What is ‘cuckolding’ and why is it becoming fashionable to be a consenting cuckold?

The interview in which Jada Pinkett told Will Smith about her fling with a young man has sparked interest in the so-called cuckolding. The difference between cuckolding and infidelity is based on consent and the fetishization of being “cuckolded.” An unfaithful woman and an unfaithful man tell us how they experience it. If you have no idea about it, try watching ebony cuckold porn and imagine it.

If, like any good evolved mammal, you have eyes in your head in addition to horns, you’ll have noticed that advertisements for companies that monetize infidelity are increasingly proliferating. Without getting into moral debates, it’s obvious that the dating industry and the sexual accessories industry are striving to give a cooler, healthier emotional spin to an issue as old as humanity.

A first step to starting to profit from other people’s cuckoldry is to re-label the different forms of infidelity with more marketable names. This is the case with cuckolding, a term that could be translated directly as ‘cuckold’ but incorporates nuances that are more palatable in current society. Cuckolding has started to gain traction following the interview that Will Smith did with his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, in which she confessed to him about the affair she had with another man, a 27-year-old rapper named August Alsina, who is also friends with their son Jaden. The term infidelity is not accurate for two reasons: this relationship occurred four years ago during a period when Will and Jada had taken time apart, and—here is the key to the matter—Will knew about the story and allegedly gave his consent.

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So what is the difference between classic cheating and cuckolding? These are the basic elements of this ‘new’ (we’d need many more quotation marks) type of relationship: an unfaithful woman, a consenting husband, and… Ta-da! The husband is excited by the idea that his wife is cheating on him and that she enjoys telling him about it, even if the account is more fantasy than reality. The extreme modality of cuckolding is for the husband to witness the infidelity in a voyeuristic manner, which again brings us back to sexual practices that are centuries (or millennia) old.

According to a study, cuckolding is a sexual practice mainly carried out in our country by couples over 40 with many years of relationship under their belt (and an attractive economic profile, we might add). Their study concludes that only 9 percent of women and 12 percent of men have tried it, but up to 72 percent of women over 40 would like to do it, provided it remains a one-time fling. It’s notable that, in the case of women under 40, the percentage is inverted: 75 percent censure this practice.

A sticky point: it seems the option of the unfaithful narrator being the man and the woman acting as the cuckolded observer is not considered. Why is the unfaithful woman fetishized and not the unfaithful man? Why did that deeply misogynistic phrase, “a lady in the street, a whore in the bed,” pop into my head? Oh, those damned roles… Incidentally, the next step of the study is to add BDSM nuances to this type of relationship, with the corresponding ‘toys,’ so you know where this is going.

Another recent statistic published by JOYclub, a partner-swapping platform, adds to that study. According to their striking data, 80 percent of women admit to having been unfaithful to their partners, compared to 70 percent of men.

…and the question arises again: Is the goal to improve couples’ emotional health through freedom, trust, and communication, or is it really just pure commercial interest detached from the potential alienation of human relationships? Or, let’s be fair-minded, a mix of both factors?