Esther Perel

For the past 10 years, I have traveled the globe and worked extensively with hundreds of couples who have been shattered by infidelity.

There is one simple act of transgression that can rob a couple from their relationship, their happiness, and their very identity, an affair.

And yet, this extremely common act is so poorly understood.

So this talk is for anyone who has ever loved.

Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so too the taboo against it.

In fact, infidelity has a tenacity that marriage can only envy, so much so that this is the only commandment that is repeated twice in the Bible.

Once for doing it, and once just for thinking about it.

So how do we reconcile what is universally forbidden yet universally practiced?

Now, throughout history, men practically had a license to cheat, with little consequence, and supported by a host of biological and evolutionary theories that justified their need to roam.

So the double standard is as old as adultery itself.

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.