I spent a good deal of last night with a friend in pieces over being dumped because she’d had a drink with an ex. I thought that was a little extreme but after gentle coaxing, she eventually mentioned she’d had a drink with the ex a few times and dinner once but nothing was going on between them. Her boyfriend thought otherwise and concluded it was cheating. It really got me thinking about cheating in relationships. Just because you’re not in bed doing a horizontal electric slide with someone else doesn’t mean you’re not cheating. There are other kinds of refined interactions that play on the boundaries of fidelity in a relationship? - Emotional Cheating – This ensues when you discuss personal issues with someone else besides your partner which in itself isn’t that bad, but when these are issues you can’t talk to your partner about … well, go figure.
- Social Cheating – Social interactions such as dinner, drinks, etc with some one you are fully aware has dishonourable intentions towards you.
- Cyber Cheating – Exchanging intimate emails, pictures and details of your life with someone over the Internet. No, just because you haven’t touched each other doesn’t make it ok.
Given a certain set of circumstances, each one can be explained off as something innocent but honestly, they are all just a preamble to the eventual physical cheating. So the next time you engage in something not really kosher with the opposite sex while you are in a committed relationship, you might want to stop and ask yourself, am I cheating?
