Cheater!

Business school is warping my brain. It's making me rethink all of my prior notions of what men are and do and think. How is it that the guys I was hanging out with before business school were so different than the ones I'm meeting now? And is there really a way that the majority of men act and think? If so, are most men like the ones at business school or the ones from my past life?


This has been on my mind since last week when the topic of cheating in relationships came up while I was at lunch with one male and one female classmate. The guy was insistent that sex was the only thing that is considered cheating and that if I think kissing is considered cheating* then I'm going to be a very lonely person because almost every guy kisses other women while in a relationship. Usually I am not one to blindly believe what others say, but this guy is someone I respect very much and look up to so what he said made my heart sink. What if I have been wrong all along about what cheating is? What if men really can't keep their tongues in their mouths and I am going to end up with no one because my standards are too high?

Like I said, I'm not one to blindly believe, so I asked some friends what they considered cheating and then turned to Google. My friends, both male and female, all agreed that kissing was cheating,** but then something else came up... cuddling. Is cuddling cheating? Some say yes but others say no. My Google search turned up suprisingly little information that I would consider reliable.*** I did find one item I trusted, though. "Ask the Experts: What is considered cheating on someone?" on teenwire.com, which is Planned Parenthood's website for teenage girls. It turns out we are all right. The expert says, "People have different opinions about what's considered cheating, so it's up to partners to decide what the 'rules' are for their relationship."

Great. So we're all right. Trouble is I don't see when these rules are formed. I have never been in a relationship where someone's said, "Okay, now that we're dating, we need to set some ground rules. I think it's okay to kiss someone else when drunk. Is that cool with you? Also, I often sleep over at friends' houses and cuddle with them. Are you down with that?" I think we always assume that our own view of cheating is the correct one and we don't end up talking about what that view is until one person's cheating line is broken. Well, knowledge is power. Now you know that cheating is a gray area and you can use that information however you so choose. Good luck and good night.


* And I do think kissing is considered cheating!
** Thank god.
*** I didn't spend too much time searching so don't kill me if I missed an important article.