TED Talks Daily
(#9) Elise’s Top Ten: Rethinking infidelity ... a talk for anyone who has ever loved | Esther Perel
20 Sep 2025
Infidelity is the ultimate betrayal. But does it have to be? Relationship therapist Esther Perel examines why people cheat, and unpacks why affairs are so traumatic: because they threaten our emotional security. In infidelity, she sees something unexpected — an expression of longing and loss. A must-watch for anyone who has ever cheated or been cheated on, or who simply wants a new framework for understanding relationships.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Hey, everyone. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, the show where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. Welcome back to Elise's Top 10 TED Talks, our first ever podcast playlist where we share a curated list of talks from the archive on the feed all at once. Thank you so much for having me.
Therapist and podcast host Esther Perel's 2015 talk is called Rethinking Infidelity, a talk for anyone who has ever loved. And honestly, the title says it all. It reframed how I understand relationships and ourselves. And in a world that's all about connection, what better talk to dig into this topic?
Why do we cheat? And why do happy people cheat? And when we say infidelity, what exactly do we mean? Is it a hookup? A love story? Paid sex? A chat room? A massage with happy endings? Why do we think that men cheat out of boredom and fear of intimacy, but women cheat out of loneliness and hunger for intimacy? And is an affair always the end of a relationship?
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. 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.
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