Solarist

Well, I would definitely agree things are not so black and white. Nothing in this world really is, and most "actions" have a schenario where they are a horrible crime in one situation while the same action could be a heroic gesture in another. The fact it is not black and white does cause some difficulties, however, pre-defining the situations to avoid conflicts of bounderies.

Cimmie - I feel for you situation - it is horrible to go through but to deal with flaunting it afterwards has to be just earth shattering. But Jadedstar is right - regardless of whatever the situation, it is not your fault. You are only responsible for your actions and regardless of your actions (I don't know the full situation) he is purely responsible for his horrible act. Jadedstar - I do agree that things like lying or omitting that one spent extra money really doesn't qualify as "cheating" in the sense that we are talking about (although by the literal definition of "Cheat", it would be). I am, however, somewhat struggling with the second situation you provided with the female friend. Your justification on lying (or just omitting information) is that if someone sets up unrealistic parameters they are justified on ignoring and hiding the action if they break them. My opinion is that this could end up pretty much negating anything - by that logic, if someone thinks it is perfectly fine to get a lap dance but their partner disagrees, they could declare it an unrealistic parameter and feel justified just doing it anyways. What if someone thinks casual sex isn't cheating? I think it is a very slippery slope. Now I can understand how people can be paranoid and set some insane parameters (myself being one whom has) and it being "easier" to just lie about it, but I think this lying will just fuel their paranoia all the more. I would think the proper way to handle this is just to state "I will be talking to this friend" and not hide the fact. It is then up to the other partner to either accept the change in parameters in their relationship or not. Not giving the partner the opportunity to reject this change in boundaries is cheating, IMHO, regardless of how unrealistic the initial boundary is. I am still pondering the fine line between "Intimate Friendship" and "Emotional Affair" - does anyone have any thoughts on where that line gets crossed? In my situation, there are the definite things (strong declarations of love and not loving the partner, desire to run away with the friend, indication of wanting a sexual relationship, etc.) - however I am struggling to set up boundaries for the more subtitle things. Another hole in the premise of "what you would do in front of your partner" I am discovering is about sharing emotions. If one partner is willing/able to share their emotions with their partner, but instead chooses to share them with someone else instead, would this be cheating? What about raw time in a platonic manner? Say a partner spends 40 hours a week with some other person thus only has 14 left to provide to their spouse, would this be considered cheating?

I completely agree Jadedstar - I think people tend to assume too much and that is often how things go astray. I have had some of these - I am not comfortable with strip clubs however she doesn't have an issue. Pretty much whenever the situation comes up, she asks if I would okay if she went. Typically, my answer is "No, not really." and she respects that. But it is other, less "classic" boundaries that I think cause more issues. I had one yesterday where we were talking about "intimate relationships" - and I indicated that I would never end up in an "intimate relationship" with anyone but her since I would consider it cheating. Unfortunately, this was muttered on the way to a birthday party, so we didn't end up getting to talk about it for a while, and both of us had horrible feelings running through us throughout the party. As it turns out, our definitions of "intimate relationships" were not in synch and this caused the pain and confusion. I still am having difficulty trying to determine where that line between "Close Friend" and "Emotional Affair" lies - I am not even sure how to vocalize this since, well, it is rather subjective to a particular situation.

I actually have been exploring this whole question myself to try to determine my boundaries before I express them to my wife. While initially the "Cheating is any act that the person would not do in front of me" line seemed to be a good guideline, there are some flaws in it I think. For example, if the person has a different set of boundaries, perhaps they would be comfortable doing things in front of you that you are not comfortable with them doing. In my situation, my wife felt perfectly comfortable talking to this OM for 10 hours in front of me. Was I comfortable? Heck no. I felt betrayed and neglected. So thus I thought perhaps "Cheating is any act that the person, if done in front of me, would cause me to be upset or uncomfortable". Of course this has flaws also. For example, my wife goes hot tubbing naked with some of her female friends. Would I be comfortable being there? Heck no - most of her friends I find rather , well, unattractive and I would not be personally comfortable with my own nakedness - however I don't think that my comfortablenesses should necessarily bar her from doing this. There is also situations with conversations where the other party says something personal that they would not necessarily want the spouse to hear, which is fair enough (assuming the reason is they just don't know/trust the spouse at the same level). Would this make it "cheating"? I would think not. The main task I have to figure out is the different between a "Close Friend that you can have some emotional openness with" vs. "Someone your having an emotional affair with".... Defining these boundaries is proving to be difficult...