- Taboo, yes. It’s like playing a game of Taboo. It’s like if you can't say that word or maybe any closely connected words, how could you express that same sentiment? Is an interesting exercise.
Emily: Additionally, one of our other patrons and our two-time former guest Phoebe Phillips explained on her blog, Polyammering and an article Can You Cheat in Polyamory. The cheating is a phenomenon that occurs outside the realm of romantic relationships as well like one can cheat in a game for example and some of our Patreons actually expressed that same sentiment.
Phoebe says, "Cheating implies being intentionally surreptitious about ignoring or outright breaking established agreements to gain an advantage for yourself or to control outcomes. It's a concept that implies there are agreements, laws or rules in place, and that one is actively circumventing them to their own advantage."
In that way, I think yes, it's absolutely possible to cheat in polyamory. She goes on to say, "What might cheating look like in polyamory? The more rules or agreements are in place, the easier it might be to cheat, but generally speaking anytime you're withholding information from a partner that you think they would be upset to find out, there is a good chance you might be cheating." Fascinating.
Jase: I’ve heard that rubric before of like if the thing you're doing, you would be worried if your partner knew about this, then you're in that zone. You're in the cheating zone and maybe you should rethink either the communication or the action.
Dedeker: Finally, we need to do a call back to our guests from our last episode Martha Kauppi who discussed trust and how it relates to infidelity in her book Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists (and Their Clients). I think the way that Kauppi looks at this is really interesting because she looks at the whole ecosystem of the relationship. As in looking at someone lying or being less than truthful in order to avoid conflict? Does that reveal something about how the other partner shows up in conflict?
Emily: So interesting.
Dedeker: Yes. Kauppi has what she calls lie-inviting behavior, and we've talked about this before. I think Phoebe also talked about it on her blog. She has a really wonderful blog post called The Honesty Exchange where it's basically looking at that phenomenon of it's not only about the person who made the choice in how they chose to communicate or not communicate honestly, it's also in how the other person receives that honesty.
That if you have a partner who blows up or shames you or shuts down or becomes completely emotionally dysregulated whenever you tell them something that's uncomfortable when you're honest, then that means they may be more likely in the future to avoid that conflict, and it may encourage some omission of truth or telling some half-lies or even just straight-up lies.
Lie-inviting behavior often means that there's a lack of differentiation as she talks about a lot in the book that they're not able to emotionally regulate and listen and stay curious when their partner is sharing something that isn't easy to hear. I think that is really interesting. Sometimes I avoid leaning into that too heavily because of course, we don't want to go to the extreme of, well, you're at fault that your partner cheated on you because you made it too difficult for them to be honest.
It's not like we can completely swing the other way and put all the emphasis and all the responsibility and blame on that person. However, I do appreciate this, the sense that it is an ecosystem, that it's not just one person being a bad person necessarily.
Jase: Yes. I think that metaphor of the ecosystem is an interesting one to think about with things like this because I think so many of us have been conditioned culturally to think about relationship problems legalistically of like who is guilty or not guilty, of there's the black and white, there's only one choice or the other and that once you're at that point, I feel like the whole thing's already lost.
Once you're at the point where what matters is legalistically deciding who's right and wrong, you've lost the whole thing already. You're not going to win, you're not going to have a good relationship that way if that's the thing that matters.
Emily: Sure.
Jase: I know that's different from how a lot of people approach this and talk about this stuff but this idea of an ecosystem is an interesting way to look at it, that it's like are the lions or the antelopes, the villains are the heroes? It's like we don't think about actual ecosystems in the world that way it's this all goes together and changes in one place affects everything else. I think that's an interesting metaphor to look at.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: All right. For our last section of this episode, we want to talk about some actionable takeaways. What can we actually do with this information now that we've talked about all this stuff? There's maybe two categories of actionable takeaways. One is what to do if you're wondering if an action that you're taking or thinking about taking is cheating, and then two, what to do if you've been cheated on.
Again, to go back to Phoebe Phillips who lists some questions you can ask yourself if you're trying to determine, am I cheating or would this be cheating? Question number one, am I within the bounds of our established agreements with this action? Question two, if I'm not sure or if I'm using a loophole to rationalize my actions-- I know a lot of you did that in step one, I have certainly done it. Am I willing to discuss it with my partner in advance to ensure that they're aware of my intentions? Then question three, am I allowing my partner to make a fully informed decision about whether or not to continue dating me? That's an interesting one there too, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: If you answer a solid yes to all of these, then you're probably not cheating but if there's no or, I don’t know about that, to any of them, then you might be. Again, even if you're saying whatever the term cheating isn't even that useful, it's still like, well, you might be in that zone
Emily: Doing something you shouldn’t be doing to somebody else.
