Infidelity: The One Sin We Keep Forgiving Ourselves For

Fire Behind the Curtain: Napoleon and Joséphine

Paris, winter of 1808. The fire in the private chambers of the Tuileries Palace crackled softly, but the silence between Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine was glacial. Her letter had fallen to the marble floor, its folds still warm from her hand. Another name. Another liaison. Another betrayal.

And yet—he couldn’t bring himself to condemn her.

Not because he didn’t care. On the contrary—he cared so much, it burned him. But he also understood something deeper, something darker. He too had tasted forbidden skin, had kissed necks that didn’t belong to his Empress. Their marriage had long since ceased to be a sanctuary; it had become a stage. Their love, once fiery and fevered, had cooled into strategy. The world watched, and so they played their roles.

Infidelity, for them, was not a failure of character. It was a symptom of power. And history is filled with such stories—of passion and betrayal, of marriage as performance and sex as protest.

The Oldest Crime of the Heart

Why do we cheat? It’s a question as old as monogamy itself. And the answers are never just about sex. They’re about loneliness, resentment, desire for validation, intoxication with risk. But more than that, they are cultural. Infidelity is a mirror—one that reflects what a society tolerates, what it punishes, what it craves.

In ancient Mesopotamia, a woman caught in adultery could be drowned. In classical Athens, a husband was socially expected to kill his wife's lover on the spot. But if the man strayed? Well, boys will be boys. The double standard was not a flaw in the system—it was the system.

In medieval Europe, the sin of adultery was prosecuted not for the betrayal of love, but for the betrayal of lineage. A woman’s fidelity ensured the legitimacy of heirs. Her body wasn’t hers—it was a vault, and the key belonged to her husband. If she handed that key to another man, the entire structure of inheritance and power wobbled.

Still, passion found its cracks in the walls. Courtly love in the high Middle Ages often thrived outside of marriage, precisely because marriage was seen as a contract, not a romance. Noblewomen took lovers in whispers and glances; troubadours sang of stolen touches and silken bedsheets.

Intellectual Affairs: Sartre and de Beauvoir

Fast-forward to 20th-century France, and infidelity gets an existential makeover.

Jean-Paul Sartre once boasted that he and Simone de Beauvoir had “a necessary love” and “contingent affairs.” Their partnership was radical—a philosophical rebellion against bourgeois marriage. They wrote, taught, loved, and slept with others, with mutual consent… in theory.

But reality is rarely so tidy. Sartre’s “contingent loves” were often young women he intellectually seduced and emotionally manipulated. De Beauvoir too had lovers—female students, colleagues, and a few who later wrote bitter memoirs. Their relationship, hailed as progressive, was also fraught with jealousy, secrecy, and silent pain. Like so many who dare to rewrite the rules, they often broke them themselves.

And yet, their openness forced a question: Is monogamy a natural state, or merely a cultural construct we stubbornly cling to? If love is a choice, then must fidelity also be one?

Public Shame, Private Desire: Clinton and the American Confession

When the world learned about Monica Lewinsky, America pretended to be shocked. The headlines screamed. The late-night jokes wrote themselves. The impeachment circus began.

But what really offended people? That the President had sex with a young intern? Or that he lied about it under oath? Or was it something else—that his private failings had slipped into public view and forced everyone to confront the contradictions at the heart of American morality?

Bill Clinton’s scandal revealed a country still addicted to the myth of wholesome family values, but secretly titillated by their violation. Hillary stood by him, stone-faced, a modern Joséphine. Lewinsky was slut-shamed into exile, while Clinton kept his career largely intact. The message was clear: power protects—but only selectively.

And America, for all its puritanical posturing, has never been immune to the erotic pull of scandal. The Kennedy affairs, the Reagan-era moral crusades, even the Trump-era tabloid flares—each chapter shows a nation in constant tension between repression and indulgence.

A Dangerous, Erotic Energy

There’s something inherently erotic about that which is forbidden. The brush of a hand not meant to touch you. The gaze that lingers too long. The note slipped under a hotel door. The password-protected file folder that hides another life.

Throughout history, extramarital affairs have been coded in secret languages and dangerous glances. Every lover becomes a co-conspirator. Every hotel room, a crime scene dressed in satin and silence.

Writers have long understood this. From Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the adulteress is not merely a sinner—she is a rebel, a tragic heroine who dares to want more than what her role allows. Her desires are human, raw, and terrifying to those who seek to contain them.

Even today, while technology has changed the medium—apps, DMs, disappearing messages—the fundamental impulse remains. Adultery offers what routine cannot: a chance to feel alive again. To be desired. To choose, and to be chosen.

Infidelity Endures—Because We Do

Infidelity isn’t going anywhere. But its meaning evolves. Where once it was a crime punishable by death or exile, today it’s often treated as a symptom of miscommunication, or unmet needs. In the age of therapy, even betrayal becomes a talking point.

But beneath all the noise, the story remains deeply human. We cheat not just out of lust, but out of longing—for attention, for transformation, for a version of ourselves unbound by expectation. And societies, for all their moral outrage, have always been ambivalent about it—punishing it, yet glamorizing it; condemning the cheater, yet consuming their stories with hunger.

Napoleon knew it. Sartre intellectualized it. Clinton paid for it. And somewhere tonight, behind a closed door and a locked phone, someone is writing the next chapter.

Because infidelity, for all its mess and misery, reminds us of something elemental:

That the heart, no matter how domesticated, remains a dangerous, untamed thing.

Sources:

Encyclopaedia Britannica (2025) Adultery: Definition, Causes & Consequences. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/adultery [Accessed 6 Jul. 2025].

Literary Ladies Guide (2025) Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir: An Existential Love Story. [online] Available at: https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/literary-musings/simone-de-beauvoir-and-jean-paul-sartre-an-existential-love-story/ [Accessed 6 Jul. 2025].

Kipnis, L. (2003) Love’s Labors. The New Yorker, [online] 11 August. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/08/11/loves-labors-2 [Accessed 6 Jul. 2025].

Stein, J. (2014) The Shaming of Monica: Why We Owe Her an Apology. TIME Magazine, [online] 9 May. Available at: https://time.com/92989/monica-lewinsky-slut-shaming-feminists-media-apology/ [Accessed 6 Jul. 2025].