You were on a break. (friends reference)
Read it again.
But don’t they? Not in a legal sense, but as far as relationships go. If you don’t accept your partners definition of cheating, you should find a different partner.
If the OP is looking for a legal answer, as opposed to a moral one, I think this is the best answer. I can for certain, that the conduct in the OP–even with the consent of the soon-to-be ex-spouse–would be a crime and he could be prosecuted. I’ve recently learned of a soldier who was dating a “legally separated” woman from California. Even though a “legal separation” is a binding agreement, it is still short of a divorce. The soldier committed adultery and is being removed from military service.
I never questioned it until maybe a year ago, so would the cheating have happened 30 years ago or last year?
By the way, all, I was interested in the moral sense. Sorry I didn’t think to say so. But both are turning out interesting.
If there is enough of a commitment for cheating to be an issue, both parties will have come to some kind of an understanding of what constitutes cheating. The cheater will know the boundaries that apply in each unique relationship, and therefore know what the lines are that ought not be crossed. And yes, the cheatee does get to define what constitutes grounds for an accusation of cheating, because the cheatee is the plaintiff that brings the case up for adjudication – and then goes on to become the prosecutor, the judge and the jury, and finally the executioner…
Jimmy Carter? Is that you?
[QUOTE=Jimmy Carter]
“I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
[/QUOTE]
If that were true, we’d all be in prison serving life without parole.
Civil behavior is separating the deed from the thought.
I think the issue is that if you have ended a relationship by your own code, you aren’t perpetually bound by the partner’s idea–for example, in the OP’s case. If he moved out, moved to a different city, and filed paperwork and was open about his intentions to start dating, that’s not cheating. Even if the (almost) ex-wife believes that it is and demands that he be faithful, it’s not her call, and he’s not obligated to let her define the boundaries of the relationship.
Otherwise, there’d be people who could never ethically move on if their divorced spouse refused to recognize the civil divorce as meaningful.
But he didn’t question his own motives for 30 years, and then he wondered. Does that mean it wasn’t cheating yesterday, but today it is?
No it isn’t.
So, no.
Much like you shouldn’t consider it cheating if one partner in a mutually-agreed-upon open marriage had a relationship with a third party, you shouldn’t consider this cheating, either. Cheating is more about breaking the boundaries of the relationship as agreed upon by both parties, and less about your legal status when doing so.
It pretty obviously was NOT cheating. The one way in which it might have been a little morally questionable is if the person Napier was dating during the waiting period didn’t know he was in the middle of a divorce and thought he was completely unencumbered. But that’s a different issue and still wouldn’t count as cheating on the ex-wife.
My immediate response upon reading the topic line was ‘if you have to ask, the answer is probably yes.’ But, lo and behold, the story you tell is actually in the realm of ‘no’, and I can’t even imagine why you’d wonder.
All parties knew all the elements under discussion, and nobody expressed expectations that were not getting met.
Here’s how I could wonder:
“I always want to think of myself as in the right. But I was dating somebody else while still legally married. And if a man finds himself asking if something counts as cheating, it usually does. So, gee, maybe this is a case of wishful thinking.”
Not cheating. However, I’d certainly let any new romantic interests that the divorce isn’t final yet.
The statute of limitations for Cheating is long past. Not guilty!
Good point – I did.
Nope, absolutely not. You are fine. Fine with the man upstairs, and your conscience soul be clear.
DinkyDink
C’mon… I really like hearing better reasons for feeling like a hero than having grown old!
If your soon to be ex-wife had been seeing someone else, would you have thought that she was cheating? I doubt it. So I suspect you were consistent in your definition.
Cheating is when you violate the rules. When I played solitaire with real cards I had a rule that if you had fewer than 10 cards you could select any. Under my rules, doing that wasn’t cheating. Your rules changed also.
Not guilty!