Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?

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If you do it as Aldeth said, I'd say it is.

EDIT: Ah, DR beat me to it.

 

Dude, if the first definition only applied to sexual unfaithfulness, they wouldn't have listed the second definition, because both definitions would literally say the exact same thing. The second definition is listed because they (the dictionary writers) saw a difference.

Here's the breakdown, Mountain Hare. You are creating "Straw Men" out of everyone's arguments and taking them down. You aren't proving a thing. This is the actual argument: If you pursue an intimate, but not sexual, relationship with someone else -against your wife's wishes- while denying her the same intimacy, you are "cheating". Address that argument instead of arguments that no one is actually making, please. These strawman arguments are not only dishonest and mean spirited, but they get you nowhere good.

She can label it whatever she wants to. Who are you to tell her she can't?

You've obviously never been married. If you had, you'd understand that it is impossible to account for every possible scenario that you, as a couple, will encounter over your next 1-100 years together.

[ August 23, 2007, 18:03: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

THe Mountain Hare: Breath ... deep breaths ... in ... out. Keep doing it.

It is often difficult to separate an attack on an idea versus an attack on the person presenting the idea.

I think many people here (including myself) have widened the technical definition of cheating. Ultimately, if you are engaging in an act that makes your partner unhappy, you are putting your relationship at risk. I think a lot of us have included some of the the 'putting your relationship at risk' into cheating -- because the end result is the same (as you pointed out).

In this particular case, the man has a deeply emotional, romantic relationship with another person. I think the majority of people would classify this relationship, even though it is not conjugal (yet), as a form of infidelity. Breaking an emotional trust cuts just as deeply as breaking a physical trust. The events leading to a tryst are as important in a relationship as the actual act.

On a personal note, I liked your choice of Elle. Shame on Aldeth for questioning such an excellent example.

Edit: On second though ... EVERYBODY ... deep breaths....

 

No. I was quite explicit about this already, but I'll try again. If you neglect your current relationship in favor of a relationship WITH SOMEONE ELSE, then clearly you are either unsatisfied with your current relationship, or you're getting a little side action. I can't make it much more clear than that. Unless gambling or shooting beer cans gets you off, I can hardly call that forming another relationship.

The context was a one sentence reply - the one I quoted - at the end of your message. I didn't rip it out of context - it's not like it was a paragraph with a few sentences that I selectively pulled one sentence from - it was a stand alone one sentence statement.

OK, I'll admit on this one I was not as specific as I should have been. What I was trying to say is that it is impractical in any relationship for you to set up rules and contingencies for all theoretical scenarios that may come up in the course of your time together. For example, I have never asked my wife if it's OK for me to have an on-line relationship, and whether or not she would consider it cheating. The reason for this is I've never considered doing so, making the initial question moot.

So for the topic at hand, there is no agreed-upon, pre-existing "rule" to pull from. From your arguement, it seems to me that you think it would be OK because there was no rule saying it wasn't OK. I'm saying that's not necessarily the case. If I thought it was OK, and my wife thought it wasn't OK, we'd have to reach some sort of compromise (like you suggested), or we'd get divorced. The compromise would likely be me not forming an on-line relationship - even though if I thought it was OK, it would not be a compromise I'd be thrilled to agree to.

So there you go - an example of where there was no rule "agreed to by both parties", and yet, the "one partner dictates how the other behaves".

I had no idea how old the Hare was. Based on a later statement he's obviously in his 30s (and fairly close to both our ages). Most people on the boards are younger than 30s, and thus I was somewhat surprised at the selection because I figured he probably was younger than that, and wouldn't have been looking at Elle in her peak years. In fact, for the early 20-somethings on the board, they probably don't even know who Elle is.

 

@Aldeth: He may still be young. I don't think anyone would have called a 34 year old Elle McPherson "past her prime". She still looks great in her 40's.

 

Agreed.

The Mountain Hare is probably going by the old, legalistic definition of adultery. It has merit and I resort to it sometimes. However, we can undermine it seriously with an example of sexual activity not involving direct contact. For example, masturbating together without any touching. See?

