“It was fun, it was exciting, it was taboo”: the contradictory discursive construction of heterosexual extra-relational sexual involvement

The behaviour generally referred to as ‘infidelity’ or ‘cheating’ occupies a contradictory site within current Western culture; it is both widespread and regarded as largely unacceptable. Its social and cultural repercussions are typically linked to dominant constructions of what constitutes appropriate (heterosexual) relational practices and male and female sexual conduct when in committed relationships. The current study, located within the critical sexualities and critical social psychology fields, examines such extra-relational sexual involvements (ERSI) in depth. This paper reports on a qualitative, exploratory, and discursive analysis of ERSI amongst heterosexuals in Aotearoa/New Zealand, using qualitative survey responses from 10 men and 24 women. Data were analysed using a Foucauldian mode of discourse analysis and identified ‘acceptability’ discourses (irresistible attraction; sexual experimentation) and ‘problematising’ discourses (moral transgression; ERSI as catastrophic). The analysis demonstrates how participants portrayed ERSI in contradictory, contested, gendered and moralising ways. The discourses of ERSI were heavily intertwined with heteronormative understandings of relationality and reinforced a mononormative structure as the ideal and most ‘normal’ way to engage in love/sex relationships, marginalising singlehood and non-monogamies. This illustrates how heterosexuality may be locked in a dyadic scenario that both creates a desire to stray from it and makes such straying challenging.