Is non-monogamy just giving your partner permission to cheat?
And who the f*ck is Madeline?
When I was a twenty-year-old college student at Boston University, I visited the Virgin Records on the corner of Mass Ave. and Newbury St. (RIP) with my then-boyfriend and was struck by what was playing overhead: a distinctly English lilt sarcastically approaching topics like how to get away from an unwanted chat-up and rolling one’s eyes at cliche advice.
I went to the information desk and asked, “What is this?” gesturing vaguely to the air around us.
The employee pointed to an import in front of him: Alright, Still.
I pulled together a pile of crumpled bills, paying extra because the album wasn’t yet available in the US. I needed this CD. I’d listened to it in its entirety while mulling around the store, and I knew it would become my next media obsession.
And that was my introduction to Lily Allen.
I followed her work (and her MySpace) astutely after that, loving her sophomore album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, and seeing her perform at a small club in Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood. But I fell off after that, in no small part because the lead single from her third album, “Hard Out Here,” was widely criticized in my circles for being appropriative of Black culture.
Weirdly (or perhaps divinely), I re-engaged her first album in late September: My best friend was visiting, and on one of our longer drives, I put it on, the both of us singing loudly in our best Mockney accents, laughing in our nostalgia at Allen’s cheeky turns of phrase.
Imagine how shocked I was then, when in late October, headlines splashed a brand-new Lily Allen album, touted as a tell-all about the end of her marriage after non-monogamy gone wrong.
A songwriter whose work I’ve adored, covering a subject near and dear to my heart? Yes, please. And so I sat down to listen to West End Girl.
Over the course of fourteen tracks, Lily Allen takes us on a journey through the dissolution of her marriage to Stranger Things actor David Harbour, starting with his change in demeanor related to her casting in a theatrical production, through their agreement to explore non-monogamy at his request, to her discovery that he’d broken their agreed-upon arrangement, and toward her eventual acceptance of her lack of fault in the matter.
“I will not absorb your shame / It’s you who put me through this,” she sings on the ballad “Let You W/in". “But I can walk out with my dignity / If I lay my truth on the table.”
It feels raw, honest, authentic. And it should. She wrote and recorded the album in its entirely over the course of two weeks in 2024, managing her grief the only way an artist knows how: “All I can do is sing / So why should I let you win?”
West End Girl is climbing the charts as more and more people tune in for the gossip. But there’s a reason why it’s striking a chord with women of a certain age (read: mine): It’s a perfect encapsulation of the emotions one goes through when being gaslit, cheated on, and treated poorly by (more often than not) a man who thinks he can get away with it.
And I don’t want to take away from the brilliance of the album by adding this layer, but I have a sneaking suspicious that there’s another reason why people are salivating over it: because folks love to hate non-monogamy.
While most of the content I’ve seen about West End Girl focuses on how beautifully the narrative unfolds, how truthful the emotions feel, and how badass it is for Allen to put her side of the story out there instead of shrinking away in her shame, I’ve also seen plenty of videos, memes, and comments calling out that Allen isn’t a sympathetic victim here. After all, didn’t she let her partner step out on her? What did she expect to happen?
Within a larger cultural context wherein people often joke that if their partner approached them about non-monogamy, “you would see me on the news” (yes, you read that right; that is a threat of homicide), folks are all too gleeful to watch a non-monogamous relationship fall apart – and to blame the hurt party for their participation.
As a polyamorous person and as a coach and educator on the topic of non-monogamy, I’m so disappointed that in 2025, we’re having this conversation. But let me make it clear:
Non-monogamy is not cheating. But yes, you can cheat within non-monogamy.
“Non-monogamy” is an umbrella term that encompasses various forms of relationships that don’t adhere to monogamy, monogamy being the practice of being romantically and sexually fidelitous to one person at a time.
Monogamy is upheld as the relationship ideal in the United States: As a society, we believe that monogamy is correct, normal, and moral. We call this mononormativity.
Now, many people are familiar with cheating – or what we might call non-consensual non-monogamy. And generally speaking, cheating is frowned upon, despite the fact that it is a normal practice.
When I say that cheating is “normal,” what I mean is that it’s common, with some studies showing that one-quarter to one-third of people admit to cheating, while at least one other shows that upwards of 70% of people admit to cheating on their spouses.
