What is cheating?

A question was posed in my psych class a couple of weeks ago. The professor asked the question "Is this cheating....?" and then she gave us a real life scenario and asked it again. In the scenario my professor said she ran into an old high school friend and had lunch with him. Later she went home and had dinner with her husband. Her husband asked "how was your day?" which she replied as she always did "same ol same ol". Without going into to much detail she asked the class should she have told about the lunch. Now I should point out that there was NEVER anything of a sexual nature between her and the old friend. They were simply old high school friends. This drew a divide between the guys in the class and the girls.

I personally have asked this question to my friends years ago, but it gave me an opportunity to revisit my stants on this topic. My personal definiton of cheating is when you go outside of the rules and parameters set within that relationship. For example if you and your partner have determmined that it's ok to date other people as long as you tell them about it (and yes I know of real life couples that practice this) then it's NOT cheating. The common and more universally accepted definiton of cheating or infidelity is "any violation of the mutually agreed-upon rules or boundaries of a relationship, and is a breach of faith in an inter-personal relationship". So it's just like I said, It's based on whatever agreement was made about what's acceptable and what's not. In my relationship that lunch scenario mentioned above wouldn't be a problem, and to me it's NOT cheating. Maybe very slighty deceptive but not cheating. In a later post I will go in-depth about what a cheater is and how I have cheated myself. Stay Tuned!