Affair
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- love, affair
- Any proceeding or action which it is wished to refer to or characterize vaguely.
- an affair of love, i. e., an intrigue.
- An adulterous relationship. (from affaire de coeur.)
An affair may refer to a form of nonmonogamy. The term describes infidelity in marriage. It may be used as a euphemism and in some cases to add glamour to an illicit liaison. Describing a relationship as an 'affair' may be inaccurate or intentionally damaging. It may or may not involve either or both romance or sex. In the romantic friendship article are numerous examples of 'special friendships' in popular culture many apparently without sex. Some are distinguishable from an emotional affair.
Affair has the same word origins as affect — an affair implies bonds of affection, but not necessarily so. Some affairs are premeditatively cold. Some exploitative or designed to extract information by stealth. Some are entered into in order to provide the basis for later blackmail. And some are set up in order to provide grounds for divorce in jurisdictions that do not enjoy no fault divorce laws. That is then referred to as adultery. Affair, in lay and professional usage, does not require any of the parties to be married, though often one is in a committed relationship. Adultery refers more specifically to those in a legal married relationship.
