Understanding Infidelity Part Two: How Infidelity Shows Up in Monogamous + Non-Monogamous Relationship Structures

Oct 9

Last month, we covered what infidelity is and the various types of infidelity, including:

Sexual infidelity: a sexual relationship (once or ongoing) outside of the boundaries of an existing relationship.
Emotional infidelity: developing the type of emotional intimacy you have in your romantic relationship with someone else in secret
Romantic affair: subset of emotional infidelity; where elements of dating and romance exist, even if sex doesn’t
Cyber cheating: carrying on a relationship with someone outside the boundaries of your existing relationship exclusively online
Financial affair: making secret financial decisions: hiding large purchases, lying about financial decisions, making significant financial decisions without or against the input of another partner

This month we’re going to look at how infidelity can show up in both monogamous and non-monogamous relationship structures.

Infidelity in monogamous relationship structures:

Within monogamy, infidelity is “easier” to define because you only have one romantic or sexual partner. When you carry on a romantic or sexual relationship with people other than that partner, that is “easily” accepted as infidelity.

“Easy” is in quotations here because, obviously, nothing about finding out about a deep, personal betrayal of trust such as infidelity within your relationship is actually easy–but we mean easy in the sense that it is simple for our culture to make sense of those parameters with the understanding of relationships that most of us have.

However, like we said last month, there is not actually a cut and dry definition of infidelity, even within monogamous relationships. Some people consider flirting with anyone other than their partner cheating, and other people find flirting to be harmless fun. It’s up to you to have intentional conversations within your relationship about what exactly your boundaries are, and how you define the line for what is something that is just for the two of you–i.e. sex or kissing or flirting–and what is okay to do with others.

Infidelity in non-monogamous relationship structures:

To be clear on how infidelity can show up in non-monogamous relationships, it’s important to go back to the basic understanding of what infidelity is:

Infidelity is essentially a breach of trust, or a violation of established relationship boundaries.

While the boundaries you determine for a non-monogamous relationship are going to be different than the boundaries you establish for a monogamous relationship–boundaries for your relationship will still exist and need to be honored.

For example, while the boundary in a monogamous relationship may be that you and your partner don’t have sexual relationships with anyone else, a boundary within a non-monogamous relationship could be that when your partner is developing a new romantic or sexual relationship that they keep you informed. Whether that is just to be generally aware of what is going on with your partner and their life & ongoing relationships or to make collaborative decisions regarding sexual health and safety measures will be particular to every individual relationship.

Or it could be that in sexual relationships outside of a “primary” partnership (if that is the language you use to describe your relationship) use certain sexual health measures, like STI or pregnancy prevention.

Violating these boundaries–and not communicating that these boundaries have been violated immediately to the partner that they were agreed upon with–could be one way that infidelity could show up in non-monogamous relationships.

Other ways infidelity can show up in non-monogamous relationships:

Obscuring/misrepresenting the nature of your relationships:

If you’ve told a partner that you're just friends with someone, when really you’ve got a crush on them and are hoping it will go further, while at the same time told this person you’ve got a crush on that you’re in an open relationship–when your partner(s) don’t know about (or wouldn’t be okay with) any new connections–to make it seems like any level of intimacy between the two of you is okay would be considered a form of cheating or infidelity within non-monogamous relationships.

Pursuing a relationship that was agreed upon as off-limits:

In some non-monogamous relationships, “primary” or “nesting” partners sometimes have certain people they view as off-limits for their partners–the reasons for these relationships being “off-limits” vary from relationship to relationship–but it would be considered a form of infidelity if a partner violated the agreement to not pursue the person in question and had some sort of romantic or sexual relationship with them.

If you’ve encountered a breach of trust within your relationship, that doesn’t have to mean it's over, or too late to recover. Next month on the blog we’ll be discussing recovering from an affair. If you and your partner(s) are looking for support in navigating infidelity–our relationship therapists can help. Reach out today!

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