Sorry for the sure to be lengthy response, and the fact it moved away from the original content, but this is a topic that I feel passionate and down right rage filled about.
Letmebefrank, DRSOOLERS, StrugglingThrough, BackfromtheStorm, and everyone else contributing to this discussion,
I've been following this exchange with considerable intrest because it touches on something I believe we routinely fail to recognize about physical infidelity. And while I understand why the comparison makes people uncomfortable, I agree that deliberately concealed physical adultery, when accompanied by continued sexual intimacy with an unsuspecting spouse, constitutes sexual exploitation and can amount to sexual abuse. I also believe there is a compelling moral argument that it is tantamount to rape by deception.
Before someone takes that statement somewhere I haven't intended, let me establish the distinction. I am not suggesting that every instance of adultery automatically constitutes criminal sexual assault. Nor am I equating every form of infidelity with forcible rape or child sexual abuse. Those are distinct acts with different legal definitions and circumstances. My argument is not that physical adultery and forcible rape are identical acts. My argument is that deliberately concealed physical adultery can violate the same fundamental principle of sexual self-determination that our understanding of sexual consent is intended to protect. And I think that deserves considerably more consideration than it is receiving.
Letmebefrank, you raised the question of where we draw the line, suggesting that concealing political beliefs, religious convictions, or dietary preferences could similarly influence someone's willingness to engage in sexual intimacy. I understand the argument, but I believe it overlooks a fundamental distinction. Sexual exclusivity is not simply another personal characteristic or background preference. In a mutually agreed monogamous relationship, it is an explicit condition governing the sexual relationship itself. When I agreed to a monogamous marriage, I was establishing the circumstances under which I was willing to exercise my bodily autonomy by choosing to engage in sexual intimacy. Those circustances included the mutual understanding that neither of us was sexually involved with other people.
When my wife secretly changed those circumstances, she didn't merely violate an emotional expectation. She fundamentally altered the conditions under which I had agreed to share my body with her, and she deliberatly prevented me from knowing. I consented to sexual intimacy within what I understood to be an exclusive relationship. I did not knowingly agree to sexual intimacy under circumstances in which my spouse was secretly involved with other sexual partners. Those are materially different circumstances.
If my wife secretly changed her political beliefs, I might feel deceived. I might even decide that I no longer wanted to remain married. But those beliefs would not ordinarily alter our agreed sexual exclusivity or introduce additional sexual partners into our relationship. A concealed physical affair does both. This is not about inventing an arbitrary condition after the fact. We had expressly agreed upon sexual exclusivity. She knew that boundary existed. She knew it mattered. She violated it and concealed that violation while allowing me to continue making sexual decisions as though our agreement remained intact, with considerable health concerns involved.
I recognize that even an explicitly agreed condition does not automatically become a condition of legal consent to every sexual act. But morally, I believe deliberately concealing the violation of a known sexual boundary is fundamentally different from failing to disclose an unrelated personal belief. The question is not whether every possible deception invalidates sexual consent. The question is whether deliberately concealing the violation of an expressly agreed sexual boundary, while continuing to obtain the benefits of that sexual relationship, constitutes sexual exploitation. I believe it does.
You also suggested that rape by deception generally involves someone lying specifically to obtain sexual access, whereas an unfaithful spouse is not necessarily concealing an affair for that purpose. I would challenge that distinction as well. A person does not need to initiate an affair for the explicit purpose of tricking their spouse into sex for their subsquent conduct to become sexually exploitative. Consider a spouse who knows that revealing their affair would result in their partner refusing further sexual intimacy. They understand this. They recognize that disclosure would fundamentally change their spouse's willingness to participate. Yet they deliberately withhold that information while continuing to engage in sexual contact.
At that point, whether their original motivation was self-preservation, fear of divorce, emotional cowardice, or maintaining their comfortable lifestyle does not erase what they are knowingly doing. They are deliberately depriving another human being of information they understand could determine whether that person is willing to share their body with them. That isn't simply hiding an uncomfortable truth. It is manipulating the circumstances under which another person exercises sexual autonomy. The fact that obtaining sex may not have been the original purpose of the lie does not eliminate the sexual exploitation that can result from knowingly continuing that deception.
