2.3 Emotional infidelity
A second way to define infidelity is in terms of emotional intimacy with someone other than the committed partner. Consider this topic a bit more with the following activity.
Activity 2.3 What is worse – emotional or sexual infidelity?
Please think of a serious committed romantic relationship that you have had in the past, that you currently have, or that you would like to have. Imagine that you discover that the person whom you’ve been seriously involved with became interested in someone else. What would upset or distress you more? Select only one. If it does not feel comfortable to answer for your own perspective, think about answering from the perspective of a potential client.
Discussion
Rather than assuming that infidelity is only sexual, a broad body of research has explored both sexual and emotional infidelity. The most typical experimental paradigm comes from Buss et al. (1992) and involves a ‘forced choice paradigm’ such as the one above where participants have to choose the worst of two hypothetical scenarios (note that we amended this study paradigm as traditionally it only allows participants to select from ‘male’ and ‘female’ and thus accepts – or fails to question – traditional gender norms).
Evolutionary understandings of infidelity
Research on the response to hypothetical sexual/emotional infidelity arose from predictions in evolutionary psychology theory on gender differences in response to infidelity. The key proposal is that men will be more concerned by a female partner’s sexual infidelity and women by a male partner’s emotional infidelity (Harris, 2003; Buss et al., 1999). Research has explored this hypothesis in terms of:
- self-reported jealousy over hypothetical scenarios in various cultures (e.g., Buss et al., 1999)
- impact on attention and memory (e.g., Maner et al., 2009; Schutzwohl and Koch, 2004)
- physiological responses (e.g., Bendixen et al., 2015; Harris, 2000; Buss et al., 1992)
- relationship violence (e.g., Harris, 2003).
Debate continues over whether evidence exists for this evolutionary psychology hypothesis (e.g., Edlund, 2009; Buss, 2007; Harris, 2005). However the purpose of the current summary is first to point out how the field’s thinking on the definition of infidelity has been shaped by this considerable literature, and second that that this research field and the forced choice methodology originated by Buss (Buss et al., 1999), is based on the proposition that it is possible to separate sex and emotions.
Research has operationalised emotional infidelity in various rather vague ways, including ‘deep emotional attachment,’ and falling in love (Buss et al., 1999), feeling ‘deeply connected’ (Sabini and Silver, 2005), feeling connected and feeling love (Allen and Rhoades, 2008) and an investment of romantic love, time and attention to a person other than the primary partner (Shackelford et al., 2000). Behaviours that have been defined as emotional infidelity include: sharing intimate details, discussing complaints about the primary partner and meeting for an alcoholic drink (Luo et al., 2010; Henline et al., 2007), a list of activities that may suggest most friendships are adulterous.
2.2 Defining infidelity as sexual ‘activities’