| Chapter 1: | Operationalizing Fidelity |
template. For those who are not legally married, monogamy retains value and remains the ideal relationship in form and apparent function. Shumway (2003, 219) alludes to the discourses of romance and intimacy as “cultural components that teach us certain scripts and rules that govern relationships,” pointing out that intimacy discourse assumes monogamy as its paradigm: “The monogamous relationship, whether gay or straight, is our culture’s dominant form of sexual regulation. In the absence of other ethics, marriage will be seen by most as the only one available” (229).
Previous research on intimate relationships suffers from a variety of limitations. Many of these studies assess relationship behavior and attitudes within a framework of marriage and heterosexuality that reinforces cultural ideals of monogamy through research design and analyses. Unfortunately, such research necessarily situates infidelity, extramarital sex, and alternatives to monogamy in a primarily deviant context. Doing so not only introduces potential biases into the data but also fails to resolve the tension between the monogamy ideal and nonmonogamous (whether covert or consensual) behavior.
For example, an important limitation in research on monogamy and infidelity rests with researchers’ assumptions. Most assume that extramarital sex is secretive, thus tempering the way a study is designed, which results are analyzed, and what conclusions can be made about a particular sample (Thompson 1983; Blow and Hartnett 2005a). Consent becomes an important yet commonly overlooked variable because the script of monogamy is based on sexual and emotional fidelity. In addition, research on extramarital sex includes data on those who are married; what about cohabitation, dating, domestic partnerships, and other forms of committed relationships?
Studying intimate relationships in terms that reinforce marriage creates a number of problems. First, these studies shed little or no light on the diverse nature of contemporary relationships. Second, framing nonmonogamous behavior through the use of mononormative language—such