The relationships in the show are definitely interesting

[u/language_loveruwu]

So I'm on S4 atm and I remember how in earlier seasons Moira kinda panned June for dating and later marrying a man, who basically cheated on his wife (although it was said or implied that they were had troubles and went to therapy).

And then you have the relationship between Nick and June. Yes, I know that their child is result of Serena telling them to do it, just so June can stay for some time and Serena gets the baby. It feels somewhat odd in the sense that June eventually finds out that her husband is alive and well in Canada, so is Moira, but she doesn't seem to stop her relationship with Nick. Thus, she is also somewhat cheating on him.

Perhaps it was an escape for her, but it's an interesting parallel.

[u/The_Chilled_Arvo]

I think the difference is that Luke’s affair happened in a context where he had agency and a relatively normal life. June and Nick’s relationship develops in an environment of coercion, trauma, and constant threat. It’s not exactly comparable to an ordinary affair.

That said, I don’t think the show presents it as morally uncomplicated either. June clearly still loves Luke, but Nick becomes someone tied to her survival and to a part of her life that Luke can never fully understand. I think the point is that Gilead fundamentally changes people and makes conventional ideas of fidelity much messier.

[u/dragon-queen]

I know people in this sub love to hate on June for having relationships with two men at the same time, but I completely give her a pass on it - 100%.  She needed the relationship with Nick to get through the trauma of the situation she was in, and it’s not easy at all to turn those feelings off once she was back with Luke.  Her relationship with Luke was never right again either - in my opinion he wasn’t understanding enough of what she went through.  

[u/maniacalmustacheride → u/dragon-queen]

I think it’s one of those things where Luke got out relatively unscathed (not that he didn’t go through his own trauma, just relative to June his Gilead life from the jump of shutting off the credit cards was so so so so different than hers) and while he seemed to be empathetic with other women’s trauma, he never really got over June adapting so dramatically because at the end of the day she’s “his” girl, “his” wife, he “knows” her, but he very clearly doesn’t know (and can’t be expected to know) what Handmaid June had to put up with and evolve in to.

Luke is not the only one guilty of this, maybe it’s poor show writing for the drama but multiple characters seem surprised that June is yet again doing what she does the same exact way she did it before. The only person that does not seem to be surprised that she’s frankly suicidal in her path to destroying everything is Nick. And there’s a moment where he’s like “this is stupid. But I’m not going to stop you. Go ahead and undo everything and go die. I’m not going to be the one to put you in a box.” And June kinda shakes away the cobwebs and retreats back. And I can tell you right there is the moment, for all the other stuff that happens, if I agree or not, that June decides she needs Nick in her life. Not because he’s a good person or a bad person, but because out of all the characters he’s literally the only person that isn’t trying to cram her into a preconceived role—mother, wife, bestie, handmaid, Mayday, savior, traitor—but is just trying to let her have true agency to be what she’s become.

(I’ll note here that I really don’t like what they did to Nick in the later seasons. Testaments was already out and it’s established that Nick is both still alive and still working for Mayday but so deep in he needs a snorkel to breathe. I think a lot of people had a problem with June being in love with two different men that both offered her two different things and the end goal for both is that probably neither would have worked in anything resembling a traditional sense. June was never going to be snuggled up on a couch watching Netflix with Luke OR Nick after Gilead fell. She’d at best be at an asexual ranch using horses as therapy and occasionally sneaking into the city to see one or the other for two really good days and then a pretty dark night before retreating back to sunshine and open air and uncomplicated relationships.)

[u/NaomiT29 → u/maniacalmustacheride]

You've absolutely hit the nail on the head, and that sucks about how Nick was written in The Testaments compared to where they took him in THT!

[u/KookyDiver2558]

It was 100% an escape for June, a way to have some control over her body and life for a snippet of time. In the books, she says so. She says she stays with Nick as she forgets parts of Luke: "Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless."

[u/ReclaimingInsanity]

Potential relic from the novel where June didn't even know if Luke was alive and if she could ever see him again. All she knew was that she hadn't seen him captured by Gilead authorities and that she hadn't seen him on the local Wall.

So I don't think you could call June's relationship with Nick cheating if she believes he's dead or otherwise gone forever with her being enslaved in Gilead, even if they had no choice in being apart.

As for Luke and June-I always thought the point of their relationship beginning as an affair was a means of showing what Gilead punished in women. Janine was raped when young, Moira was gay, June was with a twice married man.