Manda JO wrote:
Didn’t Jimmy Carter say something about this in Playboy Magazine once? 
Normally, yes.
You can hurt a lot of people by getting to the point where it counts as cheating. Flirting starts small but ends up really dangerous. Dammit, if you’ve got something it’s possible to cheat on, you’ve got something far more precious than you think. Something many, many people are aching for. Remember that? Are we so quick to forget?
Change your life. Stop looking at people sexually. Reassess. Rededicate. It may feel forced and contrived at first, but it’s just a question of Right Behaviour. You’ll get used to it, like you got used to using the bathroom. And you will earn far more. It is always worth it.
Even if your relationship later goes belly-up, knowing you did your best is immensely more empowering than knowing you could have done more. Get control over yourself. This shouldn’t even be an issue.
Sheesh MJ - you gotta read the whole paragraph y’know. I even broke it up into bite sized pieces.
At no point did I say that to fancy another person is actual bona fide cheating. Rather I was making the point that to yearn for a relationship with another is to harm your current relationship. It is both a symptom of the lack of quality of your current relationship and a cause of future friction. As such the root cause and end effect are not that dissimilar to those involved with actually cheating.
Hell - maybe I’m just young ‘n’ idealistic. But I know what I feel and I know that what I feel is irreconcilable with yearning for another. I’d put YMMV here, but somehow I can’t believe that human emotion is that variable.
pan
Oh - and Ross also expressed the point I’m trying to get across. Thankyou Ross.
pan
Asking what is cheating and what isn’t, is like asking people what they prefer for dinner. It depends on each individual person and couple. What is cheating to me, may not be to you. I think it’s possible to cheat on your SO without physical contact, as it is to not be cheating while having wild jungle sex with other people. Overall, I believe in a lot of what was mentioned above, that cheating involves emotions beyond friendship and then acting on those emotions. However, I also feel that when you realize, before acting, that emotions are developing, and you do not do something to harness those emotions, you again are cheating. Kissing to me is not cheating, unless it is being done out of passion, as opposed to a passionate kiss. There is a fine line between the difference in the two, but a difference nonetheless.
I think in a lot of ways kissing can be more emotional than sex. Yes, the first time you have sex is always the preverbial holy grail of a relationship, but there is also recreational sex, and sex groups. I am sure some of you have watched HBO’s series Real Sex. These episodes are built on groups and clubs of people who just lay areound and have sex, with everyone els in the group. Now, hile there are some teenagers (and the really bastardistic adults) who just sit around at the mall and make out, which kinda falls into a recreational catagory. But, for the most part, people don’t just say “He lets kiss now, since we got time to kill”. So I think that, while it is way more common, a kiss can be much more emotional and meaninful than sex…thats my 2 cents…but hey, I’m only 17, so what do I know?
This recently came up in a discussion with my wife (inspired by something on some TV program) and we both agree that kissing other people is not allowed.
I have to say that I am dismayed and disappointed that a number of people in this thread have stated that kissing or having sex with anybody other than your SO is NOT cheating IF your SO knows about it and agrees to it.
The fact that your SO accepts your behavior doesn’t make it right. If I beat my girlfriend but she doesn’t object, does that make it OK? Of course not! Likewise if I kiss/fondle/flirt with/have sex with another woman, that’s cheating, even if my SO doesn’t mind. Her accepting it doesn’t make it right, it just means that I can get away with it.
Is it really so unreasonable to expect your SO to be physically faithful? I say “physically faithful” because I agree that it is unreasonable to think that anybody can go through life without having the occasional fantasy about somebody other than their SO. We are, after all, only human. I wouldn’t fault my SO for finding another man attractive, or even indulging in the occasional fantasy about somebody else.
But the mark of humanity, the thing that separates us from animals, is the ability to put reason above instinct, the ability to control our emotional impulses with intellect.
