What’s Considered Cheating? How To Define Relationship Infidelity
What does it mean to be unfaithful to your partner? Why are there so many gray areas when it comes to infidelity? It’s an age-old question with many answers.
There are some situations in which most people would agree that cheating has occurred. If you are in a relationship and one partner has sex with another person that isn’t you, the consensus would be that infidelity had occurred without question. But what if you are in an open relationship?
Is pornography considered cheating? Masturbation? Having intimate conversations with a co-worker, yet nothing physical has ever happened?
Everyone has their own definition of cheating. It’s the reason infidelity is so difficult to define.
The Definition of Infidelity
For as long as there have been relationships, there has been infidelity. And for as long as there has been infidelity, romantic partners have disagreed over what exactly counts as infidelity.
According to couplestherapyinc.com,
Infidelity is when you are actively turning away from your partner and toward someone or something else in secret. Infidelity is not just being in another romantic or sexual relationship.It’s the active turning away from a stance of trust and transparency with your committed, chosen partner.
What constitutes cheating is definitely a tough question to ask, and despite what some people say, there is no complete universal answer.
Different couples have different rules. Cheating is murky territory after all.
Marriage.com says,
The definition of infidelity in marriage can broadly be attributed to the violation of a couple’s mutually negotiated and agreed upon contract or understanding regarding emotional and/or sexual exclusivity.
Obviously what's cheating and what's not will vary from relationship to relationship.
Ask 10 people what “counts” as cheating and you’d probably get 100 different answers. “Infidelity is a gray area because different individuals have their own boundaries and ideals for romantic relationships,” says Dana Weiser, Ph.D., assistant professor at Texas Tech University.
The Main Reasons People are Unfaithful
The first question asked by someone who has been cheated on is, “Why? Why would you do this to me?”
Turns out, research gives us 8 key reasons to explain why people are unfaithful.
1. Falling out of love
Sometimes (but not always) people have affairs because they are lacking feelings of love for their partner. Over three quarters (77%) of participants in the research indicated that a lack of love for their stable partner, and/or greater love for the person with whom they cheated, was a fairly strong reason for being unfaithful.
2. For variety
Other times, infidelity is not a response to a problem with an existing relationship; rather, it's a reaction to boredom. For many people (74%), a desire for variety factors into their cheating behavior. More men explained their infidelity as tied to this reason than women.
3. Feeling neglected
Similar to feeling a lack of love, some people engage in infidelity as a response to their partner's lack of attention. Participants (70%) revealed that feeling neglected was at least moderately tied to their cheating behavior. More women than men recognized this as one of their motives for cheating.
4. Situational forces
Not every act of infidelity is premeditated and driven by dissatisfaction with a current relationship. Many participants (70%) noted that factors of the situation were a key reason they cheated. Maybe they were drinking or in some other way thrown into an opportunity they didn't anticipate. More men recognized this motive as a reason for their cheating than women.
5. Out of anger
This was not the most commonly cited reason, but anger played a role in the affairs of many participants (43%). In these cases, cheating was seen as a way to punish a partner or enact revenge.
6. To boost self-esteem
It seems counterintuitive, given that infidelity tends to end with significant personal consequences, but for some people, the act of having an affair can boost their own ego and self-esteem. More than half of participants (57%) indicated that enhancing their self-esteem was a motive for their cheating.
7. Not feeling committed
Lacking love and lacking commitment to a current romantic partner are both tied to general feelings of relationship dissatisfaction. They may go hand in hand. In terms of commitment, nearly half (41%) of participants indicated that having low levels of commitment to their romantic partners motivated their cheating.
8. Because of sexual desire
About one-third of participants (32%) reported that they were driven to have an affair because of their sexual desire. Maybe in their established relationship, individuals aren't engaging in the frequency of sex, style of sex, or specific sexual behaviors that they want; this can contribute to their reasons to cheat. Men reported this reason more than women.
Types of Infidelity
The obvious type of cheating is physical cheating and it’s pretty self-explanatory. “It’s typically construed as any type of touching, kissing, or sexual behavior with a person who is not your exclusive partner,” says Dr. Dana Weiser, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University.
Emotional cheating, generally starts innocently enough as a friendship. Through investing emotional energy and time with one another outside the marital relationship, the former platonic friendship can begin to form a strong emotional bond which hurts the intimacy of the spousal relationship.
