LOVE DEMANDS INFIDELITY
ALM No.94, October 2026
ESSAYS
Eros
The goddess of love, Aphrodite, was once married to the blacksmith god Hephaestus. The marriage , however, was confining as Hephaestus spent most of his time in his forge. Come Ares, the god of war. He pursued Aphrodite and soon they began what is considered one of Olympus’ most scandalous affairs. But when Hephaestus began suspecting his wife of infidelity, he created an invisible net and placed it on the lovers’ bed. The next time Ares and Aphrodite lay together, the net enclosed around them, trapping their entangled, naked bodies for all of Olympus to see. Despite having been caught, the union between Ares and Aphrodite resulted in many children. One of them is Eros; the greek god of love, born out of infidelity, carrying equal parts desire and conflict.
Lack of faith
Etymologically, infidelity comes from the latin word īnfidēlis, in ‘not’, and fidēlis ‘faithful’. It can also be described as ‘want of faith’ or ‘lack of faith’. The parent word, infidel, is used to describe a person of a different faith, a non believer, a pagan. In the 14-15th century, infidelity was associated with disloyalty to a sovereign nation, and by the 16th century, betrayal or disloyalty to a spouse.
But coming back to ‘lack of faith’; in her essay Eros the Bittersweet (1986), Anne Carson refers to Eros as a lack, an act of reaching. She writes, “Eros is always a story in which lover, beloved and the difference between them interact. This interaction is a fiction arranged by the mind of the lover. It carries an emotional charge both hateful and delicious and emits a light like knowledge.”
The triangulation that Carson speaks of, between the lover, the beloved, and the third thing that keeps them apart manifests as a love story template across cultures. Considering the heteronormative nature of these works, for the sake of this argument, the template loosely goes like this:
Boy meets girl, they fall in love. The first difference that keeps them apart is anything from opposing families to caste and class. The lovers suffer through a separation and the girl is married off. In comes the husband, who acts as the third entity between the lover and the beloved. The boy returns, and takes on the role of the lover. In masculine readings of such texts, the woman becomes a passive recipient of that love. Things happen to her. Like marriage; she gets tied in domesticity with the husband. She takes on identities; wife, daughter-in-law, mother. The man, on the other hand, forsakes the world because he can. He begins to exist beyond temporality; without name, meaning, or identity. Yet, for the woman, the lack remains. Eros remains. And he demands a lack in faith— infidelity.
Liberation
In Part Four, chapter VIII of Anna Karenina (1873), Tolstoy writes, “Anna, during this first period of liberation and quick recovery, felt herself unpardonably happy and filled with the joy of life.” This comes after Anna leaves her husband and son, and travels to Europe with Vronsky. Her shedding of her societal title, domestic and marital life is considered a a radical act. A transgression in the eyes of society, but ultimately, an act of liberation.
In the oral folktales of undivided Punjab, known as Punjabi qissas, such as Heer-Ranjha or Sohni-Mahiwal, or in the Arabic/Persian versions of Laila-Majnu, the aforementioned framework of this triangulation remains the same. In all three stories, the women, Heer, Sohni, and Laila are married off by their families who oppose their lovers’ tribe, class, or caste. And in all three, like Anna Karenina, the act of infidelity post marriage, is considered liberation. Not only from the domestic, marital life but all worldly, material life.
In the story of Heer-Ranjha, first written down by Damodar Gulati in the 1600s, and later by Waris Shah in 1766, Heer is married to the Kheras after her family finds out about her clandestine meetings with Ranjha. While Heer is tied to the materialism of domesticity in her marriage, Ranjha forsakes the world to become a Jogi, wandering all of Punjab. Eventually, he ends up at Heer’s new village and the two reunite. However, it doesn’t last long. Even though Heer’s family agrees to their marriage, it is only a facade. On the wedding day, her uncle poisons her and when Ranjha finds out, he dies as well.
When it comes to Laila-Majnu, popularised by Nizami Ganjavi’s 1188 CE version, the story goes the same. Laila is married off and Majnu forsakes the world. He goes mad living in the wilderness among animals. And eventually, their story, too, ends in death after a brief reunion.
