The quick answer is no. Unfortunately there’s no guarantee that no matter how great your relationship or your sex life is, that infidelity won’t happen. Sorry! The next best thing is exploring and establishing relationship boundaries, expectations and agreements. Doing so allows both partners to flesh out their own definitions of infidelity within the relationship because it differs from person to person. This means taking the time to discuss with your partner in detail what is important to you, what you need to feel safe or secure in the relationship and also touching on why it’s important.

Infidelity is the violation of an emotional or sexual agreement and trust within a relationship. The murky area for most is that some of these agreements are explicitly stated whereas some aren’t. The definition of infidelity is ever-expanding. For some, watching porn can be seen as cheating while for others, cheating can be seen as building an emotionally intimate relationship with someone other than your partner. There’s an immense amount of layers to our definitions and they vary from person to person based on experiences, relationships and values.

Attachment styles are expectations we develop about our relationships with others based on the relationship we had with our caregivers when we were infants. Our attachment style defines the way we interact and relate to others in our relationships, especially when that relationship is threatened. Understanding your attachment style allows you to bring awareness to your behaviours, how you perceive your partner and identify patterns. It provides a great framework for understanding your needs within a relationship and the best way to get them met.

Sexuality comes in many different shapes and sizes. It’s not as simple or as static as “heterosexual” vs “homosexual”. As a society, we’re increasingly recognising and appreciating the diversity and fluidity of sexuality.

Our individual sexuality is made up of a complex interplay between our sexual identity, sexual orientation and sexual behaviour. Our sexual identity refers to how we self-identify publicly and personally. Sexual orientation is who and what we are attracted to, and sexual behaviour refers to what we do sexually. Each part is just as important as the others, but it’s important to note that it’s not a requirement that all three dimensions neatly match. A person is no less bisexual if they’ve only had straight sex, or no less queer if they’re only attracted to the same gender sexually.

As a result of incredibly limited sex education, we’re often left to learn what sex and sexuality ‘should’ look like through the lens of porn and media. We’re taught bodies and sex should look a certain way and we create long lists in our heads about what needs to happen in order to be great at sex. We suck in our stomachs to look cute or push through pain because we’re taught a one-size-fits-all approach to intimacy. This is performative sex.

The first and most influential step in moving toward body appreciation, neutrality and even positivity, is to bring awareness to how we learned about what bodies ‘should’ be, and to challenge some of the unhelpful and untrue societal narratives.

To support this, we’ve created a list of reflection questions to open the conversation around body image and get you thinking about how you see yourself, and what influences this…