Cyber sex is generally a masturbatory behaviour. It doesn't probably count as adultery in most courts deciding divorce cases, but on a moral level, I would find that to be cheating. The physical aspect is deriving sexual pleasure from a third party's solicited act, as well as performing such acts aimed at giving such pleasure to another. Strictly speaking, that has to be cheating, since one is supposed to derive such pleasure only from the spouse's acts and deliver it only to the spouse.

@Death Rabbit:

Hah! The orgasms derived from cam sex are quite physical already.

However, in the case of this man, it seems to be the pretence that his character is not he and that the character is in love and married with a character played by a woman who is not identified with her character. In short, a make-believe marriage without necessarily cyber sex.

@Aldeth:

Unless the wife's being unreasonable, what she finds threatening to the marriage shouldn't be done by the husband. However, I don't think it's up to her to define what's cheating.

@The Mountain Hare:

Yes. He doesn't violate his vows in uncontrollable biological reactions, but he does in fantasies he willingly enters into.

Yup, the question is not whether it's fine but whether it's cheating. The fact it's not fine and it concerns marriage doesn't automatically make it cheating. For example, spousal neglect due to hobbies is not cheating and neither is spousal abuse.

In the most traditional sense of cheating, emotional affairs are an analogy. However, we need to make some distinction between roleplay between selves and roleplay between characters. A standard, "I put this and that here and there," from #adulterers is between selves. A roleplayed romance between roleplayed characters is more complicated. At any rate, so long as someone is getting real sexual pleasure from someone else, material acts are being committed whereby cheating is designated unless we limit cheat to actual penetration - for example arousing someone to orgasm on purpose but without any touching, is cheating on the spouse on the grounds that the acts performed and the resulting pleasure received are aimed at illicit sexual pleasure, in which at least one of the agents is married.

@Montresor:

Some women believe designating another woman as a friend is already cheating. Does that belief make it cheating for her husband?

@Drew:

You are making the exact same assumption here, Drew.

"Cheating" does imply subjectivity as opposed to "adultery", which is why ideas are begotten that it's up to individual spouses to define. Cheating implies unfair conduct one lies about. This is not entirely true in open marriages, is it? However, the condition of it being adultery or not is independent from the spouses' opinions, as is the state of it being moral or not. Here, while we use the ambiguous term "cheating", we don't focus on the rules the spouses make for each other but on whether the conduct is becoming of a married person. We should probably use a clearer vocabulary.

Yes, there is no such rule and it is not so limited. However, once we decide to discuss sexual fidelity, it shouldn't extend to include non-sexual behaviours. In short, spousal neglect while being preoccupied pretending you're married to someone else is not the same as going over to the person's house and having real, actual sexual intercourse. I think we will all agree that:

1. It's wrong to neglect spouses.
2. It's not proper to pretend to be married in a make-believe world while neglecting the real life spouse.
3. Neither the neglect nor the pretending belong to one narrow kind with adulterous intercourse.

And we may also agree that the gravity is different, not only the kind.

The problem with the case at hand is that it seems that to those who call it outright cheating (without differentiation), what makes it cheating is the associated neglect of the real life spouse, as well as the amount of time spent in the make-believe world. Frequency of occurence cannot decide, in so far as we can't say, "tree hours a day is not cheating, eight hours is." However, frequency of occurence is not altogether unconnected with the nature of the act - when one basically escapes the real marital life to engage in virtual marital life in a make-believe world, it makes the pretended marriage the primary union in the person's life. Similarly, prolonged and frequent interaction in a make-believe union establishes a concurrent relationship, which doesn't formally exist, but in which the emotions are real.

Obviously, you could also argue that merely pretending to be married to someone else is cheating already, but in that case, actors would be cheating all the time. Stage play is perhaps more noble than a game called Second Life, but the mechanics are similar, except the compensational factor in the game. However, an argument from the mechanics (the emotions being real while the relationship doesn't formally exist) would have to include actors, spies who assume identities, and the like.

