Carrie's Right: Cheating in a Relationship Doesn't Have to Be a Disaster

Vogue

3 days ago

When it comes to cheating, everyone has a pop culture reference point—a kind of wider societal lens through which infidelity is seen and understood. For some, it's the denials: think Ross and Rachel's 'break' and Bill Clinton's 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' For others, it's standout soundbites, like 'We do everything that people who have sex do!' as Julia Roberts famously yells in Mike Nichols's Closer.
Now, thanks to the latest episode of And Just Like That, there's a new addition to the canon. 'It's so odd, but I kind of understand,' Carrie Bradshaw says after Aidan tells her that he slept with his ex-wife, Cathy. The circumstances are somewhat unique: the cheating happened in a moment of distress after Aidan and Cathy's troubled teenage son, Wyatt, refused to go to a wilderness program his parents had hoped might provide him (and them) with some much-needed respite.
'I guess we were just trying to comfort each other, it just happened,' explains Aidan. 'And it was a mistake. I mean, we both said so. And it will never, ever happen again. It just won't.' But Carrie remains largely nonchalant and empathetic, saying she can 'understand how that could happen.' The two proceed to get into a slight tiff about their frankly bizarre five-year plan to be properly together (whatever that means) after Wyatt goes to college, ultimately reaching some sort of mutual agreement that sees them tangled up in bedsheets mere moments later.
In other words, Aidan's infidelity—if Carrie even wants to call it that—is no big deal. To some, this might seem odd: cheating ravages friendships! Families! And, in the case of the Profumo affair, political parties! It's heinous! Shameful! Hey, it's even one of the 10 commandments!
Sure. But in some cases, cheating simply isn't that deep. At least not to the degree that it always causes irreparable harm. Sometimes, there are situations in which people can—and do—get past it.
A YouGov report from 2022 found that more than half of Americans who have ever been in a monogamous relationship say they have been cheated on—and in many scenarios, those instances of infidelity wouldn't have ended the relationship. One study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior in 2023 found that married people who have affairs largely find them very satisfying and believe that cheating didn't hurt their otherwise healthy relationship.