While most templates consider the man as the active lover and the woman the passive receiver of this love, it is worth noting that while the man abandons the world, it is the woman who actively fights.
This fight for liberation is taken up a notch by Sohni in Sohni-Mahiwal. As the template goes, Sohni is married off, and Mahiwal renounces the world. He wanders around and ends up in her village, just across the river. Every night, Sohni crosses the river using an earthen pot and meets her Mahiwal. He catches fish for her, and they spend the night together. Sohni’s infidelity is active and much more visible than Heer and Laila. She moves back and forth between the lover’s spiritual realm and the husband’s material world. But, of course, as the story goes, the lovers eventually die. Sohni’s sister-in-law, suspecting her infidelity, replaces her earthen pot with an underbaked one. As Sohni attempts to cross the river, the pot begins to dissolve. Sohni drowns. Mahiwal jumps in to save her. He drowns as well.
In all these stories, the lack of faith that Love demands from these women, is in their husbands who represent the material world, while the lover represents freedom— liberation. These women show a lack of faith in the societally perceived notion of womanhood. Eros’ required infidelity isn’t necessarily physical, although in Anna’s case that is an additional dimension; this lack in faith that Love demands is in the materialism of the husband, the temporal marriage, and the material world.
In Wuthering Heights (1847), Heathcliff enters Cathy’s material world. He comes in without a name, meaning or identity literally. When Mr Earnshaw names him Heathcliff it chains him to Cathy’s earthly world through the tie that the name once belonged to her deceased brother. The two fall in love but the first thing separates them is class. However, once Heathcliff leaves, forsaking Cathy’s world, she gets married to Edgar Linton. She sinks in the material world of the husband. And when he returns, Heathcliff beckons her to break free.
Unlike Majnu, it is not Heathcliff who goes mad. Cathy is the one who falls into a state of insanity when Linton forbids her to see Heathcliff. Now, similar to these Punjabi qissas, Cathy and Heathcliff’s love remains untainted by sexual desire or consummation. Even though that is changed in Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation where Cathy and Heathcliff start an affair. In Bronte’s work, however, unlike the Punjabi qissas where both lovers die together, Cathy dies first, forsaking the material world, whereas Heathcliff remains tied in the temporality through not just his name, but the evidence of Cathy’s domestic chains— her child with Linton. Until Heathcliff’s eventual death, Cathy’s ghost becomes the elusive beloved that he seeks, the beloved with whom he wants to have that divine union in death.
Oneness
It is perhaps Mirabai, the 16th century Bhakti poet, who best captures the idea of oneness with the beloved. Mirabai, who was born a rajput princess, devoted her life to Krishna. Even after she was married, she never considered her earthly husband legitimate. She spent her life writing songs in Krishna’s praise and dancing in front of his idol. Her love for Krishna can be categorised as bridal Mysticism.
A couplet from one of her devotional poems for Krishna, translated by Jane Hirshfield, reads:
Friends, let those whose Beloved is absent write letters—
Mine dwells in the heart, and neither enters nor leaves.
Mirabai focuses on non duality. She and her beloved are the same spiritually, despite the physical distance between them. One of her most famous devotional songs, sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, is Sanson ki Maala. The lyrics of the song go as Prem ki maala japte japte, aap bani mai Shyam, which translates to, “I’ve chanted Shyam’s [Krishna] name on this rosary of love so much, that now I’ve become him.”
The Punjabi qissas of Heer-Ranjha and Sohni-Mahiwal, too, allegorise the union with the divine, through the lovers.
Similar to Mirabai’s poem, in Heer-Ranjha, Heer famously dons Ranjha’s clothes and sings, Ranjha Ranjha kardi ve main aape Ranjha hoyi, which translates to, “I’ve chanted Ranjha’s name so many times that now I’ve become him.”
In another version of the Sohni and Mahiwal, the idea of oneness makes an appearance as well. One day, when there’s no fish to catch, Mahiwal cuts a piece of his thigh and cooks it for Sohni to eat. This act of cannibalism joins their souls forever in a tryst of togetherness as Mahiwal’s flesh becomes a part of Sohni’s body.