Then consider the physical implications. The unfaithful spouse secretly introduces outside sexual partners into what the betrayed spouse believes is an exclusive sexual relationship. The betrayed spouse is potentially exposed to sexually transmitted infections and other sexual-health risks they never knowingly agreed to accept. They cannot request testing for risks they do not know exist. They cannot insist on additional protection. They cannot decide to abstain from sex. They cannot exercise choices they were deliberately prevented from knowing they needed to make. My WW had no idea her AP was also seeing three other women, I would assume all were devoid of conscience and not use protection like WW.
Does her ignorance in this make it valid to exponentially risk my health and welfare, as well as our children's?
The fact that an infection may never be transmitted does not erase the deprivation of their ability to assess and accept those risks. The absence of physical injury does not establish that someone was given an informed choice. And this is precisely why I struggle with comparing concealed physical adultery to undisclosed dietary or political preferences. The former directly concerns the agreed conditions of sexual intimacy and potentially alters the physical risks associated with it. The latter ordinarily does neither.
There is another dimension I believe deserves serious consideration. When someone discovers years of concealed physical infidelity, the violation reaches backward through their intimate history. My wife engaged in two long-term affairs, approximately fourteen years apart. The first began before our marriage and continued into it. The second occurred nearly two decades into our relationship. Consider what that actually means. There were intimate encounters during those affairs when I believed I understood the reality of the relationship I was participating in. I believed I was sharing my body with someone who was honouring the same explicit boundaries I was. I wasn't. And the truth was deliberately withold from me because allowing me to know it would have meant allowing me to make my own decisions.
Would I have agreed to those sexual encounters had I known the truth? No. And she knew and admitted it.
Would I have married her had I known about the first affair? No. And she knew and admitted it.
Would I have continued exposing myself physically and emotionally to that relationship had I possessed the information she deliberately concealed? No. And she knew and admitted it. Those were my decisions to make. My body. My choice. And I was deliberately denied the opportunity to make those choices.
I cannot go back and refuse participation in something that happened years ago. I cannot reclaim the intimate decisions I would have made differently. I cannot undo the fact that someone else knowingly maintained a false understanding of reality that influenced decisions about my own body. That is not ordinary heartbreak. That is a profound violation of personal and sexual agency.
And this is why I find StrugglingThrough's point about reproductive decisions particularly important. Choosing whether to have a child is among the most consequential decisions a person can make, I would NOT have had three with her had I known, and she knew that too. The suggestion that someone being deliberately deceived about the fundamental circumstances of their marriage while making that decision is somehow comparable to discovering their spouse secretly became a vegan strikes me as an extraordinary oversimplification. We are talking about decisions involving sexual intimacy, reproduction, bodily autonomy, and potentially the entire trajectory of someone's life. Not every deception is equivalent simply becasue deception is the common denominator. The nature of the information being withheld, its relationship to the decision being made, and the deliberate interference with that decision all matter.
We place tremendous emphasis on whether the betrayed spouse physically said yes, while giving insufficient consideration to the deliberate deception under which that yes was obtained. And I understand the legal distinction. Consent to a particular sexual act and informed agreement to every circumstance surrounding a relationship are not automatically the same thing under criminal law. But I reject the suggestion that this distinction resolves the moral question. A person can voluntarily participate in a physical act while simultaneously being deliberately manipulated into continuing a sexual relationship they would otherwise reject. Both things can be true. And acknowledging the first does not erase the exploitation inherent in the second.
Criminal law establishes particular thresholds for particular offences. It does not provide an exhaustive definition of every morally abusive or sexually exploitative act that one human being can inflict upon another. Something does not have to satisfy the criminal definition of rape to constitute a serious violation of sexual autonomy (though I actually believe this should be prosecutable and legal).
