Isn’t it time we grew up – and stopped panicking about infidelity?

The view that brands men like Adam Levine and Ned Fulmer ‘trash’ for their conduct is narrow and unrealistic

Have you ever cheated? Oh come on, you must have, at the age of nine, playing a card game with your parents. Perhaps you cheated on a maths test, using the pop-out bottom section of your glue stick to lodge a tiny aide-memoire of the main functions in trigonometry. Or maybe, after 11 years of being in a couple with somebody, you got bored and, after one too many mulled wines at the work Christmas party, pulled off Matt from IT.

It’s funny to think that in the English language, sexual infidelity is referred to by the same word as generally used in games and sport – that is, to behave in a dishonest way in order to gain an advantage. In French, for instance, the word “tricher” has no sexual connotations; the verb for affairs is “tromper” ie to “wrong” somebody rather than “cheat” on them. Perhaps that gives a better sense of the potential harm done to a loved one in breaking a vow, than the idea of somehow bending the laws by which everybody else plays, in order to gain something illicitly.

These thoughts are brought to you by the troubling revelation this week – hot on the heels of Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine being exposed for allegedly sending extra-marital sexts – that somebody from a collective of YouTube comedians had an affair.

I’m afraid so. One Ned Fulmer, from the YouTube crew “Try Guys” (whose shtick is filming themselves trying out various things), was bounced from his job a couple of days ago, by the other Try Guys, after being found guilty of having an affair with a colleague.

After much puritanical fulmination on the social networks/moral courtrooms, the online comedy group announced they had parted ways with Fulmer. He issued a statement, saying: “Family should have always been my priority, but I lost focus.” Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal gravely intoned: “For fans of the Try Guys, the news came as a shock. Mr. Fulmer was known in internet parlance as a ‘wife guy,’ which is someone who builds his internet persona around how much he loves his wife.”

Losing your job for having an affair would seem to be a high price to pay, but for apparently millions of denizens of the net this was an appropriate penalty for the offence. Here, in the wilds of Twitter – but also walking among us! – with a very firm and unbudging view of sexual infidelity. When, following the shock revelation last week that a popstar is horny, I had the temerity to suggest that relationships and sex are a rather more thorny subject than society tends to allow, a veritable deluge of offended personages materialised to finger-wag at me, to the effect that I must myself be incapable of commitment. (I am, which is why I am merrily single.)

In this warped worldview, it is possible and advisable, in service of some undisclosed higher good, to repress sexual feelings outside of the couple, and never to act on them. This viewpoint, which dubs men such as Levine and Fulmer “trash” for their conduct, is narrow and unrealistic; it is likely to cause pain to whoever endorses it.

To believe in it, you have to shut your eyes to a whole history of literature and art, from Anna Karenina to Brief Encounter via Revolutionary Road and Betrayal. Perhaps these works tell us that humans, in the ways we connect to each other, in the way we navigate our brains and libido, are infinitely complex and unpredictable?

Stephen Greenblatt, talking about St Augustine in the New Yorker in 2017, wrote that “through a sustained reflection on Adam and Eve, Augustine came to understand that what was crucial in his experience was not the budding of sexual maturity, but rather, its unquiet, involuntary nature.

“How weird it is, Augustine thought, that we cannot simply command this crucial part of the body. We become aroused, and the arousal is within us – it is in this sense fully ours – and yet it is not within the executive power of our will.”

St. Augustine lived 1,600 years ago, but is rather more evolved on the subject of sexual fallibility than much of what passes for discourse now. These observations should not be taken to mean that the mind has no control over our behaviour and that people should succumb to whatever sexual leanings their undercarriage commands; it goes without saying that we should try not to harm others. But our bodies are animal, our essence complex.

Marvin Gaye, in the liner notes for Let’s Get It On, wrote: “I contend that SEX IS SEX and LOVE IS LOVE. When combined, they work well together, if two people are of about the same mind. But they are really two discrete needs and should be treated as such.”

The sex and relationships columnist Dan Savage (incidentally a gay man; it should be said that queer people have historically tended to be rather more easygoing on the subject of sexual exclusivity) has long advised that an affair can be advisable, within the confines of our society that massively promotes monogamous couples, if a partner will not allow any sexual straying and things have reached an impasse bed-wise.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

This seems reasonable. The majority of people in couples do not have the leeway or even the idea to negotiate an open relationship: what, then, can these people do, if they meet somebody they are attracted to? Must they tamp it down or end their whole relationship in order to take up another with this new person? What allowances can be made for them, if any?

The show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend gave one of the most realistic portrayals of this, in 2017, when the character Paula, wounded and heartbroken, in a mostly unfulfilling marriage, takes her husband back after he has had an affair, recognising her needs, their bond and companionship. In this, the show surely reflects a society in which couples overlook extra-marital relations rather than break up because of them, indicating that perhaps sexual infidelity is not such a point of no return.

Humans are difficult and fallible (not that sex, considered properly and within the bounds of consent, can be a failing). A great-aunt and great-uncle of mine, who loved each other dearly for decades, finished their lives screaming abuse at one another in an old people’s home, and having to be separated physically. A friend told me of falling for someone at work in the month after she had become engaged; she told me she was startled to think that she could just as easily be with, have as happy a life with, this other man.

People aren’t logical. If you judge others, thinking that you yourself can or should tame your desires forever, you may be in for some surprises.