Good news, adulterers: It turns out that if you get relationship counseling in Britain, you’ll have your identity as a “secret non-monogamist” affirmed!
And apparently, it’s been that way for a while — although it took a therapist named James Esses to point out just how bewilderingly perverse the guidance from the British Association of Psychotherapy and Counseling really is.
Esses is the founder of Just Therapy, an organization that believes “much of the world of psychotherapy and counseling has been taken over by activists and ideologies, which risk harming, rather than supporting, the mental wellbeing of clients.”
That’s the kind of thing that passes as being rather boring as the news cycle goes, but he managed to go hugely viral when he discovered this passage about adultery in the association’s “Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity Guidance.”
“It categorizes infidelity as a brand new sexuality: ‘secret non-monogamy.’ Therapists must affirm this sexuality to prove ‘cultural competency,’” he wrote on X.
The British Association of Psychotherapy & Counselling has just released new ‘Gender, Sexuality and Relationship Diversity Guidance’.
It categorises infidelity as a brand new sexuality: ‘secret non-monogamy’.
Therapists must affirm this sexuality to prove ‘cultural competency’. pic.twitter.com/yYUEj6c1kG
— James Esses (@JamesEsses) July 12, 2026
Do you consider adultery to still be a sin?
Yes: 100% (12 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
The problem is that, while this version seems to be new and the advice is updated, the principle isn’t.
In the new version that Esses posted on X, the guidance on “secret non-monogamy” is pretty clear about approving it: “Cultural norms and social expectations influence both the prevalence of secret non-monogamy and the ways it is experienced and judged, with some societies showing stricter disapproval and others exhibiting more tacit tolerance… Secrecy is intensified by stigma, cultural norms favouring monogamy, and concerns about judgment or discrimination in relationship contexts.”
Ah, those fiendish cultural norms and incidents of “discrimination in relationship contexts.” We all know that voter ID is Jim Crow 2.0. Is “You shall not commit adultery” Jim Crow 3.0? Or is it Jim Crow 0.1 beta, since it’s from the Ten Commandments?
However, as many pointed out in the comments section, this is hardly new, alas:
Think you’ll find that was in earlier versions
BACP dangerously insane Relationships guidance by Meg John Barker (former partner of Edward Lord) was first exposed in 2018
— Marjorie Hutchins (@leakylike) July 12, 2026
We have access to the 2023 version, which does not talk about the stigmas and discrimination that adulterers face, but which says that it “may be more useful to view secrecy to openness of non-monogamy as a spectrum.”
I don’t know how high or low your expectations for The Science™ are — but if it’s still high, even as it pertains to the social sciences, be prepared to be very disappointed, reader. Emphases in the following passage all my own:
With secret non-monogamy it is easy for therapists to become focused on the non-normativity of what is being done: going against the normative rules of monogamy. However, under a GSRD affirmative approach, non-monogamy is an equally valid form of relating to monogamy, and the boundaries between them are blurred anyway. Given this, the key issue with secret non-monogamy is its non-consensual nature (see 3.8) and the secrets, lies, and deception which are involved. There may also be non-consensual deception and invasion of privacy on the part of a partner who has ‘discovered’ another’s infidelity.
Thus the goal of therapy is not to stop the non-monogamous person or people from being non-monogamous – just as we would not attempt to stop a gay or trans person from being gay or trans – rather it is helping them navigate their relationship such that non-monogamy can either be done consensually and openly, or the relationship can end or change if partners are too incompatible in terms of where they are at with non/monogamy for this to be possible.
So first, adultery is equally valid to monogamy, even if it’s not an explicitly open relationship. But you know, that whole pesky “non-consent from the other partner” does get in the way.
Wait, though: The partner who was cheating didn’t consent to being caught, either! A-ha! See? This was non-consensual on both sides!
And of course, we’re taught that being gay or transgender is natural and irreversible, and apparently, so is “secret non-monogamy.” Thus, the therapist should help them “navigate” this to the point where it’s consensual, unless the other partner is “too incompatible” with being cheated on.
Garbage — or, this being the British, “rubbish” — like this excerpt is why we need to start looking back to the Bible for what God thinks about “secret non-monogamy.” (Or, non-monogamy, period.)
Hebrews 13:4: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
James 4:4: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Mark 10:11-12: “And he said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’”
Matthew 15:19: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
Jeremiah 13:27: “I have seen your abominations, your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings, on the hills in the field. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will it be before you are made clean?”
That’s among many others. Amid the talk of “lewd whorings” and comparisons of adultery to slander (“secret non-veracities?”) or murder (“stigmatized incompatibilizing with life?”), I didn’t find anything about “secret non-monogamy” being an acceptable form of conduct. (Not even in The Voice translation.)
God doesn’t care what a psychological journal says. He cares what He says, and He says that adultery is a sin. You’d be better off, and quite literally eternally grateful, if you take His advice over this nonsense.
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