And from that you could infer a successful argument that it's cheating, since most people will agree that bigamy, even if no sex happens, is cheating. That kind of thing is much like bigamy, or at least very close in effect.

Then you obviously consider the rules made by spouses to be the only binding and you consider breaking those rules to be cheating. However, even if the marriage is open, sex with a third party is still sex with a third party, and it's still against the concept of marriage. The difference is that spouses don't hold each other responsible on the basis of a previous agreement.

@The Mountain Hare:

Strictly speaking, girlfriend is not wife, but in marriage people are supposed to forsake all others, including themselves. This means a husband is supposed to forsake himself as a source of sexual pleasure, which means masturbation is cheating, as is watching porn. Porn is not only masturbatory in nature, but it also derives pleasure from the image or actions of women other than his wife, which means he violates the vows in that way as well.

@Aldeth:

I agree with that view, although I do wish the definitions were clearer.

Careful, Aldeth. Real life adulterous sex rarely involves falling in love. Also, merely falling in love is not cheating - feelings are morally neutral in so far as they are not voluntary. For cheating, you must make a voluntary choice, which means you must, for example, choose to nourish such feelings for a third party. Sorry for nitpicking.

The wife's subjective feelings are a problem created by her husband's behaviour, if there is an objective link. Even if the link is subjective as well, he should still avoid that kind of behaviour, so long as it's a reasonable expectation (e.g. not kissing friends on the mouth is reasonable, not having friends of the opposite sex is not). However, subjective agreements do not shape objective facts or states - in that case, the offence wouldn't be an offence in its own right, but it would rely on breaching an agreement. If cheating is an offence in its own right, it can't be subjectively defined. If it relies on a breach of agreement, then the matter is whether the action concerned is objectively in accordance with that agreement. Subjective judgement of the action is a whole different story. So is subjective judgement of accordance with the agreement.

You mean before marriage, not after, right?

Umm... I fear we're going to end up in the world of epistemological controversy. If two people make mutually exclusive claims, they can't be right at the same time. Also, perception does not make existence, therefore just the fact someone perceives something in some way doesn't make it "right for him" in a mixture of objective existence somewhat delimited by subjective circumstances pertaining to an external agent. Yes, I know. I'm mean. Sorry.

***

As an overall conclusion, I'd say we need to make sure we're talking about the same thing. For example, what questions are we asking. Examples include:

Is it fine to have external emotional relationships?
Are virtual ones less cheating (or less wrong) than real-life ones?
Is roleplaying the same as regular cybering?
Is a cyber (or roleplayed) relationship tantamount to real-life sexual betrayal?

And so on and so forth. We can ponder the many questions, but we shouldn't fall into the trap of making some behaviours look worse (or better) than they are by forcing them into frames of definitions where they don't really fit. For example, a particular offence should be judged as such, not dragged under some more convenient definition. For example, when we say, "this is cheating," we no longer judge the behaviour itself, but we go by the customary judgement of cheating formed on the perception of it as mostly a case of real and physical sexual intercourse. If the offences are really so similar, we need to substantiate that claim somehow.

***

Now, if you want my opinion, I'd rather not talk about cheating because of the ambiguity of the term. I'd say neglecting the spouse in favour of a make-believe world in which you have a compensational life in which you live out a romantic relationship, is against the vows. You can't live in several alternative worlds at the same time and your spouse has a right to you in that way - especially considering that the emotions are real even if the acts are pretended.

It goes against the marriage sexually in the sense of going against the exclusive sexual partnership. What goes against marriage in the sexual sense, more narrowly defined, is cyber sex, since the sexual reactions (orgasm, erection etc) are real. The source being other than the spouse and willingly chosen makes it cheating. Although there is still a difference in gravity between that and a real-life physical sexual intercourse.

[ August 23, 2007, 19:39: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

Well, I was going on the assumption that he was giving an example of an attractive woman walking past you and you thinking to yourself "Wow - she's hot". If you continue fantasizing about her long after the event that's not good, but I don't think you can prevent the initial split-second reaction.