And in some cultures, including subcultures in the United States, certain forms of cheating are considered ideal, particularly for men, most commonly having both a wife and a girlfriend, where the former is responsible for domestic and familial domains, and the latter satisfying the sexual.
This cognitive dissonance – “Monogamy is ideal, but cheating is normal” – can be expressed through a strong distaste for cheating and those who do it.
I don’t see a problem with that: Betrayal is harmful. But I do see many problematic takes on the matter, from “once a cheater, always a cheater” to the recent trend of claiming that men who consistently cheat on women are gay (note: this is homophobic—please stop).
People hate cheaters.
The problem is: Many people don’t actually know what cheating is.
There is a trend on TikTok that comes and goes where couples stand in front of the phone camera while a sound plays that names different forms of potential cheating in a relationship. Each person in the couple is supposed to respond to each form, showing if they think it’s cheating or not. What makes the trend entertaining is that the couples often disagree.
And this suggests that many, if not most, couples aren’t having conversations about what cheating means to them and coming to clear agreements.
One person might think flirting is cheating, while the other doesn’t. One might be okay with you kissing someone else, but anything beyond that is cheating. Many men claim that their female partners hooking up with other women isn’t considered cheating, while many queer women find that lesbophobic and misogynist. What is “emotional cheating” – and what counts? Pornography? Following and liking other women’s content on Instagram?
The nuances are endless.
And yet, people aren’t naming them.
We’ve seemed to agree, as a culture, that cheating is wrong. But are you even sure about how you and your partner define cheating?
Acts that are considered cheating are determined by the couple in question. Your partnership’s agreements around cheating might be different from your brother’s or your best friend’s. Your expectations around cheating might look one way in one relationship and then another in your next. And that’s okay. There is no one-size-fits-all definition.
What we know is that the romantic and sexual behavior that you can or cannot engage in with others while in a relationship are unique to the partnership.
And that is true whether the relationship is monogamous or non-monogamous.
The general public has a belief about non-monogamy that it’s simply a free-for-all, that you can do whatever suits your fancy, and then clean up your mess with an “oopsie” if and when it makes your partner uncomfortable.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
While yes, of course, some people treat it this way, these are folks who aren’t to be trusted (I’m looking at you, David Harbour). Just like people who treat monogamous dating without care and intention, folks who do so in non-monogamy are equally wrong.
A cornerstone of non-monogamy is negotiating agreements: What do we want this to look like? Allen alludes to this on the title track of West End Girl, when we hear a one-sided phone call wherein she asks, “Well, how, how will it work? Where—?”
Many people actually choose to create a living document of agreements, which is revisited when new desires or boundaries pop up, including when other parties become involved. Think of it as a clearly written list of what is and is not within the bounds of the relationship, not unlike what even monogamous people should be doing in conversations about what constitutes cheating.
In “Madeline,” Allen points out exactly what some of the agreements between her and her husband were: “We had an arrangement / Be discreet, and don’t be blatant / There had to be payment / It had to be with strangers.”
When she hits us in the gut with “But you’re not a stranger, Madeline,” what she’s getting across is that her husband disrespected the bounds of their non-monogamy.
And whether or not the non-monogamy, in and of itself, was agreed upon is irrelevant: He betrayed the parameters. He cheated.
Specifically, she names that “If it was just sex, I wouldn’t be jealous” (“Tennis”) because that’s what she agreed to. “But you moved the goalposts / You’ve broken the rules / I tried to accommodate / But you took me for a fool.”
Just like a monogamous couple can decide that x is within the bounds of their relationship, but y isn’t, so can a non-monogamous couple.
The argument that because Allen agreed to an arrangement wherein her husband was allowed to have extramarital sex doesn’t mean that she’s at fault for him forming entire emotionally involved relationships with other women.
They had an agreement, which her husband betrayed. That is what cheating is.
And making Lily Allen responsible for that – not unlike the gaslighting that her husband engaged in – shows not only a lack of knowledge about how non-monogamy works, but indeed, a lack of knowledge about how relationships work.
Relationships are contracts. And whether your connection is monogamous or not, you deserve a partner (or partners!) who respect those boundaries. Period.