Jase: Yes, exact. There’s something else that needs to be worked out here.
Emily: If you are cheated on, if you are a person who has been cheated on, whether you're monogamous or not, there might be some shame involved with that. I think that's something like a cultural narrative that a lot of people have. They feel a lot of intense shame like, how could this happen to me? What did I do? Internalizing it in some way with that in mind, there's some thoughts from Esther Perel for those who find themselves in this position.
Esther Perel wrote The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Perel argues in that for a more compassionate approach to this what she calls an inevitable phenomenon of infidelity, and rather than framing the adulterer as the bad perpetrator and the faithful partner as the victim, which again is pathologizing or moralizing infidelity in some way, it's more helpful to acknowledge the generative possibilities of infidelity.
Perel wrote Mating in Captivity, a different book, and has written extensively on cheating and infidelity, also talks about it on her show, Where Should We Begin? It's a really interesting listen. Definitely listen to it. It's fascinating. In this book Mating in Captivity, she suggests cultivating mystery and distance between partners in order to spark erotic excitement is something that people should be doing.
In my mind, that's like cultivating and creating autonomy between yourself and the person or people that you are with because if you're with them all the time which is hard right now because we're all in captivity, no, we're all like in our home, potentially it's more challenging to do that but it is still very important. Esther Perel says, "There is nothing like the eroticized gaze of the third to challenge our domesticated perceptions of each other." Whoa.
Jase: Yes, it's like you got to sit there and think about that one through.
Emily: No, I mean, it's fascinating.
Dedeker: Then, like a lot of the stuff that we talked about on the show, Perel also discusses how unlikely it is that our partner is going to provide everything that we could ever want and yet when a partner is not providing absolutely everything that we could ever want, a lot of us are very quick to immediately look for it in others and are sometimes pressured to leave a relationship if a partner is not sexually fidelitous.
Bear in mind that Perel's mostly writing this book for monogamous people and talking about traditional monogamous relationships, and yet she also straddles the line for sure, of being fairly pro non-monogamy but also trying to bring in a lot of that very natural, again, like that eroticized charge that comes from your partner being someone who is much more autonomous and independent from you and hoping to encourage people to do that even in their monogamous relationships.
What we're leading up to is Perel has some advice for weathering infidelity, which is one, except that it will probably happen. Two, strip it of its moral power. Which means, don't think that your partner is this bad, terrible, morally irredeemable person for doing it, and get curious around why they did so in the first place. That's the most important takeaway for the non-monogamous folk. That right there. This can be an opportunity for curiosity. It doesn't need to be like super happy curiosity or super excited curiosity but again, curiosity around like let's say, if your partner violated some kind of agreement or did the opposite of what they said that they were going to do, it's getting to the bottom of why.
Is there something going on in the ecosystem of our relationship that made it hard to uphold that agreement or was your partner unable to actually agree to that, but felt pressured to or things like that? Again, getting answered these questions can be really, really valuable. It could be everything from something that could help infuse your relationship with some actual excitement or it could give you a more clear sense of like, Oh, there's some things we need to work on here, or it could also give you a sense of, Oh, maybe this is not the relationship for me if my partner . Yes, again, always, its okay to break up. It is okay. We promise.
Emily: Yes. Wow. Okay. That was a lot. I don't know if we answered the question is it possible to cheat in non-monogamous relationships?
Dedeker: Sure, we did. It is.
Emily: I think it is. I think that you two think that it is
Jase: I'm on board with this like, maybe this term isn't actually serving any of us so much and we should talk about it differently.
Emily: Yes, well, what are the terms? What are labels? The older I get, the more I'm like, whatever. It's just I am who I am and that's fine. All right. For our bonus episode for Patreons, we are going to discuss a little bit about whether or not cheating can exist in relationships like, don't ask, don't tell relationships and relationship anarchy if we know of any other frameworks where cheating may not exist in those types of frameworks of relationships, we're going to dive a little bit into that. I'm interested to hear what you two have to say on those subjects.
This week on our Instagram, we are going to ask the question, is it possible to cheat in non-monogamous relationships? That's that question that we've been talking about this entire episode. We want to hear your answers and also your thoughts on this episode. The best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is on this episode's discussion thread in our private Facebook group or Discord chat.
You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to patreon.com/multiamory. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston and me Emily Matlack. Our episodes are edited by Mauricio Balvanera. Our social media wizard is Will McMillan. Our production assistants are Rachel Schenewerk and Carson Collins. The researcher for this episode is Dr. Keyanah Nurse. Our theme song is Forms I know I did by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on multiamory.com.