Ideally, yes. But there's no way you could agree upon a rule for all theoretical possibilities before marriage. The major ones, yes.

But that's the whole point Drew is making! Two mutually exclusive statements cannot both be true if we are talking about an objective truth, but the point is that we're talking about something subjective. You can claim that black pants look best while I claim that brown pants look best. We're making mutually exlcusive claims but about a subjective matter.

 

No, I'm not. I'm stating that arguments that he is cheating and arguments that he is not are equally valid depending on your point of view. Mountain Hare is arguing that only his point of view is correct.

Actually, lying isn't actually necessary. If I go and hire a hooker and then tell my wife about it, I still cheated.

Uh...Chev, you just used a straw man. I never said this guy was committing adultery. No one said this guy was committing adultery. We said he was cheating. I also take issue with what I put in bold. I disagree with your moral interpretations all the time. So do lots of people on this board. If morality really weren't a matter of opinion, no one would ever disagree about it.

The question isn't about whether or not it goes against the concept of marriage, Chev. It's about whether or not it's cheating.

Thank you, Aldeth. That's my main point, here. We aren't talking about an objective truth. If this were an objective matter, this thread wouldn't be 2 pages long.

 

You claim his point of view is incorrect and your plural idea is correct. It's the same kind of assumption of correctness.

Yup. Violating the rules of the game and all. As I said, the expression "to cheat" is complicating. In languages other than English, it doesn't necessarily exist. For example, in Polish it doesn't. We only have betrayal and adultery, but not cheating - cheating is only in games. Many years ago, when I first heard about cheating on a wife, I couldn't make any intuitive connection.

Opinions exist and take a lot of sway, but are not necessarily correct and especially not at the same time. Objective good and evil, right and wrong, exist.

And then you can define cheating any way you want. That's why the concept is flawed. I prefer talking about fidelity or lack of it, adultery or lack of it. Cheating usually implies adultery, while the term is being stretched. Generally, lumping something into the cheating category serves to equate it with adultery.

Hah. The objective is not defined by an agreement of perception.

Yup, you aren't responsible for what you can't avoid. What you can avoid is holding on to the image and that should be avoided.

Marriage is what marriage is, not what's defined. Decency was mentioned, I believe. Just that it wasn't mentioned at the time of wedding doesn't mean cybering is okay and just that at some point the wife concludes she wants her husband not to talk to any other woman save maybe his mother, is not okay either.

Breaking someone's trust may be subjective, but violating a marriage covenant is not really. No one gets married with the idea it's fine for the spouse to run off to Second Life or Everquest or whatever for 16 hours a day, pretend to be married to someone else etc.

 

This is becoming a War of Semantics, so I'll just drop this by before making my exit.

I think this entire subject can be boiled down to this:

If you engage in an online and/or virtual relationship, your significant other will likely feel jilted when he/she finds out. While not 'cheating' in the traditional sense, the internet and modern technology have irrevocably changed our perceptions about relationships and social norms. Though the medium may make this feel like uncharted territory, when you boil the issue down, it's simple: romantic interest is being channeled to a third party, to the detriment of the couple. Most rational people would consider this cheating at worst or emotional neglect at the very least. Because even if you don't consider it cheating and they do, continuing it despite their objection is a sign of weakness, both in you and of the relationship itself.

As has been pointed out here, emotional infidelity can be just as devastating to a relationship as the physical kind, if not more so. The medium is just a technicality.

Deny that this is cheating if you must, but know that you do so at the peril of your own relationship. If you're the kind of person who wouldn't see anything wrong with this, your lack of consideration indicates you'd probably make a lousy boyfriend/girlfriend, anyway.

Holla.

 

I agree.

 

Drew:

Is that the best you've got? Obviously you're never read dictionaries which repeat the same thing in slightly different ways. Quite simply, you're making a bunch of assumptions, instead of providing clear definitions which unambiguously support your point of view.

Here's the breakdown, Drew. You're talking absolute and utter nonsense.

