ADULTERY

In legal, religious, and moral terminology, adultery is technically defined as sexual intercourse between a marned person and a partner other than the spouse. In modern usage, adultery is a sexual activity of a married person with a nonspouse when that activity is unacceptable to the spouse. This usage distinguishes adultery as an unacceptable extramarital activity, or "cheating" behavior, from consensual extramarital sexual activities that are acknowledged and accepted by both spouses.

Historical Concepts of Adultery

Civil laws in the Western world have long prohibited adultery, for example, the Code of Hammurabi, in Babylonia (c. 1790 B.C.E.); Draco, in ancient Greece (c. 620 B.C.E.); and Solon, in ancient Rome (c. 590 B.C.E.). The condemnation of adultery is even more specific in the religious traditions of the Torah, on which much of our current civil legislation is based (Exodus 20:17; Deuteronomy 5:21, 22:22—29; Leviticus 20:10). However, these ancient laws applied only to women, requiring them to limit their sexual activity to one man. Since a woman was viewed as property attached to a particular man, laws against adultery (and fornication—sexual intercourse between an unmarried man and woman) were meant to protect the property rights of husbands and fathers. However, the laws against fornication and adultery generally did not apply to married or single men and their liaisons with unattached women, such as widows, concubines, or servants.

As societal views of women and marriage have changed, so have the concept and dimensions of adultery. The idea of marriage based on romantic love is relatively new. For centuries, marriage was an economic arrangement between families. In ancient Greece, true love could exist only between two men; women were believed to be incapable of truly intense love. Although women were available for men's sexual pleasure, the Stoic tradition frowned on passion and physical love which distracted men from their higher intellectual endeavors.

Christianity rejected homosexual love but adopted the Stoic suppression of physical love. It glorified spiritual celibate love, viewing sexual love as second-rate, tolerated only because it could produce more souls for the Kingdom of Heaven.

The emergence of the concept of courtly love in southern France during the early Middle Ages set the stage for a radical change in the concept of adultery, the extension of adultery to men, and development of the idea of romantic and emotional marital fidelity. Courtly love had four roots: (1) the lusty male-dominated Teutonic values of the Franks, who viewed women as playthings for men's enjoyment; (2) a certain hedonism introduced by Eleanor of Aquitaine; (3) a new interest in and misinterpretation of Ovid's classic Roman poem The Art of Love; and (4) the growing veneration of the Virgin Mary. Medieval knights vied for the honor of their ladies in jousting tournaments and sang of their love. But these ladies were unattainable, the wives of a noble or a king. In addition, sex—the expression of physical love—was considered the mortal enemy of true, noble love. True love was not then linked with sex or with marriage, which was arranged by the family and based on property and power motives or simple practicalities.

During the Renaissance, romantic courtly love began to be imbued with sexual passion. By the 14th century, the extramarital affair was recognizable as it is known today: an illicit sexual and emotional relationship outside marriage. Prior to this, affairs were expressions of male lust without emotional involvement or interest.

The Protestant Reformation (c. 1500 C.E.) produced two social models of the affair and two views of adultery that have dominated in Westem societies ever since: a pagan courtly love model and a bourgeois-puritan model.

In the Mediterranean countries and much of France, the traditional economic basis of marriage, the Catholic condemnation of divorce, and the courtly love code combined in a social pattern in which marriage remains primarily an institution designed for social benefit and to create progeny. The exuberance of sex, passion, and emotion is expressed in the extramarital relationship. This tradition has subde customs and often-unspoken rules that regulate the relationships of married persons and their lovers or mistresses. In Latino cultures today, this tradition implies that a true man, "un hombre completo," is expected to have a wife and children, and one or more mistresses in "la casa chica" (his little homes). By implication, although it is seldom discussed among the men, Latino women are also allowed discreet extramarital relationships. In northern Europe, the aristocracy and royalty adopted this pagan-courtly love tradition. In the United States, it is found among the rich and upper class society.

