Absolute monogamy is the VHS machine of relationship statuses

Remember Joey Greco? The creepy guy who hosted the show Cheaters, the one who would catch philanderers red-cheeked, and bombard them with questions as pants and belt buckles were hastily fumbled with? Well, 2017 would have been a blockbuster year for him, and for a Cheaters: Celebrity Edition.

Had Greco been on duty recently he may have burst in on comedian Kevin Hart giggling on the chest of a woman who was definitely not his wife.

Earlier this week Hart got on Instagram to fess up to cheating on his heavily pregnant wife. He didn't give details but the ever-helpful internet most definitely did. Videos of what appear to be Hart and a woman doing the horizontal tango emerged, with audio of Hart's statements about how he had now passed the age where he wanted to cheat.

Hart is not the only one. Beyoncé's husband Jay-Z also confessed to cheating earlier this year and Bonang's bae AKA is currently nipples-deep in a scandal of his own.

All three of these men have stunning partners and a lot to lose, so obviously that age-old question of why men cheat returns to terrorise our social media timelines.

All of this is terrifically funny - but it perhaps misses a bigger issue: why do we care when someone cheats?

Back in the days when fax machines were newfangled technology, social convention dictated that creating genital friction with another required a contract of marriage and that contract could only be entered into by one man and one woman (obviously this is culturally biased).

Finding anyone other than your husband or wife to do this with was a clear breach of contract, so it follows that cheating would be morally dodgy, although how strictly breaches of contract were punished is another conversation.

Society has moved a long way from there. We've long since rid ourselves of fax machines, horse-drawn transportation and the Group Areas Act. Nowadays you can have as much premarital sex as you want and for the most part no one cares. We marry for love, the promise of a lifetime supply of shiny things, or citizenship.

Truly, what does it matter if your spouse scratches the occasional itch? (Sure, an itch scratched too long and too roughly develops into an open wound but an itch that bad is generally indicative of a more serious problem.)

If your spouse is safe and gives Janice from accounting a sub-par rogering at the office party but still comes home and loves you and the kids the same as he always has, surely all is well. If wifey is visiting Dave the plumber every Wednesday and still thinks the world of you, then the occasional drain unclogging by an alternative service provider is just that.

The reason behind the cheating is far more important than the cheating itself. Someone who cheats very regularly and with the same person is probably emotionally attached to that person and that is a problem. A spouse who just happened upon a free sample and then kept it moving is only guilty of being impulsive.

The truth is that it is only jealousy that keeps us moored to the outmoded concept of absolute monogamy. Some people cheat and others don't in the same way that some people drink and others don't. Alcoholism is only a problem when you drink so much that you become dependent. Extramarital sex should be treated the same way: the odd dalliance is fine but stray beyond there and fights must break out.

Absolute monogamy is the VHS machine of relationship statuses. It was great at the time but we should definitely be past it by now.