The elusive beloved, no matter the story, is always god.
Similarly, in Wuthering Heights, despite it not being allegorical, the narrative does point out the oneness of Cathy and Heathcliff. The former tells Nelly, “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” She further adds, “I am Heathcliff.”
In a genderless interpretation of these stories, the infidelity Eros demands is inverted. If the divine beloved demands full faith in itself, then where does it demand a lack in faith? In the material world and its attachments. The husband.
Blasphemy
Kafir-e-Ishq huye, hamd-o-sana bhool gaye
Naam-e-but yaad raha naam-e-khudah bhool gaye dekho
This is a couplet from a famous qawwali, Na toh Butkade ki talab mujhe, written by Ameer Bakhsh Sabri, and famously sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. These lines translate as:
I’ve become an infidel in love, and have forgotten the praise of God
I remember the idol’s (beloved’s) name, and have forgotten God’s name
The qawwali draws a juxtaposition between the Kaba, a holy site for Muslims, and the beloved’s home which is represented by a place of idol worship which is automatically a place of blasphemy in Islam. The speaker refers to their beloved as a but, an idol, whose worship is forbidden in Islam, and himself as a Kafir, an infidel. The speaker’s love for the beloved is so intense that he’s driven to blasphemy, forgetting hamd-o-sana, praise of God that’s only ever reserved for God.
To a devout christian, John Donne’s metaphysical conceits might sound blasphemous. In his poem, The Canonization (1663), he compares earthly, romantic love to sainthood. In Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going To Bed, he compares the “soft bed” on which the speaker and his beloved would fornicate to a temple of love. In his earlier poems Donne often places the earthly pleasures of love on par, if not above, religious imagery or God’s creations. His mixes the secular with the religious, and that theme carries on to the poems he wrote later in his career, as a devout. In his Holy Sonnets, he forgoes the comparison and instead begins to use a combination of sexual and religious conceits to address God. In Batter my heart, three-person'd God, when he writes, “But am betroth'd unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie or break that knot again.” It is a plea for infidelity. He might be promised to earth and all its materialism, yet he urges God to “ravish” him, as perhaps a lover would. He begs God to imprison him, and take him forcefully, so that he’s neither ever free nor chaste.
In the 2018 movie Laila-Majnu, Majnu enunciates Laila’s name as La-ila, using it as a homophone for the beginning of la ilaha illallah, which translates to there’s no god except Allah. Here, Love’s demand for infidelity takes on another meaning. Majnu’s lack of faith is not just in the material world, but the religious and clerical dogmas which would classify this transgression as blasphemy. Majnu’s infidelity from the rules of religion is another form of liberation.
Betraying the beloved
In Book One, chapter III of The End of the Affair (1951), Graham Greene writes, “Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?”
After Judas betrayed Christ, he was riddled with guilt. But instead of repenting or asking for forgiveness, he hung himself. Christ’s love demanded full faith in itself like the divine beloved, yet Judas chose materialism. Judas’ spiritual infidelity is a cautionary tale that Sarah avoids in Greene’s novel. Instead of letting infidelity and its guilt lead to self-destruction, Sarah lets it lead her towards faith in God. Not the mystic kind like in the Punjabi qissas, a Catholic one, but still, faith in God nonetheless.
Sarah exercises a double infidelity. Her first infidelity towards her husband leads her towards Bendrix and his earthly love. Then, it is her love for Bendrix that drives her to make a promise to God— she’d give him up forever if he makes it out of the rubble alive. So, when Bendrix comes out alive, and Sarah breaks things off with him, he thinks that she has another lover. He suspects her of a second infidelity, and once he finds out the other lover he God, he becomes jealous of God. From Bendrix’s perspective, Sarah betrayed him to honour her promise to God. God is the third thing keeping them apart.
Sarah’s love for him led her to infidelity, and infidelity led her to love God.
