disturbed_one said:
... would you really call it cheating. I've thought about it before, but it happened to my friend a couple of days ago. He's still in denial about it, but I don't get why is it a big deal. Hell, I even don't get what women even see in us. If I was a woman, with all the knowledge about men that I have now, I'd most certainly turn lesbian.
So would you call it cheating or you'd just say 'meh'.
Personally, I'd ask if I can join in, or atleast take some pictures ^^
While it sounds like a cop-out, too many people focus on the
act of cheating and fail to view it as a passive-aggressive
communication within the relationship. We assume the guy cheats because he's a philanderer, and the woman cheats because she feels neglected, so we never investigate the reasons.
EXAMPLE FOLLOWS:
There are couples in which communication breaks down, the man feels "mothered" or justifiably pestered by the woman, and because neither of them are able to talk it out, this goes on until finally he just goes ahead and cheats. Then he gets caught, and there's a divorce, and he's the great Satan.
Not saying what he did wasn't bad. However, there are two points of failure here. If you get the (unfortunate) chance to watch this tale unfold, you can start to see it if you don't get too personally involved. A woman treats her man like he's a child, for whatever reason, and he begins to feel less and less like a man. When he tries to tell her how he feels, the conversation spins right back around to how
she feels about things and then stops... so he never feels as though he has communicated and been understood. Eventually, some other woman comes along and shows an interest, and he
gets to feel like a man again.
Yes, he's wrong to cheat. Yes, it's ultimately his choice. But problems never get solved if we don't look at the root cause--
both parties failing to effectively communicate or create an environment in which communicating is even a good idea. It just so happens, in this case, that he caved first, thus giving her the "moral high ground" and absolving her from having to do anything about
her part in the precipitating events.
END EXAMPLE.
So, the long and short of it, look into
why she's cheating. Communicate about it. See if it's a problem that can't be solved, or whether it's one that
can. My fiancée occasionally has an "itch to scratch," so to speak. She needs her "girl time." She's always been up-front about it, and I've always been up-front that I'm not the sort that's going to push to be included. She needs that space and time, she communicated that need, and we're good.
This is because, for her, it's a physical desire. She's not going elsewhere because she's
emotionally unfufilled. There's an excitement to it that I'm just not equipped to provide (giggity). And you know what? She comes back every time, and she comes back in a
fantastic mood, so I say win-win.
Now, if it were a
guy, I'd be hard-pressed to buy that it was purely a physical need. For this problem, I've got the requisite features, no need to outsource. If she were to, instead, communicate to me that she didn't feel I was giving her enough attention, or she didn't feel admired anymore, or something like that, it'd be something we could work on together--because I strive to be open to communication like that.
If it were just a purely physical thing, she wanted the excitement of being with a different
guy from me, it would be difficult to accept. I couldn't say
impossible, but certainly difficult. My main concern would be that it might be "more than physical" for
him, or that at least he would get possessive and start to make trouble or sow seeds of division. Until my fears in that regard were abated, I wouldn't go along.
All of this is just to say that they should talk about
why she's doing it--and more importantly, why she's being
secretive about it. Treat it as communication (bad communication, but communication nonetheless) rather than a personal attack. Focus on what she's trying to say or show, rather than
just on how it makes you feel (there's certainly a place for that, too).
Too many relationships end because we have such a narrow view of cheating. It's always a bad thing, yes, but more accurately it's a grouping of
several different bad things, and you ought to at least know which you're dealing with before you 'splode.