E-mail Flirtation: Are You Cheating?
A therapist explains the slippery slope from borderline to actual cheating.
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 grey 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."
Discussion
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?
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...
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.
While surfing the net this morning I stumbled across tangomag.com and being a married woman, I clicked on the "married" tab. I found the postings about cheating and had to dive in. After reading some of these stories, I feel compelled to share mine.
My husband and I have been married just under 2 years and while most of the time we have a wonderful relationship, there was a time when I caught him red-handed cheating.
We both spend a lot of time online, and always in separate rooms. I spend my evenings playing card games on this one particular site but he, on the other hand, used to spend his evenings watching videos of girls ... he always said they were just chatting. One evening I caught him with his "boy parts" exposed and on webcam. On the outside, I told him to do whatever he wanted, and if exposing himself on webcam made him happy then so be it. On the inside I was screaming, "Why am I not enough for you?"
I let it rest for a while until one day he asked me to take a weekend off and go visit a single female friend. We went, and she took us to this nightclub where the dancers, both male and female, were not fully dressed. She dragged me up to the male stage and while some guy was shaking his rear in my face ... all I could do was turn my head away. I told her that male strippers just "don't do it for me" and we went back to the table. My husband, on the other hand is a normal red-blooded man and asked for my permission to visit the female dancer area. Figuring nothing would happen, I said fine. He went, then came back to our table and told me he felt some dancer up. (And had fun doing it.) This didn't bother me ... after all, he was going home with me.
Later that evening, we got back to the friend's house and our hostess was complaining of a backache and decided she was going to bed. My husband proceeded to go into her bedroom to "tell her goodnight" and after about 15 minutes, I peeked my head in her room and asked if everything was alright. She was flat on her back, and my husband was bent over her bed. All I looked at was his face - and when he answered me "yes it's fine" the tone in his voice told me to leave.
He came out of the bedroom about 2 minutes later and found me sitting on the couch ... LIVID. I KNEW something was going on in there but I did not see the whole scene, only his face. I again asked him what happened and he told me. His response was "It just happened." To this, I say bull feces ... it was his decision to reach between her legs. He apologized for the rest of the evening, of course, after showing me the result of his actions ... he was ready for sex from me. I on the other hand didn't even want to be in the same room with him, let alone have sex.
We woke up the next morning and I told him that we had to leave - I could not sit in that house one second longer. He said goodbye to his friend and we were on our way home. That was a 5 hour trip - probably the shortest trip we've ever taken together because we talked the whole way home. I finally confessed all of my feelings, how I thought he betrayed me, and how insecure I really am. I told him how hurt I was because he was not the man I married any more. We had stopped talking to each other, and had stopped being romantic. I told him that things needed to change, or I was moving out.
It has been 3 months since "the incident" - one we never bring up any more. While we are on the road to healing and fixing our marriage, there is still a huge part of me that has not, nor will I ever forgive him for the things he's done. However, we are working on communicating with one another. Our sex life is almost non-existent but that doesn't bother either one of us. I would rather him not touch me until I am the only woman he will ever see and want.
K, what you're doing kind of skirts the line, but the more important thing is that you know you're partner doesn't like it. If they don't like it, don't do it. They obviously see it as cheating and it's hard enough for them to be 20 hours away and still trust you, so if you value your relationship you shouldn't put strain on it by upsetting your partner over coffee and flirting. Even when you're having a big disagreement with your partner, you should NOT allow that to be an excuse for you to be inappropriate with other men.
Also, if a guy sends you anything with a heart on it, he wants more than friendship and you know you can't give more than friendship, so don't accept the gifts. Flowers are ok as long as it's platonic, but with guys it's usually not.
I am in a comitted relationship. Seven months ago, I relocated for my job 20 hours away from my partner. Since moving, I have met many people professionally, most of them men. As I am an outgoing person, I have engaged in what I consider harmless flirting when they flirt with me and guys have often tried to pick me up.
I have on occassion received gifts from some of the men that I have been in contact with. These gifts come in the form of a coffee with a small heart drawn on the lid and most recently, I recieved a bouquet of flowers from one gentleman that knew I had recently had a big disagreement with my partner.
After receiving the flowers, I called him and thanked him for the flowers and told him I was comitted to my partner, but I still kept the flowers.
Could my "harmless flirting" and keeping the flowers be considered cheating especially when I am aware of how upset it makes my partner?