In the aforementioned Punjabi qissas, Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, and The End of the Affair, a triangulation with a third entity exists. In all the stories, there is a husband who is betrayed. And yet, there is another Punjabi qissa of Mirza-Sahiban that does things a little differently. Mirza and Sahiban never suffer a separation due to the husband like Heer Ranjha or Sohni Mahiwal. Sahiban never does get married. Instead, because their physical love and longing for each other is so strong, she and Mirza elope when their families oppose their union. So, where is the infidelity that Eros demands?
Since there is no husband to have a lack of faith in, the price of infidelity is paid by the beloved. Sahiban betrays Mirza. After eloping, the two sit under a jand tree to rest. While Mirza falls asleep, Sahiban remains awake and spots her brothers on the horizon, chasing after them. Knowing that Mirza would kill her brothers in combat, and not wanting her new life to begin with spilling the blood of her kin, she breaks all his arrows. When Mirza wakes up to the attack and reaches for his quiver, he finds all his arrows split in two pieces. Sahiban’s betrayal, perhaps a bit like Judas, leads to the death of the one she loves. And, like Judas, Sahiban, too dies by suicide as she stabs herself with a broken arrow.
However, unlike Judas, Sahiban’s betrayal wasn’t because she chose materialism. It was because she chose non duality like Mirabai. Heer-Ranjha and Sohni-Mahiwal had already renounced the world in their lifetimes. Whereas, Mirza and Sahiban’s love was much more rooted in earthly pleasures. The lovers didn’t renounce the world like the other couples. So, in one way or the other, Eros needed to demand infidelity. The lack of faith in the material world occurred via Sahiban’s betrayal which led to the death of their material selves, i.e., their egos.
And so, what Bendrix considers to be infidelity on Sarah’s part, is just her renouncing his earthly love for God’s spiritual one.
When the soul betrays
Psyche was the youngest of three daughters, and the most beautiful of them all. She was so beautiful that men began to worship her instead of Aphrodite. Jealous and disrespected, Aphrodite tasked her son, Eros, to teach Psyche a lesson— make her fall in love with a grotesque monster.
At Psyche’s home, her father constantly worried about her marriage as her beauty evoked reverence instead of suitors. He spoke to Apollo’s oracle about it. The oracle told him that it was in Psyche’s destiny to be married to a monster. She must be tied to a mountain as offering to the hideous creature who would then fly off with her.
On the mountain, there was no creature. Instead, it was Eros, who, upon seeing her, fell in love with her. He directed the Zephyr, the west wind, to blow Psyche to his palace. There, Psyche was bathed and fed by Eros’ servants. At night, Eros visited her, and told that he was her husband. However, he didn’t unveil his identity. In the darkness, Psyche couldn’t see him either. They consummated their marriage and Eros asked her to promise that she would never look upon him. Time passed and Psyche spent her nights in the arms of her mysterious husband, showing such blind faith that she never questioned him. However, soon, she invited her sisters to visit her palace, despite Eros’ warnings. When her sisters arrived, they, jealous of Psyche’s beauty and now wealth, somehow convinced her to find out her husband’s real identity. So, that night, as Eros slept in their bed, Psyche lit an oil lamp and gazed upon his visage in the dim light. Instantly, she recognised him as Eros, the god of love, and fell in love with him. However, a drop of oil spilled onto Eros’ shoulder, burning him. He woke up, understanding his wife’s betrayal and left her.
Thus began Psyche’s journey of winning her husband back. She beseeched Aphrodite to convince her son, and the goddess in return asked her to perform four tasks to prove her love.
As the story goes, the final task called for Psyche to go to the underworld and fetch Persephone’s box, however, she was not to look inside or else she would fall into a death-like sleep. But Psyche looked. She fell into a sleep, prompting Eros to take matters into his own hands. He asked Zeus to intervene. The husband and wife reunited, and Eros fed Psyche ambrosia so she, too, would become immortal. Psyche, later, gave birth to a daughter, Hedone.
In this myth, Eros, who has always extracted infidelity out of people one way or another, disrupting marital conjugation, himself is betrayed in love by his wife. And yet, this infidelity was necessary for his immortal union with his beloved.