In northern Europe, the early Protestants fused romantic love with marriage. They rejected the medieval Catholic ascetic view of marriage as an inferior way of life and restored the Jewish view of the importance of sexual love and family as the center of religious life and nurturance. The emerging middle-class families of northern Protestant Europe incorporated the virtues of courtly love into marriage and championed the value of conjugal love and passion, even while leaving intact traditional patriarchal values and attitudes. As the Protestants came to accept divorce, adultery and the extramarital affair became the mortal enemy of marriage and society because they were often the prelude to and cause of divorce. This bourgeois-Puritan tradition flourished through the 19th century and down to the present in American society.

Family historians believe that a major step in the evolution of love and the extramarital affair occurred during the Victorian period in America around 1880. They offer no explanation for the burst of popular literature, novels, poetry, and advice manuals that glorified romantic, marital love, and the expectation that a man or a woman should satisfy all of the partner's needs.

In the 20th century, important social changes have affected the character and incidence of adultery. Women have moved closer to the level of sexual freedom men have enjoyed for centuries as their financial independence, presence in the work force, education, legal rights, control over reproduction, mobility, socioeconomic options, and personal expectations have increased. Increasing life expectancy and the reduced proportion of time wives spend in the mother and housewife roles have also strained the traditional values of sexual exclusivity.

Modern Concepts and Patterns of Adultery

The current concept of marital fidelity that has evolved over three thousand years of Western Judaeo-Christian culture is clearly expressed in the marriage ritual's phrase "forsaking all others until death do us part." Today, this concept includes sexual and emotional exclusivity for both spouses. However, the radical social changes mentioned above have created a growing tension in these values.

Traditionally, men have been more active extramaritally than women, but recent surveys indicate some changes. In the 1940s, Alfred Kinsey projected that at least half of all married men would some time experience extramarital sex. One in four married women under age 40 reported having had an extramarital experience. In 1970, a survey of Psychology Today readers showed that 40 percent of the husbands and 36 percent of the wives polled had had affairs.

Married men and currently divorced males under age 45 in Hunt's 1974 nationwide survey reported a 47 percent rate of infidelity. A year later, married women age 40 and older, in a Tavris and Sadd survey for Redbook, reported a 39 percent frequency. In Linda Wolfe's Sexual Profile of That Cosmopolitan Girl, 69.2 percent of the married women over age 35 repotted having had an extramarital experience. Both the 1975 Redbook and the 1980 Cosmopolitan surveys were of more educated, upper-class women rather than random samples. Such non-random surveys are hardly representative of American women in general. It may be that the increasing sexual experience of women in college, especially in college dormitories where parental control is reduced and peer pressures often prevail, predisposes more educated women to view multiple and non-exclusive relationships in a more positive framework than in the past when extramarital sex was considered a male prerogative tolerated by women. Also, many single women prefer having affairs with married men because they want a male who can provide emotional and sexual fulfillment without the pressure to take on the commitment of marriage and family.

Since most surveys of marital infidelity were done before heterosexuals became concerned about AIDS, little can be said about the incidence of adultery in recent years. However, of the persons reporting having had extramarital sex in the recent surveys that have been done, 40 to 50 percent had only one outside partner, 40 to 45 percent had two to five partners, 5 to 11 percent had between six and ten partners, and 3 to 5 percent had more than ten extramarital partners. In some respects, women now seem to be equaling or surpassing the men in extramarital relations. In one study of 200 couples in marital therapy, the affairs of husbands lasted an average of 29 months, compared with 21 months for the affairs of wives. While many studies indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans consider adultery wrong, some psychotherapists and marital therapists see women's increasing access to sexual choices as potentially positive because it equalizes power within the marriage.

Despite our cultural values and the obvious trauma caused by adultery, marital therapists now rank adultery behind eight other factors in the breakup of marriages, such as poor communications, unrealistic expectations, and power struggles.

In 1982, Atwater found that about 25 percent of the women in her sample had discussed the possibility of having an extramarital affair with their husbands before doing so. But as long as the primary relationship is successful and for the most part satisfying, many tend to ignore that their partner is emotionally or sexually involved with another person.

