Esther Perel

But who knows what's really going on under the sheets there, right?

Because when it comes to sex, the pressure for men is to boast and to exaggerate.

But the pressure for women is to hide, minimize, and deny.

Which isn't surprising when you consider that there are still nine countries where women can be killed for straying.

Now, monogamy used to be one person for life.

Today, monogamy is one person at a time.

I mean, many of you probably have said, I am monogamous in all my relationships.

We used to marry and had sex for the first time, but now we marry and we stop having sex with others.

The fact is that monogamy had nothing to do with love.

Men relied on women's fidelity in order to know whose children these are and who gets the cows when I die.

Now, everyone wants to know what percentage of people cheat.

I've been asked that question since I arrived at this conference.

It applies to you.

But the definition of infidelity keeps on expanding.

Sexting, watching porn, staying secretly active on dating apps.

So because there is no universally agreed upon definition of what even constitutes an infidelity, estimates vary widely from 26% to 75%.

But on top of it, we are walking contradictions.

So 95% of us will say that it is terribly wrong for our partner to lie about having an affair, but just about the same amount of us will say that that's exactly what we would do if we were having one.

Now, I like this definition of an affair.

It brings together the three key elements.