Infidelity in wartime: Risk, digital intimacy, and implications for couples’ therapy

Abstract

The field of infidelity research is shaped by moral judgements about the behaviour which – arguably – can limit understanding of the phenomenon and the ability of practitioners to work with it as a presenting issue in couples. In this talk, we will begin by providing a brief introduction to infidelity – what research suggests about how it is defined, how common it is, and the (shifting) public attitudes towards it. We will also survey what infidelity research and theory suggests are risk factors for infidelity and review the very limited research on infidelity in wartimes (mainly in an US context). In the second part of our talk, we will consider the implications of digital technologies for infidelity, beginning by framing them within the broader literature on digital intimacies (with a…