According to this article, digital cheating can be defined as secretly engaging in online communications that overstep relationship boundaries behind your partner’s back. This could include flirtatious chatting, sending inappropriate photos or forging an emotional bond through online conversations.
Many people mistakenly see the screen separating them from the other person as a barrier that prevents their new virtual relationship from becoming a ‘real’ infidelity, but this isn’t the case at all. Digital infidelity can be just as damaging to a relationship as physical infidelity.
Object infidelity
can be described as pursuing an outside interest that may reach a point of near-obsession, where the interest leads to neglecting one’s relationship”, notes psychcentral.com. “A healthy balance of outside interests are perfectly fine, normal and encouraged in a committed relationship, but when one is so consumed with the object or if the interest takes top priority, that is when the problems arise.
Creditcards.com industry analyst Ted Rossman says, “There are three main types of financial infidelity: spending money your spouse/partner wouldn’t be comfortable with, secretly carrying debt and keeping a hidden credit card or bank account.”
Rossman adds, “Financial infidelity is a big problem because it’s hard enough to meet your financial goals when you’re pulling in the same direction. It’s almost impossible if you’re engaging in a tug-of-war against each other.”
5. Experts Weigh In
This article provided a compilation of experts offering their ideas on what constitutes infidelity. Here are some of their comments.
Dr. Gregory Kushnick, a Manhattan psychologist, says "Cheating is behaving in a way that violates an explicitly agreed upon or implied understanding of what is not permitted in a relationship. A universal definition of cheating is less important than what a couple jointly defines as constituting a deviation from the agreement.”
Dr. Joshua Klapow, Psychologist and Host of “The Kurre and Klapow Show” notes,
Cheating is an act of betrayal. Betrayal is a violation of a person’s trust. What is important to understand is that once trust is broken, repairing and mending varies greatly from couple to couple and individual-to-individual. Depending on a person’s history of trust issues, betrayals, attachment style and security, it may take one episode of a betrayal to dissolve the relationship. Or it might be completely repairable after the event. It is totally dependent as much on the person, their history, and the strength of the relationship as it is on the type of cheating that has occurred.
Dr. Gary Brown says, "Is there a gray area? That depends upon how on whether or not you and your partner are OK with various levels of micro-cheating, which can include an innocent (or not so innocent flirtation) with someone other than our partner. Certainly this can occur while in the company of someone, but also in other ways such as via texting.
This can also include intended as well as unintended consequences such as developing an infatuation that becomes a full on crush for someone; revealing some of your deeper inner thoughts and feelings with someone you are attracted to; other than your partner, lying to someone else about the fact that you are already in a relationship; sleeping with the other even if you don't have sex; and having any sexual contact that might not include intercourse but could include sexual touching of a provocative nature.”
Licensed Counselor Nicole Richardson adds a good practice to put in place in your relationship. She says, "In a time when people are really experimenting with what is/isn't a relationship and commitment, I understand why this can feel like a gray area. My general litmus test for couples is to 'behave in my absence as you would in my presence.' That is far from perfect but I think it can help avoid a LOT of problems. If you wouldn't do it (whatever that is) in front of your partner, then it's probably not a good idea.
Melanie Shapiro, Licensed Social Worker, offers this: "My definition of cheating is when there is an agreement between two partners to be in a monogamous relationship and one partner violates the agreement and engages in sexual or emotional intimacy with someone outside the relationship. Often, people only think of sexual relations as cheating, yet sharing emotional intimate parts of oneself with someone outside the relationship can also be considered cheating.”
Conclusion
Dr. Robert Weiss says,
At the end of the day, sexual infidelity is not so much about the physical sex act—either in the real world or online—it’s about the fact that you are keeping it a secret from your partner, the one person in the world with whom you supposedly share everything. If you’re looking at pornography and your spouse knows about it and is OK with it, then it’s not a problem. But if your spouse doesn’t know, you’re cheating.
If you have been the victim of infidelity in a relationship, Psychology Today offers these book suggestions on learning how to move on after an affair:
- Blindsided by His Betrayal (Madden)
- Cheaters: A Woman’s Guide to Why Men Cheat (Wilder)
- Loving Your Spouse When You Feel Like Walking Away (Chapman)
- Infidelity: A Survival Guide (Lusterman)
- When Good People Have Affairs (Kirshenbaum)
Have you read any of these books and found them helpful? Leave a comment below.
