How The Torah Views Adultery

The Torah uses a very powerful metaphor to describe adultery: stealing from God. 

It says that the same way one who has eaten without reciting a blessing prior has stolen from Hashem, the same way one who steals from the Holy Temple, Beit Hamikdash has similarly stolen and needs to repay the value of the stolen item and add one fifth of its value, and the same way one who has stolen from sanctified booty at war time has stolen from God, likewise, the adulterous act is an act of theft, or in Hebrew, me'ilah. This term, me'ilah essentially means that a person has taken something that was sanctified and used it for profane uses; interestingly, when the tribes of Reuven, Gad and half of the tribe of Menashe make an altar on the Jordan and are accused of serving an alien god, the term me'ilah is likewise used. 

The term is a loaded term, a term with very deep meaning, and is meant to construe something very specific. 

In the words of the Seforno on the bitter wars that would check both man and woman alike - if a man had acted adulterously with a married woman the waters would have a similar effect on him - when a woman is adulterous she has stolen from her husband the divine presence he felt every time she would hug or kiss him, every intimate act imbuing their lives with sanctity of which she has now deprived him. 

May we as a society internalize that lesson, that affection and intimacy, between husband and wife, like the cherubs who turned to each other and brought down the divine presence, are the bastion of sanctity in this world, without which we have usurped the potential for greater closeness, and romance in this world.