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The Gray Zone: What Counts As Cheating?
A therapist explains the slippery slope from borderline to actual cheating.
by Nona Willis-Aronowitz
Sometimes the French really do live up to their adulterous reputations. Even the French president, Jacques Chirac, has publicly admitted to having extramarital affairs—news that barely caused a stir in France. In American culture, though, a full-blown affair—involving love, intercourse, or both—can end relationships faster than you can say, “cheater!”
We have been taught that the definition of cheating starts with a kiss, and that a physical tryst is the ultimate betrayal. But a lot of other flirtatious behavior can cross into the gray zone. Anything from sexy text messages and phone sex to a lap dance from a stripper and intense lunches with a coworker may not be immediate cause for a break-up, but these acts may be enough to make people re-evaluate what constitutes being unfaithful.
Take Eva, 25, a curator who lives in Chicago. Knee-deep into her relationship with her boyfriend, Rob, she started to feel restless. The sex with Rob was passionless and infrequent. Eva still loved him, but felt a need to jumpstart her love life. One day, she found a three-word email from an ex-boyfriend in her inbox: “How are you?” What started as innocent catch-up emails escalated into graphic reveries about their racy sexual past. Eva felt a thrill she hadn’t felt for months in her relationship with Rob. The ex-boyfriend lived in Italy, so the exchanges never resulted in a face-to-face meeting. Late at night, though, she wondered, “Am I a cheater?”
“There are two rules of thumb: if one of you is doing something that would make the other uncomfortable, it’s wrong,” says Dr. Bethany Marshall, a marriage and family therapist and author of the forthcoming Deal Breakers: When to Work on a Relationship and When to Walk Away. “And if you or he is getting emotional and sexual satisfaction outside the relationship, that’s a bad sign, too.”
What is dangerous about “cheating light,” as Marshall calls it, is that it can easily intensify into something more. “Don’t minimize these interactions,” Marshall advises. “The person who is doing it is going to get emboldened over time…borderline cheating activity should be taken as a warning signal of what’s to come.” She’s right: Eva’s sexy emails to her ex-boyfriend in Italy didn’t end there. “The first time I ever ventured into the territory of non-physical cheating on Rob was through these emails. But once I started down the path, I never looked back.” Eva’s computer cheating with one ex, she believes, led her to have sex with another ex a month later. “It was the deception, not the physical activity, that was the breaking point,” says Eva. “Once I betrayed his trust virtually, it was easy to do it physically.” Eventually, Eva’s relationship with Rob imploded and, after three years, he moved out. Meanwhile, Chirac’s devil-may-care admission of infidelity–which he claims never threatened his relationship with his wife–begs the question whether cheating is culturally or individually relative. Is there a universal danger zone? That is, if one partner feels guilty about his or her own questionable behavior, can it still be cheating even if the other partner doesn’t feel jealous? “I deal with people who try open relationships all the time. Some people are not born with the jealousy gene,” Marshall points out. “But regardless, if one person is expending emotional or sexual energy outside the relationship to compensate for something missing, it’s going to destroy their union.”
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1 anonymous // Sep 9, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I have been living w/ my boyfriend for close to 2 years and he must always have attention from women. Now we work at the same place and the women there act like they are his girlfriend, they ask him to do them favors like hold saws etc (work in construction field) and he rarely eats lunch w/ me but hangs out w/ his own team. I’ve begun to feel isolated and lonely. When i try to talk to other men he takes offense although he can flirt and talk to any female on the job he wants to. He says im too jealous and if we get married I would be even worse. Im starting to think the more i have talked about marriage the more further he wants to get away from me.
2 She Is Legion // Jul 30, 2008 at 2:22 pm
“…if one person is expending emotional or sexual energy outside the relationship to compensate for something missing, it’s going to destroy their union.”
I disagree with this statement. When it comes to me and my relationships with people, one person cannot be my everything. It’s that simple. My husband and I love each other dearly, but we are both bisexual — sometimes, he wants to have sex with men, and sometimes, I want to have sex with women. He cannot fulfill that desire for me, nor I for him, which is why we have an open relationship. If you can spend your life with one person, and never want for any experiences with anyone else, than more power to you. But looking outside of an established relationship to have certain needs/wants/desires met is not automatically a death knell.
3 sheryl // Jan 2, 2008 at 7:05 pm
What if your guy says he going is going to delete his profile from the dating site we met on. but doesn’t. You do however, but showing your gf his pic in your mail you find he is still active?
4 Michael // Apr 23, 2007 at 4:07 am
Lis, it’s not cheating if there isn’t any sex involved. Adults need emotional intimacy with others. Some may find more of a connection with females or with males, but ideally, everyone has at least some friends of both sexes. You mention age too, as if it were a determiner of his values. It’s not. Like it or not, these are people he relates to, at least in their setting.
I would venture to say that your husband loves you very much, but is reluctant to share his friends with you for the following reasons: A) You obviously respond poorly to him having close friends of the opposite sex. B) His friends are just that - his friends. They are obviously providing a connection that you are not. This doesn’t mean that your connections with him aren’t essential, but different people provide different value to the human psyche. He is going to enjoy doing things that you do not, and enjoy conversations about topics you would find disinteresting, and it is only appropriate that he find that outlet somewhere else. C) He can’t trust you enough to know that you would treat his friends with honor. You snoop in his messages and pester him with questions until it’s simply a lot easier to pretend he doesn’t need one-on-one interaction with others than to deal with your response to it all.
Certainly , if he has a philandering mind, your husband might be at risk to leave or have an affair, but that is regardless of whether or not he is permitted freedom or locked down by you. I can say with certainty though that the more restrictive and unreasonable you are, the more likely he is to find someone else, if not simply to escape the suffocation he finds at home.
Love your man, respect him, and above all love and respect his friends, that they might find no fault in you. For if they do, they will certainly share a friend’s confidence that he would certainly be better off somewhere else…
5 Jack // Apr 21, 2007 at 11:38 pm
The bottom line is that most, if not all men think about being with other women. The ones that don’t act on it are usually too afraid of what they will lose to risk it. But the desire to do so is still there. Usually this desire stems not from the fact that something is missing from the current relationship or marraige, but rather because men want to experience something new, for the first time, a “cherry high”. And, it doesn’t matter how many romantic weekends you plan or special little things you do, a five year old relationship will never be new again. And any psychobabble to the contrary is a load of crap. Ladies, you might not like this little reality sandwich, but this is what is going on in the mind of your man.
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