The uniquely American panic over adultery

Vox

2 days ago

is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
Americans have long considered cheating one of the worst things you can do to another person that doesn't end in jail time.
We witnessed the ire that messing around incites second and third hand in July, when a kiss cam caught the now-infamous Coldplay CEO (not his legal name) and his fellow Coldplay-loving coworker canoodling during a concert at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts. After being spotted, the pair quickly separated and ducked, leaving frontman Chris Martin to speculate that they were having an affair. The video quickly became national news, with sleuths revealing the people's real names (Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot), job titles (CEO and head of HR, respectively), and the company they work for (Astronomer, a data platform company). Online vigilantes found and descended on their spouses. Somehow, Martin's own ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow got involved (as part of a joke, not the affair).
Byron and Cabot's affair contained a mash of scandalous elements, but there's another reason why it has brought about the swiftest stripe of internet justice seen in recent memory: Americans love an uncomplicated story about a perceived moral failing. Nothing, therefore, brings us together quite like cheating.
We like when cheaters get caught. We like when cheaters have to pay. We like when cheaters get what we think they deserve. We like the Coldplay cheaters because we really don't like dealing with the concept that infidelity is much more complicated than we want it to be.
Despite the raft of changes that have come for American relationships — the advent of feminism, the rise and fall of divorce, the burgeoning world of open marriages — and the bare fact that sneaking around isn't uncommon, adultery is still the big bad thing we can all agree on. Why, exactly?
Americans are profoundly anti-cheating and always have been
There's no question about it — getting cheated on can be horrible: heartbreaking, destabilizing, earth-shattering, wildly unfun. Unsurprisingly, cheating's approval numbers are incredibly low.
Since 2001, Gallup has surveyed Americans about behaviors they find immoral, and cheating has consistently been in the gutter, neck and neck with 'cloning humans' as 89 percent of respondents in 2025 said it's 'morally wrong.' That percentage is the same as when the survey was first conducted 24 years ago — it's risen (as high as 93 percent) and fallen, but the lowest that figure has ever been was still 85 percent of respondents declaring cheating unacceptable back in 2023.
We can see this attitude in our simple aphorisms — 'If they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you,' 'Once a cheater, always a cheater' — in our Reddit threads, and in our TikTok trends.
Americans' harsh judgment about adultery in general is tied to Americans' surprising static view of marriage. Even though so much — the age when we marry, who we marry, rates of matrimony and divorce — has shifted over the past several decades, marriage is still largely a revered institution, tied to unique legal and financial protections.
People would never cheat at a Phillies game.'In the US, marriage is still largely seen as the be-all, end-all, final and only relationship form,' says Alexandra Solomon, a professor at Northwestern University and psychologist specializing in relationships. This mentality often sees commitment as synonymous with monogamy, and commitment as a path to marriage.
Solomon cited countries in Western Europe as examples of places that are more relaxed than the US. Compared to the US, many people living in western European and Scandinavian countries have more diverse views of what marriages constitute and what relationships look like, from a fully committed, monogamous coupling with cohabitation and a blending of finances that never results in marriage to a marriage with consensual non-monogamy, or even just a marriage later in life, perhaps post-children. It's not that adultery can't or doesn't occur in these relationships, but it isn't seen as character failure. Extramarital affairs aren't tethered to one's moral standing; non-monogamy isn't a sign of moral failure.
'When you hold marriage up as this pinnacle, a moral pinnacle,' as Americans do, Solomon explains, 'you also set yourself up to hold infidelity as the pinnacle of betrayal.'
But also: Americans do cheat
It's worth keeping in mind that Americans might also be hypocrites.
Roughly one in three couples in the US experiences infidelity, according to research compiled by the Gottman Institute, an organization that counsels couples and trains relationship therapists. Additionally, a 2025 YouGov US survey found that 53 percent of respondents said they had been cheated on, with 33 percent responding they had been the cheater. Suffice it to say, these numbers might be an undercount given that many people may be reticent to divulge a potentially embarrassing and intimate admission to another human, let alone a pollster.
That said, what these findings do tell us is that the majority of Americans consider adultery 'morally wrong,' and there are still plenty who do cheat. Statistically, we have to infer that some Americans believe cheating is morally wrong and do it anyway. How do we reconcile this tension?
'Infidelity exists in a world of contradictions,' Paul Keable, the chief strategy officer at Ashley Madison and an expert on the subject of contemporary adultery, tells Vox. Ashley Madison is infamous for its mission to discreetly connect people looking to cheat with one another and its cheeky motto: 'Life is short. Have an affair.'
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Keable, who is Canadian, believes the American relationship to cheating doesn't make much sense on paper, but he compares us children who hate to be told 'no.' The more you tell kids that they shouldn't, say, touch a hot stove, the more inclined they are to put their hand on it. Adults, who are children but older, ostensibly burned their fingers and learned not to grab at hot metal years ago, but failed to extrapolate the bigger lessons about things they're not supposed to do.
There are also apparently smaller paradoxes within this contradiction-hypocrisy umbrella theory. Keable says some of the users on his site cheat to save their 'sexless, orgasm-less marriages.' Keable concedes that conversations about non-monogamy and divorce or separation may happen, particularly among young millennial and Gen Z couples. Still, citing fragile egos and gender roles, he believes many still don't take the option that respects a partner and spares them hurt.
He also says that the most vocal anti-adultery advocates tend to be the biggest cheaters, and right now that's good for business. Keable notes that tradwife and family influencer content emphasizes conservative, conventional ideas about marriage and puts regressive gender roles on a pedestal. The more people buy into this content, the more potential customers Keable envisions.
Keable said that after the Coldplay CEO fallout, Ashley Madison saw a surge of new signups, averaging 36,000 in the week following compared to the regular average of 20,000. Keable surmises there will be enough contradiction and hypocrisy in the US to sustain Ashley Madison's business in the coming years.
