The Complaints of Wives on Marital Infidelity: Speech Act Analysis

The most vulnerable members of human society who are immensely affected by infidelity are women. To explore this premise, we applied speech act theory to examine wives’ complaints about marital infidelity, focusing on emotional and financial aspects and their coping mechanisms amid these challenges. In this pursuit, we utilized qualitative discourse analysis, and conducted in-depth interviews with ten married women, selected through snowball sampling. In the final analysis, we found a distinctive pattern in wives’ expressive speech acts, the explicit complaints are prevalent, indicating intense pain, betrayal, anger, sadness, confusion, depression, financial strains, lack of support, and the emotional burden of solo responsibilities. In contrast, wives often refrained from below the level of reproach, and accusation and warning complaints. In relation to Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), wives coping with infidelity rely heavily on regulatory expressions for guidance and direction and representational functions for sharing emotions and experiences. On the other hand, personal, interactional, and instrumental functions are less prevalent, indicating constrained individual growth, communal support, reluctance to engage in open conversations, and fewer explicit expressions of tangible actions. Our findings suggest that wives affected by infidelity should engage in open communication to address emotional and financial issues directly. Seeking support from counseling services can provide tailored guidance and practical advice to help them navigate these challenges.