In A Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, there’s a scene like this: Mr. A has been married to his wife for many years, and waves of boredom keep washing over him. He wants to cheat, but he knows deep down that he loves his wife and his family. One day, Mr. A learns of a company that offers a “virtual infidelity” service. This kind of company can provide a fully simulated affair — falling in love, the heat of romance, going to bed… an experience that can even feel better than the real thing! And all of it happens purely inside a computer simulation, with no actual third party involved.

If a married person never grumbles about their marriage, something must be off with their IQ or EQ. The philosopher Montaigne once said: “A good marriage is one between a blind wife and a deaf husband.” This is exactly why a happy marriage so often belongs to the “numb” — those who, when they marry badly, tell themselves heaven is testing them; who, when they fight, explain it away as lovers’ quarrels that end in the same bed; who, when a third party intrudes, write it off as simply human nature’s flaw.

I suspect that for many people, some things just aren’t so easy to let go of. In a family where a third party has intruded, one side has to endure the heartbreak of sharing a partner, while the other is torn between two boats — how could that not be painful? The assumption that one side (usually the man) always comes out ahead is probably why society despises “the other woman” so much.

Of course there are many reasons a third party intrudes — practically speaking: psychological, economic, social factors and so on; more fancifully, even climate (hotter places see more infidelity than colder ones) and terrain (less of it happens at high altitude). But to those who appear to be the wounded party, an affair has everything to do with emotional fidelity — it is simply unforgivable under heaven. This reminds me of how our news always says some country’s such-and-such action has “damaged the friendship between the two nations.” Is there some hidden, drip-fed connection between these two kinds of “hurt feelings”? I can’t say. But setting aside the causes, does dwelling endlessly on the emotional drama actually comfort either side?

Getting off track — back to the original question. Buried in it is a much bigger social issue: betrayal within marriage. Most countries in the world legally practice monogamy (there’s a village in the U.S. that practices polygamy, where one old man apparently has over a hundred grandchildren — astonishing). Of course, we all understand that law is only a constraint for the majority. Under a monogamous system, there often exist plenty of de facto polygamous or polyandrous arrangements. Setting those special cases aside, if a third party intrudes into an ordinary couple’s marriage, then in defense of monogamy, public opinion, law, and morality alike must come down hard on it.

But wait — there’s something worth noting. The infidelity company Mr. A learned about is entirely virtual! Meaning no physical third party ever appears. So does that perfectly resolve the contradiction between cheating and not betraying one’s family? Clearly not. According to sociological surveys, even married women who merely discover that their spouse masturbates feel a sense of shame — so wouldn’t this kind of virtual infidelity be seen by them as an even greater disgrace?!

At what point does something actually count as “cheating”? Purely physical, purely mental, or both physical and mental boundaries crossed at once? Or does mental infidelity only count once the body follows through and acts on it? — Perhaps years from now there will be some kind of “consciousness monitor” that visualizes emotion, and at that point even fantasizing alone will count as cheating.