Just came across this excellent article by Polly Vernon about building a more comprehensive, tolerant understanding of marital infidelity. Vernon profiles (and interviews) Esther Perel, whose Mating in Captivity is one of the few couples therapy books out there that takes what I would call an "adult" approach to these matters.
From the article:
Perel thinks we have to work toward renegotiating our ideas of monogamy. We need to see it as an exclusive emotional commitment, but not an arrangement that necessarily denotes sexual exclusivity. She thinks that, in time, we'll come to accept affairs in the same way that we've come to accept premarital sex and homosexuality: not as deviancies, weaknesses or sin, but as part of who we are and how we love.
