Cheating?

Where I work mostly everybody is engaged or more likely married. If talking to a married woman at work was cheating I'd be a silent monk at work.

 

"...for whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. " Matt 5:28. Lots of people on here aren't religious, but I think the heart of this scripture rings true.

 

Thoughts are seeds of action, if you think it, is it wrong? In my opinion it is cheating. It is destructive to the relationship and that makes it cheating. If you are thinking or fantasizing about sex with someone else, I think it's cheating.

Eventually porn won't give you what you need to get that hit of dopamine. Eventually you will have to seek more stimulation to get the same high. Because that is the reality for most of us on this journey. It may and probably will become a more real action at some point. We are not satisfied with our partner, we need more excitement.

I don't know if this makes any sense at all. But I think our intentions are just as important and even more important than our actions. Because eventually you sow a thought and reap an action.

 

Nothing wrong with talking, everything wrong with talking to score.

 

It's an uncomfortable truth that we PA's would do well to acknowledge. Adultery is a spectrum. Is porn full-fledged just-as-bad-as-sex adultery? Most would say no. Is it on the spectrum? Unquestionably yes. Dishonesty, obsessiveness, allowing it to move us further emotionally and sexually from our spouse, etc. moves it even further down that dark spectrum. In fact, the person who earlier laid out three times they could have been cheating but weren't strikes me as being somewhere on the spectrum as well.

Anything that interferes with beeing 100% faithful to or present for your spouse emotionally, physically, sexually, or spiritually almost certainly falls on the spectrum IMO.

I'm ashamed to be able to attest to the truthfulness of Idaho Man's statement about porn making it easier to go further. My addiction led me to seeking a fix from massage parlors. How many people do you think frequent places like that who aren't already porn addicts? How many people cheat on their spouses who aren't already porn addicts? I'd suspect not many.

 

I thought about this again today, over a pretty tasty beef-with-horseradish sandwich. And I thought I'd share (not the sandwich):

Anyway, the simple truth is that your cheating is whatever your partner defines it as. It's as simple as that. Objectivity doesn't come into relationships. You can talk about the 'terms', and perhaps persuade one another of your points of view (hopefully this happens at least a bit in a healthy relationship), but at the end of the day, if your SO considers it cheating then it is. And if I/you consider that unfair, then the relationship won't work.

So if we don't know, then we need to ask. And we should probably assume it is until we do.

I said no previously, because my SO didn't really have a problem with it aside from the trouble it was obviously causing me. Now the improvement in our relationship and sex life might change that point of view, which is fine.