If you don’t mind your SO humping every available female like a dog in heat, that’s your business. But call it what you like, he’s still cheating on you. And it’s a reflection of how he thinks about you, how he thinks about himself, and even how you think about yourself.
Um, Narcotic, you’re kinda taking a hard line here that utterly rules out “open” or polyamorous relationships. If I demand monogamy from my partner and s/he has sex with another person, then I am being cheated on and my trust has been betrayed. But if it’s not an expectation of the relationship, I don’t see how either person is hurt by it.*
FWIW, this seems like quite an inflammatory and even unrelated statement.
I’m sure some other polyamorous folx will be along to say this and more better…but I wanted to give you the chance to incorporate these exceptions into your previous statement.
- This is, of course, in the ideal and well-discussed polyammorous relationship. I pretty much maintain that it’s often easier to be monogamous than to have a healthy open relationship.
Cheating implies breaking of rules. Beating your wife is breaking a rule (in this case, the law).
Messing with someone other than your wife is not against the law (at least in most places). For it to be cheating, there has to be some agreed-upon rule against it.
Here’s a good question, though…if a woman tells her husband that she will NOT agree to refrain from kissing other men, even though he doesn’t like it, is she really cheating if she does, or is she just being insensitive?
So what if you have sex with someone as a greeting, not for pleasure?
Non-Curved Narcotic:
If I have sex with someone other than you, am I cheating on you? If not, what is the difference between me having sex with someone other than you, and your SO having sex with someone other than you (and remember, we’re operating under the hypothetical that your SO has never made any promises of monogamy)?
Moi:
I’m glad to see that you got my point exactly. You are correct, I do not allow for “polyamorous relationships” in my conception of what a relationship is supposed to be. While there are countries/cultures where it is acceptable and even expected for three or more people to be involved in a relationship/marriage, the majority of the people in the US (at least IMHO, as I don’t have facts to back this up) believe that a person should only be involved romantically/sexually with one person at a time, and this is the belief that I subscribe to. My statements about cheating were based on this belief.
The Ryan:
You can do whatever you want with whomever you please and you would not be cheating on me, because you and I are not in a relationship. If we were, I would have made it clear at the start that I expected both of us to be monogamous. And then if you were to have sex with somebody else, yes I would consider you to have cheated on me. You see, I was NOT operating under the assumption that my SO hadn’t made a commitment to be monogamous.
To the group in general:
I think everybody is being a little too literal and not reading in the implied statements in the “is kissing cheating” question. I think the original question should be more specific, as in “If you are involved in a monogamous relationship, then is kissing (for purposes other than purely platonic greetings, etc.) considered cheating?”
Yes, if both people in a relationship agree that they are under no obligations to be faithful to each other, then it would not be cheating if one of them were to kiss/whatever somebody else. My statements were based on an assumed monogamous relationship, and I was simply commenting that I am surprised that so many people seemed to assume that said relationship WAS NOT monogamous. It is my belief that monogamous relationships are the rule, not the exception, and based on many of the posts here it would seem that not everybody here agrees with that.
Perhaps a better question would be “How many people here would be content to be in a relationship under the condition that your partner was not expected to be monogamous?”
Given this, Narcotic, I would say kissing is cheating, but nowhere as detrimental to a relationship as actual intercourse.
And this:
…is probably an entirely different can of worms, one which we might have to start a separate thread for.
By the way, welcome to the Boards, Narcotic.
But earlier you said:
If your SO knows about it and agrees to it, you aren’t fully monogamous. So you’ve said that even if your relationship isn’t fully monogamous, kissing is still cheating. Another point which I probably should have addressed in my previous post is that relationships are not simply “monogamous” or “not monogamous”. There many different forms of monogamy. Most people would expect sexual monogamy, but few would expect social monogamy. So clearly it’s possible to have one form of monogamy without necessitating all others. So why do you think sexual monogamy necessitates physical monogamy?
If the question is “Given that you’re in a relationship in which kissing is considered cheating, is kissing cheating?” then it’s rather tautological.