In his book, Amor and Psyche: The Psychic Development of the Feminine: A Commentary on the Tale by Apuleius (1956), Eric Neumann offers a Jungian analysis of myth of Eros and Psyche. According to him, Psyche’s infidelity sets her on a path of individuation where Aphrodite’s given tasks elevate Psyche’s earthly character to a higher spiritual plane, ultimately making her deserving of being reunited with Eros, a god. He writes, “Psyche's individual love for Eros as love in the light is not only an essential element, it is the essential element in feminine individuation. Feminine individuation and the spiritual development of the feminine—and here-in lies the basic significance of this myth—are always effected through love. Through Eros, through her love of him, Psyche develops not only toward him, but toward herself.” He further adds that this process of individuation allows for the self to be “experienced as the centre of wholeness”.
Psyche, of course, translates to soul. Therefore, the soul journeys towards love and thus itself, and as a consequence of this journey attains self-knowledge and awareness which lead to liberation. And this knowledge comes from the oil lamp’s light. As Carson writes, “It [Eros] carries an emotional charge both hateful and delicious and emits a light like knowledge.”
Psyche’s beloved is divine. He is a god. In the blanket of the night, he is elusive, and refuses to be seen. Mirabai’s beloved, too, is divine. He, too, is a god. Some folktales suggest that at night, as Mira used to dance in front of Krishna’s idol and sing his praises, her in-laws began suspecting her of infidelity towards her earthly husband. Upon hearing the laughter of another, they thought she was entraining a secret lover in her chambers. However, when the doors to her room would open, no one remained but Mira and her the idol of her beloved.
The mysticism of Mira’s story finds itself trickling to the myth of Eros and Psyche. Neumann notes, “This love of Psyche for her divine lover is a central motif in the love mysticism of all times, and Psyche’s failure, her final self-abandonment, and the god who approaches as a savior at this very moment correspond exactly to the highest phase of mystical ecstasy, in which the soul commends itself to the godhead.”
Psyche’s mystical union with Eros results in such great happiness that their daughter can be called nothing but Hedon— Pleasure. But, this Pleasure is not to be confused with sensuality, it exists beyond that. Neuman writes, “this child is the mystical joy which among all peoples is described as the fruit of the highest mystical union. It is ‘Joy indeed, but surpassing sensuality.’”
Both Mira and Psyche were earthly beings and their beloved were gods. They had to rise to their spiritual level, gain that light of knowledge, and have their divine union. Psyche went on a journey and at the end drank the ambrosia to unite with Eros. Meanwhile, Mira, too, went through trials that tested her surrender to Krishna. Her in-laws tried to end her life on multiple occasions, once, even feeding her poison which was disguised as amrit, or ambrosia. Mira drank the poison fearlessly and such was her surrender to the divine that no harm came to her. In the end, to unite with her beloved, Mira took a perilous journey to Dwarka, the birth place of Krishna. There, she entered a temple and sang with such ecstasy that her physical body dissipated in front of the priests. What remained was her veil covering Krishna’s idol.
Psyche’s lack of faith in her husband led to her eventual union with the divine. Mira’s lack of faith in societal conventions and her earthly husband led to her liberation and union with her divine beloved.
The women in these stories—Psyche, Mira, Sahiban, Sarah, Heer, Laila, Sohni, Anna, Cathy—surpass the role of being the passive beloved that’s forced onto them. They are the active lover, fighting to be one with their lover. The men have the privilege to be the elusive beloved, to forsake the world and wander in the wilderness. They are gods. And yet, it is the women from whom the divine love demands infidelity. No matter the kind, Love always requires a transgression. It can be given various names— betrayal, infidelity, blasphemy, or disloyalty, and yet, it is this transgression, this one act of defiance, that leads one to oneself. Non duality. The divine within.
Guniya is a writer born and raised in Jammu & Kashmir, India. Her work has appeared in publications such as Muse India, Lifestyle Asia, and Brown History. She is currently working on her debut novel.
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