Americans hate cheating so much, except…
There's another way to look at Americans' elastic relationship to the morality of infidelity. As Keable notes, the moment an affair involves people we know (perhaps even ourselves), we're a lot more understanding. Suddenly, it all becomes more complicated. And 'knowing' someone is pretty elastic, too. One need not look any further than celebrity infidelity scandals to see how differently they're treated.
The public reaction to both real and imagined celebrity infidelity often tilts more gleeful and humorous. Take for example, the story of two star-crossed Good Morning America anchors, both married, which was embraced by fans and tabloids alike. We saw the same energy — even if unfulfilled by the actual players — brought to discussions of the on-set chemistry between Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, or Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn, whose Scandal act some hoped to be real. While Ariana Grande and her new boyfriend, Ethan Slater, received some blowback, the overarching reaction to their synchronized spousal abandonment was muted. Like the Coldplay cheats, these stories involve ideas about workplace romances between people with significant others.
'Even though we, in the abstract, hate infidelity, there may be times in some of our own lives where we may have forgiven people,' Solomon says.
With some celebs, we've created narratives about them, imagined who they really are and what they're really like. Every parasocial wrinkle becomes something that makes them more human in our eyes. They can remind us of family members, friends, and even ourselves. Because they do, we give them humanity and grace that we aren't quick to offer strangers — even though these famous people are indeed strangers.
Given his immense power, Chris Martin should exercise judgment whenever he points to the crowd.'The Coldplay couple, we have no backstory, so it's very easy to vilify both of them,' Solomon says, pointing out that people quickly jumped onto the narrative that both were betraying their spouses. Granted, the way Byron and Cabot reacted, they were caught red-handed. But there wasn't any room made to consider other possibilities (e.g., being in an open relationship, being camera shy, going into hiding for a totally different reason) before the chase to find out every detail about them began.
'They're less sympathetic to us because we don't know them and we can't put ourselves into the narrative,' Solomon adds. It all comes back to the stories we like to tell ourselves.
It's worth noting, though, that not all celebrities get off so easily — especially men who have made their marriage part of their appeal.
Why we like telling ourselves simple stories about cheaters
Perhaps the simple story Americans tell ourselves about cheating being flatly unforgivable (until the GMA anchors do it) is for sanity's sake. Infidelity hinges upon trust, a thing so special that we only allow certain people in our lives to have it. When trust is betrayed, it opens up a world of other anxieties — a debilitating number of what-if scenarios and doubts come into play. So why not just lock that person out, before they can hurt again?
That narrative almost always places us as the wronged party. Cheating, in the public imagination, always happens to us. We don't like to picture ourselves doing adultery, committing betrayal, and asking for forgiveness. 'Adulterer' isn't an identity many people claim, and for good reason.
'Most people are not serial betrayers,' Carrie Cole, a counselor and the research director for the Gottman Institute, tells me.
Cole, who's studied and counseled couples through affair recovery, tells me that while people are no doubt capable of being deceptive and manipulative, she also sees many cheating partners find themselves embarrassed, ashamed, and guilty about the damage they caused. She also said that while options like an open marriage or divorce might seem like clear, more respectful options instead of adultery — a common refrain is that having all these alternatives makes cheating ostensibly more painful — affairs can happen in all kinds of relationships, no matter the rules of that relationship. Some people who have affairs are likely going against their own morals and values.
Understanding what drives people to infidelity is probably more useful than writing them off as human beings.
Cole referenced the book Not Just Friends by the late Shirley Glass, which explains that cheating is more complex than we like to think — infidelity is not just a calculus of lies and sex. Glass, who was a psychologist, theorized that sometimes infidelity can begin with making small, seemingly harmless emotional connections, getting caught up and not creating boundaries. The point is not that this is excusable, but that sometimes the 'why' or 'how' of infidelity can be a bit more complicated than we like to think.
Examining why people cheat and what humans seek in infidelity is also at the core of psychotherapist Esther Perel's work. Whether it's feelings of being trapped in the role of a doting mother or a lack of physical intimacy, Perel posits that affairs can show us things, perhaps even desires, that are missing in relationships and marriages. Perel poses questions about the magnitude of our morals and desires, why we hold these beliefs (e.g. marriage equals transparency and monogamy) so strongly. She shows couples that it's possible to come back from this kind of violation.
Just because Americans see infidelity as an explicit transgression doesn't mean it shouldn't be examined. Our mistakes can tell us about who we are, no matter how much we dislike said mistakes. Perhaps this is why so many people are reluctant to forgive or extend empathy to cheaters. It's much easier to write someone off when we think we could never be like them.
Honestly, it's all their fault… Jon G. Fuller/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
'I obviously don't condone anyone having an affair, but it's very easy to sit in judgment, in condemnation of one' Cole says. 'It's sometimes not as clear-cut and simple as what people want to make it to be.'
Within a narrative like that of the Coldplay cheaters, whatever complex anxieties and feelings we have about trust in relationships get flattened into something deliriously simple. The alternative — hard-won sympathy, the possibility for forgiveness, empathizing with the pain of everyone involved — is a lot less entertaining and more somber than the Philly Phanatic reenacting the most humiliating moment of someone's life.
The truth is, there's a disconnect between what Americans believe about 'cheaters' and how we think about ourselves and the people we're sympathetic to. In the US, there's a dogmatic understanding of matrimony that necessarily can't apply to all the many, many marriages out there, and a culture that clings to the roots of that institution even as it changes. Despite it all, there are capacities for shame, forgiveness, and redemption. We just don't seem to want to make room for them.
A story that complicated wouldn't be nearly as effective in bringing us all together.