BackfromtheStorm, I agree with your broader position that infidelity can involve sexual and psychological abuse. Where I approach the argument somewhat differently is that I don't believe we need to establish equivalent psychological trauma between adultery and forcible rape to demonstrate the violation. Similar injuries do not automatically establish identical causes. And different injuries do not automatically establish that no common principle has been violated. I would rather examine the conduct itself. The deception was deliberate. The agreed circumstances of sexual intimacy were knowingly altered. The betrayed spouse was deprived of information necessary to make an informed decision about continuing that sexual relationship. And the unfaithful partner understood the importance of the information they were concealing. That is the foundation of my argument.
Emotional affairs can involve devastating psychological manipulation without necessarily raising these same direct questions about physical sexual exposure. That does not make their consequences insignificant. It simply means different forms of infidelity can involve different violations. The existence of emotional affairs does not invalidate the distinct bodily autonomy concerns inherent in deliberately concealed physical adultery. Nor does the fact that sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and psychological abuse have different definitions mean we cannot recognize overlapping principles.
I am also not suggesting that everyone who commits adultery is motivated by a desire to abuse their spouse. But I find the repeated emphasis on the wayward spouse's intentions troubling. Someone can be primarily motivated by selfishness, pleasure, fear, or self-preservation and still knowingly engage in abusive or exploitative conduct. You do not have to enjoy violating someone's autonomy to knowingly violate it. You do not have to wake up intending to traumatize someone for your deliberate choices to become profoundly destructive. And feeling guilty while doing it does not somehow restore the choices you are witholding from another person.
I think this distinction is particularly important because we spend an extraordinary amount of time discussing why someone cheated, what they were feeling, what needs they believed were unmet, and what psychological processes enabled the affair. Those questions may help explain the behaviour. But explanations do not erase the nature of the conduct or the rights of the person deceived. We can examine the psychology of infidelity without sanitizing its consequences. And we can acknowledge the humanity of an unfaithful spouse without diminishing the humanity or autonomy of the person they betrayed.
Ultimately, I keep returning to one question.
If you know someone would refuse to share their body with you if they knew the truth, and you deliberately conceal that truth so sexual intimacy continues, how can you reasonably argue that their sexual autonomy has not been violated?
That is what I want answered. Not whether adultery and forcible rape are identical under criminal law. Not whether every form of infidelity causes identical trauma. Not whether one experience is objectively worse than another. But whether one human being has the moral right to deliberately manipulate another person's understanding of reality to preserve access to a sexual relationship that person would otherwise refuse.
The answer, to me, is unequivocally no.
My wife had every right to decide what she did with her own body. What she did not have was the right to make decisions about mine by deliberately withholding the truth. And I think we do a massive disservice to betrayed partners when we reduce that violation to nothing more than a broken promise, a failure of commitment, or an unfortunate consequence of someone else's pursuit of happiness.
The fundamental injury isn't simply that my wife chose to share her body with another man. It is that she exercised her own sexual freedom while deliberately obstructing my ability to exercise mine. She got to make informed decisions about the sexual reality she was participating in. I did not. She knew the truth about our marriage. I was required to live inside a version of it that she knew was false. She had the freedom to decide whether she wanted to continue having sex with me while having sex with someone else. I was denied the freedom to decide whether I wanted to continue having sex with her under those same circumstances, I am actually struggling with disgust looking at her currently.
That is not an equal exercise of sexual autonomy. That is one person exercising theirs at the expense of another's. Call it sexual manipulation. Call it sexual exploitation. Call it a form of sexual abuse. Debate whether rape by deception is an appropriate moral comparison. I am willing to have that discussion, and I recognize that reasonable people may disagree about the terminology. But I am not willing to accept that deliberately controlling the information necessary for someone to make decisions about their own sexual participation is merely ordinary relationship dishonesty.
Because ultimately, the question is not simply whether my wife had the right to have sex with someone else. She did. The question is whether she had the right to ensure I continued having sex with her without knowing that she was doing so. She did not. And no amount of discussion about affair fog, limerence, unmet needs, compartmentalization, or the excitement of an affair bubble changes that.
Her body was hers to choose with. Mine was not hers to deceive her way into.
YES I feel I was raped, sexually abused, emotionally abused, and psychologically abused for 18 years.