No, that was not the actual 'argument' presented by many posters on this particular thread. If you donned your pair of spectacles, you'd realize that many have presented the argument that 'if they think it's cheating, it's cheating!'. Aldeth himself said:

That's the argument I'm addressing. Unless the numerous posters on this thread who used to champion that ideal have now admitted to it being a load of nonsense, and have covertly refined their opinions on the matter.

Relevance? If anything, that statement is a cheap jab aiming to undermine my credibility.

So to remedy this, one partner gets to make rules up on the spot? Sort of the like a judge in the Australian judiciary system when there is lack of legislation regarding the case?

Ain't marriage grand when only one party can make up the rules on the spot?

chev:

Thanks chev. So if you really bend it, a man who masturbates is 'breaking the rules' of marriage, and hence is 'cheating'. I wonder how purists such as Drew feel about such nonsense, hmmm?

Oh, by the way chev, I think you're talking utter crap. Just in case you weren't aware.

 

No, your condescension, childish insults and phony intellectualism put the last nail in your credibility's coffin about 3 topics ago. So much so that I'm starting you think you're a fake poster, just trying to kick up some sh*t for fun and not actually arguing in good faith.

And Drew's right: you deploy more strawmen than a hundred Dorothies.

 

Not really. "Cheating" doesn't have a cut-and-dry, non-debatable meaning, as you acknowledged when you said:

and

I consider the perspectives that

1) "There was no cheating because, in order to qualify as cheating, there must be a physical relationship"
and
2) "There was cheating because any romantic relationship qualifies, regardless of whether or not it is physical"
equally valid.

The perspectives that
1) "Cheating has a clear-cut, utterly precise, and non-debatable meaning, therefore, anyone that thinks this guy was cheating is clearly in the wrong"
and
2) "Cheating has a clear-cut, utterly precise, and non-debatable meaning, therefore, anyone that thinks this guy was not cheating is clearly in the wrong"
are, on the other hand, equally invalid.

If what does and does not qualify as "cheating" were so clear-cut, utterly precise, and non-debatable, this thread wouldn't be on page 3. We would have just looked the word up in the dictionary, found the caption that said "the bed must be creaking for there to be cheating", and called it a day.

 

Drew:

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=cheat

http://www.answers.com/topic/cheat
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cheat
http://www.yourdictionary.com/ahd/c/c0263400.html

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/cheat

*dusts off hands* I say we call it a day .

 

@TMH: Sure, I'll call it a day. You're still wrong, but I'll call it a day.

 

@Mountain Hare: Where's the caption, Hare? Not seeing it.

Anyway, my full Webster's (you know, the 10 lb, 8 inch thick one with the atlas in the back) has over ten definitions listed for "cheating"......one of which is "to be unfaithful to ones mate". So I went ahead and looked up "unfaithful", as well.

Here's a little snippet from among the many definitions given for "unfaithful": "not observant of promises, vows, allegiance, or duty, disloyal, violating the marriage vow"

That said, at least in my opinion, having a romantic, but non-physical, relationship with another woman qualifies, not only as the breaking of a promise, a vow, an allegiance or a duty, but is also disloyal and violates the marriage vow. While this doesn't prove that you are empirically wrong in your assertion that "cheating" must always involve sex, it does prove that the matter is debatable....which is all I've been trying to prove from the get go.

EDIT: I believe I've been ninja'd.

[ August 25, 2007, 16:53: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Tal:

It is when people just go 'Ho hum' and ignore dictionary definitions when they contradict their own Spanglish.

Definitions can be arbitrary. If you wished it, you could call a duck 'vorpal rabbit', or redefine 'penis' to describe a vagina.
But you'd confuse the rest of normal society, and it would be a huge error to 'transfer' the stigma of the original definition to your custom definition.

Lumping 'fantasizing about a non-spouse' in with cheating is the equivalent of calling a spank on the ass 'rape'.

Dictionary definitions are a good indication of society's consensus on the meaning of a word in a specific context. If you have a problem with the definitions, take it up with the author, not me. I've quoted various dictionaries, all of which consistently state that cheating involves sexual activity.