Swinging

As Americans become increasingly concerned about the personal and financial costs of divorce and remarriage, various adjustments to sexual exclusivity have become more visible and perhaps more commonly accepted. One form of consensual adultery based on the "togetherness" value of traditional romantic monogamy is "swinging." Swinging is recreational social-sexual sharing among consenting adults. In swinging, two or more couples mutually agree to engage in sex with each other's partners. The extent of swinging is not well documented, but surveys indicate that between two and five percent of American adults have at sometime participated in swinging.

Many couples feel that swinging is a catalyst for positive growth, a sharing activity that promotes understanding, communication, and intimacy in their relationships. They report that it helps free their relationship of routine, sex-role playing, and socially imposed inhibitions. Other writers, principally those involved in marriage counseling, report that swinging was a negative factor in the lives of those they investigated.

The North Amencan Swing Club Association listed over 100 active, organized American swing clubs in its 1991 directory, as well as dozens of publications catering to the swing community. Annual lifestyles conventions in the South, Midwest, and West draw several thousand swingers each year.

Swinging, according to participants, involves much more than sexual activities, with the couples sharing business, emotional, and social interests. Yet, in 1971, Bartell reported that the swingers he interviewed typically limited their swinging with another couple to one or two exchanges and were thus constandy looking for new partners. Several researchers have reported that swingers are generally not liberal or highly educated. They are predominantly conservative or moderate in their politics, and far from permissive on a wide range of social and political issues. Most of the women are housewives, with few outside interests. Swingers also tend to be church-goers. Swingers, however, are not a homogeneous group but come rather from several distinct and very different subcultures.

Open Marriage

A second form of consensual adultery, which emerged in the 1960s, reflects contemporary values of equality of the sexes within the pagan-courtly love model. The open marriage described by anthropologists Nena and George O'Neill is based on "an equal partnership between two friends" who respect each other as persons. Open marriages are flexible and allow each partner privacy and room to grow and develop, even in unexpected directions. Within a trusting relationship, the concept of an open marriage accepts the possibility of both spouses having emotionally and sexually intimate friendships within the context of a healthy primary relationship. Blumstein and Schwartz's 1983 study of American couples found that 15 percent of married couples and nearly 30 percent of the cohabiting couples reported they had sexually open relationships. Among the terms used by researchers for consensual extramarital sex based on the sexually open marriage model are intimate friendship, co-marital, or satellite relationships.

In the 1990s, as increasing numbers of married and cohabiting couples become more open about their healthy patterns of sexually open, nonexclusive relationships, some mainstream churches have established special task forces to reexamine traditional sexual values in the context of current lifestyles. Several of these task forces, particularly those of the United Presbyterian Church of the United States and the Episcopal Church, have called for reinterpretation of the traditional sexual values that uphold sexually exclusive monogamy as the sole morally acceptable lifestyle for sexually active adults and condemn all forms of premarital and extramarital sexual relations. Such reinterpretations are based on a redefinition of sexual morality and fidelity in broader terms than sexual exclusivity and heterosexual monogamy. Fidelity, in this new context, means a commitment to the covenant or contract agreed upon.

Adultery, which etymologically means "polluting the relationship," is then viewed as any action or behavior that violates the couple's commitment to each other. Where couples have agreed to have a sexually open marriage, the terms "extramarital" and "adultery" are not applicable to relationships that are incorporated within the dynamics of the primary relationship.

If accepted, such reinterpretations would recognize the right of couples to redefine marital fidelity and adultery by creating their own covenant of commitment and fidelity within a liberal context. These efforts, however, are vehemendy denounced and strongly opposed by the majority of church members and leaders.

In civil law, a charge of adultery was, until the 1960s, a common and widely accepted ground for granting a divorce in the United States. In some states, adultery was the only legal ground for a divorce, so that couples often concocted evidence of this felony. In 1961, Illinois adopted a consenting adult law that abolished criminal penalties for adultery and fornication. At present, few states still have laws prohibiting adultery between consenting adults, and those that do seldom, if ever, arrest or prosecute offenders.

Written by Robert T. Francoeur in "Human Sexuality - An Encyclopedia", Routledge, 2013, New York, USA, edited by Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.