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Partners in relationships should be explicit regarding their expectations and the promises they’re willing to make. As I’ve written before, adultery is whatever partners believe it is, whether that means sexual intercourse, kissing, or texting. People in relationships should not feel bound by anyone else’s expectations of them—each person should feel bound only by the promises made to his or her partner. If you don’t feel your partner can be everything to you, then don’t promise to get everything from your partner. But if you do so promise, as I said above, you have an obligation to live up to it.

At the end of the day, adultery is not about the sex—it’s about the betrayal. We simply focus on the sexual aspect because it’s so visceral and associated with emotional intimacy within relationships (along with centuries of religious and political baggage). This also explains why many people would be more bothered by their partner romantically kissing another person than engaging in meaningless sex. The form of the betrayal is less important than the betrayal itself and its corrosive effect on trust in the relationship.

More generally, the author doesn’t seem to appreciate that the value of commitment is based in part on the value of what is given up for it. Of course, sexual desire has a unique pull on most of us. But promises of fidelity would mean much less if we were promising to give up something we didn’t want! The fact that most of us want sex so much is why it means so much when we promise it to just one person—and that promise to that person, not societal norms regarding monogamy, is what should make us think twice about “the pleasures of adultery.”