The Fantasy Panic: Why Thinking About Someone Else During Sex May Tell Us More About Modern Consciousness Than Modern Infidelity (opens in new tab)

There is a distinctly modern form of relationship anxiety in which two people become less concerned with betrayal itself than with the possibility of unauthorized cognition. Someone admits—hesitantly, guiltily, often with the exhausted expression of a person confessing to financial crimes—that they occasionally fantasize about someone else during sex. And suddenly the atmosphere changes. Not grief exactly. Not even jealousy. Interpretation. The modern couple has become deeply interpretive abo...