Lis, your husband needs to stop this. You are totally right in what you are doing. If there's nothing wrong with anything he's doing, then why hide it? This may be a mid-life crisis but it needs to end. If he's just helping out students, then why isn't he helping out male students as well? Ask him that.
would definitely like to know if this falls into grey area and how to deal with: husband of almost 10 years has, for past 3 years, engaged in secret non-sexual (as far as I know) lunches, emails etc with other women. I always end up finding out somehow, but until I do, I have no idea that he is meeting woman X or Y (and they are always university graduate students 20 years younger than he is!--there have been at least 3 that i know of) when i find out, he blames me for being jealous and says that's why he doesn't tell me. of course, I'm only jealous because I find out months after the whole thing has started and in all these cases, the women have developed a certain emotional dependency on him and he's always helping them out looking for work etc....most recently, he returned home after working overseas for 3 months (we also have 2 young kids) but first stopped in amsterdam....turns out it wasn't just for a brief rest before coming home after admittadly a tough time abroad...I discovered from an SMS he forgot to delete that he actually met a (also young, if I got the right google woman!) woman there. dinner, a concert, so happens it was also the day after her birthday. and this after he promised never to lie to me again about these sorts of things. and he specifically tiold me he was not meeting anyone in amsterdam. he doesn't seem to get it. any thoughts on this? (btw, I haven't asked for details this time as I realy don't care anymore, it's enough that he has this wierd compulsion to establish this secret relationships, without sex, i am pretty sure, that appear pretty important to him.) I've told him we need to separate and he needs to figure out A. why he does this and B. how he can win my trust back. is this fair? he argues these friendships are just friendships and why do i need to know everything...I argue that he's lying, which he is, and either we share or why be together? I know i can be jealous, but i wasn't really jealous until the first time I discovered he'd be having lunch every week with a woman, plus many flirtatious emails, etc.
Cheating, that's what you do when you can't have your desires filled with your partner? Better talk this over with your SO and see what you can work out. With sexual desires pointed away from your primary, you might well feel the need for more which implies an even greater level of duality and duplicity in your life. So either work it out with your main man, accept deciet or try polyamory.
Dannielle, you are DEFINITELY cheating! Even if it's not physical, it's intimacy outside of your relationship with your partner. If your relationship with your partner isn't going well, work on it, but don't go somewhere else to get what you want while you're still in a relationship. If you have to, break off the relationship, but don't cheat.
Life of Love, your partner needs to go to counseling or something and work on his insecurities, otherwise there is a good chance he might actually have sex with another woman.
Melissa, your guy is clearly just a dog. You really should ditch him. If he lies about the computer cheating, how can you trust him with anything else. Plus, he hasn't stopped even though he knows you don't like it. This means that he DOES NOT care about how you feel. In which case, he is not worth being with. You need to remember that you deserve the best, to be treated like a princess whose feelings are always considered. Anything less and you're selling yourself short. Just think, there could be a great guy out there who really would care about you and wouldn't cheat on you in any way, shape or form.
When I'm with a girl, I DO NOT cheat on her at all. I don't flirt, even on the computer with anyone except for her. That is what a relationship is supposed to be like. You're worth it. Just believe that and don't let anyone mistreat you and they won't. Hang in there.
I received your Nov/Dec 2006 magizine and was just fliping through it when an section caught my eye. It had to do with "Can emails be considered cheating?" And the answer is YES. I've been married to my husband for 1 1/2 years, but we have been together for the biggest part of 6 years and during a rocky spot I found an email that he and an ex was writing back and forth. It said where he messed up when he married me and then they started talking about hooking up. I asked him about it and he said that he was trying to catch her up in "something" for later. Please... Cheating is cheating is cheating. Since then, we have separated, I can't forget the email and other things that he has said or did to me. He wants to get back together. I love him, but I'm not IN love with him anymore. There is to much muddy water under the bridge. How do you forget things like cheating?
This article hit it right on the head! My boyfriend of two years has continually visited adult websites, adult chatrooms, and other adult sites while we have dated. I never knew this until one day he had the history open on the computer. I asked him about it, and he denied it! It was right there in black and white and he claimed they were just pop ups! I'm sorry but if I go to Food Network, I don't get sexually explicit pop ups! He receives emails from girls off of these sites and it infuriates me that he lies about it. Nor does he see this as a form of cheating when the emails are sexually explicit, or if people sexually chat with other people. Why? Because it is not physical contact with these people. Yet our sex life is about extinct! And if there was nothing wrong with it, then why does he do this while I am gone or sleeping? My thoughts are why hide it, lie about it, sneak it and deny it then. Anytime I have tried to talk to him about it, it leads to pretty heated discussions and him upset that I don't trust him! Yet any given night I ask for some intimacy he has every excuse in the book why we can't, or he doesn't feel like it. Yet the next day it shows he was at one of these sites. He knows how this hurts me based on our discussions, yet he continues to do it? How can anyone say it is not cheating if they continually get sexual gratification from other means outside of their partner and especially when they are denying their partner intimacy.
I am married and I have a friend who is a Counselor, my relation ship with him as a friend started 1 year before I meet my husband, at first it was a friendly conversations then turn into a sex phone as well up until now I'd keep that relationship, I love to talk to him and so is he. He hasn't got married because he is busy working on his masters degree. I don't want to stop having normal a conversations with him and from time to time phone sex. I ask myself is this behavior is called " Cheating " ?
DD.
This information is right on track. I am currently in a relationship that I am very uncomfortable with my partners actions towards other women. He feels less of a man if he doesn't have other women desiring him. I have been through some really tough times with him as far as our relationship goes and I don't feel he should need or want to have other women calling him. He says that I should not be jealous of him flirting with other women but I find his actions unsettling. I don't know where my ride in life will end but I do know that I will not be played so that the person who is suppose to love me plays devils advocate.
