The Question of the Week: What constitutes cheating?

Freda: Smiling at the copy machine, rubbing her arm at the watering hole, flirting with him at lunch break, after hour text messages, long phone conversations, sharing of relationship woes, lingering thoughts, staying late to work on projects, kissing, holding hands, oral sex, SEX………..what exactly is cheating?

Is it only when two people bump uglies or are there varying degrees of cheating, from an emotional affair to the down and dirty sneaking around, clothes on the ground, steamy affair?

Cheating comes in many forms and is different for many people. Some women are okay with their hubbies getting lap dances by big breasted women who shake their breasts in the man’s face while he innocently has a “looksie without the feelsie.” While this is completely offensive to some (hmm hmmm LIKE ME!) many women are okay with this “harmless” interaction.

Then there is porn. To some, pornography is a way of life. It is perfectly okay and even expected. While to others, porn is the silent enemy that is killing the relationship in the bedroom and women take great offense.

What about emotional affairs? These in my opinion are the worst of all affairs, because it isn’t necessarily built on sex. It is about deeper issues like need, desire, respect, intimacy. They take longer to cultivate, are harder to break away from and are less noticeable than a sexual affair. Some feel as long as it isn’t sex, a little flirtation and attraction is okay, while for others, this is emotional black mail.

I could go on and on. Long talks, kissing, holding hands, sex, oral sex, hand jobs, dinners, lunches, breakfasts. What starts out as a harmless flirtation can end up being potentially dangerous in any relationship. Some of the hottest affairs started out with two people just being friends and one encounter after another led to deeper bonding, then to a kiss, then to……….. Well you get the picture.

So what is cheating exactly? Here is my very narrow minded opinion:

With so many people who seem to be at different points in their life, relationships and marriages, it is hard for me to determine what cheating means to you. However, if you find yourself in reoccurring situations like your tongue mysteriously ending up in other mouths, your fingers frequently disappearing in women’s vaginas or men’s dicks magically in your crotch, you may want to have a serious heart-to-heart with yourself and your mate to figure out what is MISSING in your relationship or marriage and what NEEDS aren’t being met. So many times affairs are about unmet emotional and physical needs, not about sex.

Travis: When it comes to cheating, the first thing to consider is your relationship. If you’re in a monogamous, committed relationship, you should have no reason to consider anything that could be constituted as cheating. If, for any reason, you’re unhappy with an aspect of your relationship (especially the sexual or romantic aspects), the responsible thing to do is to talk about it. Many people find themselves cheating because of an overwhelming desire to do so. What they don’t realize, however, is that if they were completely satisfied in their relationships, the notion of cheating on their partner would not even cross their minds. If you’ve given yourself and your trust to someone (and they’ve done the same) enough to be in a romantic, sexual relationship, you owe it to each other to respect one another. Both of you should have respect enough to resolve any issues of desire or fulfillment before those issues escalate into a situation in which one of you will end up betrayed and horribly disrespected.

So what constitutes cheating? It’s simple: any act that you would consider cheating if committed by your partner, is also cheating if committed by you. For example, if you would consider it cheating if your partner kissed someone else, then it’s cheating if YOU kiss someone else. If you consider your partner cheating if s/he verbally flirts with someone else, it’s also cheating if you flirt with someone else.

Personally, when I’m in a relationship, I’m completely committed to that guy. I don’t stay in a relationship where I’m not happy, fulfilled, and respected. Therefore, I have no reason to let my mind consider committing an act of infidelity. If people find their minds or bodies wondering into the space of someone who isn’t their partner, it’s probably time for them to re-evaluate their relationship, and themselves.

Christine: What constitutes cheating? It’s a question that is both easy and difficult to answer, as the boundaries are different for every couple.

The most obvious answer is any type of physical contact with another person other than your partner. However, I would also include any type of emotional contact to that as well. Though many people consider ‘cheating’ to have taken place only when a physical interaction of some kind has occurred (i.e., kissing, sex, holding hands, etc.), I am a firm believer in the fact that cheating can take place without two people even having touched.

It all goes back to the word ‘intimate.’ If you are ‘intimately’ involved with another person—writing personal emails, making non-business related phone calls, sneaking out for coffee breaks or making other excuses to ‘bump’ into each other—I absolutely believe that it constitutes cheating. You are emotionally involved and emotionally invested in another relationship with someone other than you partner. You don’t need to ‘seal the deal’ with any type of physical contact in order for it to constitute cheating. In fact, in many ways, I think this type of emotional affair can be even more devastating to a person’s relationship.

A good rule of thumb to live by is this: don’t do what you wouldn’t want your partner to do. Show them the same type of respect that you would expect to be shown.