Quote:
Originally Posted by iamnotafraid
If you're in a relationship what would you
consider cheating?
In other words. Where's the line to cross
to where it becomes cheating?
Kind of personal I know. But you usually
give good answers.
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I don't have a personal answer to this, in my very young life it still hasn't happened to me.
However it's true that it varies from person to person and new technologies are influencing this area as well, for example there's a great gap between those who consider sexting cheating and those who consider as cheating sexual exchanges through phone conversations and video.
There's a incredibly slight cultural difference however between men and women in what they consider cheating, and it is that men are usually a little more sensitive to sexual cheating and women are a little more sensitive toward emotional cheating. Like, would it be worse to hear that your significant other has had sex with another men/woman or that s/he has fallen in love with someone else, and thus isn't in love with you anymore? And obviously there are also those cases in which it's both of them. Obviously both men and women suffer the same in both cases but our culture enables this small gap.
Personally I think the cheating starts with the first lie. For example, from a clinical point of view, a typical scenario could be: a man/woman meets someone that likes them, is clearly interested in them and strokes their ego. Obviously nothing happens but having some light and fun conversation, and the other person may even be informed of the fact that they already are in a relationship, so the man/woman think "This is good. I'm not doing anything bad but having some innocent fun so it's not necessary to stop". Their significant other may be jealous, so they may not find necessary to tell him/her of their new acquaintance, after all they're not doing anyhting bad and it would only uselessly worry their partner; in fact it may be even seem to the man/woman that they're hiding it to do a favour to their significant other.
And that's how auto-justification strikes. It's a thin line then to cross over. At that point it isn't really cheating but when a person enables himself/herself so much it's almost impossible to go back. That's the first step.